Blaze shook his head. "The club isn't going to have ties to someone like him."
"Benicio smuggles," I said. "We sure he doesn't smuggle people?"
"No way," Blaze said. "He has a personal issue with it. He spent twenty years in prison in Panama, and from what I understand, it wasn't a fucking picnic. Doesn't like the idea of imprisoning anyone else. Dani's father, Guillermo, now that was another fucking story."
"You sure about that?" I asked, still wary. "We're talking about a lot of money. Big fucking money. Meia's only hinted at things, but everything I've pulled on Aston says he's connected to politicians, millionaires, people with real cash."
"Fuck," Blaze said. "I'm certain of it. Guillermo was involved in that kind of shit. Benicio wouldn't do it, on principle. Made a thing of it after Dani killed Guillermo."
"I'm not asking for club resources," I said. "Just a meet with Benicio. I've hacked Aston, and I've hit a wall. I've narrowed down places he could have taken her. My gut says it's Bangkok, though, back to where she was when she was a kid. The finishing school she talked about. Benicio's got an ear to the ground. I just need some more intel, and I need a contact for a weapon when I get there."
"Christ, Hammer," Blaze said. "You're not going over there by yourself. It's fucking suicide."
"You need to stay at the club -" I started.
"That's why I have a fucking Veep I trust," Blaze said. "I was out of the country when the shit with April happened. I was absent from the club, and if I'd have been around more, I might have seen what was going on with Mad Dog. What happened with Mad Dog- with April- it's my responsibility. You're not following this guy to fucking Thailand to get slaughtered by yourself."
I nodded. "Okay."
"I'll call Benicio. And for fuck's sake, call Axe. He's a better shot than either of us are."
I blinked, but my eyelids felt heavy and swollen. I saw everything through a haze, cloudy and blurred. I tried to move, rolled onto my side, and immediately felt nauseous. Bending over, I heaved the contents of my stomach into a bowl beside the bed, this ornate heavy thing with gilded edges I almost felt bad about defiling. Almost.
I didn't even hear him behind me. It was like he materialized out of nowhere, from behind me, his hand on the back of my neck, holding my hair away from my face. His touch was gentle, like a lover's.
Except he was no lover.
When I was finally finished, my body weak, depleted of everything, I turned to look at him, the man who held me, the man who had taken everything from me.
"Oh, don't look at me like that, doll," Aston said, his voice excessively polite. "It's not becoming."
"Where am I?" My voice was hoarse, my mouth dry. I could barely form the words. "Where's my son?"
"Oh, please tell me you recognize this place," he said. "It would be a tremendous disappointment if you didn't, after I put out the effort of bringing you here. Come on. You can feel it inside you, can't you? You've come home."
My heart felt like it stopped beating, and I inhaled sharply as I looked around the room, finally beginning to register my surroundings, the teak bed and the jewel-toned pillows. The smell of lemongrass and jasmine permeated the air, and nearly made me vomit again. Yes, I knew this place. How could I ever forget the place where my innocence was ripped from me?
"Where's Ben?" I asked again, my voice bolder than I felt. I pulled away from Aston in horror, walking toward the other side of the room. He watched me, the way an animal watches prey, his eyes following my movements. "Is he here?"
"I have plans for you, Meia. For both of you."
My blood ran cold. "What plans?"
"Now what would be the fun in it, if I told you everything right now?" Aston said, striding across the room to face me, gripping the bottom of my face with his hand. "There would be no excitement, no anticipation."
I struggled, and Aston squeezed my jaw tighter, then leaned in close to me. "And the excitement has just begun."
"Why, Aston?" I asked, my voice trembling. I reminded myself that I could endure whatever horrors he had planned for me. I could hold on. Ben's life was at stake.
"Because you're mine," he whispered. "I gave you freedom. Latitude. And you repay me by fucking some white trash biker? You seem to have forgotten who owns you. I owned you when you were a child, and I will always own you. You think you can have a life apart from me? I am everything to you. I give you breath."
