by Nashoda Rose
I walked up to the gate of Chaos’s backyard where I’d agreed to meet Alfonzo. As far as he knew, I’d come to buy Raven since he claimed he owned her still. Of course, it was all bullshit.
What I hadn’t expected when I strolled into the backyard was Chaos and Alfonzo rolling around on the ground fighting over a gun. Fuck. Already this situation was volatile and Chaos was a live wire.
“Jesus,” I muttered, diving for Chaos before she got herself shot, and dragged her off Alfonzo.
I wasn’t nice about it either. Alfonzo had to be played. He was already uneasy about meeting me, but word was he was also a greedy fuck.
What the fuck was Chaos doing? This had to play out my way or Jacob would slip away like he and Alfonzo had done with London for years.
Alfonzo scrambled to his feet and went to punch Chaos’s face when I caught his fist in my palm and shoved him back. What I wanted to do was take my knife and gut him like a fish, but that had to wait.
I heard the commotion inside and shoved her forward into Alfonzo. “Hurt her and I hurt you.” Then I walked inside the house, saw the girl, Emily, on top of London, and a gun inches from both their hands.
I had no idea what the hell was going on except Alfonzo had lost control of the situation and I had to get it back in order for this to go down like I needed it to.
I grabbed Emily and hauled her off London.
“Stop,” I ordered as she struggled against me.
London’s breath hitched and her eyes flew to mine. Then, as if she were terrified to look at me, she dropped her gaze to the floor.
“Raven!” I used the name Alfonzo called her because I wasn’t supposed to know her real name.
Alfonzo yanked Chaos back inside and Raven quickly kneeled, head low as she came to my side. Jesus. Fuck. Seeing that, seeing London on her knees and so submissive and terrified of doing anything except what she’d been beaten into doing, it was like setting my insides on fire.
“Where’s the transporter?” I ground out. Jacob, I wanted Jacob. The bastard who was in charge.
Alfonzo kicked Chaos in the back of the legs, and she fell to her knees. I clenched my jaw, but didn’t say anything. I needed to be unemotional. I needed all I’d been taught, because if I slipped, then Jacob would disappear and my chance was gone.
I knew the second I put a call in to Deck about what was going down, the guy was going to go ballistic. Chaos and Deck had history and it was history that connected all of us, although Deck didn’t know it.
Alfonzo tied Chaos’s wrists behind her back and I saw her wince. This shit had never bothered me before. I wasn’t attached to Chaos, even though I’d been assigned to her since she was sixteen.
No attachments. It was simple. I kept it that way, but there was nothing simple about it now.
Alfonzo picked the gun up off the floor. “I promised you Raven. You have her. That’s our deal.”
“Our deal has changed,” I said. No matter what, Alfonzo was dying today even if he refused to lead me to Jacob. I excelled at ‘convincing’ men to do what I wanted and if need be, that was my next option. “What are you doing with that one?” I nodded to Chaos.
“She’s coming with us. And that bitch”—he nodded to Emily—“escaped Raul. No one escapes Raul and lives.”
“Raul’s dead.” Pathetic asshole.
Alfonzo kicked Chaos in the lower back, and she grunted and fell forward. I had my hand on my knife ready to gut him and screw the plan. It took everything I had to remain calm and steady.
“Once I’m done with their training, they’ll go to auction and never be found again. That’s if they live through it.”
I glanced at Chaos. Fuck, she was pissed and I knew what she was going to do before she did it. She slammed her head backward into Alfonzo’s knee.
I heard the sound of her skull hitting his knee cap; then Alfonzo yelled in agony.
Jesus Christ.
“No!” Emily yelled as Alfonzo raised his gun to Chaos.
“Killing her is a waste,” I said, careful to keep my voice calm. “Take me to the transporter. I need to see him.”
Alfonzo had his gun to Chaos’s head, his fingers weaved into her hair. “I can’t do that. That wasn’t the deal. Raven and the money. That’s it.”
“It’s the deal now,” I said.
