The Curse: The Butterfly Effect, Book 2.

by Margaret McHeyzer

  Sliding my undies up my legs, I put on the stupid negligee. Looking at myself in the mirror I roll my eyes at my reflection. I look like I’m ready to have sex. Thankfully, my undies are black and match this stupid lingerie, and fortunately all my bits are covered up.

  As I stand in the room, waiting for the door to unlock and open, I can’t help but wonder what kind of lion’s den I’m going to be led into. Or should I say, forced into.

  My stomach knots in anticipation as I reluctantly wait for the scary guy to collect me.

  My hands sweat and I rub them down the cheap, lacey material of the baby-doll.

  My heart hammers inside my chest, while my breathing quickens until I’m sure it’s quite audible.

  “You can do this,” I give myself a pep talk, encouraging myself to get on with it.

  The unlocking of the first lock is deafening. It seems so loud it’s piercing my ear drums. Not literally, but the tension in my body has ramped up to something I’ve never felt before. My shoulders are so tense it’s painful, and my entire body responds by shaking.

  The door finally opens, and the scary guy walks in, carrying his stupid gun. His beady, cold-blooded eyes take in my appearance. He arches a brow and bites on his bottom lip. “You look good,” he says with his husky and scary-as-shit voice. His gaze lands on my breasts, and I want to cover myself up with my hands, but I know he’s not the type of man who’d let me get away with it.

  Swallowing hard, I try to lower the strain beating on my body.

  His ogling travels further down to my underwear. He knots his brows together while his jaw jumps with obvious tension. “You’re not wearing what I provided for you.”

  Shit, I knew this was going to happen. What do I say? What do I do? “They don’t fit,” I automatically respond. “They’re too small.”

  His mouth twists into a smug smirk. He knows I’m lying, I can see it in his face. “Too small you say?” He scratches his chin with the nozzle of his gun.

  God damn it. Why didn’t I just wear the stupid scrap of material? But I pull my shoulders back and stand tall. If he’s going to kill me, I’m going to die with dignity, not as a stupid show girl in even stupider skimpy underwear. “Yeah, they’re too small.” Stop talking, Lexi! Stop it.

  “I’ll make sure the next ones fit better.”

  Shit, what does he mean by that? How should I respond? What should I say or do?

  Instead of commenting with something sassy, I elect to remain quiet and berate myself for even speaking to begin with.

  He taps on the door, earning my attention. He’s standing in the doorway, waiting for me. “Hurry up,” he spits toward me.

  In this case, I hurry up. Following behind him, he leads me down a long, well-lit corridor. My bare feet scramble to keep up with him, but I manage it.

  We reach a set of stairs that lead up, and at the top of them is a heavy metal door. “Hmm,” I mumble quietly to myself. Figures, I’ve been kept in a basement dungeon like a chained-up animal.

  He opens the door, and steps through it, revealing a gaudy, over-decorated foyer, primarily in gold and dark wood. Can this place be any tackier? I hold in the eye roll I’m so tempted to give to this gross place. It’s obvious to me that whoever owns it has the worst taste ever, because everything is so garish.

  “Hurry up,” the scary guy barks as he holds the door open.

  My gaze finds his and I see the anger bubbling away behind his darkened eyes. “Sorry,” I mumble, hurrying my steps.

  As I approach him, he grabs onto my upper arm and squeezes tightly. I don’t need to look at where he’s squeezing to know he’s wearing gloves. I can feel the cool leather against my skin.

  He pulls me in close into his body. His stale breath makes me gag. He has an odor about him of sour sweat and strong cigarettes. I hold my breath, and hold in the vomit.

  “I’m going to enjoy playing with you when the Boss tells me he’s done.” He leans in closer. Sweat rolls down my back, and the vomit I’m holding back creeps further up my throat. He licks my face, and I gag before the vision takes me over.

  Standing in a room, I turn my head to look at my surroundings. The music is loud, and the room is decorated in black and red. The scary guy is sitting on a deep red lounge chair, completely relaxed into the high back. He’s nursing a glass of dark liquid. In front of him is a table where a scantily-dressed woman is on her knees sniffing a white powder through a rolled-up bill.

