by LP Lovell
“Was she with you when you were sold?” I ask.
“No, she was sold three years before me. I don’t know if she’s alive or not.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Can I ask you something?”
I smirk, glancing sideways at her. “Sure.”
“Why do you do it?” she whispers, her voice strained and hoarse. “Surely there are other ways to make money.”
I take a deep breath and release it slowly. “You think I buy and sell girls like you. You’re wrong. I don’t.” She keeps staring at me. I need to keep her talking, and I figure she won’t remember this anyway. “My mother was a whore for the Juarez cartel.” I catch Carlos’ gaze in the rearview mirror, a frown pinching his features. “She was a single mother, living in poverty in the worst part of Juarez. She had very little choice. And when my sister was old enough, she also became a whore, working the streets for money. Only my sister didn’t handle it very well.” I swallow hard at the memory of what Violet used to be. “She wanted to go to America and study to become a nurse, but you know better than me how cruel this life can be. She had no means of saving money. So when one of my mother’s clients offered her a lot of money for her virginity, she took it. Of course, it wasn’t enough, so she kept working. Eventually, the reality of what her life had become was too much for Violet. She found an escape.”
Anna closes her eyes for a moment and gnaws on her bottom lip. “She became a junkie?” Her voice is so quiet I barely hear it.
“Yeah. I started running drugs for the cartel, hoping I could make enough money to get her out, but…it was too late. She overdosed when I was eighteen.”
“I’m sorry,” Anna whispers. When I glance at her, she’s staring at me. “I thought…”
“You thought that I was one of those sick fucks who buys girls like you and whores them out.” I shake my head. “What was done to you and what my sister chose are two different things, Anna. My sister was a whore. You are a victim and a survivor.” I stroke her bloodied hair away from her face, still fighting the rage that’s threatening to overtake me.
As if she can sense it, she reaches up and grabs my wrist, wrapping delicate fingers around my tattooed skin. The contrast is like night and day.
“What is Nero going to do to me?” she asks, her speech slurring slightly. That can’t be good.
I stroke absentminded circles over her neck. “I don’t know what he wants you for, avecita. But I promise you will never be a slave again. Don’t ask any more of me than that, please.” She nods solemnly and focuses her gaze straight ahead, shutting down the conversation. She doesn’t understand that I cannot just break promises for her. It’s not how the world works. It’s not how this world works. To deny Nero the girl he spent ten million dollars on? Well that would start a war I’m not prepared to take part in. Not for her. I may feel sorry for her, but I’m not about to fuck around with Nero for her.
He and I will definitely be having words though. I need to know that he won’t abuse her or hand her off to anyone who will. This is one of those situations where emotions are nothing but a hindrance.
When the car pulls up to the gate, I stare at the scene in front of me. One of the solid iron gates is hanging off its hinge, and both guards lay dead, blood pooling around them and soaking into the dusty desert sand. Jesus fucking Christ. Some of my men scramble from the SUV behind us and manage to get the other gate open wide enough for us to pass through. As soon as we pull up, Lucas rushes from the front door with the doctor trailing behind him.
I pass Anna off to Lucas, and her head lolls against his shoulder as she drifts on the edge of sleep. “Stay with her while the doctor sees to her.” I look at the gash on her head. “She doesn’t like needles. You might have to hold her down.”
His face pales, but he nods and walks off with her, the doctor following him. I turn to face Carlos who is now leaning against the side of the SUV, a cigarette propped between his lips. “I managed to patch the bullet hole. He’s alive if you want to start torturing him.” I glance past him to where two of my guys are dragging a guy from the back of the SUV. The sole survivor of this little attack. How unfortunate for him. “Put him in the basement,” Carlos calls out. “And chain him up.” His eyes dance with something dark and sinister.
They drag the man past us, his legs hanging uselessly beneath him. “You sure he doesn’t need the doctor first? Wouldn’t want him dying on us now, would we?” I smirk at Carlos, though I’m feeling anything but amused.
“Eh, hundred bucks says you can get it out of him before he carks it.”
I snort. “Why would I bet against myself?” And why would I want to make this fast?
