“And that’s supposed to mean...?”
“I thought I knew you.”
“Jax, I told you. I did a lot of stuff I’m not proud of in the name of getting my sister and I away from our family. I worked with bad people. The worst. But it got Tali free. I’d do it again.” The muscle at Zach’s jaw twitched. “What do you want to know? What’s bothering you?”
“All of it. I don’t get any of it.” Jaxon shook his head.
“What don’t you get?” Zach pivoted to face Jaxon, his dark eyes gone black. “My uncle planned on raping my fifteen-year-old sister so he could force her to marry him. No one cared because she was a woman and in our culture, that meant what she wanted didn’t matter. How was I supposed to be okay with that? What should I have done, Jax? Tell me. Because every day I ask myself: was there another way? Something that wouldn’t mean Tali and I would have to live looking over our shoulders?”
“It just...it’s not right.”
“No, it’s not.”
“There should have been another way.”
“There wasn’t. So, I made a deal with the devil to get us out of there. I will never regret that I did it. How can I? Every time I look at how happy Tali is, her kids, I think—it was worth it. All of it. Because she has the choice. No one forces Tali to do anything. No one hurts her. That doesn’t mean bad people don’t exist, Jax, it just means we get to fight back.”
“Are you putting Tali in danger helping me?” Jaxon had assumed that the threat to Zach and his sister was over with, but maybe he’d been wrong.
“Not if I’m careful, and I am very careful.”
Jaxon stared at Zach, who didn’t look away.
They were the world’s most opposite people, and yet Zach was the one putting it on the line for Jaxon. Because he got it. He’d been there. The least Jaxon could do was try to understand.
“Now, do you want to find Freya, or would you like me to break out pictures of my niece and nephew?” Zach flicked his fingers at the laptop.
He’d taken the knowledge of Zach’s illegal ties hard. It’d caused a rift between them these last few weeks that had left Jaxon confused and angry. He’d trusted the wrong people once, and it’d nearly set his life on a collision course with disaster. Was he making the same mistake with Zach?
Zach was a good guy. He’d given up a hell of a lot to live on the run and take care of his sister. He’d done what he’d had to, not to make a profit. To protect the ones he loved. Was that so different from what Jaxon was doing?
It wasn’t.
It was time Jaxon let that go.
Besides, Zach was his best friend.
They’d all done bad things, for good reasons.
“Sorry, man. This whole thing has me fucked up in the head.” Jaxon grimaced.
“I get that. I hope you know that...I wouldn’t have done what I’d done if there had been another way.”
“I believe you.”
Zach still had that wary glint in his eye. Trust was a two-way street.
“Show me what you’ve got on the Swan Palace.” Jaxon leaned his forearm on the table.
“Okay, here’s the blueprints.” Zach brought up a 3D image of the upscale, adult entertainment venue in downtown Seattle.
The old, brick building dated back to the 1920s. It’d been updated, remodeled and redone several times, which made getting an accurate picture of the inside difficult. And that was why Jaxon was the Swan Palace’s newest employee. He just didn’t want to go in blind. He needed a guide on where to look, because if his theory was correct, Freya was somewhere in that building.
“City records show they renovated the building from the ground up about three years ago, when the place rebranded into basically a strip club. Let’s just say, it was a hotly-contested re-zoning that got pushed through. Several city council members flipped their votes at the last second, despite their public statements. Here’s the interesting word on the street.” Zach zoomed into the second and third floors of the blueprints. “They had you stationed downstairs, right?”
“Yeah, front of house security.” Jaxon leaned closer. He’d known things were different. No strip club, however fancy, needed that much security. “How does this all trace back to Yuri?”
“It doesn’t. On paper. The club is owned by a company, that’s owned by a company, that’s owned by a company, that’s owned by a company. Ownership is buried in shell corporations. I tracked it back to Yuri through, well...it’s sort of like advertising on the dark web. That’s where I found out about this.” He tapped the second floor.
“There’s a separate side entrance. You can’t even get to the stairs without going into staff-only areas.” And though Jaxon had tried, even he’d been shooed away from the stairs leading up.
“The club downstairs where you worked is public but up here, for the right price, you can get a different kind of entertainment.” Zach sat back and crossed his arms over his chest, lips twisting into a grimace.
“Wait, you mean...?” Jaxon stared at Zach.
He knew a little bit about the man holding Freya prisoner. He was the worst kind of human being. There wasn’t anything off limits.
Was Freya being forced to...?
He couldn’t think it.
Couldn’t let himself.
Freya was a friend, a good person. She’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. This couldn’t happen to her.
“I don’t want to sugarcoat it and tell you she’s fine, Jax.”
“Yeah, I know.” Still, his chest went tight and he dug his nails into the wood grain of the table.
“Look at it this way, Freya is worth more alive and unhurt.”
“How do you figure that? How could you know?”
“Because one of my half-sisters was kidnapped and ransomed back once. The moment a girl like this—pretty, well-connected, noticeable—is taken, they stop being a person. They’re a commodity. Bruised fruit isn’t worth as much.”
“You think they’re—what? Selling her?”
