Chapter Sixty-Five
Brooklyn
I keep my eyes on the table because if I look at Jackson, I’ll break. He’s right beside me, his hand resting on the back of my chair, quiet and steady and solid in a way I absolutely am not. My breathing is all over the place. Too shallow. Too fast. Like my ribs are wrapped in wire.
Morris waits. He doesn’t rush me. That almost makes it worse.
“I didn’t know it was him at first,” I say, my voice barely there. “I kept trying to make it fit with something else. Someone else. Anyone else. Because the idea that he’s alive…” I swallow hard. “It feels like my brain is trying to fold in on itself.”
Morris nods, slowly. “Take your time.”
“I knew the voice.” My fingertips press into the edge of the table until they sting. “Not at first. I was scared and disoriented, and everything was fuzzy, but… part of me knew. I think I knew the whole time, and I just didn’t want to. But the second he said Cecilia…” My chest caves. “He’s the only one who ever called me that. Him and my mom. And she’s gone.”
The room tilts a little. I blink fast, grounding myself in Jackson’s quiet presence. It doesn’t fully help. Nothing could.
Morris leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Brooklyn…are you saying you believe the man behind the wall was your stepfather? Grant Holloway?”
I nod even though every part of me wants to shake my head and pretend I never said any of this. “Yeah. I think it’s him. I wish it wasn’t, but…yeah.”
And then everything starts pouring out of me, like a dam cracking.
“He didn’t…he didn’t care about me the way a stepdad should. I wasn’t a kid to him. Not really. I was something he could use. A way to make money. A way to get what he wanted.” My throat tightens so painfully that I have to force the words out. “He sold me. Before I turned eighteen. Men would show up, and he’d make me feel like it was normal. Like this was just what girls like me were good for.”
Jackson still doesn’t touch me, but I feel him tense beside me, like he’s swallowing fury just to stay here for me.
Morris’s voice softens. “Brooklyn… did you know Teddy Greer before this?”
The name makes my stomach flip. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “He was one of the men. Back then.” I wrap my arms around myself, shaking.
Morris and Nash exchange a look. Not casual. Heavy.
“So you’re thinking,” Nash says carefully, “that the connection between you and Teddy wasn’t random.”
“It wasn’t,” I whisper. “None of it was.”
I can feel the spiral now. That frantic, tightening pull in my chest. Like everything I’ve pushed so far down is rushing back up all at once, too sharp, too loud.
“He’s doing this because of me,” I say, and my voice cracks. “Those women… they’re like me. My initials. My hair. My build. He’s been getting as close to me as he can, without actually having me. And now…” My hands start to tremble so hard I curl them into fists. “I don’t want him to have this power. I don’t want him in my head. I don’t want to go backward. I can’t.”
Jackson shifts just slightly, enough that I feel him, steady, strong, but he still doesn’t touch me. He’s letting me choose when I’m ready for that.
Morris sighs, running a hand over his face. “Brooklyn…based on what you’re telling us, it’s possible you were a victim of trafficking, and that Grant may have been running something larger than what you saw.”
The word trafficking almost knocks the wind out of me.
Jackson mentioned that same thing before, when I told him my story, but it’s hard to put myself in the headspace to even begin to wrap my mind around that.
“I don’t want that to be my story,” I whisper. “I don’t want any of that to be real. I left. I survived. I built a life that wasn’t controlled by him. And now it feels like he dragged me right back.” I shake my head hard. “But I’m not going back there. Not in my body. Not in my mind. And definitely not for him.”
The room goes quiet.
I can feel the investigation shifting. Like a door just opened to something darker, bigger. Something with teeth.
And for the first time since I heard his voice when he whispered behind me as he took yet something else that didn’t belong to him, I feel something under all the fear.
Anger.
Not at myself or at the past, but at him.
I lift my chin just enough to meet Morris’s eyes. “Tell me what you need. I’ll give you everything I can remember. Every detail. I’m not running from this.”
Jackson’s fingers shift on the back of my chair. A small movement. A silent *I’m right here.*
I cling to that as the floor keeps tilting.
Morris nods slowly, like he’d been expecting everything to tilt in this direction but was still hoping it wouldn’t. He glances at Nash again, something silent passing between them, then looks back at me.
“Okay,” he says. “We’ll take it one step at a time. You’re not alone in this.”
I try to breathe through the shaking in my chest, but it feels like something is rattling loose inside me. Something old. Something I kept boxed up so tight I forgot how sharp it was.
