She nodded. “Not personally, but he was kind of a legend to most of the girls. Like the bogeyman.” Which was no wonder, considering he was evidently strong enough to bind people against their will, and to enforce an underage binding past the age of consent.

“So she gave me the name, and I…” Cam broke off with a shrug, part modesty, part shame. “I took care of it.”

“He tracked the bastard down and killed him,” Van finished, the words lingering on the end of her tongue, as if they tasted too good to let go.

I blinked at Cam. Then I blinked again. “You killed Cavazos’s Binder?”

“Yeah,” Van answered for him. “Shot him in the groin first, then twice in the head.” Cam flinched, but didn’t deny it. “Tower was so impressed he offered him a step promotion.” She beamed at Cam, obviously proud for him. But Cam looked sick, and I understood that there was more to it than that. Some part of the story that he hadn’t told her.

“They gave you a step promotion for killing one Binder?” I said, picking at the seams of his secret.

“It wasn’t just a Binder,” Van said. “It was Cavazos’s top Binder. When Cam killed him, he nullified every contract that bastard had ever sealed. Three dozen of the girls went free—at least until a few of them were rounded up again—and Cavazos lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in unenforceable contracts.”

And suddenly I remembered. “Lorenzo…”

“Yeah.” Van looked surprised, but Cam frowned. “You knew him?”

“No, I…” It was just before I signed with Cavazos. His men were still talking about it—all the money they’d lost, and what they were going to do when they found the bastard who killed Lorenzo…

Son of a bitch! Puzzle pieces fell into place in my head, and the thuds echoed through not just my mind, but my past. And Cam’s past. We were tangled, even beyond what I’d known….

“No, I just… I heard about it. Cavazos had Lorenzo brought in from Spain, at a huge expense.”

Van’s smile was a grim parody of joy. “Good—I hope Cam cost him a fucking fortune. Doesn’t matter, though. No amount of money can give any of us back what he cost us.” Van drained her second bottle, then stood, looking just a bit unsteady, but whether that was from the beer or the memories, I couldn’t tell. “Be right back,” she said, on her way down the hall.

As soon as the bathroom door closed, I turned on Cam, pleased to note that my angry face could still make him squirm. “What aren’t you telling me?” I demanded in a whisper. “What aren’t you telling her?”

It was something about his promotion. He’d accepted it because of me. So he could stay in the city. But why had they offered it? It wasn’t just because he’d killed Lorenzo. Whatever it was, it had something to do with Vanessa. Something he didn’t want her to know.

Then it hit me, like a knife to the chest, disappointment so sharp I couldn’t breathe. “You son of a bitch,” I hissed, fury burning through me as if my blood was on fire. “You fucking recruited her. You didn’t get promoted because you killed Lorenzo and freed all those women. You got promoted because you brought the women over with you—straight into Tower’s grasp.”

Nine

“How many did you recruit?” Liv demanded in a furious whisper, and it took real effort for me not to lie. I’d been lying for so long now, to everyone but her, that telling the truth was hard. It hurt, like facing myself in the mirror—something else I didn’t do much anymore.

“I didn’t have any choice,” I said finally, so low even I could barely hear myself. “I was under orders to recruit Vanessa, then get her to help me track and recruit as many of the others as we could. All I got from her was a list of names, though.” I glanced at the bottle between my hands on the countertop, then made myself look at Liv. Just thinking about what I’d done made me sick to my stomach. “I didn’t want to involve her in the rest of it.”

“Well, she’s involved now, isn’t she?” Liv hissed. “She’s in it up to here.” She held one hand at shoulder level, where Van’s binding mark would be. “You could have found a way around those orders, Cameron. I’ve seen you wiggle out of things you’re supposed to do.”

“Yeah, maybe I could have. And maybe it wouldn’t have gotten both me and Vanessa hauled up in front of one very pissed-off Jake Tower.” Though I highly doubted that. “But if I hadn’t recruited them, someone else would have, and their methods might not have been quite as gentle as mine.”

“Gentle? Is that a euphemism for coercion and outright lies?” she demanded.

“It’s an alternative to gunshot wounds and children sold into the skin trade.”

“It’s all the same, Cam. You can’t serve yourself while you’re serving someone else.”

“Does that make you feel better?” I snapped, pissed off like only Liv could make me. “Standing there throwing stones from your pretty little glass house? Or is that an ivory tower? I can’t tell from my lowly vantage point, but I can tell you this—no one down here in the gutter has the luxury of principles like you’re flaunting. Some of us had to make compromises to survive.”

Her face flushed, her fists clenched in fury. “Don’t tell me about compromise—” She bit off whatever she’d been about to say and took a second to visibly regroup. “That poor girl was sold by her father, bound by one monster to another monster, then turned out on the street to bastards who beat and raped her for four years, and she didn’t even have the ability to voice protests o one would have listened to anyway. Then you swoop in and save her, and for what? So you can turn her over to yet another monster?”