by Melissa Jane
CRIMSON DESERT
(Bittersweet Duet Book 2)
by
Melissa Jane
Crimson Desert
© Copyright
Published by Melissa Jane
This book is licensed for your enjoyment only. It is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblances to people living or dead, locales and events are entirely coincidental. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient
Written by Melissa Jane
Front cover by Cover It! Designs
Editor: Duncan Carling-Rodgers
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Bittersweet Duet
Little Doll (Book 1)
Crimson Desert (Book 2)
Coming soon
Sophia (Bittersweet Familia)
In loving memory of my beautiful mother.
My world, my everything.
“For he or she that harbors no fear has never truly loved anything. You can only measure true love by the thought and fear of its loss.”
~ Chris Jirika
Chapter One
Laila
“You’re early.” Aiden’s disapproval was clear.
“Who gives a fuck?”
“I do, asshole. We had a plan.”
“Where is she?”
As I listened to the conversation, my brain was spinning. I knew that voice, I thought, with a sudden urge to be sick.
That voice belonged to a ghost. Someone I had mourned for not so long ago.
Aiden’s solemn tone called for me, but I was already stumbling into the bedroom to see if my hallucinations were, in fact, reality.
I stood motionless, my face drained of all blood. How could it be?
“Ethan! You’re alive!”
***
I needed links.
The pieces of this crazy puzzle just weren’t fitting together.
My nightmare had begun a month ago because my brother had all but vanished. I’d even believed him dead. Yet now we were face to face in the same room as if nothing had happened.
Except it had. A lot had happened and I needed answers.
Jorge stood by the door next to a grim-faced Aiden, their guns now lowered. Both were decidedly silent, yet obvious tension was radiating off them in waves.
Thirty seconds ago I was hiding in a filthy bathtub, on the run from sex slavers Hector and Juan and believing myself about to be traded for cash. I’d wallowed in despair at how cheap and worthless my life had become.
Now, I was just confused.
“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” said Ethan, his voice laced with concern.
My mouth couldn’t move; words had long deserted me. I glanced between a now sheepish looking Aiden and back to my brother.
Ethan also appeared leaner, almost malnourished. His hair had grown out and now hung over his tired eyes. Through the stress of it all, he had aged and his playful smile was barely hanging on.
With blurry vision, I saw Jorge discreetly disappear through the door, clearly not wanting to be around for the reunion. Aiden remained, however, knowing full well I had a barrage of questions waiting for him. Running a hand over his exhausted face, he looked like he was mentally preparing himself for what was about to unfold. Not for the first time, I wondered just who the man was Aiden claimed to be.
Ethan closed the space between us, wrapping his arms around me in an all-encompassing bear hug.
“You’re alive,” I said in utter disbelief, my face buried in his neck. The tears I now cried weren’t in mourning.
“Well, I’m not dead,” he replied, a smile in his voice.
Loosening my hold, I touched Ethan’s now prominent cheek bones with my fingers, half expecting to find he was just an illusion.
“I was told you were killed. Shot in the desert!”
“No, I am perfectly alive. Who told you that?”
What?
Like a switch being flicked, my happiness morphed into anger before I even had time to think. Pushing away from Ethan, I rounded on the man who was the bearer of all my hurt.
“How could you do this to me?” I raged, ignoring Ethan’s plea. Aiden shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, his jaw set with a determination that only pissed me off more. “How could you allow me to believe he was dead? That you killed him? Didn’t you see what that did to me?”
Aiden shifted from one foot to the other and squared his shoulders. My apparent hostility wasn’t making him uncomfortable, but he was taking his time and choosing his words carefully. “We had to do it, Laila,” he said simply, his eyes meeting mine.
“What do you mean ‘we’ had to do it?” I scoffed.
Ethan spoke from behind me. “You told her I was dead?”
Aiden sighed heavily before continuing: “I couldn’t contact you directly and it would have compromised everything if word had been passed down the line. Even now, I’m not sure who’s trustworthy and who isn’t.”
“So you told her I was dead?”
Aiden’s eyes narrowed on Ethan. “Like I said, I did what I had to do. Hector wanted you killed and he trusted me to do the job.”
“What the hell did you do, Ethan?” I demanded, knowing full well I wasn’t going to like the answer.
Unlike the confident Aiden, my brother looked as though he was shitting himself with fear.
“Tell her,” Aiden said sternly.
Ethan slumped onto the edge of the bed behind him, his eyes pleading.
“I did something really, really stupid, Laila. Like I’m talking even for my standards. I’ll never expect you to forgive me for what you have been through and I am fairly certain I don’t even know half of your story.”
He sighed heavily before continuing. In my peripheral vision, I saw Aiden dragging the armchair over to me and I sat down gratefully. I had been lightheaded and sick in the stomach the moment the knock had sounded at the door.
