Adrian nodded. “Dad gave his buddy a picture of Bree. He showed the men her picture and they agreed to pay top dollar for her.”
Horrified, Jenna squeezed his hand tighter. “Oh, Adrian.”
What kind of father sells his own daughter?
“Bree grew up here, you know?” He looked over at her. “Knew the neighborhoods. The people. So she wouldn’t have been scared to walk the few blocks from the bar back to the house.”
“That’s when they took her? While she was on her way home?”
Another sad nod.
“That was the last night anyone saw or heard from her.”
“How did you…” Jenna swallowed the growing knot in her throat. “How did you find out what happened?”
“When Homeland and the CIA first approached me about taking the deep cover job, they knew my sister was missing. They also knew of a trafficking ring based out of Colombia. From some of the evidence they’d found, they suspected it was the same group responsible for Bree’s disappearance. They gave me first dibs on the job.”
“The job?”
A coldness seeped into his eyes. “The fall of an empire is like an avalanche. You start from the top, and the rest begins to crumble.”
Jenna processed this before asking, “You went after the head of the ring, didn’t you?”
“His name was Cesar Ortiz. I didn’t just go after him, sweetheart.” Adrian watched her closely. “I killed him. But not until after Imadehim tell me where Bree was.”
“Where was she?”
“In a shallow grave in the woods behind the bastard’s house. He fucking used her. Raped and beat her. Then, when he was tired of her, he had one of his men put a bullet in her brain and bury her.”
Shocked, Jenna gasped. Her free hand covering her mouth before she said, “I’m glad you killed him.”
The words were out before she’d even thought about it, but she had no desire to take them back.
She’d always been a black and white kind of person. Something was either right or it was wrong. And for her, killing—unless it was self-defense—wasalwayswrong. Period.
But Jenna was finally beginning to realize the world didn’t exist in only black or white. Shefinallyunderstood that there were a whole lot of grays mixed in there, too, and sometimes…sometimes people deserved to die.
“I tortured Ortiz, Jenna.” He said it as though he was warning her. “I cut him. Broke his bones. I did whatever I had to in order to get the information I needed. Then, when he finally told me about Bree, I tortured him some more before I slit his throat from ear to ear.”
The picture he painted was one of nightmares, but she knew what he was doing. She’d asked him to share more about his life. She wanted to know who he was, and this was his answer.
He saw himself as a ruthless killer, and while that may be partially true, Jenna needed to make him see he was so much more.
She stood and went to him. Sat down on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I’m sorry you grew up the way you did.” A tear fell down her cheek. “I’m sorry your sister had to go through something so heinous, and I’m so, so sorry you lost her. But I’mnotsorry you killed that monster. As far as I’m concerned, he got exactly what he deserved.”
“What about my dad?” He challenged. “Do you think he deserved to die for what he did?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t say he killed him, and she wasn’t going to ask.
Adrian shook his head, looking up at her as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. “Jenna?”
“I get what you’re doing,” she told him. “You’re trying to scare me. I get it, but it won’t work. You want to know why?”
A slight nod.