The Revenge (The Insiders Trilogy #3)(40)

I had to take stock for a beat, because the last time I saw Victoria, she’d been furious, but she hadn’t been this Victoria. She was skin and bones.

“Boss.” Jasper lifted her arm, shoving her robe’s sleeve up.

Her veins were black and blue. Track marks.

I frowned, shooting an order out to Josh. “Go. Search the house. I want all the drug paraphernalia collected.”

“What? Noooph. Im nod a drgge. I’m nod.”

“Vic.”

The nickname silenced her. She stopped struggling against Jasper’s lone hold. He was behind her, one foot between hers so she couldn’t kick back, and he had a firm grip on both her arms, keeping them slightly behind her.

Her eyes were wide, but damn, she was gone. Anything I said to her would be wasted. So instead of issuing the threats and the ultimatums that I wanted to, I remembered she was someone I used to care about.

I never loved her, but I cared for her .

I stepped close, sliding my hand under a strand of hair that was hanging over her face, and I moved it back. I tucked it behind her ear and I let her feel a gentle slide of my hand down her cheek, a slight cupping of her chin, before I angled her head to see me better.

“You’re going to get clean.” The words were firm and without reproach from me.

She took note and her eyes widened. Defiance started to fill, but I shook my head.

I let go and stepped back. “I’m not asking, Vic.”

“You took away my grandfather,” she whispered.

“But not you, Victoria.”

Her eyes closed first.

Her shoulders fell.

The fight left her body.

It could’ve all been an act. It probably was, because she had the signs of a full drug addict. I wasn’t going to give her an option.

“Take her outside,” I told Jasper.

Derek was listening to his radio, and as Jasper led Victoria outside, he approached. “They’re done outside.”

“Okay.” I nodded toward where Jasper and Victoria were going out the door. “Leave me the remote. I want you to go back with them and the guys.”

“Will do.”

A minute later, one of the men came inside and handed me the remote. He explained which button to use, how far we would need to be, and then he left.

Josh came down the stairs, a full bag with him, and he placed it on the dining room table. “I think I got everything. I’ll do a sweep of the main level and the basement.” He disappeared to the back rooms, and I moved to the far wall, which extended down the farthest hallway.

I was looking at the pictures when Josh finished, coming up to me. “Done. ”

I didn’t speak. I kept looking.

He transferred his gaze, taking in the image. “Is that Victoria?”

“It’s her and her father.”

Josh looked at me. “Her father’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” That was a sad fact that I never stopped to consider until now. “My grandfather killed him.”

Josh didn’t react, but I felt his attention sharpen.

“I overlooked it. That was around when Victoria and I met for the first time, and looking back, there were rumors. I never questioned why. I never questioned the reason for it. If I had, then what? Would I have stepped in sooner? That’s probably the time when he decided to use Victoria to get to me.”

“That’s what Griogos was talking about, that Victoria was supposed to marry you.”

“Victoria was supposed to control me. That’s how my grandfather thought. He wanted me tied to him. It was just one more way he was trying to control me.”

“You and her did date.”

I nodded, moving to the next picture.

They were smiling in it. I pointed at it. “This is Maragos and his daughter.”

“The daughter who Calhoun was controlling, too?”

“He owned her. Griogos sold her to Calhoun.”

But that wasn’t the point of my trip down memory lane.

I was remembering the first time I saw Victoria.

The first flirt. The first kiss. The first date.

I came to the last picture, and Josh said under his breath, “Damn.”

It was me, Victoria, Matt, and Tony.

I forgot that, too. The four of us were friends. We were the beginning of everything.

“You’re so young in there.”

I nodded, lingering on Victoria’s face. Fuck. The bitterness was strong .

I had missed this.

I had missed it completely.

“This was another family he destroyed.” I touched Victoria’s face in the picture. She was thirteen. It would be the next year when Tony and Matt began drinking. It would be a few years years after that when Victoria and I started sleeping together. And in the midst of it all, I never thought about how Calhoun took her father first, then indebted her grandfather to him, and through all of that, began to own Victoria and her mother.

“Why am I getting the feeling you’re changing your mind on her?”

“She was a friend first. She was an innocent at one point.”

She looked like Bailey in the eyes. Both pure and both smiling.

I nodded, rapping my knuckles against Victoria’s thirteen-year-old self one last time before turning to leave. “We’re going to get her clean, and then we’ll go from there.”