John Paul’s mouth tightened. “Is that the south’s agenda? Or yours, Theresa?”
Theresa allowed them a half smile. “The south has no agenda. We merely do our best to maintain the order.”
No one was fooled by the coy demeanor, but John Paul allowed himself to lean back in his chair. Still tense, but not as aggressively.
“Despite the objections of the south, the majority rules in this case. Of the five houses, excluding the north, three have agreed to sponsor Dimitri as head chair of the north. That puts the odds in his favor and automatically elects him, as I’m sure you are familiar.”
Theresa studied the gold head of her pen as though it were the most fascinating item she’d ever seen. The light from the wall of glass behind her caught the delicate curve and winked. In her small, manicured hand, it almost reminded Dimitri of a scepter, small, but wielding all the power in the world. He wasn’t sure she could actually kill them with it, but she was the type of woman who would try, and do it without getting blood on her crisp, white two-piece suit.
Theresa was beautiful the way the first glimmer of winter was when everything was white and sparkly, and held the excitement of Christmas. But she was also just as cold, just as bitter and sharp. She was vengeful and cruel. Her beauty stopped above the milky white of her complexion, the silky lines of her white-blonde locks, and the frosty, blue gems that sat in the center of that flawless, heart shaped face. Her aura pulsed with the same frigid fury as a meat locker.
Against her Snow Queen façade, Marcus was dark with a wavy mop of curly black hair that always reminded Dimitri of an oil slick. It was forced back from a face too young to be sitting in a seat of power. Brown eyes were dominated by heavy brows and a broad forehead. He wore a navy blue suit that sat aligned with his narrow shoulders in a perfect fit.
That was the thing Dimitri dreaded the most—the suits. Everyone seemed to be wearing one. Including Elena, who normally thrived in her baggy dresses and clunky jewelry had on a pair of gray trousers and a pale, green blouse. Even John Paul had pulled on an elegant suit of black and a white dress shirt. Dimitri was the only one in dark trousers and a dress shirt only. He’d rolled up the sleeves to his forearms and left two of the buttons undone. It wasn’t to be a rebel. He was just comfortable.
“Be that as it may be,” Theresa rose, gathering her papers as she did so. “This is a matter I would need to discuss with my father.”
“Hold on.” Marcus shot to his feet before Dimitri could even attempt a response. “What about that asshole stealing our money?”
The papers were set down gently, but with authority and Theresa regarded the room once more.
“A bounty,” she said simply. “One million from each of us for the person who catches this … Devil, and brings him to us.”
“And start a witch hunt?” John Paul countered. “That’s just asking for idiots to get involved.”
Theresa blinked her eyes very slowly. “And what is your suggestion, Morel? Nothing? Let him waltz into our homes, or warehouses, and rob us blind?”
John Paul said nothing.
“I say we set a trap,” Elena piped in. “Lure that bastard in and kill him slowly. Piece by piece and then send each one to his mother in a box.”
Dimitri tried not to shift uncomfortably.
A fine line of disgust wrinkled Theresa’s pert nose. “As … thorough as that may be, perhaps a less … graphic approach.”
“The trap thing might work,” Marcus said. “We put word out that there’s a shipment coming out, then we wait.”
“I can agree with that,” John Paul said.
Theresa took longer to respond. She stared from one to the other, her devious little mind churning.
“Very well,” she said at last. “Do it. The south will offer what it can in support.” Her papers were back in her arms. “Meanwhile, I will bring the other matter,” she shot Dimitri a quick glance, “to my father and be in touch.”
No one stopped her when she exited the room. No one spoke until the crack of her heels had disappeared into the elevator. Only when the steel doors had shut did the space seem to breathe.
It was a spacious room crafted of marble and glass. It held only a single, round table in its center and five leather chairs. It wasn’t the most impressive room he’d ever been in, but it was one of the most boring.
“That went well.” John Paul rose, fingers fastening the single button on his blazer. “There is nothing Theresa, or her father, can say that can change the rules.”