  The scary guy is watching someone behind me, and when I turn to see, it’s a girl, no older than me, dancing . . . and stripping . . . and grinding against a pole. “Oh man,” I sigh as a lump of disgust sits in my stomach. I’m not judging her, but her cold and distant appearance tells me she’s here because she has to be. The track marks running up her arms confirm it. She’s here, in this vile and dirty place, to feed her habit. Loathing washes over me, and I want to get out of here. But I’m in the scary guy’s vision. He’ll be coming to this club tonight, and I need to see everything. It may be the only way for me to get out.

  Turning my attention back to him, I watch as he watches the girl on the pole. His concentration is on the girl, his own hand on his crotch, and he doesn’t see the man who enters the room. He’s dressed all in black as he creeps in behind the scary guy.

  He looks around him, checks the door, and then turns to the two women in the room. Neither see him. One’s high on drugs, and the other is dancing for her drugs with her eyes closed. He places his hand in his pocket, and takes out a long, thin piece of steel wire. He lifts it over the scary guy’s head and . . .

  I’m back to the present, staring at the smug face of the scary guy who’s just licked me. It brings me happiness to know that after tonight, he’ll no longer be scary.

  Hell, what’s happening to me?

  Am I turning into something I’m not? Am I becoming bloodthirsty?

  He pulls away with a stupid proud smirk, as if he’s telling me that when he’s given permission, he’s going to do whatever he wants to me. I feel like laughing in his face and telling him, he won’t be around for too much longer.

  But I want him dead.

  It’s a public service not to tell him, to let him discover his future on his own.

  “S’pose you saw something?” he condescendingly asks as he pushes me toward a black van.

  “I did,” I reply as I step into the van.

  “Come on, princess, tell me what you saw.” He chuckles at me. His laugh is demeaning, like he doesn’t believe in my ability.

  Well screw him.

  “You’re going to have a great time tonight at the strip club. Although, judging by the women you hang around, you don’t care if they’re comatose or even of legal age.”

  He laughs as he sits opposite me. “You’re right about one thing, princess. The younger the better.”

  His words make my stomach twist with disgust, and a shiver runs up my spine. “You’re revolting.”

  He winks at me, and smiles, showing me his rotten teeth. “You’re on the higher end of the age I like, but don’t worry, I’ll break you in.”

  Ugh. What a vile man. I’ve never known a person as loathsome and vulgar.

  Looking away from his smirking face, I choose to stare at the inside of the black van. I’d rather look at nothing than this disgraceful, pitiful excuse for a man.

  We arrive at what looks like an industrial park. There are rows and rows of factories, all looking quiet and abandoned.

  I can imagine this is a place where bodies are tortured and screams aren’t heard.

  The van slows to a stop outside one of the cookie-cutter doors. The scary guy rolls the side door open, jumps out and points his gun at me. With a flick of his head, I know I need to get out too.

  Great, this is where I’m going to die.

  He takes a card out of his pocket, and waves it in front of a small black box, then presses his thumb print into a scanner.

  Yep, there’s no way out for me.

  If the
re are so many obstacles to get into the building, it’s designed to keep whatever is inside, inside.

  My heart feels like it’s been beating a mile a minute since the day I was kidnapped. I’ve been living on the edge of sanity, waiting to fall over into an abyss.

  “This way,” the scary guy says and pushes the barrel of the gun into my lower back. It’s freezing cold. Just like him. The gun is an extension of him. He’d likely feel naked without it. Wherever he is, his stupid gun is too.

  I wonder if he gets off from inflicting fear on people? Probably, which is why it’s always attached to his hand.

  “Up the stairs.” He pushes the gun into my lower back again.

  I try and take in my surroundings. Maybe I’ll be able to make a run for it. I doubt it though. There are men with compact machine guns everywhere.

  This really looks like your stereotypical bad guy movie setting.

  Dingy, dark, and scary as hell.