"I'd rather die than be yours." I spat the words, before I could even think about their implications, for me or for Ben.
Aston let go of my face, and turned away from me as if to leave. His blow, a closed fist to my cheek, took me by surprise and I recoiled, my hands immediately going to my face as I stumbled back against the wall, covering my head in an instinctive attempt to protect myself. Pain shot through me, and spots colored my vision as the nausea from before overwhelmed me. I dropped to my knees, bile rising in my throat, and heaved on the floor.
From somewhere far away, I heard Aston's voice. "You will be mine until your dying breath. And, after that, Ben will be mine."
"No..." I choked out the word, the throbbing in my cheek so intense I could barely think about anything else.
"Ben is earmarked for a very special purpose," he said. "There is a group of very wealthy men who are interested in him."
Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I crawled on my hands and knees toward Aston, wrapped my hands around his ankles. "No, Aston," I pleaded. "Don't do this. Please don't do this to my son."
He looked down at me, with scorn in his eyes. "It's you who've done this, Meia. Until your last breath, know that it's you who've sent your son into the lion's den." He bent down, his face close to mine. "The men who will buy him? They are particularly fond of boys his age. They just...have a tendency to get a little, shall we say, carried away. They require new replacements due to their...vigor."
I heard myself wail, but it was like I was far away. Aston pulled away from me, and I knew he was leaving, but I dry-heaved on the floor, my stomach empty of everything. And when I couldn't expel any more, I lay there on the cool floor, curled up into a ball, unmoving.
Aston's words played in my head, stuck on a loop. It's you who've sent your son into the lion's den.
It was all my fault. I had been selfish, had allowed Hammer to get close to me. And now, my son was going to pay.
I was his mother. I was supposed to protect him, and I had failed.
There was no hope anymore, only darkness.
Benicio leaned forward, his elbows on the large mahogany desk, his hands under his chin. It was early in the morning, yet he was dressed in a suit, impeccably tailored to his frame, the same way he was the few times I'd seen him before. Two imposing men, clad in similarly tailored suits, stood behind him against the far wall, in front of the bookcases that ran the length of the office and rose from the floor to the ceiling. Their hands were at their sides, and they waited, unmoving, like London Palace guards or something. Looking forward, expressionless.
The ludicrous thought popped into my head that he must keep a tailor on retainer to outfit his staff.
Benicio said nothing for a while, even after Blaze had finished speaking. "I assume you've done some digging of your own on Aston, yes?"
I held up the binder containing everything I had on the man. "I narrowed down the possibilities for where they might be located. I don't know for certain, but out of the several locations, I'd be inclined to say they're at his location in Bangkok. Meia talked about the place where she was held - she called it a finishing school. Aston was younger then, and it's where he first...met...Meia and her sister." I stumbled over the word "met," and I forced the image out of my head of what he'd done to Meia back then.
And what he might be doing to her and her son now.
The thought made my stomach turn. But, more than that, it made me enraged. I wanted to kill him before; I wanted to destroy him now.
Benicio had said little during any of this, and I held my breath, waiting for his verdict.
The club's Panamanian employer had an extensive network of resources, broader than I could begin to even guess at. If anyone was going to give us a contact for weapons in Thailand, it would be Benicio.
"I'm familiar with Aston," he said. "He's been running a trafficking operation out of Vegas for years now. With the implicit permission of some influential political leaders, of course. There are rumors about his parties, and the people who attend."
"Parties," I echoed stupidly. Meia had said she was forced to do whatever Aston wanted. I felt my fists clench at my side.
"Invitation only, given by Aston or one of the key members. These are people who are extremely powerful, very well-connected, and wealthy. The rumor is that Aston provides whatever you need to satisfy a craving- no matter the type of craving- and no matter how young your preferred partner."
A chill ran up the length of my spine. "Meia and her son," I said. "There won't be a lot of time before they disappear."
Benicio shook his head. "No, I imagine not. There is some urgency here."
