I was relieved when he started talking, because I hadn’t expected him to. I was still tense about the blackout he’d had while right in front of me. It’d been almost identical to the one he’d had the day before when I’d tried to remove the zip-ties from his hands.

“My English, it was okay when they took me, but not great, and I often spoke to the people who took me in Portuguese. They’d get angry and tell me to speak English, but I was just too scared.”

Aleks began to shake violently and his breathing once again started to tick up. He was holding my hand with both of his and was squeezing so hard he was actually hurting me.

But I didn’t even think of asking him to loosen his fingers… If there was a way I could have taken all his pain and felt it for myself, or better yet, taken it from him, I would have in a heartbeat.

“The first man who bought me… he… he pretended to be my friend and I was able to talk to him in English. He said things that I eventually started to believe. He just kept telling me the same things over and over,” Aleks said with a shake of his head.

“Like what?” I interjected as quietly as I could in the hopes my voice wouldn’t ratchet up his panic.

“That Mama and Papa didn’t want me back because I’d been bad. That Dante would come if I was good.” Tears started to slip down Aleks’s face, but I doubted he noticed. “He never came, no matter how good I was. I… I believed the man at first… that Dante knew where I was but refused to come get me.” Aleks lifted his shoulders to wipe at his face, since he didn’t seem to want to let go of my hand. He’d managed to calm down a bit.

“Your brother wouldn’t have let anything or anyone stop him from coming to find you,” I said. “You know that, right?”

Aleks nodded. “I believed he would come for me for a really long time but after a while it got too hard. It made it hard to always be good…”

“What do you mean?”

Aleks hesitated and then wiped at his face again. He tried to pull his hands free, but I gently held on to one and intertwined our fingers and began rubbing the pad of my thumb over his skin.

“When the man would do things to me that really hurt or that I knew were wrong, I’d tell him Dante was going to punish him. I… I actually started dreaming of Dante showing up just as the man was about to hurt me again and stopping it, and when he didn’t…”

I used my free hand to wipe at his face.

“He would have if he could have, Aleks.”

Aleks nodded. Tears kept slipping down his face. I couldn’t help but lean across the console as I pulled him against me. I brushed my lips over his damp cheek, the shell of his ear, and his forehead and just whispered soft words to him, mostly about how I would have stopped the man from hurting him and that he was safe now.

But even as I said the words, bile crawled up the back of my throat. I’d had the chance to save Aleks so he wouldn’t be hurt anymore and I hadn’t done it… not quickly enough, anyway. And he most certainly wasn’t safe now.

Aleks held onto me for a while and when he began speaking to me again, he did it against my chest, which was just fine with me.

“The man didn’t like that my English wasn’t better, so he brought in a woman to teach me how to read and write it. But no other subjects. I didn’t understand why.”

I did. The men who dealt in kids like Aleks viewed them as the most luxurious of amenities. Being able to understand and respond to his tormentor in English would have added value just like adding leather seats or specialty tires on a car did.

“Her name was Miss Penny. She always looked so… scared,” Aleks murmured. “The man, he told me what would happen to me if I asked her for help or told her he wasn’t really my cousin like he’d said. But…”

“But?” I encouraged when he fell silent.

“I think she knew,” he finally admitted. “We weren’t left alone very often but when we were, she’d quietly ask me questions about my ‘cousin.’ But I never said anything. Until one day when she… she brought me a book about flowers. I wasn’t allowed to have any toys or books and that’s what I told her.”

“How old were you?” I asked.

“Um, I’m not really sure… ten maybe. I’d been with Brian for a while.”

Brian. Finally, a name I could attach to the bastard. I automatically vowed to kill any fucker in my dark world named Brian. Even if he wasn’t the one who’d hurt Aleks, he was hurting some kid somewhere.

“It wasn’t a big book and I really wanted it, so I accepted it and hid it. I… I didn’t know Brian had found it.”

Aleks began to shake violently and since his body was against mine, I could feel his skin grow chilled. I pushed him back a bit so I could look at him. His eyes were starting to go blank.

“Aleks, stay with me,” I urged as I cupped the side of his face with my hand. “Aleks,” I said firmly when he began to drift away even more. It wasn’t until I practically yelled his name that I saw him come back to me. “Breathe,” I commanded. He took in a huge breath and slumped in my hold, like he’d been holding his breath for minutes, not seconds.