  Making my way up the metal staircase, there’s a man with a gun eyeing me up and down. “She’s a cute one,” he says to the scary guy behind me.

  “She is,” he replies. I can hear the sleaziness in his voice. I know he’s checking out my butt as I walk up the stairs, and knowing his eyes are on me makes me cringe inside.

  “This way,” the guy at the top says when I reach the platform. He points to an open door that leads to a waiting area.

  This is it for me.

  This is where my role will finally become apparent.

  A thin layer of sweat coats my palms and my skin pebbles with fear and uncertainty.

  The room I’m pushed into has a musky type of smell. It reminds me of stale water and sweat mixed together. God, this is putrid.

  Adjoining the room is another, with yet an extra armed guy standing by the door leering at me. They all resemble savage beasts who haven’t eaten in days. I can’t imagine they’d be the type to respect females. They’d be the type to happily hurt us, and then discard us like an inferior product.

  Slowly, I drag my feet into the room and see a man sitting behind a desk. He’s looking over some papers lying flat on the desk in front of him. He’s rubbing his temple with one hand, and the other is tapping a pen on the paper.

  “Come in,” he says in a thick accent and directs me to sit opposite him, all while still looking down at the paper.

  I get pushed again, and I nearly fall into the seat. Looking around, I notice the number of men crammed in here. They all have machine guns and they’re all staring at me.

  God, I feel so sick. My stomach is churning and my hands are shaking. My leg bounces up and down as I wait for this guy to look at me and tell me what he wants.

  The atmosphere in the room is thick with tension. My body is stressing out as the sweat gathers at the nape of my neck and rolls down my spine.

  “So,” the man behind the desk says. He lifts his chin to stare at me. His left eye is . . . missing. Gasping, I try not to stare at his missing eye. “Do you know who I am?”

  I shake my head. “No,” I whisper still trying not to look at the blank spot where his eyeball should be. But I can’t help it, it’s right there, and disgusting.

  “Do you know how this happened?” He points to where I’m staring.

  Considering I don’t know who you are, how am I supposed to know how you lost it? “No,” I reply with the safest answer.

  “In my youth,” he starts reminiscing, “a boy in my village bet me to see if I could climb the highest tree. He was trying to steal a girl I liked.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “I climbed that tree.”

  His heavy accent draws me into his storytelling. His confidence is somewhat admirable, though I don’t make the mistake of being swept up in the story. He waits for me to respond, but I have nothing to say.

  “I climbed to the top, and yelled that I was going to be coming after him. My girl laughed and punched the boy in the arm.”

  I want to pull the smile back, but so far, I like this story. It’s not scary, though I know the frightening part must be coming.

  “On the way down, I saw him punch my girl back. This made me so mad, I began to swing, like Tarzan from branch to branch.” His accent grows thicker, and I struggle to understand him. “I got to the bottom, I picked up a fallen branch and I cracked his head. Right here.” He shows me a line starting at his forehead above his missing eye, and runs his finger down toward his ear.

  I can’t help but scrunch my brows together, shocked not that he’d beat someone, but there was so much violence in him as a boy.

  “He lost his eye because the branch had smaller spikes sticking out, and poked his eyeball out.”

  I lift my hand to my mouth, completely engrossed, though turned off by what he’s saying.

  “He recovered, and came after me. Told me, ‘an eye for an eye.’” He really doesn’t need to tell me anymore, because I’m getting a crystal-clear picture of what happened.

  “Oh,” I reply, hoping he stops talking.

  He stands from behind his desk, and straightens to his full height. Man, he’s tall, like basketball player tall. How the hell did he fold himself beneath the desk? And he’s old. He has to be pushing sixty, if not older. He walks around, and leans back against his desk. Crossing his arms in front of him, he takes in my appearance. He then flicks his eyes up to someone standing behind me. “She’s to be dressed properly, not like this. Not like a whore.”

  I swallow hard. I want to turn around and look at who he’s talking to, but the moment he answers with, “Yes, Boss,” I don’t need to look to know it’s the scary guy.

