An hour later they were out and heading to a restaurant in the area. It was a local greasy spoon that she knew served a pretty good breakfast at decent prices. After all he’d done for her, the least she could do was buy him breakfast. Even if it was still going to dig into her minuscule nest egg.

They found a table easily and ordered coffees and breakfast. She studied him as he tucked into his bacon. She had to repress her smile as he polished off his plate and didn’t stop until every scrap of food was gone. He ate like a person who didn’t think that his next meal would be any good. It was a look that she was quite familiar with. He even savored the fresh tomatoes that were the garnish to his plate. 

Neither of them said much while they ate, but she couldn’t help herself as he popped the last bite of tomato into his mouth.

“How is it that a guy who can afford a room like that can attack food in a place this like it’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten?”

He contemplated his answer for a minute, dark eyebrows furrowing. His hazel eyes narrowed with thought.

“I’ve had worse meals. I try the to make the most of every decent one I have now. Also, I appreciate the fact that I’m here and get to have them, so I’m not letting it go to waste,” he answered cryptically. 

She didn’t push the issue, though. God knew she had enough crap of her own to deal with.

He insisted on paying for breakfast, claiming that he owed her for saving him from tequila shots at a strip club this morning. They strolled back in the direction of the hotel in a comfortable silence.

She was trying to make a plan for where she could go once she’d retrieved her precious backpack from his room. She turned to say something to Walker, when her blood suddenly turned to ice.

She recognized a man walking toward them on the sidewalk... and the man didn't have a friendly expression on his face.

She’d known him for a long time. In fact, he’d been the one to tell her that she would be working at the club she’d walked out on last night.

She shuddered as his eyes met hers across the hot pavement. She had been sixteen the first time she’d looked into those eyes. The first time she realized that she was looking into the eyes of one of the men who owned her. She was his, until she could figure out a way to repay her dead mother’s ridiculous debt. And then there was her own to think of...

* * *

She hadn’t been able to afford a funeral for her parents. They hadn’t had two pennies to rub together when they both met their untimely, yet completely unsurprising deaths. There were no wreaths in a church, no flowers to lay at engraved headstones. Hell, there weren't even headstones.

She’d simply walked away from the coroner’s office, barely sixteen years old. She had no family, no friends, no one’s shoulder to lay her terrified head on. She knew what happened to kids like her. Knew that foster care and group homes were her future. 

She'd heard stories about what went on in those places. There was no way in hell that she was going there. She’d tried to think of some way to escape it, but her head was foggy.

She was exhausted and numb from the events of the last twelve hours. She hadn’t slept a wink in over twenty-four hours, and she’d just left her parents behind... forever.

She just wanted to sleep.

She crashed once she’d reached their seedy apartment, trying to stay away from where everything had happened. The spot where she’d found them. There was evidence of the police who had been there earlier, but her sluggish mind couldn’t comprehend the enormity of it all. What had happened here not so long ago. 

She was still exhausted when she woke up from her fitful, nightmare-ridden attempt at sleep. She stayed on her bed for a long time after waking up, trying to map out some sort of future for herself. 

She wasn’t going to be able to finish high school, that much she knew. She knew nothing about getting a job, and had no meaningful skills that came to mind immediately. So in short, she was going nowhere. She had nothing and no one. She wouldn’t even be able to stay on in the crappy apartment for long if she wanted to avoid the foster care system... 

A noise from outside her bedroom startled her hours later. Her heart dropped to her stomach and tears sprung to her eyes. She thought about trying to hide, but that would have been useless. 

Surely social services will find me eventually, she thought. 

Foolishly, she hadn’t even tried to run. The door to her bedroom swung open, and a bulky man stepped through it. He held an unlit cigarette between his teeth. She saw his beady eyes from across the room.

He didn’t look like a childcatcher, as she’d come to think of the social workers who would surely be collecting her soon. Dread spread through her body. He openly raked his eyes across every inch of her. His appraisal made her feel naked, even though she was wearing baggy sweatpants and a large hoodie.

She could taste bile at the back of her throat when his watery eyes made their way back up her body. They lingered here and there, as though trying to see through her clothes. Anxiety unfurled in her nauseated stomach. She suddenly wished that he was in fact a social worker.

“You Doll?” he grumbled in a thickly accented voice.

She felt petrified, unable to move a muscle. She watched helplessly as he stomped farther into the room. A large hand reached to yank the cigarette from his mouth as he moved closer to her.

She could smell him now. He smelled like cigarette smoke and alcohol and sweat, mixed with something sweet and stale at the same time. It nearly gagged her.

“Are you Doll?” he asked again, gravelly voice low and terrifying.

She nodded slowly. Maybe he was just there to collect something from her parents. Or maybe he didn’t know that they were dead yet, she tried to convince herself.

Little did she know in that moment that he was there to collect something from her parents.

Her.

* * *

A sharp tug on her arm pulled her out of her dark thoughts. Dimitri’s grasp tightened on her wrist, causing her heart to stammer and stop. 

This is it, he’s selling me to that sheikh for sure. It was all she could do not to vomit on him right there at the thought.

It was perfectly within his rights, of course. Now that she’d walked away from Igor, and from everything that had been keeping her safe. The rights she’d had no choice but to give him at the tender age of sixteen.

She crashed against his side, resigned to her fate. She cast her eyes down... only to catch Walker’s fists clench. She looked up, surprised, and saw the veins in his neck bulge.