“I don’t know what Yuri wants with Freya, but unless he’s communicating with Senator Thorburn through analog channels I’m not seeing, I think she’s alive. And relatively unhurt. There’s more. Your girl and her sister—did you know she had a sister?”
“Yeah.”
“They stand to inherit a large sum of money from their mother, though their dad is trying to tie it up in court. Could be Yuri wants that money. Everyone could use another dollar in their pocket.”
“Yuri could ransom Freya to herself?”
“It wouldn’t be the craziest thing I’ve heard of. Now, based on what I found, it’s safe to assume the second floor of the Swan Palace is basically a white-collar brothel. You’ve got your regular working girls, but you’ve also got people like Madam Slappy, who has a rather impressive website, but no listed address. I pinged her phone and for the last four nights, it’s been at the Swan Palace. But you need to get your ass upstairs and off floor duty, because there’s more.” Zach zoomed in on what appeared to be an apartment at the very top of the building. “This is the Queen’s Nest. It’s...sort of a high-roller VIP area, but looking at their website, it’s been off the market for a while. If I had to guess? This is where she’s at.”
Jaxon nodded and scrubbed a hand across his face while he struggled to process the information.
At least she was still in Seattle, and not out of the country. He could fix this. If he could find her, he could spring her himself or bring the feds in. One way or another, he was bringing her home.
“You know Kade and the others would help you?” Zach gestured at the screen. “Shelby has been asking the same questions you are, she just hasn’t been asking me.”
“We don’t know that Freya’s there, and we don’t know that I’ll need help.” Jaxon checked the time. Kade was barely back on his feet. Telling Shelby meant dragging Kade into something he likely wasn’t ready for. Jaxon couldn’t do that without proof. Something concrete.
“Jax...”
Jaxon turned and walked toward the door. He could feel Zach’s eyes on him, and he understood his friend’s concern. But Yuri Gabor had eluded law enforcement for decades. Jaxon didn’t want to get his hopes up.
Once Jaxon knew if she were or weren’t there, they could do something about it. There’d be some uncomfortable questions about how they’d discovered the information, but they’d have to cross that bridge later. Accessing the dark net wasn’t necessarily illegal, but who knew what Zach had had to do to get the intel he’d gathered? In the end, all Jaxon knew was that Zach was taking a big risk by helping him.
Jaxon slid behind the wheel of his car. Coffee was the first order of business. The summer term was coming to a close and he had finals fast approaching. This close to graduating, he couldn’t fuck things up, but he couldn’t turn his back on Freya either.
What if he was the only one still looking for her?
He could still remember the night he’d met her. They’d toasted to better days during one of the worst chapters of his life. She’d inspired him, motivated him to be better.
He hit the road, heading into the heart of Seattle.
She’d been this beautiful, fresh breath of air. So out of place in the clubbing scene. They’d naturally gravitated toward each other, being the older people on staff.
Jaxon had always wondered what her story was. Why a woman who was so obviously well-educated, intelligent, and beautiful was plying her skills to bring the hottest, most fashionable people to a club to do nothing more than drink, rub up on each other and maybe get laid. But it wasn’t like he’d been in a position to ask her out, to discover more about her. It’d taken every penny Jaxon had to pay his hospital bills, the post-op care and square away the apartment he’d had to sublet. In the end, it left him with less than nothing.
He’d always known his fame could be short lived, that once he fell from the spotlight, it would be an unforgiving fall from grace. But nothing could have prepared him for this. The fans, his team, all the friends he’d made, the people who’d been there when he was king of the octagon, were nowhere to be found these days.
Fuck’em.
Jaxon didn’t need those people or that life anymore. He had a plan now. One he should have worked on long before, but he’d been too young and stupid to know better. Now he did and he wasn’t giving up this life without a fight.
He pulled into the small, employee parking lot behind the Swan Palace and shrugged into his white, button-down shirt.
The manager had stressed the dress code. So, Jaxon switched out his shoes to shiny loafers he’d borrowed from his cousin, Andre, and shrugged into a suit jacket.
The name of the game was flying under the radar. As a bouncer, he should be part of the backdrop. That would allow him to poke around and see what was really going on upstairs, without raising too much suspicion.
He jogged from his car to the employee entrance, digging out his key card.
Eight months ago, he couldn’t so much as power walk. He’d come a long way in the last year, in part due to Freya’s encouragement. She’d made a difference in his life.
He swiped his badge and stepped into the club.
Music serenaded from the front of house and dishes clanged in the kitchen.
Just another normal night in the service industry. At least that’s what it appeared to be.
Somehow, he needed to get his ass assigned to the upper floors. How he was going to do that was beyond him.
Jaxon clocked in at the back office, almost half an hour early.
Servers for the VIP areas bustled back and forth. He stepped back and frowned. Something was off. There was a different vibe going on. People weren’t meeting his gaze, most of the servers were looking at the ground. Had something happened? Had shit hit the fan already? From the looks of it, people were ready to duck.
Jaxon hovered in the entry. Listening. Watching.
He was in over his head. That much he knew. But if he didn’t do this, if he didn’t look for Freya, who else would?