He holds his hands up. “Hey, it’s a fair bet. You might accidentally kill him. Who knows?”
I roll my eyes and walk towards the house. “When the doctor is done with Anna, have him fix the guy up just enough to survive an hour and a lot of fucking blood loss.”
Carlos laughs. “Sure, boss.”
An hour later, and I stand in front of the man Carlos brought back. His wrists are bound in chains and pulled above his head. He’s shirtless with a wide white bandage around his torso, covering the bullet wound. A piece of tape holds a needle in his arm, attached to a blood bag. I’m told he will bleed out internally before the night is out regardless, but I won’t tell him that. A lack of hope tends to make people so very unwilling to talk.
“Who do you work for?” I ask, forcing the burning rage down so that I can focus. Interrogation must always be rational. He grits his teeth and glares at me, making me laugh. “You broke into my house, so you must know who I am. You must have known this couldn’t end well for you.”
“I have no fight with you,” he growls. “We just came for the girl.”
I crack my neck to the side before grabbing him by the throat. He chokes, his eyes going wide. “She is under my protection. You take her from me, and we have a fucking fight,” I snap. Carlos meets my gaze from his position against the wall. His eyebrows are raised, and he eyes me questioningly. I ignore him and look at the man hanging from the chains again. “Who. Do. You. Work. For?” He says nothing and a slow grin works over my lips.
“Oh, you just made your life very hard, mi amigo,” Carlos says, shaking his head. “I’ll get the pliers, boss.”
Sixteen
Anna
I wake up to a pounding in my head. Rolling over, I wince, slowly twisting my neck from side to side to try and alleviate the ache. I stretch my arm across the bed and freeze when my fingers meet a warm body. Cracking my eyes open, I find Lucas on the other side of the bed. His eyes are closed, his mouth hanging open as he sleeps. He’s still fully clothed, and there’s a pillow wedged between us. I wait for a sense of discomfort to come, but it doesn’t. It’s as though my mind can’t even comprehend Lucas as any kind of threat. He’s just too innocent, too…kind. Kindness is a quality I can’t recall ever seeing in another person, but he has it.
He jerks awake, letting out a little snuffle as he does. It’s cute. He glances around the room before looking at me.
“Ah, Anna. I can explain…” he trails off, his usual blush staining his cheekbones. “The doc said someone had to watch you because you might have a concussion, and uh, I fell asleep. I’m sorry.”
“So, I could have died, and you wouldn’t even have known?” I ask.
His eyes pop wide. “No! Yes. Maybe.”
I smile. “It’s fine, Lucas.”
He blows out a breath. “So, how are you feeling today?”
“Like I was in a car crash and a gun fight.”
“I’ll go and get you some more painkillers.” He hops up and practically runs to the door.
Lifting my hand to my cut forehead, I feel a neat row of butterfly stitches. Blood is crusted into the strands of my hair, and I know I must look a mess.
I shower and walk back into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around my body, startling when I see Rafael sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Rafael.”
>
He glances up at me, and I notice the heavy shadows lingering beneath his eyes. He’s wearing suit pants and a rumpled shirt, the buttons loose to the middle of his chest. His usual put-together self is nowhere to be seen.
“Have you slept?” I ask.
His lips pull up on one side. “I’ve had a busy night.”
I stare at him, and this strange feeling settles in my chest, a shift in the air.
I move closer until my knees are only inches from his. His eyes drift up my towel-covered body until they meet my face. He seems almost vulnerable for a moment until I spot the smear of blood on the collar of his shirt and the open splits in his knuckles.
He follows my gaze to his hands before clenching his fists. I don’t know why I do it, but I find myself reaching for one of his hands and taking it in my own. He watches me as I brush my thumb over the torn skin.
“He deserved everything he got,” he says.
“Who did?” I whisper.
“The man who broke into my house to take you.” I swallow and stare at his large tattooed hand in mine. “Does it scare you, avecita?” he asks.
