by Pam Godwin
“She’s none of your concern.” He yanked his arm away and sat back.
“True, but she’s in your head, messing with your thoughts. Isolating you. That’s why you’re here. You came back to the beginning, to the one place that gave you a sense of belonging.”
“What are you? A fucking psychologist?”
“No.” Cole laughed, a hollow sound. “Nothing like that. I just know from experience that a broken heart is the worst kind of hell, a goddamn lonely path from which you can never recover.”
He touched a thin chain that hung around his neck, lifting it from beneath the t-shirt and letting it drop in full view. A tiny silver ring dangled at the end. A woman’s wedding band.
If he was married or engaged, he wasn’t any longer. Not with her ring in his possession and no ring on his finger.
Tate removed a pack of smokes from his pocket, lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply. “What happened to her?”
“I let her go.” Sadness whispered through Cole’s voice, but an admirable amount of fortitude sharpened his eyes.
“Let me guess. She’s with someone else?” At Cole’s nod, Tate repeated the same words he gave Lela upstairs. “They belong together?”
“Yeah.”
The air around them agitated before settling into a quiet hush. Cole did a good job tucking away his feelings. But Tate knew how deep that well could go and how hot and relentless the turmoil could burn within it.
“We’re in the same hell, then.”
“I don’t think we are.” Cole rubbed his whiskered jaw. “I watched you check out that dancer. You’ll have her on her back by the end of the night.”
Her or one of the other girls who worked here. Tate wasn’t picky, as long as she was restrained and trembling beneath him. “I’m a man, not a saint.”
“I’m a man, but there isn’t a woman out there who compares to the one I had.”
Given the tattooed silhouette on his arm, his ex-fiancé…wife…whatever must’ve been a dancer. That explained his displeasure with the dancer earlier.
“What’s your point?” Tate asked.
“If you truly loved her, you wouldn’t be fucking every tight ass that crossed your path.”
He wanted to deny the accusation, but after Matias walked into that bar with a claim on Camila, he’d reverted to some old vices, such as smoking cigarettes and fucking anything in a skirt.
But that was beside the point.
“You did your research.” Tate tapped the cigarette in the ashtray. “Which means you knew my background and the reason I asked you here before you walked in the door.”
Cole nodded. “You’re looking for Lucia Dias, because you think you’re in love with her sister.”
He did love her, but the dickhead could believe whatever he wanted.
“What I haven’t figured out…” Cole studied him for a moment. “What is the price you’re willing to pay?”
Back to this again. “How about we start with your fee?”
“A hundred grand.”
His pulse raced. “A hundred—?”
“She’s been missing for eleven years. It’ll take time, but I’ll get you the location of her body—dead or alive. That’s the finder fee. It doesn’t include retrieval. If she lives and wants to be removed from her situation…” Cole folded his hands on the table and exhaled slowly. “You can’t afford it.”
“How much?”
“Depends on the level of risk, the location, and whether she’s being held against her will. Extraction jobs can last months, man, and the expenses add up—surveillance technology, specialized weapons, informant bribes, recruitment of resources, hush money, travel costs… The bill would run higher than the six-hundred thousand sitting in your bank account.”
Tate’s stomach bottomed out, and it wasn’t only from the outlandish price. Knowing Cole had hacked into his finances, the fucking pity etching his face—all of it made Tate want to slam a fist into the wall.
“Let’s just…slow down.” He took a drag on the cigarette and squashed it out. “We need to find her first. I doubt she’s even alive.”
“You believe that?”
Did he? With a deep inhale, he mentally probed his gut and found the hope he’d held onto for years. “I know she was abducted from her home. Her parents were tied in with cartel. Both were murdered after she disappeared. And justly so. They gave her up to spare their own lives.”
When Matias had learned they’d sold their daughters—both Lucia and Camila—he’d killed them. Camila had eventually escaped Van Quiso, but Lucia’s kidnapper died eleven years ago, taking her whereabouts to the grave.