  He looks around the room, and flicks his head to all the men in here.

  Crap. Is this where I’m going to die? Is this the end of my life? Dressed in lingerie in an office with an old guy who only has one eye? Or will he make me perform sexual acts on him? Oh, my God, I’m going to hurl.

  The door closes with a resounding bang, and I jump in my seat. Everything inside my body is speeding at a million miles an hour. My heart is about to thump out of my chest, and my pulse is running so fast, I can feel the vibration inside my veins.

  “You don’t know who I am?”

  “No,” I respond without making eye contact.

  “I saw you the night of the charity event. You were with Jude Caley, yes?”

  “Yes,” I say then swallow.

  “You have something I want, Lexi.”

  Oh God, I hate how he knows what to call me. “Which is?”

  “You’re a witch.”

  Witch? It’s the same word Jude used. Exactly the same. “Your accent?”

  “I am from France. I’m sorry, let me introduce myself.” He holds his hand out to me. “Enzo LeRoy,” he says and moves his hand closer to me. He wants me to take it, to get a glimpse into his future.

  Hesitating, I extend my hand, then pull it back when I’m nearly touching him. I don’t want to see what’s in his future. I don’t want to see it at all.

  But my hesitation angers him, and he pushes off the desk, grabs hold of my hand and wraps it in his.

  I’m standing on the deck of a yacht, the water gently tilting the vessel from side to side. I seem to be here alone; I can’t see anyone. I look down the side and see no one, so I concentrate and move to stand on the opposite side.

  Enzo is at the rear of the boat, with one of the other guards beside him. He smokes a cigar as he talks to the guard.

  The guard’s back is to me. I can’t see him, but I know it’s not the scary guy. His build is different. I walk toward them, making sure they can’t hear me. I know I’m in the future, but I’ve had visions where I’m convinced they can hear me. The wooden deck makes a creaking sound beneath my bare foot, and Enzo looks over the guy’s shoulder toward me.

  He can’t see me, but I halt my footsteps and hold my breath—just in case.

  He turns his attention back to the guy, who now heaves a black duffel bag over the edge of the boat. The guy looks down, and I follow his line of sight where t
here’s several more laying by his feet.

  “You exceeded my expectations,” Enzo says to the guy.

  “Thank you.” He grabs another duffel and throws it over the edge of the boat. I step closer to try to see what’s in the bag. The floor creaks again, and Enzo puts a hand to the guy’s shoulder, stopping him as he looks in my direction. “What is it?” he asks and turns toward me.

  It’s then I recognize him. It’s the guy from the strip club with the long piece of wire.

  “Shit,” I murmur to myself. The guy . . . and the duffel bags . . . and the strip club. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what or who he’s throwing overboard. The blood seeping out of one of the bags confirms my thoughts.

  I’m back in the office, and Enzo crosses his arms in front of him.

  With my heart erratically beating, I sit back in the chair and stare at one-eyed Enzo. “What did you see?” he asks, amused. He knows I know.

  “Exactly what’s going to happen. But, why?”

  His lips pull up into a smirk and he runs his hand through his thinning hair. “Because he slept with my granddaughter.”

  I shiver in revulsion. I know he likes them young, and knowing he slept with his boss’s granddaughter almost makes me want to avoid asking anything else. But I do anyway. “How old is she?” I wince at the expected number.

  “She’s eighteen.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. Fortunately, he didn’t say anything younger. I’m not sure I’d be able to stop myself from vomiting. Crinkling my forehead, I exhale a thankful breath again. “But you’re wondering why he’s going to die? Yes?”

  No, don’t tell me. Yes, I want to know. “No need to tell me your business.”

  “He slept with my granddaughter.”

  “You already told me that.”

  “And that is the only reason.”

  Huh, how weird. “Are you trying to tell me you’re going to kill everyone who sleeps with your granddaughter?” I find this conversation, peculiar.

  “I will if they give her drugs too.”

  But, he just said . . . man, this is too much for my brain to comprehend. “Look, what do you want from me?”