He dug his fingers into his eye sockets before dropping his arms and bracing his shoulders. “I know because my daughter just came home. After she’d been missing for almost eighteen years.”
I froze.
Something prickled the back of my neck.
Something hissed in my guts that I wouldn’t like where this was going.
A sixth sense sent my pulse skyrocketing as Tony sniffed with a mixture of joy and grief. “She was taken on her ninth birthday.” His voice wobbled as he glanced at the fascinated crowd around us. “I’ve...I’ve never spoken about this publicly. After those first few years of her disappearance, the countless police searches, the endless dead ends, my wife and I shut down. The horror of not knowing what was happening to our baby girl destroyed us. Every day she was gone was a nightmare of our own kind.” His lips twisted. “But it wasn’t until three weeks ago that we knew firsthand just how easy we’d had it.” His tears fell faster now, unchecked and real. “We got the call we didn’t think we’d ever receive. She was delivered to a hospital by a man who wouldn’t leave his name. A man our daughter says she grew up with. Who—” Tony choked and wedged a fist into his mouth.
No one spoke or moved while he gathered his composure and continued. “She has scars on her body that she can’t talk about. She has nightmares that make me sob into my pillow. She has a haunting in her gaze that I doubt we’ll ever be able to cure—no matter how much love we give her.”
Gemma openly cried beside me, her hand latching around mine. “I’m so sorry, Tony. So unbelievably sorry.” Her voice hitched. “So that’s why you were so keen to have Kas do this? To open a line of communication and a safe space for those who have been found. Because...your daughter is one of them.”
He nodded. “That is one reason. Yes.”
My hackles rose. “The only reason?”
Tony slowly shook his head. Standing taller, he swiped at his tears and spoke with a much braver voice. “There is another reason. A reason I wasn’t going to mention. I’m not a man who believes in coincidences. I’m not overly religious. I don’t know how the universe works...but—” He smiled at Gemma for a second as awe filled his teary gaze. “But I can’t deny that something bigger than us is at work.”
“What do you mean?” Gemma whispered, her voice soft but loud enough to scratch my heart.
“I mean...a few weeks ago when your live video went viral, our algorithms kicked in. The most popular videos of the day are posted on my direct feed so I can check out why a certain topic has hit the public so profoundly.” Tony shook his head at me as if he couldn’t believe it. “And that’s how I ‘met’ Kas. A long-haired, bearded bear who looked into the camera with so much pain, so much wariness, so much distrust. I remembered that look. I remembered his name and—” His tears started again. He ran both hands over his face, forcing himself to finish. “And when my daughter came home with that very same look in her eyes and the countless scars on her beautiful body, there was one scar that didn’t look like the others. It was black with lead instead of silver from age. It looked...deliberate. It made me fucking sick to think some bastard had autographed my child. That he’d hurt her then signed the very pain he’d given her. But she...” He blew out a harsh breath, glowering at the crowd and the insensitive cell phones recording such a private, agonizing moment. “She told me it was self-inflicted. That she’d sat in the dark with her older brother and dragged a sharp pencil over her forearm. He’d told her to stop. But she’d added his name instead. She said it was the only thing that gave her comfort. The name of the boy she loved, inked into her skin, a hero who did what he could to protect her.”
For a second, my mind was blank.
But then it detonated with images. Of memories. Of sitting on our beds, drawing blood with a pencil, imprinting wounds on a body already riddled with them.
“We have to stop. It’s too addictive.”
“I know, Kas. Just...one more.”
And I’d let her.
She’d drawn a K and then an A, finishing it off with an S.
I’d felt so protective of her, so in love with her, so damn afraid that I would let her down after she’d just called me her hero.
Bile rushed up my throat.
Fuck.
Fucking...
I’m going to be sick.
Motherfucking sick.
I stumbled backward, clutching onto the bar.
Tony came closer, crowding me, crushing me. “I don’t know the extent of what went on in that place, but you were there for my daughter when I couldn’t be.” Tony choked on a sob, his arms reaching for me. “You were there to hold her, soothe her. She told me that for the first part of her imprisonment, you did your very best to save her from—”