Ten Thousand Lies (4 page)

She looked up at him, and he shook his head.

“He couldn’t get away with it,” said Rex through clenched teeth. “David…they’re right. I need them. There’s no going back from what I did, and I can’t let this happen to other people. I’m joining their cause—”

“David,” I said, “we need as many people as we can get with us. What we’re up against is…fucking terrifying. We don’t want to put you or your daughter in any danger—”

“A little late, don’t you think?”

“
I
did this,” rasped Rex. “I put you in danger. I didn’t even think…” He sniffed and buried his head into Xanthe’s chest, his body spasming with his muffled sobs.

“Hush,” whispered Xanthe, smoothing a hand down his greasy face. “We’re family. Of course you came home.”

David didn’t dispute that. “It’ll be all right,” he softly told Rex.

My respect and admiration for this man grew exponentially.

“We’ll do whatever we can to keep you safe. We…” There really wasn’t anything I could promise.

If my father found out, then he’d come for them. David and Xanthe would end up dead, simply for loving the kid. He’d have Rex killed, too. He wouldn’t bother with trying to sell him later on.

Holy shit. We’re fucked.

Looking to Deo, I saw he knew it, too.

“Ronen?” I asked quietly.

“I’d say we start praying, brother.”

That chilled me to my motherfucking soul.

Ronen was an atheist.

Ronen and I gave David and Xanthe our numbers, and we essentially stole theirs. If we got wind of anything coming their way, we’d give them a heads-up. Then, we helped them get Rex into David’s car, so they could take him to the hospital.

“I want you to call Deo and give him updates about Rex,” I told Xanthe. “Right now, it’s too dangerous to contact me or Ronen. Deo’s good people. He’ll listen if Rex needs to talk about…well…”

“Okay,” said Xanthe.

I trusted her. I couldn’t explain it, but I had the feeling that if David refused to do as I’d asked—demanded—she would follow through. There was just something about her, like a kindred-spirit sort of vibe. Looking to Ronen, I could tell he sensed it about her, too.

David Malcolm was hard to read. Most people would be shitting their pants, dealing with the likes of me and my boys, with the very real threat of death hanging over them. But he seemed to be just fine with the fact that The Godwin could be after him. He didn’t strike me as stupid, just the opposite. I couldn’t help but wonder though where his head was.

“We’ll be in touch,” I told him. “Hopefully, one day soon—”

“If we live that long, you mean,” David said coolly.

My stomach clenched. “Yeah. The next few days, keep your eyes and ears open.”

David nodded and pulled his station wagon out of the drive. The three of us hopped into the van—Deo had switched the plates while Ronen and I had stood, talking to David—and headed down the street.

“She was something else, yeah?” asked Deo as we made our way out of Iffley Village. “That Xanthe chick—she was ready to find and murder Rex’s dad herself.”

“We need to bloody figure this shit out in the next hour, Jamey,” said Ronen from the backseat. “We might already be up shit’s creek. Any word from your dad or Max?”

I shook my head. A sensation like a lead brick dropping fell into the pit of my gut. That neither of them had gotten in touch with me in hours was a fucking bad sign. Max was in this with us. He’d never leave us high and dry unless…

My father would have no problem murdering his children if they crossed him. Betrayal was dealt with swiftly. That we were his blood would only ensure he’d destroy us that much quicker.

“Deo,” I said, my brain clicking into overdrive.
Fucking finally.

“Yeah?”

“Call your mum. Make sure she’s out of the way. Your cousins will protect her well enough.”

Deo and his family were some huge motherfuckers. His mum and aunt were South Pacific Islanders—Maori—while Deo’s dad was German, and his uncle was Welsh. Somehow, the mixing of the gene pools had created some bloody massive people.

He was on the phone with his mum within seconds, telling her to get the fuck out of her home and go to her sister’s.

“What are you thinking, Jamey?” asked Ronen quietly.

“Deo needs to stay here. We can’t leave David and Xanthe alone. We’ll take the tube back to London.”

“Damn it.” Ronen hated the tube, especially late at night.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Deo as he pulled the van into the tube station, stopping close to the entrance.

“Go back to their house, and stay with them. We’ll be in touch as soon as we can, yeah?”

“Don’t let anything happen to my mother, Jamey. If your father lets you live, I won’t.”

“I know.”

Tickets purchased with cash, Ronen and I sat on a bench next to the rails and waited. We had a good fifteen minutes until the next train showed.

“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” I asked Ronen, keeping my voice low.

“We didn’t think this one through. Shit, Jamey. We didn’t even tell Max. We heard about the kid and went in half-cocked on this one.”

“Fuck.”

“We should’ve waited, even if that meant Rex would’ve come out worse. Physically, he’d have healed up.”

“Yeah, but it’s the mental bit we were trying to save.”

Ronen nodded.

