If they had become successful elsewhere, the carnival could try to exploit that connection for publicity or money.
Those who saw such people again would be led to believe that such people were traitors who broke the "family bond" and potentially knew too much, depending on who it was that encountered them.
Those encounters would be met with hostility, intimidation or even attempts to drag them back.
Former friends would be torn, happy to see them alive, but afraid to be seen with them.
They would be seen as a disappointment, a "bad example" to be used to scare others into obedience.
That could result in such encounters treating such people with open contempt, resulting in mocking and humiliation if they crossed paths again, while others would go as far as ignoring such people entirely, as if they never existed.
If things got bad enough, then it could even go as far as violence being inflicted.
It was not easy to get past that kind of brainwashing, which had been so deeply ingrained within them from a very young age.
When someone approached them who had already left the family, it was difficult to listen to them.
It would be even more difficult to believe them.
There were always reasons they could come up with to tell themselves that such a person was lying and was only trying to cause problems for the family.
Once they closed themselves off, it was difficult to get back in.
Trust was not so easily earned back, and those bonds would be difficult to repair.
Once those people were gone, they would most likely be pushed away more than anything.
Nobody would be able to accept the truth even if they were told it.
It was even more difficult when the person telling them was someone who was no longer considered family or someone to be trusted.
That person would just be an outsider, so trusting those kinds of words would not be easy.
What made it just as difficult would be the positions in the family that could influence that.
Those with deeper ties to the family would either be too deeply under the belief that nothing was wrong, or they would be in on it all.
That was why Tiffany had to take her time observing and calculating who she would have to approach.
It could not be anyone aware of the truth of the carnival.
It needed to be someone who had some ties to the House of Horrors, even if it was not directly linked to them.
They needed someone to watch out for them and to be able to understand what was actually happening and believe it.
The only way to truly understand everything would be to make them see, hear or experience everything for themselves.
They could not deny what they experienced for themselves.
As expected, it was not so easy to convince Dorian.
It had to take some convincing to keep him quiet long enough to arrange a meeting with many who had been sold off by the family.
Each of them went over the night they had been taken away and the kind of lives they had ended up with.
They did not leave willingly, and they had been dragged away.
It did not matter whether their lives had gotten any worse or better as a result of that; what mattered most was that they never left their family behind and did not betray them.
It was the family that chose to discard them first.
Once they started going over their experiences before being sold, things started to seem all too familiar to anyone who had experienced the same thing in their life.
The same pattern existed each time as they kept repeating themselves.
Soon, Dorian started to see things happening to himself that had happened to the others in preparation for them being sold to the highest bidder.
When he was starting to believe and become suspicious of the family, that was when Tiffany made the situation even more real for him after revealing why she had disappeared.
The gruesome truth was revealed that she was left for dead, and it was likely that the family already believed her to be dead.
It was only after he had started believing and doubting the family that she revealed everything.
His loyalties shifted from then on.
He was no longer loyal to the family and would cooperate with Tiffany.
She made use of him to look out for the others who were put into similar situations that she had suffered, and to guide him to places where he would see and hear things that would expose certain truths of the family.
Dorian continued to hold the wrist of the woman before squeezing it a little. "Stop it."
His voice was cold as he tried to suppress his anger.
He did not put much power into his grip, but it was still enough to gain the attention of the woman who called herself their mother.
She had already wasted away over the years of drinking alcohol regularly and fattening up with the luxuries earned through the deals that she and her husband had been involved in.