“Don’t you remember?” He looked at her quizzically.

She did. God help her, she did. He was the man who had killed her mother, Marshall and the man who had been raping her and then set the apartment on fire, leaving a whole apartment building to burn down.

“You’re the one who took me from my mother and gave me to my adoptive parents.” She wasn’t going to mention that she had seen him murder them, too, afraid that he would kill a witness to a crime he had committed years ago.

“That bitch was no mother to you. That slut should never have been allowed to have any children. She was evil incarnate.”

“How did you know my mother?” Lily asked.

“She grew up in my neighborhood. We grew up together. I would see her around every now and again. I have several businesses; one of those businesses was to provide entertainment to men. She worked for me for a while until she started stealing extra cash out of the customer’s pockets.”

“My mother was a prostitute,” Lily said, her face pale.

“Your mother was a slut. She would give it away for free as often as she sold it.”

Lily winced at his cruel words.

“This is interesting, but I’m trying to understand what this has to do with you kidnapping me. If you’re worried I was going to talk someday, I won’t.”

“I didn’t think you would, Lily. It wouldn’t be much fun testifying, would it?” King said mockingly.

His words let her know he also remembered why he had killed her mother and the other men.

Lily shrunk in on herself, reminded of the treatment she had received as a child. She knew herself well enough to know that she would never be able to testify to what had happened to her when she was a child.

Lily heard King sigh, his hands going to his pockets. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories for you, Lily, but I have no choice. I have an enemy who is determined to destroy me and he plans to use you to accomplish that goal.”

“How? I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand. I just want to go home to my husband. He’ll be worried about me. I want to go home.” Lily refused to cry in front of this stranger. She had stopped crying all the time. She wasn’t weak anymore; she had Shade, Beth and Razer, and she had The Last Riders. The weak woman she had been was gone.

“I can’t let you go home until I kill Digger. He escaped a couple of days ago, and he’s not far from Treepoint, if he isn’t already there. I couldn’t take a chance. I had to put you where he couldn’t find you until I can find him. Don’t worry; it won’t be long then you can go home.”

“Why would he try to use me against you? I don’t even know you,” Lily protested.

“Look at me, Lily. It’s obvious.” His eyes stared into hers.

“No.” Lily shook her head, denying the possibility, squeezing her eyes closed as if she could make him disappear. She couldn’t shove the truth away, though. Lily gave a bitter laugh. “So not only was my mother a prostitute, my father was her pimp?”

King nodded his head. “Among other things. I’m afraid being a pimp isn’t the worst of my sins. You didn’t stand a chance.”

Lily lowered her head, her hair falling forward to hide her face. “Do you even know that I didn’t know that fathers existed? That when I found out, I cried for three days? Do you even know the things she did to me and made me do?!” Lily’s eyes raised, the purple depths filled with hatred stared at King who went pale at her outburst.

His face quickly became an impassive mask; however, Lily saw the torture in the eyes that were so much like her own, and her hatred fell away, replaced with pity. She had suffered for eight short years while this man had suffered for much longer than that.

“I…” King cleared his throat. His impassive voice belied the eyes staring back at her. “I didn’t know. My sister was violently murdered. She had been kidnapped and cut to shreds. I loved my sister. It was why I did some of the things I did when I began my business, so I could drag her out of the filth of that neighborhood. When she died like that, I swore I’d never let anyone hold someone over me like that again. The men I dealt with were too dangerous. The night they returned Ariel’s body, I had to make the arrangements for her funeral and pick out the clothes they were going to bury her in the next day.”

Kings hand ran through his dark hair. “I went back to my apartment, got drunk and did some coke. Brenda must have come by. I don’t even remember the bitch being there. I remember stinking like sex the next morning, but I didn’t remember anything from that night. I stayed out of the neighborhood Brenda lived in. It brought back too many memories.

“Then, one of my girls got hurt bad. I went there to settle a score and as I was leaving, I heard kids laughing—little girls. It’s an unmistakable sound. I looked over at the playground and I saw you. You looked exactly like my sister had at that age. When Brenda came outside to get you, yelling at you to go inside, I knew what that bitch had done.

“I made her come to my office. She said she didn’t tell me about you because she was afraid I would kill her. She was right. It was everything I could do not to kill her that day. The only reason I didn’t was because I knew that I didn’t want you hurt like Ariel. You were too beautiful to drag into my world.

“I gave her money for you. She had enough to move out of that rat hole, but she stayed there to be closer to her suppliers. I knew she was doing drugs, so I paid Marshall to move in with her to keep an eye on you, to protect you. Instead, he became another one of your tormentors.

“I had no idea what she was doing to you until that night when Marshall called. He was so mad at Brenda for letting another man have you that he called me. I don’t think the dumb bastard thought I would ask you. I knew the son of a bitch wouldn’t care if Brenda fucked fifty men.” His voice was full of disgust.

“So you killed them then started the fire.”

“I enjoyed it. I wish I could have brought them back to life and done it again.” His eyes blazed hatred for the people he had so ruthlessly killed.

“How did Beth’s parents come to adopt me?”

“Saul Cornett was my uncle. I called him and asked him if he would take you. He said he would, but he told me that if he did, I had to agree to stay away. He wasn’t going to endanger his child. He knew Ariel had been killed because of me. I had an acquaintance in the morgue that falsified papers of a body there, showing you had died in the fire. I wanted to make sure no one would ever think to look for you.”

“So, he was my great-uncle?”

“Yes. He was a religious fanatic, but I knew he wouldn’t touch you.” Lily didn’t tell him that her adopted father had been a sadist who had tortured Beth. Lily wondered if he hadn’t touched her because of Beth and the Sheriff’s threats or because of King.

“You’re the one who owned the house behind ours?”

King smiled at her ingenuity. “Yes. That way I could keep an eye on you. I would always vacation there during the summer because you were outside more often. You grew into a beautiful woman, Lily. I heard you got married during Christmas.”

Lily nodded her head. “Small town gossip. I suppose you know everything about me, probably from just talking to a waitress at the diner.”