Unbroken (The Protectors 12)

And as far as Aleks had been concerned, I hadn’t been.

He hadn’t once looked at me.

Not before he’d serviced Marcus and not afterwards as he’d obediently sat at Marcus’s feet while a trail of cum had dripped down his chin as Marcus had tucked his sated dick back into his pants. I’d somehow managed to not react to the whole thing, but if the glass in my hand hadn’t been made of expensive crystal, I surely would have broken it with the grip I’d had on it. And no doubt if that had happened, I would have used the jagged edge that remained of the biggest chunk of glass to slice open the throat of the man in front of me.

I’d seen a lot of depraved shit in the nearly eight years since I’d first entered the underworld of trafficking kids for sex, but for some reason the sight of Aleks on his knees staring blankly at the floor as semen ran down his chin had broken something inside of me. I’d had no choice but to put up a wall between me and all the kids I’d had to ignore over the years in order to try and save one. Yes, I’d done everything in my power to eventually get those kids out, but there’d been no way to save them all and I couldn’t deny the horrible things that had happened to them in the days and weeks until I’d been able to send someone in to get them out.

So that wall had been very necessary.

It’d been the only thing keeping me from killing every single man I encountered who used kids for their own pleasure. Fucks like Marcus Parks were the hardest not to kill the second I met them. Because not hours after he was using Aleks like he was nothing, he’d likely been in his downtown Chicago loft with his wife and children, listening to whatever it was the privileged family members had done with their day. Then he’d probably waved off his own supposed boring day of running his multi-million-dollar empire and advocating for less fortunate kids through his handful of charities that had made him a beloved social figure in the Windy City. What his family and closest friends hadn’t known as he’d gotten up in front of large crowds of the most socially elite and convinced them to donate to his various fundraising efforts, was exactly what he did in his free time and how many men in his own social circle shared his twisted depravities.

It had taken me years to get into that inner circle of powerful men, and garnering an interview with Marcus Parks for the coveted role of protecting his dirty little secret had been the coup in my illustrious climb to the top. Every degenerate I’d served over the years had pulled me deeper and deeper into the underbelly of a culture that most were afraid to acknowledge existed. But I’d eagerly walked into that very world because it had taken one of my own and I’d quickly erected a barrier between who I’d once been and who I’d had to become.

Until Aleks.

There’d been no doubt in my mind that the whole show with Aleks had been meant as a test and what would have happened if I’d failed it. Marcus had paid well for loyalty and if I had given in to my instincts and sliced his throat from ear to ear, his men wouldn’t have let me walk out of that study alive.

Well, they would have tried to stop me, anyway.

But even Marcus hadn’t known how truly qualified I’d been for the position. Fortunately for him, and unfortunately for Aleks, there’d been something stronger keeping my ass in that chair as Marcus had paraded his toy in front of me.

Loyalty.

Love.

Hope.

My already rolling belly clenched when I considered everything Aleks had endured in the three months I’d ingratiated myself with Marcus Parks in the hopes I’d find the information I’d needed to bring the whole thing to an end.

A few fucking shared butterscotch candies and making sure none of the other guards put their hands on him hadn’t undone any of that. And even though I hadn’t been the one who’d typically had to escort Aleks to wherever Marcus was in the mansion when he wanted to play with his toy, I might as well have been the one who’d handed him over and stood outside the door and listened to the piece of shit’s grunts and groans as he’d taken his pleasure.

The handful of times I had been forced to listen to Aleks being used by Marcus, I’d managed to not stride into the room and kill the man because I’d been so close to getting the information I’d needed. I’d wanted to tell Aleks that… to beg him to hang on just a bit longer, but he’d clearly accepted for some time that his survival was all about hanging on, and he’d learned on his own how to do that.