Alfonzo’s face turned beet red. “I’m selling you the girl for half her price.”
“I could have easily found Raven myself. I found you, didn’t I? What I want is the transporter.”
“No one gets to meet him. He doesn’t meet with anyone. Ever.”
I shrugged. “He will meet with me. Call him.”
Alfonzo blanched. “You just don’t call him. It’s been set up already—”
“Raul is dead. That means you and your transporter no longer have a main source. Call him. Now. Or I kill you and take all three girls myself.”
“Fuck.” Alfonzo’s fat fingers twitched on the gun, and his eyes shifted side to side. Alfonzo raised the gun and hit Chaos on the head when she tried to get up.
“Georgie,” Emily cried and tried to pull away from me. “Please don’t hurt her.”
I tightened my hold on Emily’s arm and said in a low and almost inaudible voice, “It’s better this way.”
And it was. I’d dealt with Alfonzo’s type. If Chaos pushed it much more, he’d put a bullet in her head. Of course, I wouldn’t let that happen, but protecting her would blow my cover. I’d been forced to learn a lot at the farm. One of those things was to be unreactive even when shit went bad.
Alfonzo tied a strip of cloth around Chaos’s arm and pulled out a syringe. I knew what it was and it was going to keep Chaos alive because being drugged meant she’d stop fighting until I got to Jacob.
Emily struggled against my hold. “Please, don’t. Georgie.”
“Stop.” I yanked her arm to the side and she cried out in pain.
Alfonzo glanced at me and grinned. I was thinking about stabbing my knife into his eyeballs then cutting off his dick while I half-smiled back at him. He slid the needle into her vein, and within seconds, Chaos’s body relaxed and her eyes closed.
Alfonzo took out his phone, tapped a few times and then put it to his ear. He kept his voice low as he mumbled my name and something about a warehouse and meeting.
He hung up and nodded to me.
Finally.
Jacob.
“Let’s go,” I said. I guided Emily out the door ahead of me.
Alfonzo slung Chaos over his shoulder and I heard him order Raven to follow.
Like a fuckin’ dog. And the worst was watching her do it. My stomach curdled.
This shit was ending.
I leaned against a large piece of machinery with London kneeling beside me, her hands in her lap and her head bowed.
Chaos was still drugged and Alfonzo paced back and forth looking anxious. His eyes kept shifting to the warehouse door then to his phone. It was obvious the guy was nervous and, from when I’d met Jacob in Mexico, he had every right to be. It made me sick to think that London had spent two years with these men. No wonder why she was nothing of the girl I’d known.
Finally, the metal door slid on its tracks and opened.
Jacob.
There was no hesitation as he advanced toward me. No gun in sight. Arrogant and sure of himself. I was going to enjoy watching that flicker of life in his eyes fade away to nothing when I slit his throat.
He stopped in front of me, but when he spoke it was to Alfonzo, who had followed along beside him like a puppy dog.
“I don’t like changing plans,” Jacob said to Alfonzo. “It causes mistakes.”
I kept my eyes on Jacob as I said, “Raul’s right-hand man. I thought you were dead,” I lied.
“So does everyone.” Jacob nodded to Raven. “You’ve travelled a great distance for one girl. She doesn’t look worth it.”
“Where are the other girls?” I asked. There was no way he came to Toronto for simply one
girl. Even two. He had to have more and I took a chance asking, but I needed him to think I wanted to go into business with him. What I was doing was delaying. I was waiting for Deck who I called from my car on the way to the location. I couldn’t give it to him before we’d arrived, so he was trying to get here—fast.
Deck had already been looking for Emily, but when I mentioned Georgie, he went stone silent. What was a ‘be there in ten,’ changed to ‘be there in five.’
“Here. Awaiting shipment,” he replied.
I tensed. That was what I needed to know.
Jacob’s shoulders stiffened and I put my hand on my knife. He pulled his gun, turned, and shot Alfonzo in the head.
Alfonzo dropped to the ground.
I didn’t flinch. I remained leaning against the machinery, my hand on London’s head, making sure she didn’t move.
