“You fucking drugged my girlfriend!” I stood, clenching my palm around the ring.

“I did.” He looked to Ruby. “And I’m sorry. You were never in any real danger. In his own warped way, your father loves you.”

She didn’t respond. Hell, what could she say?

“It was between the cushions. I only saw it when I sat down.”

“It must have rolled a bit. But you found it, and it brought you here.” He cleared his throat. “The rings. Wendy designed them and made one for each of us.”

“And who paid for them?” Joe asked.

“Who do you think? She designed the symbol and engraved my name on the inside of mine.”

“And the GPS coordinates?” Talon asked.

“I had those added recently. So you could find me.”

“Hold on,” Joe said. “We’re digressing. This is all important, but we need to keep it chronological. Back to Wendy and the club, please.”

I couldn’t believe he had said please. The tone of his voice and expression on his face didn’t seem pleased at all.

“Wendy moved away after her sophomore year, and I thought it was over. She had other ideas though. She kept in contact with me and the other guys in the club, specifically Larry, Tom, and Theo. She watched us grow our business, watched them get greedy, and when the time was right, she swooped in. She’s very intelligent and shrewd and cunning. She put ideas into their heads without them even knowing it. As for me? I funded them and continued to do so before I realized they were getting into illegal stuff. They started with marijuana, which was of course illegal in Colorado back then. But face it, pot is pretty harmless. I didn’t see any real reason to get out at that point.”

“You said yourself that it was illegal,” Joe said. “That wasn’t reason enough for you?”

“Yeah, but I was seventeen and rich. I figured I was untouchable.” He closed his eyes. “Remember those days? When you’re young and carefree, and you don’t think anything can harm you?”

“No, we don’t remember those days,” I said. “We were busy dealing with fallout from Talon’s abduction the best we could, since you wouldn’t allow us to get the help we needed.”

Ruby touched my forearm. She was trying to soothe me. Too bad it wasn’t working.

“This is all shit you taught us not to do,” Joe said. “Didn’t your father teach you the same thing?”

Brad Steel opened his eyes and coughed. “As a matter of fact, no, he didn’t. The Steel fortune has some precarious history. Your ancestors left their scruples at the door sometimes to build their fortune.”

“You’re saying our fortune is dirty money?” Joe said.

“No. I’m saying they didn’t practice the best ethics. Our money is clean.”

“Why were you so adamant that we be so ethical, then?” Joe asked.

“Why do you think? Because of what I had gone through—was going through—with the future lawmakers. I’d thrown caution to the wind when I was too young to know any better, and it cost me dearly. It still is.”

“You’ve been dealing with these people since then? Our whole lives?” Talon rubbed his forehead. “The people who tortured me?”

He nodded. “I promised you the truth. I never promised it would be pretty.”

“Christ.” Joe stood. “We knew it wouldn’t be pretty. Frankly, it’s pretty unbelievable.”

“I never wanted you kids to get involved in anything like that. I was determined that you would be protected at all costs.”

“Get back to Wendy,” I said. “How did a fifteen-year-old girl have any hold on you at all?”

“She blackmailed me.”

“How? She couldn’t have had any power over you.”

“She became pregnant after she moved away. We hadn’t been together in a couple months, but she claimed it was mine and that she’d just found out. Remember, there was no DNA testing back then. The best we could do was a blood test that might or might not have indicated paternity. My father would have disinherited me if he knew I got Wendy pregnant.”

Joe sat down, fingering his hair. “Always about the money, huh?”

“I was seventeen, Joe, and afraid of my father’s wrath.”

“What happened to thinking no one could touch you?” Joe rolled his eyes.

“Please, let him talk, Joe,” Marj said.

“Anyway, I begged her to get an abortion and not tell anyone. I offered her money, but all she wanted was me.”

Joe harrumphed. “You’re not going to try to get us to believe that all of this happened because of an unwanted teenage pregnancy.”