“It’s a stalling tactic,” Marcus said, pushing back his chair. “She’s enjoying her position of power a little too much to simply hand it over that easily.”
As leader of the south, Theresa was second in the chain of command until the north had a leader once more. That made her temporary head of the organization. Dimitri couldn’t blame her for wanting to hang on to that a while longer.
“Stupid whore,” Elena muttered. “Never liked her.” With a shake of her head, she turned to Dimitri. “The chair’s yours,” she said definitively.
Dimitri said nothing. Not because he was ungrateful, but because he knew why his mother was so excited about it. He just couldn’t tell her how wrong she was if she thought he would allow her any sort of leeway into his territory. Not until after he’d been elected. That went for Marcus as well. Things would change once Dimitri was in charge.
Marcus left after clapping Dimitri on the arm. Elena followed him into the elevator without another word to Dimitri. In the metal box, she fished out her phone. She was texting when the door closed
Then there was no one but the one man who wanted Dimitri dead.
“Where’s Ava?”
Dimitri turned to face his father. “Safe.”
If the assurance was supposed to pacify him, John Paul seemed immune. He studied Dimitri with an expression just short of loathing.
“I should kill you,” he said in a tone that vibrated with the urge.
“Who do you think made me like this?” Years of suppressed rage broke through Dimitri in a whirlwind of fire and pain. “I may be a monster. I may be evil, but at least I acknowledge it. I know what to expect when I look in the mirror. Can you say the same?”
John Paul was quiet for a lot longer than Dimitri had expected. Truth was, he had expected to get shot. Instead, the other man tipped his head back and regarded Dimitri with a curiosity he hadn’t in the past.
“What you know and what you acknowledge mean nothing when your core is rotten.”
It didn’t matter how old he got or how often he told himself he didn’t care—it hurt. It stung with the same unforgiving spear as it had when he’d been a child and wondered why no one loved him. He hadn’t felt evil, but it had to be true if everyone said it. It just hadn’t been as easy to accept. Once he did, he didn’t know how to stop.
“You will get her when I get my chair,” he said instead. “She’s safe for now, but I can’t promise she’ll stay that way.”
With that, he turned and started for the elevator. He stabbed the button and cursed inwardly when the doors didn’t open immediately.
“I don’t believe you’ll hurt her,” John Paul called after him. “Not when you loved her once.”
“Once,” he agreed stiffly. “Then I was reminded that monsters don’t fall in love. We don’t get a future.” The door opened and he stepped inside. “Beauty can’t save this beast.”
John Paul didn’t stop him, nor did he take the elevator. He remained where he was even as the box closed.
Dimitri pulled out his phone the moment the doors pulled open in the grand foyer of Arrow Holding Corporation, the hub of the Syndicate’s business dealings. called Robby’s phone, expecting the doctor to be awake and watching over Ava. Instead, he was barely focused when he answered. His voice was a garbled mash of words Dimitri couldn’t understand.
Dimitri frowned. “Where’s Ava?”
“Is … is … you know?” the man slurred groggily.
“Robby!” Dimitri snapped into the receiver. “Where’s Ava?”
Robby giggled. “Pie.”
Dimitri hung up and ran to his bike. He dug out his keys and punched them into the ignition.
It was a twenty-minute drive back to the doctor’s apartment. Dimitri made it in ten. He parked in some random spot and darted upstairs. He used the keys he’d taken from Robby and opened the door.
The earlier scents of flowers and garlic bread had been replaced by the sharp stench of vinegar, the familiar tang of heated metal and burnt rubber and sweat. The place smelled like a drug den, something Dimitri had walked through too many times in his life. The foul odor was unmistakable.
“Ava?”
In the dark, he pushed his way into the sitting area. He vaguely recalled the path from doorway to the first sofa and the lamp on the end table. He flooded the room with its dim glow.
