His hand stroked down my face in a calming caress, but its path was carefully picked, as if to avoid the bruises there like brambles in a thicket. I’d never wanted him to see me like this.
I tried to speak again. A croaked sound emerged.
“Shh, just rest. You’re okay.”
He sounded so sure, but I had to know. “Where is he?”
“He’s not here, don’t worry.” But the reassurance came on a razor’s edge.
I tossed restlessly in the bed, ferreting out every ache, every bruise.
“Where is he?” I whispered again.
“He’s out meeting with the suppliers. Trying to calm them down.” Tyler paused. “We got the guy out. You did it.” His voice cracked at the last. “God,” he said, more a sob than a word. “I thought—I never imagined he would do this. Why, Mia? Why do you stay?”
“Where would I go?” It was a rhetorical question, a flippant answer, but it was the closest thing to the truth. Blinking, I recognized the open ceiling of the warehouse I called home, the exposed rafters and pipes blanketed with dust like moss on a tree. The sheets weren’t slippery like Carlos’s silk or coarse like the threadbare sheets in my own bed. These were soft, and like Goldilocks, I found them just right. I guessed we were in Tyler’s room in the compound, though how he’d gotten me out of the basement I had no idea.
“But—fuck, Mia. I thought maybe he’d fuck you. Maybe even slap you, if I let myself think about it. But not this. Your back…” His eyes held the horror of what had been done to me, they begged to understand, so I searched for something more concrete.
I struggled with that, understanding it all myself. “Carlos isn’t all bad,” I finally said.
Tyler’s eyes flitted down to my bruises and then back to my face in a tacit denial.
I sighed. “He took me in when I was starving, when I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“When was this?” Tyler asked tightly.
I’d have to tell him my story, I realized. I did owe him that. Or maybe that was just an excuse for wanting to unload on someone. I could share my story as long as I left out certain details about my father. I saw the guilt that pricked him from what had happened to me today and knew, instinctively, that it would eat him up to know the full situation in which he’d left me back then. I knew that he hadn’t owed me anything, couldn’t have known, but he wouldn’t see it that way.
“My father was…well, he got drunk a lot. And when he got drunk, he got violent.” I ignored the sharp intake of Tyler’s breath. I didn’t think my father’s rages could have been totally unknown to Tyler, living so closely to me as he had, but he hadn’t realized the extent. And he never would, not if I could help it.
I could see him forming the questions already. How soon did the violence start? Was I there when you were getting hurt? He wouldn’t like the answers to them, not if I was honest, so I moved on quickly.
“I got fed up and ran away,” I said. “I lived on the streets, but I was starving. Starving and broke. I don’t think I had more than a few days left in me when Carlos found me in an alley.”
I gave Tyler a wry smile. “He was popping some guy for who knows what. I was behind some boxes, but I must have made a sound. Carlos pulled me out and I thought for sure he’d kill me. But instead he took me home. He cleaned me up, fed me, took care of me all this time.”
Tyler’s jaw was clenched hard, with only a vein popping in his temple and the faint flare of his nostrils for movement. His eyes turned on me, a revelation of shared pain. “He took advantage of you.”
I laughed softly. “There wasn’t anything to take advantage of, just skin and bones. He had to nurse me back to health. And then, yes, he did expect repayment, but it was only fair.” I’d been paying for my food and clothes and a roof over my head with my body since I was young. That wasn’t going to change in my lifetime. It was my one constant.
Tyler stood up and walked away from me, only the stiff correctness of his posture betraying his upset. If he had only been a little agitated, only a tiny bit unnerved, it would have been okay. But he was beyond that, beyond bothered and well into rage. I couldn’t help but be scared so soon after my recent encounter with Carlos’s fury.
He must have seen my reaction, a small withdrawal, because he turned stricken.
