The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2)

by Airicka Phoenix

  He turned his head to the window and the view of a brick building on the other side. He stared at it, his jaw line a sharp point. He was breathing. Dimitri could just make out the steady rise and fall of his chest. But there was no other movement otherwise.

  “I have men searching the underground,” Dimitri said, needing him to understand that he was doing something. “And the other territories—”

  “She’s not here.” Said so softly, Dimitri almost didn’t hear it.

  “What do you mean?”

  His inhale was deeper this time when John Paul spoke. “They wouldn’t keep her here. They would know I would find them. They would have moved her.”

  Something thumped in his chest, a patter of hope he hadn’t felt in … ever. “Where? Where would they take her?”

  John Paul turned his head a notch and fixed Dimitri with solemn, angry eyes. “It’s a very big world. They could take her anywhere.”

  That wasn’t the sort of assurance Dimitri had been hoping for.

  “How do we find her then?”

  John Paul went quiet again. He turned pensively back to the window.

  A sharp rap against glass caused him to jump. His head jerked up just as John Paul lowered his arm. A second later, the man outside was slipping in behind the wheel. Door was slammed shut.

  “Robby’s,” was all John Paul said.

  Dimitri frowned. “I already talked to him. They caught him off guard. He was unconscious through most of it.”

  John Paul never even glanced his way as the SUV started forward. “I don’t want to talk to him.” A muscle tightened in John Paul’s cheek. “This is why I wanted you to stay away from her. I knew you would be the reason I would lose her.” He sucked in a breath that flared his nostrils. “You should have came to me. You should have told me she was gone sooner!”

  “I know.” Dimitri didn’t even attempt to justify his actions. He’d been an idiot. He’d been careless and reckless, and prideful. He’d allowed his own misery to cloud his better judgment. He had allowed Ava to get so far out of his reach that… “Just…” He trailed off with a vicious swipe of his fingers back through his hair. The dark strands had been released from the elastic he’d twisted them into and hung in locks around his bent face. “Please help me find her.”

  John Paul remained impervious to his plea. His eyes narrowed before he looked away.

  “Of course I will find her,” he mumbled. “I will tear this world apart if I have to, but I will find her, and when I do…” He glowered at Dimitri with a hatred birthed from the very brimstones of hell. “You will never come near her again, is that understood?”

  Dimitri nodded. He would have accepted any punishment, any brand of torture, anything if it meant getting Ava back.

  No one said another word as they crossed the city. No one even mentioned the bike they left abandoned. Not even Dimitri. He didn’t care. All he could do was cling to the possibility that this was it. That John Paul would get answers. They would find Ava. They would bring her back.

  The SUV pulled up at Robby’s apartment. Doors began to pop open only to be stopped by John Paul.

  “You won’t be needed for this, Jarvis,” he told his driver calmly as he opened his own door and slid out.

  The driver inclined his head, but remained behind the wheel.

  Dimitri followed his father out into the street. It was deserted, the block of apartments dark as their occupants slept. No one took any notice as the pair crossed into gray stoned building. Dimitri picked the locks on the main foyer doors and let them in. They took the elevator up in silence.

  At Robby’s front door, they paused and stared at the gold three eighteen bolted into the wood. Dimitri noticed John Paul studying the knob and the area around it for forced entry.

  “He let them in,” he said. “They knocked.”

  John Paul said nothing. He raised a hand and knocked. Then knocked louder. When no one answered the second time, Dimitri pulled out his kit and went to work on the lock.

  The tumblers gave too easily. The door swung inward and John Paul swept in as if he owned the place.

  Dimitri was slower. The foul stench that claimed the air with a vicious obsession stilled him on the threshold. His eyes burned. His lungs ached, desperate not to draw that air in. His palms dampened. He knew, even before John Paul paused at the sofa, Dimitri knew Ava would never forgive him for this.

  Chapter Twelve

  Clothes were the only things Ava had in common with her mother. Not to the point where they discussed it or went shopping together, but a silent, mutual appreciation. It was actually Charlotte who convinced Ava to get a job at a magazine. Not directly. It was during one of her snide, cruel moods and she’d said it as a jab rather than a suggestion, but it had stuck with Ava.

  Being an editor hadn’t been Ava’s original plan when she’d gone to college. Journalism didn’t interest her. She had no dedication to trudge through war wasted cities in search of a story. But she had always loved fashion and writing. Designing clothes had come to mind when she’d been deciding on an elective, but she had zero flair with a needle and thread, never mind the talent to actually draw. The only thing she’d known at that point was that she wanted to do something with clothes or something with writing.

  Writing a column about clothes was practically a dream come true.

  But that was gone now. Her position was probably filled by Trina or Sam, one of the other two editors at Chaud. Her things were probably boxed up and tucked away in some closet for her to go get, or already tossed out. Melanie wouldn’t have had the patience to wait longer than a week for Ava to show up. Brian, Ava’s assistant, would have tried to call her, had probably gone to her apartment. He would have told Melanie that Ava was unreachable. That would have been the end of that. Melanie would have ordered Brian to clear out Ava’s desk and get all her files to Trina, or Sam.