“Partially. I know it sounds crazy, but remember that Wendy is psychotic. More than that, she’s exceedingly good at hiding it. Anyway, she ended up having a tubal pregnancy that went undiagnosed until about ten weeks, and then her tube ruptured. She had vast internal bleeding and nearly died.”

“So I would have had a true sibling,” I said, astonished.

“Maybe,” my father said. “If Wendy was telling the truth. We’ll never know. Anyway, after nearly losing her life, Wendy changed. She became even more obsessed with me and the future lawmakers club. To her, the loss of her pregnancy was a message somehow. A message that she needed to make others pay for the loss. To make me pay.”

“So she spoon-fed Tom, Theo, and—to a lesser extent—Larry all the information they needed and exploited their greed. She figured because I was the financier, I’d always be involved, so she could punish me through the evil deeds of the others. She counseled them to form a corporation.”

My mind whirled. “The Fleming Corporation.”

“How did you know about that?” he asked.

“It was easy enough to find. It’s the corporation that owns the house where Talon was held captive,” Joe said. “It also owns another house, where my wife was left to die. I tried getting information out of the registered agent, but he wouldn’t budge. My threats had no effect on him.”

“He’s well paid to stay silent, and your threats are nothing compared to the threats from others.”

“What others? From Wendy? She’s locked up in psych. Simpson and Wade are dead. That leaves only Mathias.”

“As dangerous as Wendy and Theo are, they’re nothing compared to the elusive ring they work for. That’s who controls them and the Fleming Corporation.”

“What ring?” Talon said.

My father shook his head. “I don’t even know that. Wendy wouldn’t tell me. She said it was for my own protection. In her own twisted way, she cares for me.”

“My father must know,” Ruby said.

“He doesn’t. Only Wendy knows. And she’s not talking.”

My mother was truly evil. Evil, psychotic, and a creative genius.

“Again, goddamnit, you’re digressing,” Joe said.

“By the time we’d all graduated and Larry and Tom had finished law school, they’d gotten into the business of…slavery.” He gulped audibly. “Even now, I find it difficult to say.”

“Of course it’s difficult to say. It’s the abusing and selling of human beings. Christ,” Joe said.

“Wendy set them up with a bigger trafficking operation. Tom, Larry, and Theo became suppliers. They were responsible for finding and training the slaves and then transporting them to the pickup location, which was usually on foreign soil somewhere, but sometimes in the US.”

Ruby sat beside me, her face pale. I squeezed her hand. “You okay?”

She didn’t answer me. Instead, she addressed my father. “How did they”—she swallowed—“learn how to train these people?”

“Baby…”

“No, Ryan. I need to know.”

“Are you sure?” my father asked.

“For God’s sake, tell us the fucking truth!” Joe yelled.

He looked to Ruby, his black eyes sunken. “They went through the same training themselves.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ruby

My mouth tasted like battery acid. I clamped my hand over my lips.

“Baby?” Ryan said.

I shook my head. I’d get through this. So my father had endured things I hadn’t. So what? He’d wanted to inflict those same things on me. I’d just been able to escape before he could.

I could not—would not—feel sorry for the man, even if I owed my existence to him.

“You mean…” Talon began.

“Yes,” Brad Steel said. “Everything those monsters did to you had once been done to them.”

Marjorie gasped and clasped her hand over her mouth. Joe put his arm around her and whispered something that I couldn’t hear.

“At least they weren’t ten years old,” Ryan said. “I don’t feel the least bit sorry for them. But I don’t know why anyone would voluntarily put himself through that.”

“Easy,” I said, my voice cracking. “They were paid well, weren’t they?”

“Two million dollars each,” my father said. “Their drug business was going well, but this was more money than they’d ever seen.”

“Two million dollars for their humanity.” Talon shook his head. “Not fucking worth it.”

“They didn’t have a choice at that time. They’d entered into an agreement. It was fulfill it or be killed.”

“I think I’d have chosen death,” Ryan said.

Talon shook his head vehemently. “You wouldn’t have. You wouldn’t believe the survival instinct when you’re in such an insurmountable situation. It kicks in whether you want it to or not.”