I softened at that. “It’s okay. It’s been okay. Not so bad. But a few months ago…there was this girl. I mean, I’m not the only girl to have ever been here, but this one was different. Carlos really gave her a hard time, more than usual, and I could tell—” I wasn’t sure how to explain the wounded look in her eyes, the one I recognized in the mirror. “—I could tell she’d had it rough. It was bad enough, but when he tried to kill her, I couldn’t let it happen.”
I shrugged. “So I saved her. Her and Zachary. Then Zachary told me about the trafficking and recruited me as an informant. And…well, at least I can do some good here.”
Tyler hung his head. “Fuck, Mia. I know you said you weren’t his girlfriend, but I thought you were. And I guess you are, in a way, but it wasn’t…I never thought he’d do this to you. I thought you were just like any other girlfriend of a criminal, that you either didn’t care about what he did or you liked the rewards too much to bother with it.”
“Hey,” I said with a hand on his arm. “That’s pretty much true. For a long time I didn’t care about the bad stuff he did.”
“You were a kid!” he burst out.
I cringed at his volume, his words.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice as hoarse as if he’d been shouting for hours instead of minutes. “I’m sorry. I just can’t…I can’t quite get a handle on it. It’ll take me some time.”
He looked up at me, earnestness glistening in his eyes, never looking more like the young golden boy than right now. “I’m just ashamed that I didn’t know you did this out of desperation. I knew it wasn’t good for you here, but I thought that you chose to be here.”
“I did.”
But we both knew what would happen to me if I left. I’d known for a long time that the only way out of Carlos’s cold embrace was six feet under. And after seeing the results of Carlos’s punishment, it seemed Tyler understood as well. But just because death was unsavory didn’t make it any less of a choice, and one day soon, I’d give in to it. Just not today.
“I want you to leave.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you say that to all the ladies? Because I can’t imagine that gets you a lot of play.”
“I’m serious,” he insisted. “It’s like I told you before. You can go into Witness Protection. I can keep you safe.”
He might as well have been offering to ship me to a colony on Mars for all that a safe life meant anything real to me.
“And what’s going to happen to those girls?” I reminded him. “Carlos was already freaked about a traitor. If I wind up missing, he’s going to know something was up. And he’ll probably suspect I had help getting away, too. The whole operation will be blown. Those girls will end up sold somewhere else entirely and you’ll never find them.”
Tyler said nothing, knew I was right.
“So I’ll stay,” I said quietly. There was a solemnity, a finality, to the statement that I felt in my bones. This would be the last thing I did with Carlos. However it ended, with success or failure, it would end. And then maybe I’d find peace, even if it was in a pine box.
“I’ll protect you,” Tyler swore vehemently.
I smiled, tinged with sadness. “You can’t even trust me. How can you protect me?”
“I will,” he insisted. “And I trust you now. I’m sorry, so sorry. And I want to make that up to you, too, but for now I hope you’ll settle for protection and trust.”
“Okay,” I agreed, with a detached indulgence.
“You’ll be fine,” he said, though who he was trying to convince, I didn’t know. “And when this is all over, I’ll set you up somewhere safe. You’ll start a new life, away from all this.”
/> I told him okay to that, too. There was time enough for the truth later.
Chapter Six
I studied Tyler’s unfathomable expression through the mirror as I applied foundation to my bruises. I worked at my vanity, fixing myself, hiding. He lounged in the corner chair, watching me.
The casual pose might have fooled a woman with less experience in reading a man’s body language. But the wide flung arms and spread thighs were taut like a panther ready to pounce. His eyes held an intensity I’d learned to be wary of many men ago.
He’d insisted on walking me back to my room and making sure I was settled—and stable—before getting back to work. Apparently that included voyeurism of my cosmetic routine. Not that his gaze was sexual. It was predatory.
After the base and foundation, I laid on the loose powder. A good make-up job was a matter of thin layers, well-blended, as opposed to thick smudges. I could probably have an alternate career as a make-up artist, assuming I lived long enough to stop being a whore. Assuming I were normal enough not to be a whore. Not that respectable places would hire me. I was already dead on paper, having disappeared from school at sixteen and never having filed any official paperwork or taxes since then. The system probably counted me rotting in an alley years ago. Sometimes I wondered if that wouldn’t have been the better fate.