Jackson’s voice finally breaks through the heaviness. Quiet. Controlled. But rough at the edges in a way that makes my throat tighten.
“You’re doing good,” he says. “You don’t have to push past what you can handle.”
I shake my head. “No. I do. If I don’t do it now, I won’t be able to later. And I want him found. I want him stopped.”
Something dark flickers across Jackson’s face, a mixture of fury, protectiveness, and fear all tangled together, but he nods once, like he’s anchoring himself right alongside me.
Morris takes a breath, then reaches for a file on the table. He hesitates before opening it, which scares me more than anything inside the folder could.
“We cross-referenced the women who’ve gone missing with physical similarities,” he says. “Hair, build, height, approximate age. It didn’t make sense at first because it wasn’t consistent enough.” He glances at me. “Until now.”
My stomach drops. “What do you mean ‘until now’?”
Nash clears his throat. “Your initials. C.R. The other victims… their names all started with the same letters.”
My skin crawls. “But he didn’t call me Cecilia.”
“I know,” Morris says gently. “But he knew your real name. The one almost no one else knew. He was…circling. Getting as close as he could without crossing the exact line until he found you.”
I grip the edge of the table hard enough that my fingers ache. I keep imagining him hunting for women who could’ve been me if things had happened differently. Women who didn’t run fast enough. Women who didn’t get away.
“It wasn’t random,” I whisper.
“No,” Morris says. “It wasn’t.”
Jackson shifts closer to my shoulder, still not touching me but close enough that I feel the heat of him, the steady gravity he brings to every room. It helps, not enough, but a little.
Morris opens the file.
Inside are photos. Four women. Similar hair. Similar build. All different, but…close enough.
I look away fast, pressing a hand to my mouth. “I can’t…not right now.”
“You don’t have to,” Morris says immediately. He closes the file again and sets it aside. “There’s something else we need to talk about. And then we’re done for tonight.”
My pulse stutters. “What else?”
Nash leans forward, folding his hands. “It’s about Teddy Greer.”
Ice floods my veins. “What about him?”
*I can’t help but think once more about how Jackson found me at his place, and if they know about* that *too.*
“You mentioned he was one of the men your stepfather sold you to,” he says carefully. “We looked deeper into Teddy after that. His finances. His movements. His connections.”
The room feels like it shrinks by half. “You found something, didn’t you?”
Nash nods slowly. “There are bank transfers going back years. From Teddy to accounts linked to Grant Holloway.”
It feels like someone punches the air out of my lungs.
“No,” I whisper. “No, he—Teddy he wouldn’t do something like that. He gave me a place to stay, food…”
“He would, he did,” Morris says. “He’s not a good man, Brooklyn. And he was still paying your stepfather.”
“For me?” I choke out. *Could he have been reporting back to him every time I came to him, needing help or a place to stay?*
One of the men before me answers my question, making me realize that I must have said it out loud.
“We don’t know,” Nash says. “But the transfers only stopped recently.”
*Recently?*
*Could that have been what set him off?* *Because he couldn’t keep tabs on me any longer?*
*Is that why he started targeting those women, why he targeted Caleb’s sister?*
The walls tilt. My chest squeezes so tight I can’t get a full breath.
Jackson moves then. Not to touch me, he’s still letting me decide, but he drops to a crouch beside my chair, eye level with me. “Breathe,” he murmurs. “I’m right here.”
My vision blurs for a second, but I grab onto his voice. I use it to steady myself.
“I’m not going back,” I say, shakier than I want. “He doesn’t get to drag me back there.”
“You’re not going back,” Jackson says firmly. “Not ever.”
Morris clears his throat softly. “Brooklyn…based on all of this, we believe Grant was running something organized. Possibly bigger than what you saw growing up. And Teddy was part of it. Maybe even still is.”
“It’s trafficking,” Nash says, voice heavy. “We can’t prove its full scope yet, but this—” he taps the closed file “—this changes everything.”
My hands won’t stop shaking. “So what now?”
Morris leans forward. “Now we go after Grant Holloway. Hard. And we use every single detail you remember to get ahead of him.”
I lift my chin, even though my voice wavers. “Then tell me what you need. Tell me what I can do.”
Jackson’s hand finally rests lightly on the back of my shoulder blade. A barely-there touch. But it steadies something in me. For the first time in hours, the floor stops tilting.
Morris exhales. “You already started. And it’s more than enough.”
But deep down, I know this isn’t the end of the chapter.
It’s the beginning of something much bigger and much darker.
And I’m not running.
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