“Let her go, right now,” his suddenly commanding voice demanded through gritted teeth.

“She’s mine, you American asshole. You might not understand why, but she belongs to me,” Dimitri hissed.

Walker surveyed him for a moment, cocking his head at Dimitri. 

“You don’t care about her,” he said contemplatively. “What’s she worth to you?”

He’d put things together remarkably quickly, she thought. She gaped at his confident posture, his narrowed eyes, and the set of his jaw.

“Unless you can tell me right now, fuck off and don’t ever let me see your cowardly ass again.”

Dimitri looked mildly surprised as he spat at Walker. 

“That’s not how it works, my friend. You don’t just demand release.”

“I’m not your fucking friend,” Walker said in a low, surprisingly calm voice. He was still commanding and in control. “But you leave her out of it. As of right now, she’s nothing to you. Understand?” 

Dimitri took a swing at him. His strong hands had reached up as fast as lightning, catching the other man. He gripped Dimitri’s collar, his steely eyes fixed unyieldingly on the Russian man’s face.

“You ready to walk away? Or are we doing this now?” Walker's glare broke away from Dimitri’s to flash to a police car parked nearby.

Dimitri followed Walker’s eyes and tugged at his hands. He rasped, “You take the whore... for now... but she’s still ours. And we keep what is ours. We find what is ours.”

Walker’s eyes darkened. She could see the muscles in his biceps clenching, but he said nothing as he eyed the police car. He stepped away from Dimitri, placed a palm on her lower back. He smirked as he led her away from the Russian thug.

The Russians will be back though, she reminded herself as she walked off with Walker. And I’ll be the one to pay for that little showdown. 

A tremor of fear ran down her spine.

She’d just incurred what Dimitri would surely label as more debt. The bottomless pool of bullshit debt that gave the Russians the power to control her life. They had the right to do with her as they damn well pleased. 

She tried to shut it down until she could get away from Walker. She needed to get her backpack and just be alone, but they had walked only about two blocks before she melted down.

She’d been doing an okay job walking, silently trembling next to him. But the thought of her inevitable future finally overwhelmed her as she sank to her knees.

Instead of asking her why, Walker took one look at her quaking form and folded her into his arms once more. He carried her the last few yards to the hotel.

Once he had her tucked on the uncomfortable couch, he pulled a sweet soda from the minibar. He opened it and handed it to her.

“Drink up,” he insisted as he sank into the couch with her.

“You don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to. I just want you to know you’re going to be safe. Guys like that...” He trailed off. “Let’s just say I’ve had a run-in or two with his type.” 

She wiped at her eyes. She studied his face carefully as she considered his words. He wore a concerned expression, not the pitying one she’d been expecting. His eyebrows were knit together, his jaw set and his shoulders tight, eyes clouded with worry.

Unexpectedly, it was like a dam burst inside her. The walls around her closely guarded secrets came tumbling down. She was used to fending for herself, protecting herself.

It had been, well, forever since she’d had someone to talk to, someone who worried about her. Yet here she was, confessing her deepest secrets, her darkest fears, to a perfect stranger. A stranger who was somehow worried about her, who wanted her to be safe.

He kept silent as she shared her story. His only reaction was to raise an eyebrow here and there. She didn't miss him clenching and unclenching his fists as fury filled his eyes.

She kept waiting for the pity, but it never came.

Not when she told him about her abusive drug addict parents. 

Not when she told him that her mother had killed her father, and then overdosed on the same night.

Not when she told him that she’d been the one to discover both parents’ bodies when she was only sixteen years old.

Not when she told him that she’d been alone with the bodies for hours. That was when a neighbor had found her and phoned the police.

Not when she explained how she’d met Dimitri just hours after returning from the coroner’s office. How he had demanded that she pack her bags and come with him. Her parents owed him money and apparently had used her as collateral. They'd told him that she was a pretty young thing, someone who would make him a killing working in his clubs until their debt had been repaid.

She didn't even see pity when she told him that she owed Dimitri even more money for putting her through high school. Meanwhile, she'd worked in the clubs at night. Dimitri kept threatening that he was going to sell her off because she was too much of a burden. Then Igor had taken a liking to her and taken her under his protection.

The protection she now no longer had.

Dimitri had made it crystal clear that if she fucked it up, as she now had, he was done with her. He was going to sell her off to a sheikh with a penchant for redheads.

Walker drew in a sharp breath at this little tidbit, but he still hadn’t interrupted her.

By the time she was done, she felt numb. She collapsed back into the couch. She pressed the heels of her hands to eyes, wishing the uncomfortable couch would swallow her. Maybe it would never spit her out again. 

She barely felt the cushions of the couch shift before strong arms surrounded her, pulling her close against his hard body. His hands started stroking her back and her hair, and she melted into his arms.

She shouldn’t have. She knew that giving in -- even momentarily -- would just make her long for having someone to lean on. She would want him to comfort her and make her feel safe for a long time after he was nothing but a memory that wouldn’t protect her. Still, she couldn’t help herself.

She allowed him to hold her, allowed him to stroke her hair. More dangerously, she allowed him to make her feel like everything was going to be okay.

It was this feeling that sent silent tears flowing from her eyes. The tears came harder and faster until sobs wracked her body and she could barely breathe. Because she knew, with every fiber of her being, everything was most certainly not going to be okay. Despite this fleeting moment of comfort, everything was going to be the complete opposite of okay and would never be okay again.