“Her last known location,” Tate said, “was in a sex trafficking transport in Peru. It crashed. No survivors, but her body was never identified. I traveled to the crash site myself a few months ago. Talked to the locals in the village. No one knows anything, or so they claim.” He met Cole’s eyes. “To answer your question, I believe she survived that crash and is being held somewhere against her will.”
“What will you do when I confirm your suspicions? When I give you proof of her life? Since you can’t afford my retrieval fee, will you ask Matias Restrepo for help? We both know he has the power and resources to assist.”
Fucking hell. Since Cole was privy to Tate’s relationship with Camila, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he knew about the man she lived with. While the cartel capo could fund his own operation to find and extract Lucia, he’d already looked for her. And failed. Because he’d given up.
Tate wouldn’t be asking Matias for shit. He was doing this, in part, as a gift to Camila. He didn’t want Matias involved.
“No?” Cole’s gaze pressed against him, probing too close for comfort. “Okay, so what’s your plan? Will you try to retrieve her on your own and get yourself killed in the process? Or maybe you’ll ask your roommates to help you? Are you willing to risk their lives?”
What the hell was this guy’s problem? Tate just needed to know if Lucia lived. If she did, he’d figure it out from there.
“I don’t care what you do, man.” Cole leaned back, drummed his fingers on the table. “But before you go down this rabbit hole, you need to really think hard on why you’re doing it and the price you’re willing to pay. Right now, you can assume she’s dead and walk away. If you hire me, it’ll be too late to turn back.”
Cole was right. If he found her, if she was still alive, it didn’t matter how dangerous the situation, Tate would do whatever it took to reunite her with her sister. He ached to see the relief on Camila’s face. To know that he was the one who put it there. That he had given her something Matias couldn’t.
That was the fucked-up part, wasn’t it? His motivation was perverse, bordering on obsession, because dammit, he still wanted to win her heart. He wanted to be the one Camila belonged with.
So when Cole asked what price he was willing to pay, what he really wanted to know was how much Tate loved Camila. The answer was easy.
“I’ll send you everything I have on Lucia Dias.” Tate pushed away from the table. “Find her.”
CHAPTER 2
Five weeks later, Tate woke in an unfamiliar bed to the muffled chirp of his phone. Blinking away grogginess, he pushed a feminine arm off his chest and scanned the moonlit room for his pants. A trail of women’s clothing led out the door and into the hall, where he spotted his shoes and shirt.
“Where’s my—?”
“Here.” A naked woman sat up beside him and dragged his jeans from the floor, bringing the sound of his phone closer.
While searching the pockets, he slid off the bed and shuffled through the room. 1:13 AM glowed from the clock on the nightstand amid a clutter of empty beer bottles and condom wrappers.
Fuck, he hadn’t meant to fall asleep here—wherever here was.
The blonde he’d gone home with rolled to her stomach, her mascara-smudged eyes roaming his naked body. What was her name? Alicia? Allison? Did it matter?
Jesus, I’
m an asshole.
His fingers bumped against the phone in the pocket, and he connected the call from an unknown number. “Hello?”
“It’s Cole.”
His pulse spiked. He hadn’t heard from Cole Hartman since he wired the finder fee. After five weeks, he started to wonder if he’d been scammed.
“Hang on.” He shoved on his jeans and slipped into the hall, shutting the door behind him. “Did you find her?”
“Yes. We’ll talk in person when I get back to the States in about…” A pause. “Fifteen hours.”
“Is she—?”
“I’ll come to you.”
“Is she alive?”
Dead air.
“Hello?” He glanced at the phone, and the call was disconnected. “Motherfucker!”
After spending a week at The Velvet Den, Tate had returned to Austin. Evidently, Cole didn’t need to be told that. But Tate had a million questions, so he hit redial. When the call wouldn’t connect, he tried the contact number he had for Cole.
No answer. No voicemail.
Frustration roiled through him as he grabbed the rest of his clothes and left the woman’s apartment without a word.
