“I want to know more about you, Gabrielle.”

“Why?” I blurted out without actually meaning to.

He raised his left eyebrow. “Because we’re friends and I like to know everything about the company I keep. Where did you grow up? What about your family?”

I looked down as I moved the silver heart ring I was wearing up and down my finger. I didn’t want to tell him anything, especially how I grew up. Because if I did, then that meant I was opening myself up; something I didn’t want to do.

“I don’t like to talk about my childhood. I’m sorry.”

He placed his finger under my chin and gently lifted it so I was staring at him. “You can trust me.”

I involuntarily laughed. “Trust? I trusted someone once and he let me down. So I’m just going to say that trust is no longer in my vocabulary.”

His eyes darkened. “Again. You. Can. Trust. Me. We’re going to be on this plane for two and a half hours. Now, you can either tell me about yourself or you can entertain me in other ways.”

Swallowing hard, I took a sip of my mimosa, and against my better judgment, I began to speak of my childhood.

“The only family I have is Giana and I grew up in Trenton, New Jersey. I never knew my mother and father. Apparently, I was abandoned at the hospital. My birth mother checked herself out and was never to be seen again. The nurse that was taking care of me in the hospital took me home with her and raised me for the first two years until she became sick and couldn’t take care of me anymore. I was flipped from foster home to foster home due to cracks in the system until I was finally placed in the home where Giana lived.”

A soft look swept across his face as he placed his hand on top of mine. Chills shot throughout my body as his thumb softly stroked my flesh.

“Darcy and Curt Dolby. Two names I’ll never forget. Drugs, gambling, prostitution, gang relations; it was part of their life at night. By day, they presented themselves as the perfect couple who took in lost and unwanted children. The only thing they cared about was the money the state paid them for keeping us. When I moved in, there was Giana and a boy named Louis. Unfortunately, Louis got caught up in a gang and shot and killed a convenience store owner. He was put in juvenile detention until he was eighteen. After a string of robberies and a couple of rape charges, he was sent to prison, where he still resides. I had only known him a couple of weeks. Once he was gone, it was only Giana and I. We bonded instantly and have been like sisters ever since.”

“What happened to her family?”