Chapter 106

Lake POV

Troy had been protecting us. Had put himself between us and the men with the knife, had given me precious seconds to try to run. And now he might be dead because of it. Because of me. Because Samuel was my father and Frank was my old landlord and I’d brought this danger into their lives.

“This is your fault, you know,” Samuel said, echoing my thoughts with eerie accuracy. “If you’d just accepted your place from the beginning, if you’d been grateful for the opportunities I gave you—none of this would have been necessary. You could have been making good money, building a life, instead of running off with that brat and making everything so complicated.”

“Opportunities,” I repeated, the word bitter on my tongue. “You call selling me to men who hurt me an opportunity?”

“I call it survival,” Samuel shot back. “We needed money, Lake. You were beautiful, desirable, in demand. Was I supposed to let that go to waste? Let us starve when you had a way to