He and I knew all too well what the mental bit could do to a person. We’d watched his sister’s body heal of the abuse, but each day, her mind had turned more for the worse until she couldn’t get past it. The risk we had taken with our own lives a year ago in Amsterdam to save her had meant nothing to her. All the love in the world couldn’t have touched the pain she was in.

Staring hard at an advert across the tracks, not truly seeing it, I wondered if my mother lived with that pain daily. If she did, I couldn’t fathom how she woke up each morning and not ended her own life as well.

Katarina Pachenkov left her village, far too thin and starving for more than just food. She desperately needed a job, so she could support her dirt-poor family. She was the second of seven children, and her brothers and sisters were hungry, cold, and sick.

While her mother worked tirelessly, keeping the household together, her father was a mechanic, who drank ninety percent of his salary away when he got it.

It was said that Katarina was the most beautiful girl for miles around. While her older sister, Giorgiana, made a living sleeping with the men in town, she would forbid her sister from doing so, too. It was bad enough that she had to shame their family to help put food on the table, but Katarina would be able to find a husband who’d care for her and help them out; she was
that
beautiful.

Katarina ended up finding work in a factory, sweeping after the late shift for a few hryvnia. It was a pittance, but everything she earned would go to feeding her brothers and sisters. Between Katarina and Giorgiana, they kept food on the table.

One day, toward the end of the late shift, a foreigner came into the factory just as Katarina arrived to start sweeping. British, he was an entrepreneur looking for exotic young men and women to come work in his bars in London. He said he needed four—two men, two women—and they had to be very attractive.

He must have been sent from God,
she thought.

He promised fantastic money to send back home to care for her family.

Flattered, Katarina ran home after her shift to tell her parents the good news. She was one of the two girls picked to go. All she needed were her birth certificate and passport in order by the end of the month, and she’d go to England and have a job that would pay for everything they needed. Barely seventeen years old, and she’d be able to truly support her family.

Of course, she’d have to pay back the travel expenses and the room and board, but there’d be enough for Katarina to send back home to even let Giorgiana stop whoring herself.

Three weeks later, she tearfully said good-bye to her parents and siblings as she hopped in the bed of a truck the British man had rented to pick them up.

Willis then drove them to the Black Sea, tossed them on a ship, and didn’t see them again until they were disembarking in France in the middle of the night. Then, a small skipper transported them across the Channel.

While hiding in the cargo hold for weeks, living off whatever scraps were leftover from the crew’s meals, the four Ukrainians dreamed of working in pubs, chowing down on fish and chips, and speaking with British accents. They told themselves their means of travel was to keep down costs, so they’d be able to quickly pay back the man who’d given them this opportunity.

Wishful thinking.

They were transported to the warehouse dungeons to await inspection. By that time, they were terrified, knowing they’d been fooled into walking into something they knew nothing about. Their only luck so far was that their jailers hadn’t touched them. They were fed twice a day, and though the water tasted strange, it didn’t make them sick.

Three days after they’d been locked up, Charles Godwin came in to inspect the cattle. The buyer he was procuring for had specific requirements, and he personally had to make sure the captives met the demands.

He found them satisfactory. A little too satisfactory in Katarina’s case. He took one look at her and decided to keep her for himself. Willis was sent back to the Ukraine to get one of her sisters. Charles didn’t care which one, so long as it wasn’t the whore. Virgins were a part of the demand.

It was the strange blue-green of her eyes that captivated Charles. He wanted them for himself, as if he’d been shopping for gems. No one but Charles could have her. That beauty, he wanted to own for himself.

My mother was a virgin when my father brutally raped her for the first time. It was the standard practice. Show them who had the power, break their independent spirit, and then treat them with care. That cycle left her confused and oddly dependent on her tormentor until she naturally showed him affection in return. It took months of this before she was finally damaged enough not to want a different life.

She made peace with herself. She’d be the exclusive whore of a wealthy man. After a while, it even became pleasant for her.

Charles gave her a new identity. She became Kathryn Penchant, aged eighteen, which she nearly was. Then, he married her. No one knew why. It wasn’t as though Charles was capable of loving anyone, but perhaps in his own warped way, he did.

Kathryn gave birth to Maximillian when she was just eighteen years old. Eleven months after that, she gave birth to me, James Charles Godwin.

While Charles had forbidden that his children know of her past, Kathryn told us everything that had happened to her, everything she knew about Charles and his business. She warned us long before we knew firsthand what sort of monster he was and that he’d try his damnedest to turn us into the same.

“He will make you murderers. And you will do it because, if you do not, it will cost you your lives. It will cost me my life. What you must hide from him is your humanity. You must never lose it. Do what he tells you until the time comes when you can end it.”

It was rumored that I was his favorite. My brother, Max, looked very much like Charles. I, on the other hand, looked like Kathryn, down to the odd blue-green of her eyes.

They earned me my nickname, Baby Blues.

If anything could save my life from this disaster, it would be my eyes. My father adored Kathryn for her baby blues. Hopefully, her gift would save my life.