"We need a contact for weapons in Bangkok..."
Benicio raised his hand, silencing Blaze. "Weapons, transportation, manpower," he said. He gestured, and one of the men at the wall walked to his desk, leaned down while Benicio spoke in his ear, then nodded and left. "This will be done."
"This is a personal issue," I said. "With all due respect, I didn't expect -"
Benicio cut me off. "What is happening with your woman is tragic, yes," he said. "I am not a humanitarian. I may not like this trafficking of persons, but I am not a charity. But Aston and I have had dealings before. He does not only smuggle people. And I am, shall we say...intrigued by the possibility of expanding into an Asian market. I am always looking for opportunities for growth. Elimination of a rival is an opportunity for growth."
"I don't know for certain that they are in Thailand," I said.
"Details," Benicio said. "To be ironed out in the next several hours. I don't doubt your intelligence gathering skills, but I have my own resources who may be more useful. Are you sending anyone else from the club?"
"Squid," Blaze said. "And Axe is going to make the trip too."
Benicio nodded. "Axe," he said. "He will be very useful. So will my men." He paused. "You will, of course, preferably return Aston here. Alive."
"I would like the opportunity to end him myself," I said. The remaining associate standing behind Benicio glanced in my direction, his face unreadable, but his eyes spoke of an understanding of what would happen. After what he'd done to Meia and her son, I had my own end in mind for Aston.
"Yes, well," Benicio said. "There are particular questions I would like to ask him. Business questions about which I am curious. I have someone who is exceptionally skilled at extracting information. After that, he is yours."
If Meia doesn't try to kill him first, I thought. It would be a suicide mission.
The bolt in the door turned, and I sat up on the bed, my heart racing, my body immediately tensed in preparation for another assault. Aston didn't often hit me like that, square in the face, preferring to "preserve my beauty," and I feared what else that meant he had in store for me.
What he had in store for me was nothing compared to what he had threatened to do to my son.
I would kill him first, before I let that happen. Even if it meant I would die in the process. I didn't care what it took, what it might do to me.
The girl stepped inside, and the heavy wooden door shut behind her with a thud. She walked toward the bed, a tray in her hands, eyes cast downward to the floor. She appeared Cambodian, a young girl, maybe ten, and walked with the defeated gait I recognized from my own childhood. She set the tray on the table beside the bed without looking at me, and I reached for her hand.
"What is your name?" I asked.
She withdrew her hand like she'd been scalded, and glanced up at me with sad eyes, a dog who'd been beaten. She shook her head.
"How long have you been here?" I asked.
She turned to leave, looking at me before she left. "Eat," she said.
She'd been gone only a few seconds, before I reached for the water on the tray, gulping it down, feeling it fill my empty stomach. My stomach churned again as the water sloshed inside, and I took a few deep breaths, willing myself not to vomit. Being weak and dehydrated was the last thing I needed.
When I took the cover off the food, and smelled the curry, I could not stave off the memories of being here before. They washed over me like a tsunami, overwhelming and nauseating. I laid down on the bed, calming myself by slowing my breath, and it wasn't long before my eyelids began to feel heavy. I looked at the water glass on the bedside table. My brain felt foggy, and I wondered stupidly if I'd been drugged.
Being drugged is better than being here, I thought, as I drifted into oblivion.
When I blinked open my eyes, my first thought was that I was dead. It was illogical, I knew, but the hangover from whatever I'd been drugged with was making it hard to think. The room was pitch black, and when I tried to move, I felt my arms stretched out to the sides, attached to something.
I fought the acid taste of bile in my throat as I realized that my feet were restrained as well. Calm, I thought. Calm down.
The air in the room was cool, and I shivered, but I wasn't sure if it was the chill from the air or from the realization that I was naked, standing, my wrist and ankles chained to something.
Think of Ben, I told myself. Think good thoughts. Think of Hammer.
Hammer. I'd taken a huge risk, dropping the locket in the bathroom in the hotel. I held out hope that he'd find it, understand that I had not left voluntarily.