“What happened to Miss Penny, Aleks?” I asked, since I knew the woman was a part of this. I also instinctively knew what had happened to her… it wasn’t hard to guess. As bad as what had happened to Aleks had been after he’d been taken, it was likely the events surrounding the teacher that had jumpstarted the extreme coping method he’d come to rely on so heavily.

Aleks began shaking his head violently. I grabbed him by the upper arms. “What happened to her, Aleks?” I repeated firmly. If he didn’t start getting some of this shit out, he’d never be able to start dealing with it.

“Brian came into the room during our lesson. He had the book. He asked me if Miss Penny had given it to me. I… I…”

“What, Aleks? What did you do?”

“I lied to him. I told him no.” Aleks squeezed his eyes and suddenly yelled, “But he knew and he said Miss Penny would have to pay for my lies! He let one of his men hurt her! I yelled at Brian to make it stop… that I was sorry, and I’d never lie again but the man just kept hurting her and she was crying and begging him to stop.”

Aleks began sobbing. As badly as I wanted to end this, I knew I couldn’t. “Finish it, baby,” I whispered as I stroked his hair with one hand. His face was covered in tears, and snot and spit were sliding down his mouth and chin. He could barely get the words out.

“Bri… Bri… Brian asked me again if Miss Penny gave me the book and I said yes. Miss Penny was sitting in the chair on the other side of the table and she looked at me. I started to tell her I was sorry, but then there was a bang and blood was everywhere and I couldn’t see her eyes anymore.”

Aleks slapped a hand over his eyes. “He left me in the room with her all night… he… he left the book. He said I could keep it. I… I kept telling her I was sorry and then I started reading the book to her because I knew she was probably cold and scared…”

I couldn’t understand his words after that so I pulled him back against my chest. I let my hand pass over his hair as I whispered to him that it wasn’t his fault. When he’d quieted, I asked, “Were there other teachers after that?”

He nodded against me.

“Did he hurt any of them?”

Aleks shook his head. It took a good fifteen seconds before he whispered, “No… because I was good.”

I let out a soft rush of air as I realized that moment had defined his thinking going forward. If he wanted to live, if he wanted others to live, he needed to be good, he needed to listen and do as he was told.

I held him until he was the one to pull back. He wiped at his face but refused to look at me. “What’s wrong with me?”

I used my fingers to lift his chin. “Absolutely nothing,” I said softly. His eyes shifted to meet mine and I couldn’t help but hold his gaze as I trailed my thumb over the softness of his lips. He was a mess, but he was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

And even more off-limits to me.

I needed to remember that and I needed to make this about him and not my ill-timed bout of desire.

“Aleks, have you ever talked to someone about what happened to you?”

He seemed to know what I was talking about because he dropped his eyes and then carefully pulled away from me. He turned so he was facing forward in the seat. He shook his head but said nothing.

“Do you know what PTSD is?” I asked.

That got his attention.

“Like what the soldiers go through when they come home?” he asked, his expression lifting in surprise. “I… I don’t have that. They see terrible things… they’re forced to do terrible things. Magnus said that they can’t always relate to civ… civ…”

“Civilian life,” I said.

He nodded.

“Magnus says that their minds play tricks on them when they come home but that it isn’t their fault and it’s okay for them to ask for help.”

So Magnus had suspected what Aleks was suffering from and had tried to tell the young man in a roundabout way…

It took Aleks a moment to figure things out. His mouth pulled into a frown. “I don’t have that,” he repeated. “You’re wrong. I’ve… I’ve been doing normal things since I left Father’s house.”

“Yes, you have, and you’ve done an incredible job. But PTSD isn’t something you can just will away, Aleks. Talking to someone will help you figure out what your triggers are and how to cope—”

“No!” Aleks shouted, then seemed to remember shouting wasn’t something he was allowed to do. “No,” he repeated as his agitation grew. “I’m fine. I’m okay… Dante… he’s proud of me because I’m doing so good…”

I fell silent as he pretty much answered all of my questions with that one statement.

He doesn’t want to disappoint his brother.

It made me wonder how much he was still hiding from Dante. And if he was pushing himself too hard in an effort to make his brother proud.

So his brother wouldn’t regret coming to get him.

“Can we please just go, Vaughn?” Aleks asked as he turned away from me and stared out the window.

“Aleks—”

“Please,” he repeated, his voice sounding hoarse.

I sighed and reached out to graze his cheek with my fingers, but he seemed to be expecting the move and pulled away.

So we were back where we’d started before we’d stopped for breakfast.

Fuck.