Over the next twelve hours, he tried to sleep between attempts to contact Cole. If Lucia were dead, wouldn’t Cole have just told him on the phone? They wouldn’t need to meet in person. The same could be said if she were alive and happy and safe.
His insides twisted as he dug through the laundry on his bedroom floor, sniffing each shirt in his hunt for something clean to wear. If Cole was coming to him, he needed to get out of the house. Two of his roommates, Tomas and Martin, were home. He didn’t want them volunteering for a dangerous retrieval operation. Their untrained vigilante group, the Freedom Fighters, wouldn’t hesitate to help him. But this wasn’t their fight.
An hour later, he pulled into Liv’s driveway and parked beside Kate’s car, knowing his timid little roommate would be there. When Camila moved to Colombia, Kate started spending more time with Liv. Not that he blamed her. She was the only girl living in a house with five overprotective men who monitored her every move.
As he knocked on the front door, he didn’t have to worry about Liv or Kate risking their necks for his cause. Liv’s husband would never allow it, and Kate… Well, she was still recovering from her time in Van’s attic, which made her painfully guarded and cautious.
The door opened, and Josh’s bulky frame filled the entrance.
Tate had been Liv and Van’s sixth captive. Kate came next. Then Josh—the last one. The one Liv fell in love with. While Camila and the others had helped Liv free each slave, it was Josh who had been the nail in the slave operation’s coffin. Somehow, he achieved the impossible and broke through Liv’s cold mask.
“Hey, man.” Josh’s smile lit up his green eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Is Liv around?”
“Yeah. Come in.” Josh retreated, leading him through the house. “She’s back here with Kate. Everything okay?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s about Lucia Dias.” As he passed the living room and kitchen, there were no signs of Liv’s teenage daughter. “Where’s Livana?”
“She’s at a friend’s house this weekend.” A sheen of perspiration slicked Josh’s nude back, his feet bare and hair mussed.
Christ, had he and Liv been fucking? With Kate here? Surely not. But they were into some kinky shit, and he was headed straight toward the master bedroom.
“Hey, uh…” Tate paused in the hallway, unwilling to be part of anything that involved Liv’s whips. “If I’m interrupting something…”
“I wouldn’t have been able to answer the door.” With a wink, Josh disappeared into the bedroom.
Wouldn’t have been able to because he would’ve been tied up. Literally.
Tate exhaled a sharp laugh. Of all the men Liv had captured and trained, Josh was the only true submissive.
Since Tate had spent ten weeks in her restraints, he was intimately familiar with her dominant nature. The whole Mistress thing was a total turnoff, but when she’d had him naked and chained to the wall, she found ways to arouse him, torturing his cock until he begged for release. Unlike Van, she never fucked him, but there had been times when she’d taken pity on him and relieved him with her hand.
He rubbed the back of his head and tried to clear the memories. Over the past six years, he and Liv had become good friends, and he rarely dwelled on those dark hours of his life. But he’d never been in her bedroom, and as he stepped into the room, his stomach cramped.
Josh knelt on the bed, messing with a chain that connected to the headboard. Liv stood behind him, directing the work. In the corner of the room, Kate was curled up in a chair, her gaze drifting to the doorway.
A toolbox sat open on the floor. A drill on the nightstand. A package of heavy-duty eyehooks on the bed. Hairline cracks splintered the frame of the headboard. If he looked closer, he’d find more hooks and bolts. Probably a hidden rig of chains. Maybe a ball gag and a cock ring. The usual.
That explained why Josh was shirtless and sweaty. He was fixing the bondage equipment he’d built into the frame, which clearly hadn’t held his powerful physique.
“You’re doing it wrong.” Liv parked her hands on her hips. “Stop.”
Goddamn, that commanding tone took Tate right back to the attic. His spine tingled with echoes of pain, the burning lashes of leather on his back, the skin-crawling feel of Van’s touch, and the fucking rules. Kneel. Eyes down. Bend. Suck.
The memories pissed him off, heating his face and clenching his fists.