Maybe I could work in the underground as a make-up artist to the battered wives of the rich and famous. Blotting away bruises and covering up cuts was an art form, one I’d had plenty of opportunity to perfect. The messiest to fix were open wounds, where the skin gaped open, exposing bloody tissue or worse. Those were best left alone and explained away as an accident of some sort. Otherwise I was looking at putty or air-brushing, which got time consuming and expensive.
Not that it was my dime. As long as Carlos made the bruises, Carlos paid for them to be covered up. Besides, he was the one who insisted I go out looking like gold as soon as I could drag myself out of the pool of blood and other liquids. I would have preferred to curl up in my bed, the one that Tyler had been eyeing ever since he’d followed me into my room.
My bedroom was smaller than Carlos’s bedroom, even smaller than Tyler’s. Barely a bedroom at all, it fit my twin-size bed, a vanity, and a beat-up dresser for my clothes. Carlos used the tiny room as a reminder of my status, as if I actually needed one considering what I did. I never entertained men here so I didn’t need a big bed. I actually preferred it this way, to have a space I could keep to myself, no matter how small. Carlos would probably take it away if he realized that.
Tyler had invaded it today. I felt his presence, his intrusion, like a sharp pebble in my shoe.
“Does this get you hot?” I asked just to rile him up.
He drummed his fingers on his thighs, not taking the bait.
“I know you’re here for a reason. Just spit it out. Need me to take a few more licks? Want a blow job?”
That got him. He stiffened in his seat and glowered. His heart wasn’t in it though. Poor man was still freaked out over my injuries. He didn’t realize that I’d long ago become inured to them. The pain could touch my skin, but no deeper. And if that was because there wasn’t anything left inside, all the better.
With a last brush of powder, I turned and approached Tyler, using my best sexy walk.
“You’re so tense,” I cooed, not missing a beat at noticing a bulge rise from his pants. “I can kiss it better.”
“Stop it,” he snapped. “I know this isn’t you.”
I laughed. “If that’s what you think, then you don’t know me at all.”
He shook his head, nostrils flaring. “You were forced into this. Men abused you. They hurt you. I hurt you.”
Of course. His mind didn’t want to think of sweet little Mia from next door as a dirty skank. So he was excusing it away. But I didn’t like it. For reasons I couldn’t begin to explain, I wanted him to see me. To know me, even if that knowledge disgusted him.
“Don’t pity me,” I said sharply. Then softer, “I wasn’t forced, baby. Maybe a few times, but they knew what I was good for.”
A small choked sound came out of him, but I pushed on.
“Most of the time…I chose to do it. I used to be cheap. Just to hear him tell me I was a good girl, that was the price of a blow job. Later I got a little more expensive, a few bucks so I could go get food for dinner or buy clothes that fit me when I grew out of my old ones. But Carlos, he turned me into what I am today. Fancy clothes, fancy make-up, fancy dates when he takes me out. A girl like me couldn’t ask for better.”
Sometime during my little speech I’d gotten angry. I was yelling, ranting, incensed that he could think good of me when there wasn’t any good to be found. “So if you’ve gotten it in your head that my father tied me down or that Carlos put a gun to my head to get me in here, you’re all wrong. Okay? You’re wrong.”
The vision of Tyler swam before my eyes like one of those swirly paintings, beautiful and morbid. I felt his breath in my hair, shushing me, telling me to stop, that it would be okay, and his hands on my arms, pulling me close, burning the cuts there. He probably didn’t remember I was bruised there too, not just my back, but I didn’t want him to stop. Whatever touch he had to offer me, I would take. Whatever pain he would give me, I deserved.
I choked out a sob against his chest, so warm, so solid.
“Mia,” he said. “Mia.”
