Page 30 of Retribution

My email to the owner of the warehouse is scheduled to go out in two hours once I’m out of the city. The more I erase my footprint as I drive with large sunglasses and my hair down in two long braids, the easier it is to admit to myself that I did want Oliver to find me. That doesn’t mean that I’m not being careful now as I try to figure out what I want to do next.

I even checked my van for a tracking device. Damn hacker.

It wasn’t on my bingo card to find out that Alesso, Oliver, and Lucas are all my scent matches, and it reminds me of how freaked out I am about it. Oliver finding me was meant to ensure that Lucas was telling me the truth. I didn’t expect to be gazed at like I was a banana split with extra whipped cream. It’s better that I passed out instead of climbing one of them like a tree.

I never act like this. I don’t remember what it was like to crush this hard on anyone before. Swallowing hard as I remember how gorgeous they are, I force myself to think with my brain instead of my cunt. My instincts tell me that they’re not bad people, especially the easy way that Lucas interacted with them.

Lucas believes in being held accountable for the people within his sphere of influence. I have a feeling that Oliver and Alesso might fit this description, despite his insistence that they aren’t a pack.

They may not have been an established pack before, but it appears to me that they’re on their way to be. The three of them have a way of responding and tempering the other person’s words. I noticed that Lucas was trying to get them not to push me too hard, and while I appreciate it, I can’t see myself moving in and playing house with them.

I don’t trust lightly, even though I know that Lucas won’t hurt me, and Alesso and Oliver will be pushed by their instinctsto be good to me. What does that look like in real life though? I have no idea.

I haven’t spent very much time around omegas outside of the auction, my parents were both betas, and their idea of a healthy relationship was to kill each other with drugs.

I don’t know where to set the bar. Where do I start? Bonds are forever, after all. It scares the shit out of me.

And yet, my heart is racing at the knowledge that I’m not going to be in the same building as Lucas anymore. He’s not a pet, he’s an alpha, and leashing anyone is wrong.

I remember how awful it was for me at the Jefferson City Auction, and a whine slips out as I ask myself if I’m just as awful as Ophelia and her handlers. I can’t be, right? I shudder as memories threaten to overwhelm me, the voices of my past whispering that I’m worthless and used up due to their treatment.

Taking a deep breath, I force myself to pay attention to the road as I struggle to break free of my thoughts. My hand rubs against the leggings that I put on along with a long sleeved black sweater, a much more relaxed look than my usual. I have a gray coat to put over it all when I get to my destination to keep me warm as well. I’ll need to go shopping tomorrow to pick up some more clothing where I can hide my weapons and not gain unwanted attention.

I usually don’t care, but…

“I need to see them,” I whisper. “My life is real, I’m not with Ophelia anymore. I’m free, dammit. She’s still haunting me like the bitch she is. God, maybe it’s time to kill her and be done with it. The past can’t hurt me, but she can because her reach is long.”

There's nothing to keep Ophelia from deciding one day to come find me. Just because I’m stronger now than I was before doesn’t mean much if she decides to send hunters on my trail. Running from her for the rest of my life will interrupt myability to find my brand of justice while following my client’s instructions.

The reminder that Ophelia is not the type to quit her career as a madam hits true. I’ve rebuilt my life, run away from her and the auction as I’ve killed to shove back the trauma of what happened to me, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s still ruining lives.

I need to kill her. It won’t fix everything. I know it won’t. There’s currently one large auction in Minnesota, and that’s Ophelia’s place.

“It’ll hurt the trafficking industry,” I muse. I’m talking to myself to help ground myself, because I learned early on that cutting is a slippery slope to hell.

It lasted a year and a half until I forced myself to stop. Instead of feeling nothing, there was this all consuming rage where I needed to kill or cut after I killed the alphas who bought me in that shitty hotel room.

There was no in between for me, not when the heat of my aggression and retribution felt so good. There was drama, flare, and blood. I didn’t need or want anything else.

Not when in the aftermath I was promised blissful silence.

Once I stopped cutting, the promise of ending lives helped me keep going.

The blaring sound of my phone ringing makes me sigh. I need to pull myself together so I can answer it.

Glancing at the screen, I hit the Bluetooth enabled button on my earbud. I only have one in so that I can hear my surroundings as I drive, but being pulled over for talking on the phone would suck when I’m attempting to leave the fair city of Indianapolis.

“Hello?” I say, knowing that Devon James is on the other end. I occasionally take jobs for him when he needs to make a statement.

My kills make his men puke like little babies apparently.

“Isolde,” he murmurs. “What mischief are you currently up to?”

“You know if I told you, I’d have to kill you,” I tease him.

Devon is a decent alpha who runs the Knotted Anarchy motorcycle club in Illinois. There are about sixty people within it, and while he has a few topless nightclubs, everyone is there because they want to be.

It would be silly to have me work for them when my stand against sex trafficking is so strong. I’m very upfront about it, because the first three people that I worked for received a bloody wake up call when I found out that they were hunting and selling omegas and alphas.