“Sophia, please, calm down,” Trent pleads and grabs my shoulder to get me to stop rocking.
Unable to stand his touch, I rip myself out of his grip and try to scoot away from him. Only to realize there’s another fucking man beside me. Some patrolman I don’t recognize who’s been quiet the entire time.
“And that little bitch is back there, crying her eyes out over fucking scum and showing her true colors,” Dickers says.
“Shut the fuck up, Dickers,” Trent snaps at him, but there’s not nearly as much anger behind it this time around. In fact, he sounds a little worried.
“Shut the fuck up? Why should I shut the fuck up? Because you don’t like all your mistakes getting called out?”
“Fuck you,” Trent grumbles quietly.
“No, fuck you, boy. Fuck you and your stupid fucking white knight bullshit!” Dickers roars, back to yelling and pounding on the steering wheel. “Chasing after and saving a girl that doesn’t even want your ass! If you would have just let her go. If you would have just accepted that shit happens and let her be sold off, none of this shit would have happened!”
Getting angry again, Trent curls his hand into a fist and yells back, “I couldn’t just let them sell her!”
“Why? Why not? Stupid whore put herself in the position in the first place. You know she got grabbed down in the wrong part of town? Probably whoring herself out with her friends while you were out on the beat, protecting people. It was her own damn fault!” Dickers says with disgust.
Trent shakes his head in denial. “I couldn’t let it happen. She didn’t deserve it.”
“You didn’t care about any of the other girls, did ya?” Dickers counters. “Or the kids. You knew the shit that was going down, and you knew what you signed up for. We all did before we sold our souls to fatten our bank accounts. You didn’t give a shit about any of the others, but you just had to screw everything up for her. And for what? You didn’t even get to ride in on your white steed and save her. That other fucker did. And she don’t want you, boy. She wants him. We’d all be better off if we just fucking got rid of her.”
As hurt as I am, some of what Dickers is yelling is piercing through the pain-filled fog that wants to swallow me up.
I knew from what I read on my father’s laptop that Trent was involved with the Russians. But I didn’t think for a moment he actually knew about the Russians grabbing women and children.
The fact that he did…. That he and Dickers both knew what was going on and fucking profited off it, starts to make me so angry, my grief is starting to fade away. Replaced by the burning desire to make them pay for what they did before I leave this earth.
Make them pay before I take my last breath and join James.
Trent’s face turns blood red. “We are not getting rid of her!”
Dickers chuckles. “Why? Because you still hope she’ll somehow magically fall in love with you? Or maybe you just want to fuck? Maybe you hope that she’ll finally spread her legs for you in gratitude and it will be that magic pussy you’ve been searching for your whole life.”
“Fuck you,” Trent sputters, the veins in his forehead so prominent they look like they’re about to burst.
“That’s enough,” Jacob cuts in, sounding a bit angry himself.
“Enough? Enough?!” Dickers repeats incredulously. “It’s not enough. Not when she’s a liability we can’t afford. You realize that, right? You realize she can screw us all?”
The car falls quiet for the first time, and I know they’re all chewing over the idea of me being a liability.
Turning to Trent, I sniffle and plead, “Please don’t let him kill me, Trent. Please.”
Trent’s attention jerks to me, and I try to scoot closer to him.
Dropping my voice to a whisper, I add, “I don’t want to die.”
Dickers chortles.
Maybe if Dickers didn’t chortle, Trent wouldn’t buy my little act. But his hatred for the man must blind him to my true intentions.
His jaw tightening with determination, Trent assures me, “I won’t let him hurt you.”
“No one is hurting anyone,” Jacob says, backing him up.
“Who said anything about hurting her? We don’t have to hurt her to get rid of her,” Dickers suggests. “We can make it painless—”
“She’s Cronin’s daughter, Dickers,” Jacob says, as if he can’t believe he has to say it. “Jesus.”
“And Cronin’s dead now,” Dickers snaps back without missing a beat. “Dead because he stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and pissed off the Russians. Dead because your dumbass of a son fucked everything up and tipped him off for her. And now your dumbass of a son is going to get us all killed to have her.”