by Pamela Ann
As we took the turn out of the neighborhood, Tony pulled over and put the car in park.
“Ryan, I remember the day that I was in your seat when our cousin Lok showed me around.”
Lok was the son of my uncle in New York, and when there had been a feud going on up there, he had been sent to L.A. to live with us for a few years while they settled the conflicts. He was much older than I was and had been non-stop busy. All I could remember about him was that he’d had a lot of tattoos and always wore sunglasses. Other than that, I had never actually spoken to him.
“Shit is going to start to get real today. You will see and hear stuff that you won’t like, but you have to put that all aside. This is our family business and I know you think you know what we do, but you don’t know everything. Today, you will find out.” He sounded ominous as he put the car back in drive and started driving.
Was that a warning? I wasn’t sure.
“I know more than you think, cuz. I’m not a little kid, you know. I see and hear things.”
“So, enlighten me, what do you know?”
I didn’t like his condescending tone. “I know you go get girls and lie to them about a scholarship, bring them here and offer them an awesome job—it’s selling their body, but it makes far more money than they could ever have had otherwise. We give them an option to buy themselves out after a year, but no one does because they fall in love with the money and the love that’s given to them by our family,” I said confidently.
“And then?”
“And then what?” I hated those two word questions coming from him.
“And then what happens, Baby Ryan?”
“I told you, they work, they live, they have fun and make a lot of money.”
“So the girls willingly sell their bodies to these strangers because of money? Because they feel protected by us? And no one ever takes the option of buying themselves out?”
“Exactly. See, I know what I’m talking about.”
Tony started laughing hysterically. It went on for a few minutes. At that point, I was so annoyed that I wanted to punch him in the face just to shut him up.
He didn’t explain or clarify what he found so amusing, and I was so angry that I didn’t care to ask him, so we ignored each other until we reached the first destination.
We pulled up to the first house, which was very nice, similar to the one in Santa Monica. It was on the beach, big and bright.
“This is the Redondo Beach. We call the houses by the cities they are in, and if there are multiple homes in the same city, we number them Redondo Beach One, Two, Three and so on. The guard’s name here is ‘Black’ and he watches this house with his men.”
Hopping out of his white Tahoe, we then headed up the stairs.
“Yo, Black, open up.” Tony pounded on the door.
“Calm the fuck down, man! You impatient ass!” And there he was, a six-foot-five, huge, black guy, looking mean and ready to kill anyone who dared to cross him.
“Is this him?” Black eyed me up and down.
“Yeah, this is the baby. He’s going to be taking over this house next week after our trip.” Tony didn’t disclose the destination. Smart man.
“Koo, what up, man?” He put his hands out, wanting a shake.
“Not much.”
“All right, boss, name’s Black. Looking forward to working with you,” he said, grinning after we shook hands. He then went with us inside, holding the main entrance door open before he walked towards a dimly lit room.
“Most of the girls have been good, but the new Romanian girl in room seven, she’s been crying and trying to tell her guests that she needs to escape. We’ve had a lot of complaints from them, so I locked her up, hoping you’d talk to her.”
“When did you find out?” Tony demanded.
“Got our first complaint a few days ago when you were out of town. I slapped her up a little bit and thought she’d got the point, but she did it a few more times and I had to pull her out of the line.”
To the left of the room was a desk with some paperwork on it, a big safe behind it, two computers and a few filing cabinets.
It was then when I heard it—a girl quietly whimpering to the right side, barely visible, caged in a dog crate with her hands and legs tied and her mouth covered with a dirty handkerchief.
“What the fuck is this?” I demanded, looking at Tony and Black before shoving their shoulders, demanding an explanation. “Do Aunt and Uncle know you guys treat the girls like this? Let her out!” I walked towards the cage to free her when Tony grabbed me by the back of my head and threw me behind him. Black grabbed my shoulders and then sat me down on the chair that was behind the desk.
“Give me her paperwork,” Tony ordered.
I had never seen anything like this. I knew that Tony was mean, however his face had gone dark with a wicked grin that couldn’t lead to anything good.
He shuffled through the folder, studying it, loading up his brain with the information to use against her.
“So, Adriana.” He grabbed her by the hair, pulling her beside him as her cheek pressed against the metal cage. “When we first brought you here—the expensive plane ride, the nice house, the nice clothes—you agreed that you would be a good girl. Do you remember that?” He pulled her even closer to his face, still grabbing onto her hair. “Do you remember when Mama-san spoke to you when you landed? Do you remember that, if you become a problem, you would be losing your family members one at a time until you’re the last one living before you’re killed off?” Tony pulled out a picture of an older man; pale, skinny, with gray hair.
I swallowed, watching the horror before me.
Immediately, Adriana started weeping and mumbling what seemed to sound like, “Tata. No, Tata!” I could tell that she had not been here long with her broken English. She sounded a little like Sabina.
“Well, baby girl, I’m going off in a few days back to Europe and I think I will stop by your ‘tata’s house and pay him a visit. Would you like that?”
