“Is Duke with you?” Her soft voice drew me out of my haze. “Dillon is hoping to chat with him.”
“He had to pick up Emma from the babysitter.”
She grinned. “That little button has certainly tamed Duke, huh?”
My fifteen-month-old niece, who had wild brown curls and big brown eyes, was the sun, moon, and stars in Duke’s world.
“For sure.” I stabbed a thumb at the door with the sign Employees and Registered Guests Only. “Is Andie in a room?”
“Sela is with her in room four.”
A whoosh of anxiety-filled air left my lungs. Sela was a psychologist and worked at the shelter part-time. Any chance I got, I picked her brain whenever questions came up during my studies in sociology that I couldn’t find the answers to or if I needed a doctor’s opinion on the topic at hand.
My stomach tightened as I pushed in the door to the hub of the shelter, not sure what I would say to Andie or what to expect from her end. If she was anything like me after I’d first been raped, she would be cowering in a corner. But Andie hadn’t been awake during the incident.
Dillon strode toward me as I stood outside room four. His expression was as blank as an empty canvas, which was normal for any of my brothers.
“Norma said you were here.” He threw his arms around me. “Care to tell me what happened?”
“Nope.”
Easing away, he lifted a dark eyebrow. “Grace?”
I pressed my lips into a thin line. “Duke has already given me his two cents. I don’t need any more.”
He waved his hand at the empty room across from Andie’s. “Sela is still talking to Andie, and I don’t want you to interrupt, and I want to talk to you.”
Dillon often counseled his clients and had a way of breaking through to them. But I wasn’t here to get advice. However, I stomped into the room he’d indicated like a child who hadn’t gotten her way. If I protested, he would call a family meeting or set up an intervention, like he had a few times on my behalf, and right now, I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I only wanted to see Andie.
Threading his fingers through his dark hair, he leaned against the doorjamb and studied me. I sensed words on his tongue, but his mouth wasn’t moving. I knew my brother wasrehearsing what to say. He always considered others’ feelings before he spoke. Unlike Duke, who went for the jugular without warning.
I crossed my arms over my chest and rested against the footboard of one of the twin beds. “Well, I’m waiting for your wisdom.”
He held up his hands. “I don’t have any, sis. To be honest, I probably would’ve killed the boy.”
“So, what did you want to talk about?”
“Ted tells me you were asking questions about Miguel Rivera. Ted thinks you’re spooked over something that might have happened to you recently. He mentioned you were blaming yourself thatshedied. Who died, Grace? Did you interfere in a squabble between a pimp and his lady?”
I picked at my pesky hangnail that I had yet to yank out. I didn’t want to talk about Thea. I’d been living with the guilt of her death since I’d found her in the back seat of John’s SUV. I was the one who should’ve died that day. Not sweet Thea.
“I haven’t trolled the streets of Boston in a long time. If you must know, seeing that asshole about to rape Andie gave me a flashback of—” I shook my head, unable to bring myself to talk about Thea. “Can you give me some space? I promise the only thing I’m guilty of is shooting the frat boy.”
He closed the distance between us and grabbed the sides of my shoulders. “I am here for you. Just promise me that you will come to me if you need help or need to talk.” He gave me a peck on the forehead. “I love you, sis. I worry about you every day.”
“That’s just it, Dillon. I hate that you, Duke, and Denim worry about me.”
My brothers had been in my face for far too long. While I understood they needed to protect me, I couldn’t keep living under their thumbs. Sure, I gave them reasons to be concerned, but part of their constant anxiety when it came to me was theguilt they harbored about leaving me with an alcoholic father. As a result, I had found my way into sex trafficking.
The latter was my doing, not theirs. So many times, I’d thought about how I should’ve done this or that or even stayed with my dad. But I didn’t have a magic wand to change the past, even though for every step forward, I felt like I was taking ten steps backward.
“Duke has an ulcer because of me,” I added.
Dillon eased away, chuckling. “Duke’s ulcer stems from his days as a criminal more so than because of you. So don’t take on that guilt.”
I wasn’t any better than my brothers. I, too, had anxiety about their well-being, especially Duke’s. When he’d run his illegal arms empire, I couldn’t sleep well knowing he could’ve been killed at any moment. Even though he was on the straight and narrow, there was a chance that one of his former enemies could seek revenge against him. Maybe one of them was stalking me. Then something equally rattling hit me, and I stiffened, biting my bottom lip.
“What is it?” Dillon asked. “You have that light-bulb moment in your eyes.”
