His to Own by Ava Sinclair

Author:Ava Sinclair [Sinclair, Ava]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stormy Night Publications
Published: 2017-09-20T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“So is this all a cover?” The next morning I’m a fuck-tumbled mess, and feel I have the right to ask some questions after what he did to me. I want to know more about the man who’s finally taken my virginity. “Are you really filthy rich?”

“Oh, I absolutely am,” he says. “Everything I told you about that is true. But it’s inherited wealth, and it means little to me. I enlisted in the service over my father’s objections when I turned eighteen. I served as an Army ranger, where my side specialty was intelligence gathering. I eventually joined an elite unit that focused on human trafficking. In 2009, I was injured…” He pauses. “I thought my military career was over until I was approached by some important people who asked me if I’d like to continue my work on a contract basis. I told them I would, on one condition: that I be allowed to do it my way.”

He opens up to me then, and this is how I learn more about his past, and how it relates to the things I found in the woods.

Atticus had been an Army ranger when his unit had been sent on a secret operation to bust up a ring of human traffickers in Somalia. His best friend, Sergeant Randy Perkins, was on his team. They were tracking a band of smugglers who’d taken seven girls, and intelligence had indicated the criminals and their captives were en route to the Gulf of Aden, where the kidnappers were planning to board a boat and sail to the north.

Atticus’ unit intercepted the group. In the prevailing firefight, the traffickers, knowing they were outmanned and outgunned, shot their hostages before being taken out by the Rangers. Atticus’ best friend Randy was the first into the building. He was the first to discover the lone survivor, a thirteen-year-old girl who begged him to save her. Randy, who was of Somalian ancestry himself, was distraught as he tried to render aid to the girl. She died in his arms. Atticus described how Randy took the girl’s shoe—she’d lost the other—and bracelet. He wanted something to remember her by, he said.

The incident wrecked his friend, who had a breakdown and was discharged. A year later, Atticus received a tearful phone call from Randy’s father telling him that Randy had succumbed that day to the PTSD he’d developed. Like so many soldiers, he’d committed suicide. In his final note, he’d asked for Atticus to take his dog tags and the sad mementoes he’d taken from the girl they couldn’t save.

Atticus told me he was determined that his friend’s death would not be in vain. He and several other men with military backgrounds are now part of a contracted group devoted to stamping out the flesh trade.

I could hear the anger in his voice as he talked of the kinds of people who peddled other humans like cattle, and it made me understand his quiet condemnation of my decision. I’d

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