Maybe Zach was right and he should ask the others, the professionals, for help. But they had their own lives and jobs.
Thomas, the club manager, stepped out of the offices on the left and glanced at him. A wrinkle creased the man’s brow.
Shit.
The one person he’d wanted to avoid.
Jaxon swallowed.
“Wilson. Come here,” the man barked. Deep lines bracketed his mouth.
“Yes, sir?” Jaxon kept his tone polite, calm. So much for flying under the radar. His boss knew his name on sight.
“You clocked in, yet?”
“Yes, sorry. I just realized how early I was.”
“Never mind.” Thomas waved Jaxon into the office and pinned him with a stare layered in subtext. “I need someone I can trust, someone who can be discreet.”
Well, damn. That could mean any number of things.
“What do you need?” Jaxon tilted his head. It wouldn’t do to appear too eager to gain the man’s trust.
“We have...a more exclusive VIP area. Are you aware of that?”
“I heard someone mention it, but my job is front of the house.” Jaxon shrugged. Anyone who worked as a bouncer for long learned pretty quick not to ask questions. There was always a back room.
“I need another man on hand, and I need to know I can trust you to look the other way.”
“If that’s what you’re paying me to do, that’s what I’ll do.”
“You’ll have to sign an NDA. Some of our guests require privacy, you understand?”
“I do, sir.” He was unfortunately well-versed in exactly what Yuri Gabor pedaled.
“Good.” Thomas scrubbed his hand over his face. “It’s damn hard to get good help. Too many of these young guys like to run their mouths.”
“They learn, or they face the consequences. Am I right?” Jaxon shook his head.
“Exactly. Here, sign this, and then I’ll have one of the guys show you the private entrance.” Thomas unlocked a drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper.
Talk about right time, right place.
Maybe this was Jaxon’s lucky day.
Freya was close. He could feel it.
2.
Freya Thorburn had grown up in a gilded cage.
This cage was not the same.
She paced the width of the main room. Back and forth. Her stomach in knots as the clock ticked away the seconds.
No one was coming for her. At least no one she wanted to see. The only people she came into contact with were the woman who brought her food and clothes, that disgusting man Yuri Gabor, and him. Charles. The one with the cold, dead eyes. She shivered just remembering the look on his face last night.
After six weeks in captivity, this was her reality. Some might not object to being kept in the lap of luxury, but Freya knew the trappings hid what was really going on here. A cell with brocade wallpaper, velvet sofas and Egyptian cotton sheets, and a closet stocked full of designer clothes, was still a cell. Those things didn’t change the fact that she was a prisoner. The question was, what for? What value did she have?
She could merely guess at what she didn’t know. There wasn’t anyone alive who would pay a ransom for her. No one who cared about her, besides her twin sister and her roommate, and even they had their limits. Michelle wouldn’t care until she needed something, and Freya’s roommate wouldn’t bother asking around until it came time to pay rent. It didn’t leave her with much hope.
And that brought her back to the questions that had been haunting her since yesterday.
Did she hold out? Did she stand her ground? Or did she give up? Did she let Yuri win?
No, she couldn’t give up. She couldn’t sentence herself without a fight. She d
idn’t know what the man with the cold, dead eyes wanted, but she couldn’t trick herself into trading one jailer for another.
The only point of entry to the suite beeped.
The hair on the back of her head stood on end.
She turned, clenching her hands into fists.
Her stomach tightened.
It was him. The man from last night.
Her pulse kicked up and her palms began to sweat.
What the hell was going on?
“Good evening, Janelle.” The man who’d introduced himself as Charles took a few steps closer. Yuri called her by her preferred middle name, while Charles insisted on calling her Janelle.
He was average looking in almost every way. Average height. Average build. Caucasian. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Bland.
She recognized the well-made suit and how it was tailored. Charles had money, but he wasn’t flashy about it in the way a lot of people were. He was understated.
“It’s polite to respond, you know?” Charles pushed his hands into his pockets and took a few steps into the room.
The door behind him slid shut. There were no hinges, no handle, nothing from the inside. She knew. She’d checked. It only opened from the outside, just like a cell door.
“It’s not polite to hold someone hostage against their will, either.” She didn’t move, but she did lift her chin.
Charles grinned, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. He was the shark, baring his teeth, reminding her who had the worse bite.
“Sit, please?” Charles gestured to the two pink-velvet sofas facing each other.
“I’ll stand, thanks.”
“Fine.” Charles strolled toward the windows to her right.
On her first night here, she’d tried breaking the glass. She’d learned the hard way that the windows were also reinforced, with no way to open them from the inside, and they didn’t break.
This was a prison. One with all the trappings of luxury, but still a prison.
Freya swallowed and turned with Charles toward the cityscape obscured by the low-hanging fog and rain. She didn’t dare turn her back toward him. Her skin crawled when he was near, and a very loud voice in her mind screamed that he was dangerous. But what could she do? She was a prisoner. Charles, Yuri, and the woman who brought her food three times a day were the only people Freya saw, and none of them were concerned with her plight.
Bad Boy Prince: A Modern Fairy Tale (Twisted Royals Book 3) Page 2