“No. Please, please, I be good girl. I promise, I be good girl.” She whimpered, defeated, crying endless tears.
“Oh, you will, because I will bring you something from him next week. You don’t get warnings or second chances. You fucked up. You’re making us lose business, which means no money, and we very much hate that when it happens, okay, hunny?”
“Please. I work. I be good girl,” she pleaded, but Tony didn’t seem interested.
He yanked the cage door open, pulled her up by her hair, threw her out the office and told her to go upstairs and clean up, making sure she knew to keep her appointment tonight.
Tony wiped his wet hands off on his pants, came around the desk and shoved me out of the chair. Sitting, he swiveled the chair around to the safe before opening it. He then took one of the stacks of hundreds and threw it at Black.
“If we keep having problems in your house, you will be looking for another job.” Black gave a curt nod and slid the ten thousand dollars in his back pocket.
“Let’s go,” Tony directed me before throwing a black backpack at my chest filled with cash.
I followed without even looking back at Black. I was still shocked and confused. This could not be right. This was wrong on so many levels!
Tony let out a big sigh as soon as we got in the car. He looked over and gave me a fake smile, patting my head before putting the car in drive.
Why was he acting as if everything was all right? It wasn’t! I needed answers, but before I could say a word, Tony spoke, breaking the silence.
“I told you, baby cuz, it’s not what you thought it was, huh?”
“What just happened back there? Is it true that Aunt threatens them? Does Uncle know about this?” The questions just kept spilling out of my mouth.
“Ryan, this is the business—this is what we do—and what you saw back there is order. Without order, these girls would run away. Without order, we would not be profiting.”
“Are you really going to go visit he
r father?”
“Remember Lok?”
Our cousin. “Yeah, what does he have to do with anything?”
“Well, Lok is fucked up in so many ways. He’s something else. Do you remember when he came to live with us? Do you know why?”
“Problems with Uncle’s business in New York.”
“Yes, problems. Lok is not like us. He’s an animal.” He paused. “Before he was sent here, he was dating a girl, a daughter of one of the partners in New York. He raped her before killing her eventually, but even after the girl was dead, he kept fucking her like no one’s business.” His voice faded, as if it gave him chills.
I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked. It gave me my own chills down my spine.
“After all the bullshit, Lok chose to live in Moscow and started a little business of his own. It’s a smaller scale operation and much cheaper. The girls are infested with diseases and addicts, but he enjoys it. When we have problems with a girl here, we have Lok visit their family, take something from them and send us a video of it. We then show the girls the video, and almost immediately, they become obedient again.”
“What does he take?” I wasn’t even certain that I wanted to know, but I was already this deep in, I might as well know it all.
“He tapes a video of him cutting off the person’s middle finger—her brother, sister, mother, father, whoever lives in their home. It’s to let the girls know not to fuck around because it will not be tolerated.”
“But that was the girl’s first time. She’s just afraid. Why don’t you just end it with a warning?”
“They are told from the beginning that there are no games, no warnings. If we let her off easy, she will just sit back and plot a way to fuck up our business even more. This is how it’s run. It keeps them all straight.”
Chapter 6
The rest of the ride to the next house was quiet. We pulled up to a building that was very different from the two that I had seen previously. This building was run down, a warehouse of some sort, with a rusted steel-framed door that could have easily been replaced with the money that we were making, but I guessed that was how they kept this one low key and out of suspicion.
“Ryan, I need you to just follow my lead in here. No questions. No looks. No nothing. Got that?”
“This doesn’t sound good, Tony. What is this place?” Goosebumps started to invade my arms and neck. Something about this place just seemed to be off and it dawned on me that this was not a ‘house’, but rather, a prison.
“These girls have expiration dates on them. We use them for seven years and after that—”
“Don’t say it! Don’t tell me that we kill them here!” I was enraged at finding out what a terrible business our family was involved in.
“Ha, no dude, we don’t kill them. We just hold them here for a discounted price until we have enough to ship them back to Moscow for Lok.”
We were discounting them? What the fuck was I stepping into. This life was definitely not for me. I loved women. Uncle had always told me to treat them with utmost respect and that they were the happiness in our lives, however now I saw the real definition of what women were to him, and it had me disgusted.
“Snap out of it. It’s not that bad. Just think about it; they do this for seven years, every day. Their holes get too big.” He chuckled, nudging me in my arm.
This shit was downright ugly. How could my family be this cruel? I thought our business was about having fun and the girls loved their jobs, but apparently, I had been wrong.
“So after seven years, they get to go back home? So it isn’t a one-year contract; it’s a seven-year contract? I guess that’s more money saved up for them if you want to look at in on a brighter side.”
Tony started shaking his head. “So pure you are. There is no money for them. There is no home for them. We send them up to Lok. Remember? He has a business to run there, too.” He shook his head, as if trying to figure out why I was so bothered by it all.
“Come on; let’s go. We don’t have much time. There are still seventeen more runs to do after this one.”