  Without a job, it probably meant no more paychecks. Her rent cheques would have bounced. Ed, her landlord, would have already let himself in to see if her carcass wasn’t decomposing somewhere. He probably already had people clearing out her things and getting the place ready for new renters, renters that didn’t just up and vanish in the dead of night.

  Or, maybe they’d all seen the news about her being held hostage and wanted by the police.

  Whatever the case, whatever was happening in the world beyond the dipping and swaying ship, Ava no longer belonged to it. Her world had become the four metal walls and the scuffle of those trapped there with her.

  In the time she’d spent with the cold metal biting through clothes to singe skin, she’d learned that her fellow prisoners were from all over the world. Some of them didn’t even speak English. Some had been captive for months, others for only days, like her. She learned that not all of them were homeless. Some had been taken from bars and nightclubs. Others had been scooped up off the street while walking home. None of them knew when they would ever see daylight. None of them had any hopes of going home.

  There were fifty girls in total. Ava had counted them multiple times. The majority of them were teens, barely legal. They were the ones that cried at night. The older ones were resigned. They sat silent and motionless. Ava tried not to let their submission bring her down. She tried to remember that John Paul and Dimitri would never stop looking for her. She tried to be brave, to never cry when anyone was looking. But the tears were the one thing she couldn’t stop. They came whenever they pleased and left just as quickly.

  There were eight men who periodically entered the room. They arrived in sets of two, always the same two, and they did it in shifts. They were mixed in races. Three were white. One black. One Asian. And three darker skinned, middle eastern or Hispanic. She couldn’t tell. They arrived with the same baskets of bread and the bucket of water. Ava was beginning to suspect those were days passed. At least, that was how she started counting them.

  They never spoke, but their faces when they walked in said plenty. These were not men wit
h an ounce of mercy in their bones. They felt no shame over what they were doing. They thrived on the fear and pain they caused. It was clear every time they walked into the room that this was the moment they’d waited for all day. The whimpers, the scuffle as girls tried to get away but couldn’t, aroused them. It made them feel strong and in control.

  Ava hated them as she had never hated anything in her life. It was a violent, blood thirsty kind of heat that reared up from the very pit of her stomach. It was the kind of rage that made her want to sink her teeth into their throats. It was vile and bitter and maddening. She could literally feel herself going crazy every time they left and she did nothing. She wanted to scream and kick at the walls. But she didn’t. She didn’t move.

  “How far do you think we are?” Ilsa asked in her soft little voice, distracting Ava from her thoughts.

  Ava shrugged. “Back before ships had engines, it would take months to get anywhere. With an engine, we could be literally anywhere.”

  “We’re probably going somewhere in Europe,” said the tiny Hispanic girl a few feet away.

  Ava blinked, more surprised by the input of conversation than the comment itself. “Why do you think that?”

  The girl shrugged “It’s always Europe.”

  “Bangladesh,” said the blonde next to her. “I did a paper on it in school. They’re like the leading human trafficking country in the world.”

  “I always wanted to travel the world,” the dark haired girl muttered. “Never thought it would be like this.”

  “Hey,” Ava jumped in quickly when Ilsa whimpered and pressed her face harder against her raised knees. “We’re going to get out of this, okay?”

  “What are they going to do to us?” The girl wept fat tears that cut clean paths down her dirty cheeks.

  No one answered. Not the blonde. Not the dark haired girl. Not Ava. But they were all thinking the same thing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dimitri didn’t hate hospitals. It was just another building. But he hated the smell of them. He hated the weird sounds of machines and the dull light that never flattered anyone. He would have left. He even started to several times, making it all the way to the front doors, before finding his heels turning and walking back.

  He told himself it was because the man on the bed, strapped to a million wires and tubes, had saved his life and leaving him alone was unforgivable. But the truth of it was that Ava wouldn’t have wanted her best friend to be left alone in that place. She would have wanted someone to stay with Robby while he recovered and made sure the doctors were doing all they could to make him better.

  John Paul stayed the night as well. Dimitri wasn’t sure if it was for the same reason or if the other man was just keeping an eye on him, but it was comforting not being alone when the doctor explained the prognoses.

  “Overdose,” he said flatly. “He’ll be fine in a couple of days.” He hesitated, adjusted his thick glasses and shifted his podgy weight from one foot to the other. Dimitri couldn’t tell if he was just apprehensive or tired of standing. “Your friend has a problem,” he said slowly, delivering the news gently. “You should consider getting him help.”

  Dimitri frowned. “What problem? He hasn’t used in two days.”

  The doctor looked puzzled by that. “Overdose doesn’t take two days to happen. Judging from the track marks on his arm, it’s been about two days’ worth.”

  “We will take care of it. Thank you, Doctor,” John Paul intervened when Dimitri started to ask him how that was possible.

  The doctor inclined his head and shuffled away, leaving Dimitri to turn to his father.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “He was injected two days ago. Why would he have other track marks?”