He found Robby slumped to the floor, half under the coffee table littered with charred spoons, a syringe, bits of tinfoil, a lighter, strips of rubber, and a small, empty baggie.
“Shit!”
He dragged the man out and scrambled for a pulse. Finding one, faint, but present, Dimitri drew back. He shot to his feet and ran to the backroom.
“Ava!”
The sheets were in disarray, flung back carelessly, but no Ava.
He turned on his heel and bolted into the bathroom, then the kitchen, screaming her name and getting only silence in response.
He returned to Robby’s side, grabbed him by the shirt front and shook him.
“Get up, you son of a bitch! Where’s Ava? Where is she? Get up!”
Robby’s head lulled uselessly on his shoulders. A fine trickle of drool dribbled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes rolled into the back of his skull. But he remained lost in his drug induced haze.
Dimitri dropped him heartlessly and lunged to his feet. He stayed there, mind in tatters.
Ava wouldn’t leave. She wouldn’t abandon her friend in this state. She wouldn’t. That was the thing he was certain of with glaring certainty. It left only one possibility; someone had taken her. Possibly the same people chasing them.
He ripped out his phone, but had no one to call. No one he trusted with this.
Panic swirled up around him in a black shroud. It pushed against his vision, blurring them. He tried to focus, but all he could think was how he’d failed her. Again.
The phone rang. Its vibration tickled the palm of his hand. He almost dropped it before a spark of hope had him shoving the thing to his ear.
“Ava?”
Silence strained for two full heartbeats, then, “No.”
The devastation nearly sent him to his knees. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and struggled to regulate his breathing.
“I called to see how the meeting went,” Erik said quietly. “What happened?”
He didn’t trust Erik, but he trusted him more than he trusted his mother. He was a man of integrity and had always been a support in Dimitri’s life.
“I need a crew.”
Chapter Ten
Ava woke to the metallic clang of pipes, the rumbling growl of an engine, the shuffle of someone weeping. It was all there, tangled with the stench of human excrement, sweat, rust, sewage, and something she couldn’t put a name to until she opened her eyes.
The ceilings were slabs of cut metal bolted from corner to corner in a dull, rusted gray highlighted by the three bulbs swinging from frayed cords.
Ava groaned as she struggled to roll onto her side. Her muscles protested the movement, her spine screamed as it was lifted off the sheet of ice. There was a pang in her lungs from being on her back for too long and her arm with the bandage screamed. But she sat up and squinted into the thick cloud of gloom stretching the length of her prison.
It was a metal box, stuffed to the max with … women. Women of various sizes, ages, and ethnicities. Women huddled in corners, curled up on the floor, standing against the walls. She had never seen so many women in a single place, except the bathroom at the mall during Christmas. But this wasn’t the bathroom at the mall. This wasn’t even a room. There was one door stamped into one wall and nothing else. There were no beds, not even blankets, and despite all the bodies, the air was frigid. There were no windows or vents to regulate air so the swirling stench of too many unwashed bodies in a single bit of space and the buckets in the corners kept shifting through the place like the ocean lapping and receding off the sand. Each one washed over Ava with an intensity that boiled her stomach up into her throat. But it was the terror. God, the terror was beyond elucidation. Hers rose off her and wove with all the others tangled overhead in a thick cloud. It crept along her spine with cold, serrated fingers and latched into something just behind her navel. It wrenched and she nearly cried out. She would have if she could find the voice.
“Where are we?” The question was aimed at no one and everyone. It rang out of her in a desperate breath she couldn’t regain. “Where are we?” she said again, louder, her voice shriller.
“A boat,” said a girl a foot away.
She couldn’t have been older than thirteen with a face smudged with dirt and tears. She wore jeans torn at the knees and a clumpy, knitted sweater that may have once been pink. It was a strange orange now. Blonde locks had escaped a flimsy braid and hung in matted, tangled clumps around stooped shoulders and there was a strange odor coming from the strands that Ava could smell, despite the distance between them.
“What boat? Where are we going? How did we—?”