“I did a dumb shit move when I came to San Diego.” Ethan shook his head as he recalled his mistakes. “You know mom and dad left us with nothing when they died.”
The sudden mention of our parents created a hard lump in my throat. While I loved them both dearly and missed them every day, mom and dad left behind a lot of debt due to my father’s inability to stay out of the casinos.
“So,” Ethan continued, “when I was asked to simply deliver a few parcels here and there, a thousand K a pop, I couldn’t refuse. Do that enough times and we could have had enough for a deposit on a house.”
He looked to me with crushed hope.
“Ethan, it’s never been about the money,” I implored.
“I know that now. Now I’ve seen what damage it caused,” he leaned forward and wiped a stray tear from my cheek. “Anyway, once I earned the trust of the boss, he introduced me to Aiden who hired me as security. At that stage, one of their main men involved in transporting the, ah, ‘larger goods’…”– he made ‘air quotes’ with his hands to emphasize the phrase “… was late back for the next shipment.”
“Ethan, how could you?” I asked, mystified. I knew exactly what ‘larger goods’ meant. I was intended to become one myself.
He looked at me as if I had just spat on him. “Laila, I didn’t know they were moving people.” He released another tired sigh. “I was rather pleased with myself that I had made it this far up the ranks so I took the opportunity.” My brother looked down as he wrung his hands nervously. “It wasn’t until I saw them, I knew I was i
n deep.”
“They were sisters,” Aiden took over. I refused to face him, remaining perfectly still as I listened. “One was sixteen, the other nine. Hector had never moved girls that young before. It caught us all off-guard. Especially Ethan. He didn’t even know he was about to enter into human trafficking.”
My hand covered my mouth to hide the trembling. Those poor girls. Who could do that to them and have a clear conscience?
“But it gets worse,” Aiden continued solemnly. “The girls were destined for a notorious sadist. Alexsonov.” My stomach churned uneasily as I comprehended his words. Alexsonov was my intended master. “Many of the men who make special requests are known to treat the girls poorly. Torture, degradation, rape. Anything goes.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said quietly. Ethan’s brow creased in confusion. He clearly didn’t know.
“The last young woman he had, he beat the shit out of so severely she bled from every orifice, had her raped by fifteen of his colleagues, then beat her again until she became a vegetable.”
“Laila,” Ethan took over, “those girls were going to be given to him on a silver platter, probably to do the same shit he did to their predecessor. I couldn’t let that happen, I simply couldn’t. They were only kids, someone’s daughters.”
I nodded my head slightly in understanding. I didn’t want to hear any more about Alexsonov. While furious Ethan even got himself involved with these people, I was happy he still possessed his humanity.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I saw the look on Aiden’s face when we saw how young they were and I knew he felt the same as me. We were both mortified. I wanted to back out and run, tell the police or do something…” – his voice became increasingly agitated as he recounted the events – “but Aiden warned me the police are just as corrupt and fear Hector too. With or without me, the girls would be shipped and still meet the same fate. So from there we had two days to formulate a plan that would look like Hector could trust me with the task and to find a way to make the girls disappear from Hector’s radar.”
“Did you think for even a second that he would come after you?” I asked incredulously, confused by their plan.
“Yes, of course I knew that. I just never expected it to go so wrong.”
Ethan’s eyes were filled with remorse. “When the girls disappeared, I had to go MIA too. I couldn’t just go back to Hector and apologize that somehow the girls had got the better of me and vanished. He would have shot me there on the spot… or worse. So Aiden used his connections to have the girls moved to a safe house in the US and I lived it rough in a rural town, keeping my head low until I heard some news. I didn’t hear anything until a week ago.”
“A week ago?” The timing wasn’t adding up in my head. “They had me imprisoned for over a month, Ethan. How could you not have heard?” My voice shook and I lost control of my emotions as Aiden cleared his throat behind me. I turned on him. “You knew!” My tone dripped with accusation. “You knew all this time Ethan was alive! You never told him about me so he never came looking.”
“That’s right. It was a risk I wasn’t willing to take. If he knew, he would have come back to find you and most definitely fucked things up.” His sense of calm only enraged me more.
“Fucked things up? Aiden, not one thing about this situation isn’t fucked up!” I yelled.
“I don’t understand. What do you mean for over a month?” Ethan interjected, confused. I turned back to him, seeing sadness fogging his eyes.
“I came looking for you,” I said through uncontrolled sobs. “For three weeks you never answered your phone. Ethan, for years now we call every Wednesday and Sunday. You always answer my calls, but then I remembered that you said you worked down south. So I flew down to San Diego and asked the locals if they had seen you. They all said they hadn’t and paid me no attention, except for…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Except for Juan,” Aiden offered quietly.
“Fuck…” Ethan’s face paled.
“He saw me and followed me back here. I don’t remember much because he drugged me. There was a van, then a car, hands touching me, then I woke in Mexico at Hector’s. He said if you didn’t return with the goods he would use me as a trade to appease Alexsonov.”