  John Paul was quiet as a trio of nurses slipped past them and hurried in the opposite direction. He waited until they were out of sight before fixing his gaze on Dimitri.

  “His best friend was kidnapped from his home, under his watch, what would you do to make that pain stop? Getting drugged the first time was probably just an opening for another taste.”

  Drugs were something Dimitri had never allowed himself, no matter how he’d been tempted or how readily available the numbing escape had been. But he had seen what it could do to a man. He had watched as it had destroyed everything around them until they were but a shell of their former glory. No one truly understood the appeal until they found themselves twisted into a corner, lost and alone, with only self-destruction as company. Dimitri had always had Ava … or Millie. Now he had neither and he understood the need for the powdery haze more than ever.

  “What do we do?” he asked, ignoring the pull of his own inner demons.

  John Paul turned his head in the direction of Robby’s room. “I will take care of it.”

  Dimitri wasn’t sure what that meant, but he left the details to the other man.

  “Did you find what you were looking for when we went to Robby’s apartment?”

  John Paul shook his head. “I had hoped something might have been missed, a note, maybe.”

  “I checked for those,” Dimitri said, willing the edge out of his voice. “I turned that place upside down.”

  John Paul merely hummed in response, his attention focused on something at the end of the corridor.

  Dimitri followed the path of his interest down a long, white hall lined with a series of doors and a set of doors at the end. Seeing nothing, he turned back.

  “Where’s Ava’s mom?”

  That seemed to pull John Paul from his pondering and he frowned. “Charlotte has taken a trip to France for a little while. The press and questions were too much and she needed space.”

  Dimitri knew all about Charlotte, if not from Elena than from Ava. He’d never personally met the woman, but he never liked her. She’d always struck him as a psychopath with narcissistic tendencies. Her behavior towards her own daughter had always appalled him to the point of battling back the raw rage that always swelled up. It was a never ending question of who he loathed more, his own mother, or hers. Hers always won, because no matter what sort of conniving, backstabbing, bloodthirsty shrew Elena was, she never pretended to be anything else. He would have wondered if Charlotte was even slightly worried about Ava’s disappearance, about her involvement in a spree of murders, but he knew, since it had nothing to do with Charlotte personally, it would make little matter in the scheme of things. The only time she would make any sort of reappearance on the scene would be if Ava was returned dead. Then she could bask in the sympathies and attentions of others. Either way, it would wind up being about her and what she could garner from it. The woman was sickening, not that John Paul would listen. He had an odd sort of fascination for her. Dimitri didn’t understand it, but that wasn’t his place.

  “Does Robby have any family?” he asked instead, deciding it was easier to simply change the topic.

  John Paul nodded. “A mom and sister, but he doesn’t talk to them.”

  “Should we call them?”

  John Paul shook his head. “They won’t come and he will not thank us if we call them, believe me.”

  “There has to be someone who can stay with him,” Dimitri argued. “We can’t leave him alone.”

  The man’s shoulders lifted with his deep inhale. It was more impressive when his hands were behind his back and he seemed to expand on the spot.

  “He won’t be. I will make sure of it.” He continued to stare down the aisle, mind only half on their conversation.

  “Why…?” The man wasn’t listening. It didn’t matter how straightforward or logical his responses were, he was transfixed by something over Dimitri’s shoulder. He looked back. “What are you looking at?”

  A line appeared between John Paul’s brows. His eyes narrowed in concentration before he mumbled absently, “Transportation.”

  Dimitri raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  John Paul moved away from him and stopped when he got to a cork board littered with pamphlets on a
ddiction counseling, babysitting offers, different hotlines, and a glossy poster for a weeklong cruise around the Mediterranean. John Paul rapped at it with his bent knuckle.

  “They would need to use something to get her out of the country.”

  It took only a second for Dimitri’s head to get into the game. His gaze went from the man to the poster, then back. His hand was already digging in his pockets.

  “I’ll call Marcus.”

  John Paul placed a hand over the one holding the phone. “No.” He took his hand away and exhaled. “I want to see his face.”

  If the city were broken into sections, it would be a pie, a big, fat, messy pie with a round hole in the center. The rest would be sliced into four, large quarters. The center would be the mainland, John Paul’s territory, with the rest circling it.

  The east sat on the harbor, toes deep in the ocean and the vast majority of all international transports by water. They were also the ones neck deep in prostitution and human smuggling. If Ava was taken out of the country, or even out of the city, the east would be the ones to make that happen.

  Marcus greeted them at the front of his Mediterranean mansion, already dressed and alert despite the early hour. He jogged down the steps until he stood before them on the curved driveway circling a stone fountain. He took each of their hands in turn, his expression politely curious.

  “Did we have a meeting?”

  “We need a minute of your time,” John Paul said.

  Marcus shrugged. He nodded and motioned them into the estate.

  The main doors opened into a gleaming foyer and stopped several feet in with a sitting area. The room continued to sprawl out with open doorways on either side and another sitting area further in near a series of windows ten feet high. Through one of the doorways, Dimitri noticed there were two more sitting areas placed strategically on opposite ends of the room, and wondered how many a house needed.