And what then? I asked myself. Do you really think Hammer is going to figure out where you are? Do you think he's going to come charging in, take down Aston, and carry you and Ben off into the sunset?
I was a wonderful fantasy. But that's all it was - a fantasy. Hammer was not coming to save me. No one was coming for me. No one was coming for Ben. What happened to me would happen to my son, and there was nothing I could do about it. Aston would sell me - no, I wouldn't get that treatment, after I'd betrayed him - no, he would whore me out to the worst of them, to the men who wanted to use me in horrific ways, torture me. And when the worst of those men were finished with me, he would sell me to the ones who liked to kill. Someone would plan a gruesome death for me and carry it out.
I knew what the rest of my short life had in store for me. I had no fight left in me. In a way, it was a blessing, what was happening now, being chained up like an animal.
Waiting to die.
At least it would end my life's misery. There had been only two times in my life when I'd felt happiness. The first was the period of time after Ben's birth, when the old man had banished us from the house and we were left alone. Just me and my son.
The second was with Hammer.
Everyone I loved was taken away. No, I hadn’t known him long enough for love. I was swept up in some lust-at-first-sight kind of thing. I was mistaking lust for something more, and that’s all it was. It was stupid and foolish of me to think it might be anything else. It was naive, this fantasy that he would swoop in and rescue me.
A fantasy, that’s all it was. And, of all people, I was not naive. I knew that there was no fairy tale for me, no knight in shining armor, no one who would take me away.
What I’d had with Hammer, it was temporary, a momentary shelter from the storm that raged around me. If I closed my eyes, I could feel him still, his touch still on my skin, his lips pressed gently against mine, the way he moved inside me.
At least I could hang on to that memory during whatever was to come. Aston could have my body, but he could never possess my mind.
In the darkness, I felt a hand on my shoulder, then on my arm.
“Who is it?” I asked. “Who’s there?”
Had he been here the whole time? I felt like I was slipping in and out of awareness, like my sense of time had somehow become distorted.
"Thanks for coming, man." Axe had gotten the first flight he could out of Colorado after I'd called him, and he'd just gotten to the clubhouse, where Blaze and I had set up a staging area in the back room. I clapped my arm around Axe's shoulder. "How's June doing?"
"Pregnant," Axe said. "But she's got some help running the bed and breakfast, so she'll be okay." Axe was the old Sergeant-at Arms for the Los Angeles chapter of the Inferno MC. It was Axe who'd taken April and MacKenzie and I back to his hometown in Colorado, hidden us when the club was going to shit out here. It was Axe's house where April had been murdered.
I hadn't seen Axe since then. I hadn't talked to him since then either. I knew he'd gone back to Colorado, was out of the club, running a bed and breakfast and some kind of bike shop in his hometown. He'd married June, his childhood sweetheart, and was doing the whole dad thing.
He didn't look like the Axe I knew back in the MC. Yeah, he was still tatted up and shit, but the old Axe was mostly shithoused and crazy and out of control. The old Axe was haggard, rough-looking. He'd cleaned up his act when he met June, and whatever he was doing now, it was working. He looked like a new man.
"You look happy," I said.
"Shit," Axe said. "I'm good. It's not exciting, but it's good. Calm, you know?"
I nodded, but I didn't know. Calm was something I hadn't experienced in a long time. Calm was something I didn't know if I'd ever have again. The closest I'd come to that was the short time I was with Meia, and fuck, could I really say that was anything? Stolen moments in hotel rooms with someone who was a prisoner in her own life? I was about to risk everything to fly to another country for some girl I'd just met.
"This girl," Axe said. "She worth it?"
"Yeah, man." I said it, with no hesitation. "She is." The thing was, I knew it in my gut. I didn't even need to think about it. She was worth it. A hundred percent.
Breaking Hammer (Motorcycle Club Romance) (Inferno Motorcycle Club Book 3) Page 17