“I told him, I don’t meet clients. He didn’t listen,” Jacob said.
“So that would make me a liability.”
“Your offer piqued my interest.” Jacob paused. “I require a base to bring the girls before auction. You can provide me with that.”
My hand stilled in London’s hair as I heard a footstep. Deck. Time to finish this. “Who has been providing since Raul’s death?”
Jacob slipped his gun back into his belt. “No one. This is our first shipment in over a year. That guy Deck and his men have been all over us, and now, Alfonzo screwed up taking that one.” He nodded to Chaos. “I don’t make mistakes, Kai. I’m careful. Alfonzo wasn’t.”
“Oh, but you made a mistake, Jacob.” I smiled.
Jacob was quick. Before I even finished the sentence, he dove and rolled and my knife narrowly missed his throat. Fuck.
“Raven. Go to the girls,” I ordered.
I didn’t wait to see if she did because I knew she’d do anything I told her. I kept low as I snuck across the warehouse pausing behind a conveyor belt. I nodded to Deck who was approaching from the back of the warehouse.
Jacob disappeared behind floor-to-ceiling shelves, but I saw his feet as he circled around. And I knew exactly what he was doing and where he was headed. Shit. Keeping low and covered, I made my way back to the girls and came out into the clearing just as Jacob grabbed London hauling her up against his chest.
I came up on his left, my knife at my side.
“Let her go.” My gaze drilled into Jacob and my fingers tightened around the hilt of my knife. I was pretty fuckin’ sure I could kill him before his finger pressed the trigger.
London whimpered as Jacob’s hold tightened.
“In seconds, I can shoot Sculpt’s woman and snap your slave’s neck.”
“Then do it,” I said. I never took well to threats and I was betting he wasn’t going to kill both girls. If he did, he was dead.
Deck was crouched behind a pile of barrels on Jacob’s right. Our eyes met and he chin-lifted to me. I threw my knife at the same time as Sculpt dove out from behind the barrels and took Emily down, protecting her with his body.
My knife sliced through the air and into Jacob’s neck, so close to London’s ear I saw a speck of blood on the outer edge of the lobe.
Jacob’s gun went off, but it was a knee-jerk reaction as his body swayed. London scrambled from his hold and fell to her hands and knees, blood splattered over her face and chest.
Jacob’s hand still held his gun while his other went to his neck, blood seeping between his fingers as he tried to stop the flow around the knife.
He was a dead man any second, but I knew why Deck approached, raised his gun and shot him in the chest several times. It was a man’s need to put bullets in the guy who hurt his girl.
Jacob fell backwards. The gun slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor.
I strode over, yanked my knife from his neck, wiped the blood off on Jacob’s body then put it in the sheath at my waist. Then I went to London.
She was still on the floor as I crouched beside her. Fuck, I wanted so badly to pull her into my arms, tell her it was over. That the men who hurt her would never touch her again.
But for her, it wasn’t over. It was the beginning of finding her way back from what was done to her.
“Baby,” I murmured.
She closed her eyes, but kept her head down.
I gently put my arm around her and cursed under my breath at how much weight she’d lost. I felt Deck’s lethal stare as he was on his knees beside Chaos.
I turned back to London.
“London.” She didn’t respond and I closed my eyes as a wave of pain went through me.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
She spent years with Jacob and Alfonzo and seeing her like this hurt. No, it fuckin’ killed. Torture had nothing on this. The beauty of what London had always given me—lightness—was gone and that destroyed me.
I helped her stand then guided her over to Deck and the others. I saw Deck run his finger over the needle mark on Georgie’s arm. “Heroin,” I said.
I had my arm around London’s waist, and her head was tucked into my chest. Fuck. I didn’t want to let go, but I had no choice. There was a chance for her without me. A chance to bring the lightness back, the laughter, the sweetness. I was her destruction and I kept falling back into that rift and suffocating her in my darkness.
Deck nodded. “Probably better. Georgie would’ve gotten herself killed with that mouth of hers.” Deck stood. “Police will be here shortly. You better go.”
