The bids started to flood in. Thirty thousand, thirty-five, forty. Now I knew why my step-dad had done this: he’d be able to pay off all his debts and have money to spare.
At forty-five thousand, it was down to the man with glasses—the one who’d asked all the questions—and the two men in suits bidding on behalf of Volos. Please! I begged. Anyone but Volos!
Then the bidding reached fifty thousand. And the man in glasses shook his head.
“Sold to Volos for fifty thousand dollars!” declared Hay. And I knew my life was over.
Carrick didn’t come. A ridiculous thought. Completely unfair. I’d called him only an hour before, on a number twelve years out of date. It wasn’t his fault. But that logic didn’t stop it feeling like a cold, iron spike was being hammered into my heart. The thought of him had kept me going through my darkest times for the last decade. Now I’d grabbed at my one, forlorn hope and found it was just an illusion, nothing but a childhood encounter I’d blown out of all proportion.
I had no hero.
The men milled around, grumbling at missing out. Volos’s men passed an envelope no thicker than my hand to Hay, who extracted some bills and passed the remainder to my step-dad. Is that it? Just a handful of paper. A pathetic thing to exchange for a human life.
One of Volos’s men grabbed my step-dad by the arm. “Volos wants to make sure you understand,” he said. “He’s not just buying her. He’s buying you and your story. What’s your story?”#p#分页标题#e#
My step-dad glanced at me just once, then looked away in guilt. “She went to New York, with some guy she met on the internet.”
And suddenly I understood why I was worth fifty thousand dollars. I was a woman who no one would ever look for.
The two men grabbed my arms and started walking me towards the hallway and Volos’s waiting car.
That’s when the bar’s door was kicked in with a crash that sounded like the end of the world. A man with a shotgun stepped into the light and I caught my breath as I saw his face.
“Nobody fucking move,” said Carrick.
5
Carrick
I saw her immediately: she was impossible to miss. But my eyes kept searching the room: I think I was still looking for a kid, because that’s how I remembered her.
It took a few seconds before my gaze swung back to the woman in her underwear. I took in the long, silky red hair, the pale skin, those big, liquid eyes the color of moss.
It can’t be. This was a woman, twenty or so. Annabelle was just a—
My brain knew the math was right but I just couldn’t process it. I’d had over a decade of remembering her as a kid.
Then I saw the gleam of gold around her neck, the shamrock twisting and bouncing as she pulled against the men holding her. It’s her. And God, she was gorgeous. She’d grown into a long-legged, full-breasted beauty, all luscious curves and smooth white skin.
And those bastards were going to sell her. The rage boiled up inside me and flooded down like lava to fill my limbs, every muscle hard and straining with the need to kill, to smash, to destroy.
I let out a roar that made the windows shake and stepped into the room. Everyone stepped back and the whole place went silent as a tomb.
When I speak, people listen. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” I told them. I jerked the shotgun towards the two men holding Annabelle. “Tweedledum and Tweedlefuckingdee are going to let her go. She’s going to walk over to me. And then we’re going to leave.”
I saw a few people blink at my accent. I sound more Irish when I’m angry.
I was very fucking angry.
A big Blood Spider with a beard shook his head at me from the stage. “This is none of your business.” There was a hint of fear in his voice. He’d seen my cut and heard my accent. Everyone had heard the stories about the Hell’s Princes’ Irishman.
I saw the President’s patch on his cut and pointed the shotgun at him, instead. “I beg to differ,” I snarled. Bastard. He had his MC selling women? I’d heard things about the Blood Spiders but I hadn’t believed it until now. “Tell your boys to back down.”
Out of the corners of my eyes, I could glimpse the other bikers shuffling, trying to surround me. I couldn’t fight all of them. I needed their pres to get them off my back. I took two big steps and leapt up onto the stage. “Tell them to back down!” I roared, and shoved Caorthannach right in the president’s face.
Caorthannach looks like someone’s fever dream of a double-barreled shotgun. Her barrels are twice as wide as a standard one, the metal silver-green and covered in carvings showing lost souls being devoured. Her stock is solid Irish oak, polished glass-smooth by a century of hands. All good weapons deserve a name and I named her after a fire-spitting demon. She’s scary enough that I rarely have to fire her.