I don’t know why, but it was part of his plan. Sell you, after five years of nobody being able to find you, then you’re able to be legally declared dead. Once that happened, he would get it all back, and continue with whatever plan he had in place.”
No.
This can’t be real.
It can’t.
“How do you know all of this?” I whisper, shaking my head. “How, Cohen?”
“I got wind of it, and so I started diggin’. That one time I was at your place with you, when you were havin’ all those boy troubles, I bugged the place. I found out enough and from there I was able to figure out his plan. I got hold of your brother and threatened the rest out of him. Once I knew for sure what they were plannin’, I knew I had to stop them. The only fuckin’ way to do that, was to take them out.”
“So you used me, and then killed them?”
“No,” he barks. “No, I did not fuckin’ use you. I didn’t know what was happenin’ until long after we were friends. I was protectin’ you, if they had stayed alive, any one of them, you’d be dead right now, or worse ...”
“You mean I’d be someone’s slave, just like you sent me to be?”
“I never fuckin’ intended for you to get hurt, I thought they’d give you a new identification and you could live your life in another place. I never, fuckin’ ever, wanted you in the hands of a monster. That was not my plan.”
My anger swirls around in my chest, yet funnily enough, I believe him. Even though I’m fighting against myself, I don’t think Cohen ever intentionally hurt me. He wouldn’t have wanted me to have a bad life, he thought he was doing the right thing. Yet still, it burns. It hurts so god damned badly when I think about what he did.
“Why did you kill all of them?” I ask, my voice tight.
“Because they were all in on it. They had a fuckin’ buyer and everything, you were goin’ to get sent away and nobody would have ever seen you again. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“I just don’t understand, Cohen. If it was as simple as taking my family out, why did you send me away?”
“It wasn’t until the day I went to take out your family, that I learned other people knew about your father’s plan. Those two men knew and they were going to take you before he could sell you, then they were going to force you into marriage so they could have you sign it all over to them. It’s fuckin’ genius, really. After it belonged to them, you’d be dead and that would be the end of it.”
I shake my head, struggling to process any of this.
It’s almost unbelievable, like it has been made up for a story.
Like it couldn’t possibly be real.
“I had to get you out of there, because no matter what way I looked at it, you were going to end up in trouble. If I just killed your father and brothers, those men would have found you. It all happened so fuckin’ fast, and I never planned on you endin’ up where you did. I was goin’ to hunt down those men, and then bring you back, but I couldn’t get hold of them ...”
“So, you forgot about me,” I whisper, pain clogging my throat.
“No, I never fuckin’ forgot about you. Not for a single fuckin’ second, but I didn’t know where you were. I had to trust you ended up somewhere safe, and I accepted I’d never see you again.”
“You could have checked!” I cry.
“I tried,” he barks. “I couldn’t find you, which is exactly how it was meant to be. I had to believe the best.”
“You believed whatever made you feel better!”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t argue.
He doesn’t argue because he knows I’m right.
He did do what made him feel better. Believing I was in a good place made him think that he had done the right thing, but deep down, I’m sure he knows he didn’t.
“Are those two men the only two that know?” I ask, my heart racing.
“As far as I know, yeah.”
“Then we need to have them taken out.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, his voice tight.
“What about the rest of it?”
“All the things you own?”
I nod, unable to fathom the amount that has been left to me.
“It’s up to you. You can do whatever you see fit with all of that, one