“Did he hurt you?”
The lump in my throat was gripping so tight, I couldn’t form any words. Even if I could, I wasn’t ready to talk about it.
Ethan’s face blanched, taking my non-answer as the answer he didn’t want to hear. His hands flailed around with no purpose, sometimes running through his hair or rubbing over his face as he contemplated what was being said. He looked as distraught as I felt.
“Laila, I am so, so, so sorry.” His voice cracked before he wrapped his arms around my body.
We remained in our embrace as we took turns crying.
Chapter Two
Aiden
The atmosphere in the room had thickened with the overwhelming emotion of the reunion and sharing of stories. The worst was yet to come, but I feared now was not the time to rub salt in any wounds. Laila’s eyes shone death at me at various stages of the conversation and I could understand why. What I needed to do was ensure she understood why saving her was important to me.
The siblings broke apart and their sobs began to settle. Laila turned in the armchair, wiping her blotchy, tear-streaked face, ready to unleash hell on me.
“So was the ‘training’ side of things just one sick joke to you, Aiden?” Her accusation stung. This really wasn’t going the way I planned. “Just another laugh at the girl with nothing left to live for?”
“Not even close.” Her beautiful blue eyes were a mix of despair and anger. Even in her current state, Laila was still the vulnerable yet determined, most beautiful woman I have ever met.
“What training?” Ethan interrupted.
Dealing with these two together at the same time was not conducive to what I needed to do. Now they had been reunited, I needed to get Laila on her own. I owed the girl an explanation without a tag-team style assault getting in the way.
“Your buddy in crime here volunteered to train me on how to please a man so that Hector could reassure his bidder he was getting his money’s worth.”
If looks could kill, I would have been a smoldering pile of ash right then.
“What? What the fuck, Aiden?” Ethan sounded even more incredulous than his sister.
He rose to his feet in a lame attempt to challenge me. I could completely understand why they were behaving this way, but they were not solving anything. To my surprise, Laila joined him by his side.
“Both of you sit down,” I ordered calmly.
They remained standing, their expressions radiating death.
“You wanna know why? Then sit the fuck down!”
My tone had grown harsh, but we simply didn’t have time to waste. They looked at each other with doubt before finally silently agreeing to reclaim their seats.
“Firstly Laila, you must know that I did everything within my power to protect you in that house, to get you out of there alive.” She rolled her eyes, which I half expected her to. It would take a while to earn her trust after the ordeal she had experienced.
“Through some reliable connections, I was able to set up a safe house for Ethan to take the girls and then go into hiding himself. We knew Hector would be furious. He was left without payment and a bad reputation. The only one Hector could take revenge on was the narcotics distributor who found Ethan in the first place. With him dead, no one was left to suffer the consequences. That was until you came along, Laila.”
Her despondent eyes shot up to mine, but urged me to continue.
“Juan thought he had struck gold when you waltzed straight up to him in the café flaunting Ethan’s picture. He has always tried to prove himself to his father and he saw you as his golden ticket.”
I softened my voice knowing the rest was going to open a Pandora’s box of memories for Laila.
“You were just what he needed as leverage to get your brother to pay for what he… we… had done. He followed you back to the hotel and, like you said, drugged you and took you across the border. I knew nothing of it until the night Hector had you brought into his lounge barely dressed. He was excited by the fact he would have Ethan by the balls and at the same time he was blown away by your beauty and potential for sale. The warning was sent out amongst Hector’s men and soon word would spread he had you captive and Ethan would come back. I didn’t know what to do or think when you first walked in. It’s fucked up, but I prayed they made a mistake, that they had the wrong girl, but of course you were the one.”
I swallowed the guilt as I remembered feeling like my actions to help save two innocent lives would come at a price of royally fucking up Laila’s.
“From there,” I continued, “my goal was to protect you and ensure you were always safe. That was until Juan clued onto the particular interest I had in you and he began to sabotage my protection. I realized it was hard to act indifferent the more I got to know you, but for both our sakes I had to. Juan saw right through me. He smelled something was off and that’s when he started playing his games.”
Her eyes softened just a little bit and heat colored her cheeks.
“That’s when I let you down. I’m truly sorry, Laila. The situation was already out of hand before I even knew there was a situation. Alexsonov was determined to have you and, being void of any workable plans, my best option was to offer to train you. That way I could continue to protect and keep Juan from hurting you again.”
“Oh, my God!” Laila said quietly, her eyes widening at this revelation. A look of sadness and humiliation again took over before she dropped her head in her hands. I knew she would interpret that our intimacy was instigated only to fall in line with a plan, but to me it was more than that. I couldn’t explain otherwise, not now, not in front of Ethan.
“Laila, it’s not like that,” I soothed, yet she gave me only a dismissive wave.