Something moved in Tate’s periphery, and a moment later, Kate’s slender arms encircled his waist, her head tucking beneath his chin.
He pulled in a calming breath, ruffled her blond, baby-soft hair, and sent her back to the chair.
Liv smiled at him in greeting, and the scar that bisected her cheek pulled taut. The same scar that marred Van’s face. The matching lacerations served as permanent reminders that Van and Liv had suffered as much as Tate and the others before they escaped.
“Josh said you were here about Lucia?” she asked.
As Josh packed up the tools, Tate updated them on his search. They all knew he was looking for Camila’s sister. They just didn’t know the extent in which he’d gone with the private investigators and Cole Hartman.
“Cole found her, but I don’t know if she’s dead or alive. He said he’d come to me…” Tate glanced at his watch. “Anytime now.”
“He’ll come here?” Josh sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Liv onto his lap.
“Is that okay? I can leave.”
“Stay.” Liv hooked an arm around Josh’s shoulders. “If Van referred you to him, I trust him in my home.”
At the mention of Van, the room fell quiet. They’d all been there during Van’s reign of cruelty, but in the past few years, they’d watched him transform into something more human.
Still, there were things a person couldn’t forget.
While Josh and Kate had been forced to participate in intimate acts with Van, their buyers had demanded virgins, saving them from the worst of Van’s depravity. Tate and Liv hadn’t been so lucky. Ricky, Tomas, and his other roommates had likely been raped by Van as well, but they didn’t talk about it.
“Van seems hellbent on redeeming his transgressions,” Josh said, breaking the silence.
“Transgressions?” The whisper came from the chair in the corner. Kate shifted to the edge of the seat, gripping the armrests, her voice soft. “He’s a monster. There is no redemption for him.”
“Kate.” Liv’s cold tone cut like a whip. “I was a monster, too.”
“You saved us.” She pulled her knees to her chest and angled her face away.
“In the end,” Liv said, “he saved us in his own way. The money he gave—”
Tate shook his head at Liv. He knew Kate hadn’t touched her share of the six million. Despite his protests, she waited tables at a local diner
in order to contribute to the household bills.
With a tug on Kate’s hair, he guided her out of the chair and toward the living room. There, he continued the conversation with Liv and Josh, outlining his speculation on Camila’s sister.
If Lucia had survived that crash, she would be thirty years old now. If she’d maintained a youthful appearance like Camila, she could still be valuable as a sex slave. She could still be alive.
Talking about it with his friends reignited the flame of hope he’d carried for so long. They didn’t ask him why he was so gung-ho about finding her. Maybe they knew. Hell, Van’s wife, Amber, had called him out for the way he looked at Camila. They all knew.
When a knock sounded on the door an hour later, he leapt to his feet, his heart hammering like a piston.
“I’ll get it.” Josh crossed the room and opened the door. “Can I help you?”
“Cole Hartman.” A tall silhouette hovered on the dark porch. “Tate’s expecting me.”
Josh stepped to the side and let him in.
“Is she alive?” Tate asked the instant Cole entered.
“Yes.”
Relief sang through his nerve endings and loosened his chest. Good fucking God, he didn’t realize how badly he needed to hear that. “Is she safe?”
Dressed in black denim and a wrinkled t-shirt, Cole looked like he hadn’t shaved or slept in days. As he slid a backpack off his shoulder, his expression was pensive. Solemn. “Take a seat.”
Not good. Not fucking good at all. She’d been missing for eleven years. Was she enslaved all this time? Beaten? Raped?
He shut the door on those thoughts and gathered his composure to make introductions. “This is Liv and—”
“I know who they are.” Cole gave the empty side of the couch a pointed look. “Sit down, Tate.”
Dread held him in place until Kate gripped his hand and pulled him down beside her, holding tight to his fingers. Josh settled in the side chair with Liv on his lap.
“She’s in Caracas.” Cole sat on the other side of Tate, removed a laptop from his backpack, and woke the screen.
“Venezuela.” Tate released a breath. “That isn’t that far away.”