Anyone caught breaking that law paid for it in blood. As far as he was concerned, a special place of torment in the Underworld awaited those who harmed children and animals.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Sammy hurried to explain when he saw his reaction. “I had to smile and laugh at their jokes. Pour their drinks. Compliment them.” He deflated, folding in on himself, and his voice dropped to a murmur. “I just couldn’t leave.”
He felt a small flicker of relief that Sammy hadn’t been taken advantage of in other ways, but it did little to assuage his anger. Even knowing Sammy had managed to escape that life didn’t change anything.
Dominic wanted to hunt down every person who had played a part in his mate’s suffering and peel them apart piece by piece.
“Elaborate,” he ordered, trying and failing to sound neutral.
The answer didn’t really matter, but Dominic did need him to keep talking.
“You mean why I couldn’t leave?”
He nodded.
“A summoning spell. Technically, Icouldleave. I even tried it a couple of times.” Sammy looked up at him, an entire world of pain and hopelessness shining in his eyes. “I made it as far as Houston once. I was walking down the street, then the next thing I knew, I was back at the club.”
Instincts, unbidden and uncomfortable, welled up inside him. His hand—the same hand that craved brutality only moments before—now ached with the desire to reach out and soothe, to offer some measure of comfort.
He didn’t.
Curling his fingers into his palm, he slid his hand off the table and rested it in his lap. Things like gentleness and empathy didn’t come naturally to him, but that was only one reason he held back.
Based on Sammy’s behavior, the quickness in which he had settled with him, Dominic suspected he felt their connection on an intrinsic level. He just hadn’t recognized it consciously yet.
Fae, including changelings, interpreted the world through energy. Sometimes, like now, that understanding required touch.
Dominic didn’t take pleasure in withholding information, but he didn’t feel guilty about it either. He saw it as nothing more than a necessary precaution until he had a better read on the guy.
His parents had taught him to respect the natural order, and fate happened to be a part of that order. That didn’t make it infallible or unchangeable, though.
“But you did eventually make it out,” he nudged. “How?”
“The owner of the club died.” Sammy shrugged and reached for his coffee. Clearly no love lost there. “I took the money I had saved up over the years, and here I am.”
His retelling lacked a few of the in-between details, but it didn’t matter to the overall story, so Dominic didn’t push. He didn’t need to know everything. He just needed to keep the conversation moving in the right direction.
“If the contract is void, what’s the problem?”
Sighing, Sammy sank deeper into his chair and began toying with a silvery blue stone held on his wrist by a leather cord. “Thatcontract ended, but the relique still exists. Now, my mother has it again, which means she’s probably looking for a new buyer.”
Even as another growl built in his chest at the idea of his mate being bartered and sold like property, he recognized that something didn’t add up. He didn’t know exactly when Sammy had left Texas, but the Cherry on Top had opened a couple of years ago.
He didn’t know Valerie Halloway personally, but he had known plenty of people like her. Scheming. Greedy. Opportunistic. She didn’t strike him as the type to wait that long to reclaim such a lucrative investment.
“I honestly don’t know,” Sammy said when Dominic posed the question. “Part of me expected her to come sooner as well.”
Dominic arched an eyebrow. “And the other part?”
“Hoped the relique was buried and gone.”
That wasn’t how blood magic worked, not even a little. “Why would you think that?”
“I saw the locket on Chandler’s neck at his funeral. I figured that meant it had been buried with him.”
For a full minute, Dominic remained quiet, trying to decide if the guy could really be that damn naive.
“You saw the locket, and it didn’t cross your mind to take it?”