***
I didn’t even try to wrap my head around it. I was still reeling from what I had seen when we walked into that place, which was like walking into a horror movie. The lights flickered. The ground was dirty and wet. The sounds of men moaning and screaming their pleasure, paired with cries from the women they were fucking, came from every direction. The smell of sex, cigarettes and alcohol seeped through the walls, the floors and the ceiling.
“Go straight and take a left. It’s the red door on the right. Go in there and wait for me. The guy that runs this place, his name’s Roger. Tell him who you are and wait for me there. Don’t wander around.”
I had barely anything to say when Tony spun around and disappeared out of the hallway, leaving me alone.
Following his orders, I came upon a blood red door that had a doorbell on the side of it. It looked broken, but when I pressed it, the door almost immediately unlocked. Cautiously, I walked in. The stench of sex and rotten semen immediately made me nauseous.
I was about to spin around and walk back to where I had come from when a deep voice greeted me as the door closed behind me.
“Fifteen or thirty minutes?” he asked. “Short or tall? Come on, kid; you here to fuck or to look stupid?”
“I’m Tony’s cousin, Ryan.” I didn’t know whether to shake his hand or to just stand there as he examined me.
“Where’s Tony?” Before I could answer, the man himself answered his own question. “Oh, never mind. He’s with Alexandria.” He extended the last part of her name before he burst into laughter.
Was this guy on drugs?
“Who is Alexandria?”
“She’s a waste of space is what she is. Been here a year, in the biggest room, and is not allowed to see anyone. I shouldn’t have agreed to babysit his baby girl.” He started laughing hysterically again, which only made me more curious.
Alexandria. Tony had never mentioned anyone by that name.
“Which room is she in?” I asked, wanting to confront him and ask about what Tony was up to in that room, not to mention find out more about this woman.
“She’s in the room with the black door and no number. You should go get him before he does something stupid.” Roger had put his serious face on. I didn’t know if he was concerned or was pissed off that this girl was wasting a room. Not only that, from his weird laughter to his sudden change of attitude, I was becoming suspicious about what the heck was truly going on.
Walking out of Roger’s dingy office, I headed down the hallway. There must’ve been about thirty rooms back to back. Judging by the distance from each door to the next, the rooms couldn’t have been bigger than a closet.
As I turned the corner, I saw the black door. I paused when I heard Tony’s voice talking to someone, then walked slightly towards the door. Pressing my ear against it, I listened, hearing them talk without difficulty.
“You promised me that you would get Vera out. It’s been a two years. I need to see her.” A woman’s voice sounded like she was weeping.
“Vera is good. She’s a house girl You know that she’s being taken care of. No guys are touching her, so she’s safe.” There was a pause before Tony spoke again. “Baby, trust me you know I love you, and very soon we will leave with Vera and start a whole new life together.”
They were talking about my Vera! My girl… the girl that I loved. Who was this girl talking about Vera? Was she her relative? Why was she being kept in this warehouse and was it even possible to get someone out? I had so many questions for Tony, but before I could blink, the door opened and Tony was pointing a gun in between my eyes.
“I told you to go sit in the fucking office! Why are you so fucking hard headed?!” He gritted the words out, about to lose a fuse. Staring into his eyes, I dared him to pull the trigger. One. Two. Three. Four seconds it took him to see sense as he slowly removed the gun from my sweaty forehead.
Something moved behind Tony’s back… and that was when I saw her. The woman was Vera. Though as she moved closer, I noticed that she was an older version of her yet just as beautiful.
Just as soon as I opened my mouth to ask her what was going on, though, Tony slammed the door in my face.
+++ House Of Aces Book #2 +++
Coming mid March
Read Pamela Ann’s upcoming novel, Havoc….
WARNING:
Please be advised that this book contains violence, graphic sexual acts, drugs, consensual and nonconsensual sex, language and situations intended for MATURE readers only.
This novel is not for the faint of heart. So if you have any strong aversions about such subjects, this novel isn’t for you.
Havoc: A Novel
At the age of eighteen, Ana Walters lost her mother, her home and her freedom. Within a week after her mother's burial, she was sexually abused by someone close to her. A few months after the assault, she was still trapped. Then one day, she managed to escape her living nightmare.
The after effects of her abused state started to haunt her.
With all the never-ending hurdles, would Ana finally be free of her demons?
Prologue
When I was ten, my father was shot in a gunman’s rampage in the mall’s food court. It had been a Saturday, and since my mom had worked weekends, it had become our ritual to spend time shopping, eating out and then watching a movie afterwards.
It had started out as any other day, nothing peculiar; it had been the hustle and bustle of the usual weekend packed with families and kids everywhere. Then, out of nowhere, just like in the movies, a sound of a gun fired somewhere echoed across the domed-glass food court. There had been that eerie, sudden silence of people frozen as they realized what that blast of sound had been before the cacophony of people screaming for help and pure terror took its place. People had begun stampeding all over the place. It had suddenly become havoc and chaos everywhere I looked.