Page 123 of Born for Starlight

“I went freelance.”

“Do you work for…?”

She couldn’t ask it. So I answered for her. “I work for a good guy. Just a man who is very angry and has been very hurt.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not going to tell you his name, because if I did, you’d recognize it. But he had a daughter by a woman that nobody knew about. That daughter was kidnapped and trafficked by the same group that we ran up against in Brazil. He has unlimited funds. He hired people to find her, and they did. When they did, she was… She didn’t have much time left.”

“To live?”

“To live,” I confirmed.

“Oh, Matthew.”

“Her father couldn’t handle it. For the longest time, he just shut down. But when he finally came out of it, he went out and looked for people. People he thought could shut the system down.”

“Why did you do it?”

“What?”

“Why did you take the job?”

I paused. She sure knew how to get to the heart of the matter. “Because by then I’d realized what you could accomplish when you weren’t hindered by rules and lack of resources.”

She reached over and put her hand on my arm. “That wasn’t my question, Matthew. I asked you why you did it. Why did you take his job? It wasn’t just because you thought you could win.” She drew back her hand. “Or was it?”

I wanted her hand back. I had to answer.

“Because I’d seen what it had done to people. To children. To girls and boys. Because I’d heard Layla when she’d had her nightmares.”

“You heard her? You didn’t hold her?”

I looked into Angelica’s warm brown eyes. Even now, she was hoping that I had held Layla. That I had offered comfort. God, could Angelica have a more beautiful soul?

“Sweetheart, she wasn’t ready for that back then. She wouldn’t let me close enough.”

“That’s sad.”

“Yes, it is,” I agreed.

“You know she was the one who delayed the auction, don’t you? She kept telling the MC that the girls had food poisoning and would throw up if they went out onto the stage.”

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t know that. How did you find out?”

“Bruno told me.”

“How did he find out?”

“She told him.”

She put her hand back on my arm. It felt good. “So you took the job for this man. And that’s why you targeted me?”

I winced. “Do you have to keep using that term?”

“What else should I call it?”

I grabbed both her hands. “I used a door that was open. I wasn’t sure that you would be someone they would be interested in, but after the plane crash, I knew they were scared.”