Unbroken (The Protectors 12)

But it wasn’t enough.

Vaughn and I were sitting on the couch and our legs were touching, but I found that wasn’t enough either. Since he’d seemed okay with his brother and friends seeing him holding me earlier, I had to hope what I was about to do wouldn’t upset or embarrass him. I kept my eyes on whoever was speaking as I let the fingers of my left hand slide over my own leg and then brush against Vaughn’s. My goal was to just have the little bit of contact with him, but he surprised me when he calmly slipped his hand down to cover mine. Then he was linking our fingers.

And he kept right on talking without missing a beat.

Like holding my hand was the most natural thing in the world.

I pulled in a breath, then another and felt my body relax a bit. My mind cleared and I zeroed in on Vaughn’s voice as he spoke.

“We need to let Stylianos seek us out,” he said to Luca. “If you just start parading around the fact that you have Aleks, he’ll get suspicious… most people will. He’s already going to be looking at you for killing his men.”

“I had my team plant evidence that points to a few other potential parties,” King said. “Hopefully that will throw Stylianos off… he’ll just think you were one of a few guys going after Aleks.”

Although I knew none of them considered me property, I knew it had to look that way if any of this was going to work. But it still made me sick to think about how that’s what I’d once been… and that there were people out there who wanted to make me that again.

“I think we need to throw Stylianos off even more,” Vaughn said. “We need to make it look like an independent party took Aleks for the cash payout and Luca just happened to find out about it before anyone else… it’ll legitimize Luca too.” Vaughn looked at King. “Do you have any guys who can play the role?”

“Yeah,” King said, his face pulled into a mask of seriousness.

“We’ll need to get Lex and his team on creating Luca’s posts saying he has Aleks—” Vaughn said.

“No,” King interrupted. “Lex isn’t available. I’ll take care of the posts.”

All three men looked at King in surprise. Con said, “King, he’d want to be involved in the search for Gio—”

“No,” King repeated, his expression unwavering as he pinned Con with frosty eyes. “He’s not available.”

I could see that Con wasn’t satisfied with the response, but when he went to say something else, Luca called his name and then shook his head. Con frowned and there was a moment of awkward silence as he seemed to decide if he was going to confront King further. He finally shook his head, then looked at Vaughn. “We’ll need a picture of Aleks to show online,” Con said. “It’s going to need to be convincing,” he said softly as he looked at me.

I swallowed hard. I looked to Vaughn because I couldn’t find my voice to ask what Con meant.

“We’ve been using photoshop to make up fake pictures for Luca to post online as he tries to get deeper in the ring. People are suspicious of him because of who he is… so we’ve spent the last two years making it look like he’s one of them with the fake pictures and posts in forums. It’s been a painstaking process because we also have to cover everything we do so it can’t actually be linked back to him, or he’d end up being prosecuted for all those things, even though he didn’t actually do them,” Vaughn explained.

I nodded. “The proof has to be so good that it fools even the police,” I said.

“Exactly,” Vaughn said. “While Luca hasn’t actually committed a crime, if the stuff we’ve put out there ever gets linked back to him by someone other than the people we’re trying to convince, it would all be over for him.”

“So you need to take a picture of me?” I asked.

“Not just any picture, Aleks,” Luca said gently. “It has to be of me and you and it has to show what our relationship is.”

I felt bile rise in my throat. I looked at Vaughn. “Father took pictures like that.” I began shaking my head. “No, I can’t. No, I’m sorry, I can’t.” I couldn’t stop from repeating the words over and over.

“Aleks,” Vaughn said as he grabbed my face and forced me to look at him. “They don’t need to be like those pictures,” he said quickly.

I closed my eyes. “You saw them?”

He caressed my face. “It doesn’t matter, do you hear me? It doesn’t change anything for me.”

I knew I was being ridiculous. He’d seen me do far worse things than those pictures, but the pictures had been a permanent tribute to what I’d been to Father and they were probably still out there for any manner of men to use however they wanted.