Whatever he meant by that, it didn’t matter. He was here. I had to be grateful for that.
Don’t leave, I wanted to beg. Don’t ever leave. But begging never worked. My cheeks dampened with impotent tears, as I mourned the loss of the man, of his comfort, before he’d even left.
“Shhh,” he said. “I’m going to fix this. I don’t know how yet, but I am.”
A watery laugh trickled out of me. I thought of that nursery rhyme, the one about Humpty Dumpty. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
“You can’t fix me,” I whispered, the tears catching on my lips. “No one can.”
“No,” he said fiercely. “This is my fault. I should have known. I think…maybe I did know, but I was too fucking stupid to know what to do about it. If I would have done something back then, got you out of there…”
The image rose up in my mind, like a specter from the grave. Me, without shame. Without fear. It was a laughable thought, but somehow…somehow hopeful. Somehow heartbreaking.
“God, don’t do this,” I told him. “Don’t make me think impossible things.”
“Listen. Let’s just get through this. We’ll get through this thing with Carlos together, you and me. And when it’s all over, we’ll work on fixing this together. I don’t know exactly how it will go. A lot of that will depend on you and what you want to do. But sure as hell you’re not going to be anyone’s whore, not ever again.”
He sounded so sure, so confident. So much the fresh-faced young man about to set off on his adventure. Like maybe he’d sit down next to me on an old, dirty tire and say, “It can’t be as bad as all that.” Just as optimistic, just as wrong.
I didn’t want to tell him that I probably wouldn’t survive this, this thing we were doing with Carlos. I could feel myself weakening after each session with him. Each time it took me a little longer to recover, more time to heal. And Carlos was getting more brutal, not less, even though I was mostly obedient.
I didn’t want to tell him that even if by some miracle I made it out of this alive, that I had nothing and nowhere to go. And if Tyler ended up helping me in exchange for sex, I had no doubt that I would be his prostitute. He might be a gentler master, but that didn’t make me any less a whore.
I didn’t want to say any of that because it would ruin this moment, this moment where Tyler acted like he cared about me. Hell, in this moment, he probably did care about me. So I just leaned into him, letting my make-up smudge, letting my aches and bruises cry out for respite, because this feeling was worth a million lashes.
When my tears dried, I looked up at him. Some of the fierceness in his expression was now explained away. He felt some responsibility for what happened to me. But he wasn’t my knight in shining armor, no matter how much I might have wished him to be.
“Tell me what you need me to do,” I said.
His mouth firmed in refusal, which told me that he did, in fact, have something he needed me to do.
“Come on,” I cajoled, with a soft rock of my breasts into his chest. It was almost instinctual at this point, not something mapped out or planned, using my body to get on a guy’s good side. Even broken and battered, it worked.
“I don’t want you to do this.” But despite his words, his tone held resignation. “We can get the girls to safety once we’re inside the safe house. The problem is there’s a master key for the alarm system that is only released by Carlos’s fingerprint.”
I watched him, waiting.
“He won’t exactly be cooperative with us,” Tyler continued. “In fact, if all goes according to plan, he won’t even be there when we’re extracting the women. So there’s this—” He held up a small rectangular box, black plastic with a shiny metal strip on one side. “That has the capability to record not only the form of the fingerprint, but also the heat patterns. Using this we’ll be able to replicate it and unlock the system without his presence. You need to press his right thumbprint to the metal surface for five seconds. Without him noticing.”
“Yeah.” An incredulous laugh escaped me. No blow job was good enough for Carlos to miss me taking his fingerprint with a device. I wondered if Tyler saw the irony, that he was using my body for his own purposes. I almost hoped he didn’t, since at least that way it would be accidental.
Tyler paused as if biting his tongue.
“There’s more,” I said.
“You’ll need to get out. There are a few different ways this might play out, but no matter what he’ll suspect you had something to do with it.”
I scoffed. “Carlos thinks of me like a dog. Animals can’t be informants.”