A loud squeal echoed through the room, the distinct sound of hinges being pried open. Bodies shifted as the door opened and two men emerged. The sniffling increased. The girls scuffled back from the intruders, which seemed to amuse them as they set two woven baskets and a bucket with a ladle down.
From her place, Ava couldn’t see the contents, but it had several of the girls lunging forward, fears forgotten as their need for the items within became overwhelming. Even the girl next to Ava scrambled forward.
Ava watched as they returned to their seats with hunks of crusty bread. Some ate like they hadn’t in days. Others hugged theirs to their chests and wept. Ava didn’t move, no matter how much her stomach whimpered.
She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t naive enough not to recognize her situation. She knew the likelihood of surviving were about a hundred to one. Those were not great odds. They were barely comforting odds. The reality of the situation was that she was completely alone, trapped, and somewhere no one knew where. She had no cellphone and no way to make contact with the outside world, and the girls there would be useless. Even if she could convince them to rise up and fight the assholes holding them captive, she knew it wouldn’t realistically happen. All she could do was wait for the perfect opportunity to think of something better.
The baskets of bread and the bucket of water were the only rations they got that day. Ava watched the comings and goings and noted that no one ever came or went. The doors remained shut. Hours passed. Possibly days. The weeping girls had stopped, but the sniffling continued as background noise. Ava tried to sleep, knowing she would need her rest, but it was impossible to do on a cold ground surrounded by feet, heads, arms that were always nudging.
But it was also harder to keep the other thoughts at bay when she let her mind relax. She couldn’t help wondering what if she didn’t escape? She knew what happened to girls in her situation. She may never have thought it would happen to her, but she had heard the stories. She had seen the articles, the banners trying to raise awareness. All the things she’d ignored because … it wasn’t supposed to happen to her. She wasn’t like the girls who went missing, the ones that lived on the streets. She had a home and a family. She had people who would miss her. She wasn’t ready to face what would happen. She didn’t want to.
The men returned, possibly the next day, with another two baskets of bread and a bucket of water. This time, Ava fought her way for a drink and a torn piece of bread. The water tasted of ru
st and the bread was rock hard and smelled faintly of mildew, but she returned to her corner with it clutched to her chest. A couple of girls got into a fight over the last chunk and the guards laughed. It stopped when the bit they held tore in half and each took off in their own corners to eat.
It was only afterwards, as she sat there nibbling on the stale crust, that she felt the stab of mortification. It burned beneath her skin and welled up in her eyes as she stared at the scrap she’d been thrown. It was so degrading, scavenging like some rat for a bit of bread that would probably make her sick anyway. And it had only been the second day.
The next day was the same. Lots of sitting. Lots of waiting. No one spoke. She wasn’t sure if it was because they weren’t allowed or because no one had anything to say. The girl next to her had become a tiny ball against the wall. She hadn’t said a word since Ava’s arrival and only moved when food was brought in. Then she was gone and back before Ava could blink.
During the one meal break, the buckets were emptied and returned, unwashed. Ava had to force herself to use one and she’d almost cried. She returned to her corner, feeling humiliated and small, and unable to meet any of the other eyes in passing.
“It’ll get easier,” said a tiny voice once Ava had properly mashed herself into the steel walls. The girl was studying her filthy sneakers, but she spoke again, softer. “No one watches.”
“How long have you been here?” Ava asked.
Tiny shoulders lifted and then dropped. “I don’t know.”
Of course she didn’t. None of them did.
“What’s your name? I’m Ava,” she said when the girl remained unresponsive.
Green eyes lifted a notch. “Ilsa.”
Chapter Eleven
“Where is Ava?”
Even in text, John Paul’s annoyance was palpable. It buzzed in a relentless hum in Dimitri’s pocket until there was no choice but to shut the blasted thing off. It was probably the wrong time to be checking his messages, anyway. There was a time and place for everything and this wasn’t the place to get distracted.
The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) Page 15