I peeled London away from me. I hadn’t intended on looking at her again. I should’ve just walked away. Instead, I had to look at her one more time and my heart stopped. Broken. The compassionate, brilliant woman with stubborn determination no longer existed.
Jesus, baby. You need to find your way back. You can’t do that with me.
I had to get out of here. “You need to stay with them. Deck will take you home.”
Her eyes widened and her face paled. Then she did what I never expected. She fell to her knees in front of me and grabbed my leg. “Please. Please take me with you.”
I remained motionless.
Fuck, London.
I’d never cared before. In order to care, you had to give a shit. I didn’t. Now I did and it was worse than any physical pain. It was acid eating away at my insides and feeling like there was no way back from the hell I lived in.
I belonged in the darkness and London belonged in the light.
I sighed and then nodded to Deck. He stood, took two steps then snagged London’s arm and pulled her away from me. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound.
Then I jogged away and didn’t look back.
ERASED.
The word lingered in my head. I became a ghost after ending all communication with London. She was better without me. She was safer.
It had been a year and seven months since I saw her in the warehouse on her knees begging me to take her with me. I pretended it was business as usual, but it wasn’t. What I did had nothing to do with business. It was personal as I became the silent killer.
I killed instead of satisfying any sexual needs. I killed to stop the nightmare of seeing her on her knees. And I killed to ease the pain. Weaving in and out of the sex trafficking industry, I killed those who deserved it.
It was my outlet.
My link to keeping my sanity.
Ernie still watched her, but I’d insisted on not hearing updates. He ignored the order and sent me emails anyway, to which for the first couple weeks my finger hovered over the delete button without opening the file. But I always read them.
Shit changed a year ago when she ran away. My first thought had been Vault and after feeling that out, I knew they didn’t have her. From Ernie’s take on it, London simply left with nothing.
And since she had nothing, there was no trail. No trail meant she was making it one fuck of a job for Ernie to find her. The only good news with her missing was that if I couldn’t find her, neither could Vault and they�
��d been looking because a couple of months earlier, Mother asked me to bring London in. And for the first time, I didn’t lie when I told her I couldn’t find her.
I had a suspicion that they thought I might even be hiding her. Of course, I wasn’t. And even if I were, I’d never bring her in. I was part of Vault, but I didn’t submit to them, although they thought differently. I just knew how to play their game and lie really well.
I knew why London ran. She was running from herself from—Raven.
And I fuckin’ hated Raven.
My brave London had submitted and that pissed me off more than anything else because they’d broken her so badly that she had no choice but to fracture and yield.
She’d become Raven and Raven was not a scientist. She wasn’t strong or stubborn or a smart-as-fuck girl who would do anything to save her father, who cared about others and wanted to save lives.
She’d become nothing.
Her freedom hadn’t freed her at all. It trapped her in a world she no longer knew how to survive in and she ran from it.
My disposable phone vibrated and I pulled it from my suit jacket pocket, and then leaned my palm against the glass window as I stared out into the city. “Told you I don’t want to know.”
“Too bad,” he said. Asshole kept me updated on his search for London whether I wanted to hear it or not. “Christie shelter. Found out she often goes there. Although, it’s all women, so I can’t get in.”
For the last six months, Ernie incorporated himself into the streets and lived with the homeless. London had always helped them and no matter who she was now, Ernie and I thought she might gravitate to them, meaning live on the streets.
But the homeless didn’t like to share information or were too drugged up to share, and the homeless shelters definitely didn’t share. Not when a guy, a guy like Ernie, was looking for a girl who was completely inside herself. It screamed abuse.
“Old man named Donald says he sees her often in an alley behind the Dark Horse. It’s a bar near the shelter. Donald says the bouncer keeps an eye on her. Helps her out. Slips her food.” Ernie paused and I knew why. His gut said we were finding her tonight and that meant he wanted me there. “You need to deal with this, boss. It’s been too long and she’s worse not better. Worth the risk.”