Page 124 of Born for Starlight

“The plane crash? What did that have to do with anything?”

“It was deliberate, sweetheart.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I had been handed a lot of lines that I haven’t understood in my life. A lot of them. My job has always been to just smile and nod like they make sense. This was not one of those times I would settle for nodding and pretending.

“That can’t be right.”

“It is.” His voice was gentle.

I yanked my hands out of his grip and stood up. “No, that can’t be right. How many times did you tell me that the money men wanted to use me? You told me that ad nauseam. Why would they have tried to kill me?”

He stood up and lifted his hands, as if to calm me. “It was before they had the idea to use you for the auction. It was when you were stirring up things from the past on the first Julian podcast.”

“The past, Matthew! The past! That was thirty years ago. Why would they care about something I said on a podcast from thirty years ago?”

“I didn’t know it then, but I confirmed it in the last few weeks. The orphanage where Jase and your mom found you, was part of the original network.”

“That’s not possible. These things don’t last for thirty years.” I was trembling.

Matthew slowly moved his hand to the back of his jeans, and pulled out his phone. “Let me show you.”

“Show me what?”

I watched as he unlocked his phone, and then went even further and did some kind of encryption thing. Then he showed me a newspaper article from the orphanage where I had been rescued. I’d seen it before. Mom had shown me. The place had been shut down. Jase had called the guy who’d run it ‘weasel-face.’

“That’s the guy. Jase hated him,” I said, pointing to the administrator in the picture.

Matthew nodded, then he swiped on his phone and another photo appeared. This time it was three people sitting around a table. I had to look closely. “Wait a minute. That’s weasel-face, only he’s really old.”

“Yeah. He’s still working with the traffickers. I don’t know if you recognize the man and woman, but these are the Salgados. The same people who were at the auction. It isn’t really in the past.”

“Where is he?”

“Dantas has him.”

“But this can’t be real. The two things are connected?” I backed away from him. “So that’s why they wanted me dead? That’s why they sabotaged the plane?”

“Honey, come here. Please?”

“But Matthew.”

“Please, Sweetheart. Let’s just sit down, and I’ll explain it all to you, just like you asked. But let’s sit down.”

I wanted to. I wanted to so bad. I looked into his warm eyes. He made me want to believe in him. He made me want to trust him, just like I had told Grandma Maureen.

“Please, Angelica. Let’s sit down.”

I gave a half nod, and he took my hand and guided me to the sofa. We sat down.

“If what you’re saying is true, all of those people almost died because of me.”

“But they didn’t. You’ve got to focus on that.”

“But they almost did.”

He gripped my hands and shook them. “If you keep going down paths like that, then go down the path that those girls would have been auctioned off if it hadn’t been for you. How about that?”