Unbroken (The Protectors 12)

“After you and Dante and Magnus left the house, I torched it. Do you remember that?”

He nodded. “It blew up,” he said quietly.

“Right. I needed to destroy all the evidence. The cops passed it off as a gas leak and the whole thing was considered a tragic accident. No one knew about you except the people who hurt you.”

He nodded again.

“I spread the word that you were killed in the explosion… so no one would come looking for you.”

He stiffened a bit and I could tell he was battling with himself to believe me. I had no doubt his internal struggle was a brutal one. I barreled on so he couldn’t talk himself out of giving me a chance to explain.

“I was worried the story about your return would eventually get out and those people would recognize you and figure out you hadn’t died in the blast, so I came out here about a week after you got here and watched things for a bit.”

He opened his eyes and I could see the surprise in them. “You… you were watching me?”

“From a distance,” I said with a nod. “I had feelers out back in Chicago too to see if anyone found out you were still alive. I kept waiting for the reporters to start showing up…”

“Dante convinced Mama and Papa not to tell anyone back home I’d been found. They got me an emergency passport but then told the people they got it from that it had all been a mistake and that it hadn’t been me who’d been found. It was a false...”

He seemed to search for the right word for a moment, so I offered, “Alarm?”

He nodded. “Yes. False alarm.” He lifted his hand to wipe at his mouth. “Mama and Papa didn’t want people to know what happened to me,” he said softly. Color deepened his already flushed cheeks. “They… they wanted me to come home and be normal but when I wouldn’t let them take the…”

Aleks’s voice dropped off and he reached up to finger his neck.

He was looking for the collar.

It’d been gone by the time I’d gotten to Seattle. I’d just assumed he’d taken it off as soon as he’d been free of Marcus, but now I was starting to wonder if it hadn’t been more complicated than that. I silently cursed his parents for putting that kind of pressure on him. But as much as I hated the people who’d put us in this position, I hated having to tell Aleks the truth about it.

But it couldn’t be helped.

“Aleks, your parents, they did an interview with a reporter in Brazil a few days ago. Did you know they were suing both the mall you were taken from and the police department?”

Aleks’s eyes went wide. “What?” he breathed.

“They filed the suit last week. They’re seeking damages for the pain and suffering they endured. The suit they filed attracted the attention of reporters, or their lawyer reached out to them, but either way, your parents granted an interview to one of the bigger news anchors down there. It aired two nights ago.”

Aleks shook his head. “They… they didn’t say anything. Dante, he would have been so angry.”

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t tell your brother,” I reassured him. “They probably didn’t expect the story to even get out, and it didn’t. But the people who took you twelve years ago are still at work down there, Aleks. They’re just a small part of a bigger organization that has ties all over the world. The story showed a picture of you from earlier this year in front of your flower shop.”

Aleks pulled back from my touch and I instantly missed the connection. But I could tell he wasn’t deliberately trying to escape me. The shock had him leaning back against the wall and his hand came up to cover his mouth. I took out my phone and pulled up the clip of the news story. I handed it to him. “Hit play,” I said, because I knew he wouldn’t believe anything I said until he saw proof of it for himself.

It was a reality I’d brought upon myself by not telling him sooner what was happening. Even now I was leaving out a critical piece of information, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit that piece of the story to him.

I wasn’t worried about Aleks trying to make a call with my phone. Not only was my location using the phone untraceable, but he was already focused on the clip because the still image showed both his parents in what was clearly an interview of some kind. He hit the play button. The interview had been done in Portuguese, but the clip had subtitles, so even if Aleks was a bit rusty when it came to his native language, he’d be able to understand the gist of the news story. My heart hurt for him as I watched the expressions dance across his face as his parents talked about what life had been like without Aleks. I just hoped he wasn’t noticing what I’d noticed when I’d seen the interview for the first time.