I meet his eyes, so dark and bottomless. “No,” I breathe, and it’s not a lie. Granted, not many people truly scare me anymore, but it’s more than that; he makes me feel…safe. I can’t explain it, or maybe I’ve just given up trying because if I’m honest with myself, I’ve felt safe with him ever since that night on his office floor. It’s that gut feeling again, something beyond the rational workings of my mind.
“I have something I think you should do,” he says, turning his hand over and stroking his fingers over the underside of my wrist. “Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen.” He stands up, forcing me to take a small step back. He stares at me for a beat, and then he’s walking out of the room.
When I hobble into the kitchen, I find Rafael, Samuel, Carlos, and Lucas all crowded around the breakfast bar. Carlos and Samuel look just as tired as Rafael, both of them clutching cups of coffee in front of them.
Rafael’s hair is damp, and he’s now wearing a clean shirt. Maria walks over and hands me a cup of coffee before loosely wrapping one arm around my shoulders and trying to hug me. I remain awkwardly stiff until she finally walks away.
Samuel gets up. “Sit here, Anna.”
“I’m okay,” I argue, not wanting to take his seat.
“Sit, Anna,” Rafael orders.
Sighing, I take the seat next to his. Lucas takes my crutches and props them against the breakfast bar before pushing a couple of tablets in front of me. “Thanks,” I say, popping them in my mouth and washing them down with coffee.
“I see you avoided the needle,” Carlos says, smirking at the butterfly stitches on my forehead.
I glare at him, and he laughs. I turn to Rafael. “So what is it that you want me to do?”
I don’t miss the look that passes between him and Samuel. “Come with me,” he says.
He stands up, and I follow him out of the room, my crutches clicking rhythmically down the hallway. At the end he pushes open a door, revealing a set of stairs. Peering down into the darkness, a shiver of fear skates down my spine and his lips twitch.
“Scared of the dark?”
“Depends what’s in it.”
With the flip of a switch, the stairs illuminate. He leads me down them, and I swear the temperature drops by several degrees. Stopping outside a door at the bottom, he turns to face me.
“If you want to leave at any point, you can.”
I frown, and the door clicks open. The sight that greets me when I step into the room makes me freeze in place.
A figure hangs from a hook in the center of the ceiling, his wrists chained and his body slumped awkwardly. He seems to be unconscious, his chin lolling against his chest. There’s a line attached to one of his arms, hooked to a blood bag, suspended from the same hook as the chain. It confuses me until I take in the rest of him. One of his hands is bandaged, blood soaking through the white linen. On closer inspection, I realize that his fingers are missing and the hand is nothing more than a bloody stump. The shirt hanging from his body is torn, the bloodstained material exposing an array of bruises and cuts all over his skin. He’s a canvas depicting a violent and gruesome story. The blood bag is to keep him alive long enough that he doesn’t bleed out. It’s savagely morbid.
The metallic scent of blood fills the room until it’s all I can smell.
And this room…it looks like some kind of slaughter chamber. It’s cold like a walk-in refrigerator. There are no windows, just the one door—no escape. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all a dull grey, stained in various places with darker rust-colored patches. The entire floor slopes gently into the center of the room where a drain sits. A metal trolley rests against a wall with various knives, pliers, and knuckle-dusters on it. Rafael has a room in his basement solely for the purpose of torturing and killing people. In the back of my mind, there’s this niggling awareness that this should bother me, but the time for what should or shouldn’t be; has long since passed. I find the violence of it all strangely peaceful because I know it. Blood and pain, the simple act of consequence and punishment; I understand it more than anything else. This is clarifying.
Rafael leans against the wall, one foot kicked up against it and his thick arms folded over his chest. He watches me, studying my every reaction as though he expects me to run from the room screaming.
“Who is he?” I ask.
“You don’t recognize him?” His eyes flash with dark amusement.
“It’s hard to see through all the blood.”
He smirks. “This is the guy who broke into my house and took you.” He lifts a brow, and I inhale a deep breath. “He told me all about it. Why he did it, who he works for…”
“And?” I prompt.
“Dominges hired them.” I don’t know who that is. “The boss of the Sinaloa cartel,” he clarifies. I blow out the breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding.
“Oh.”
“So, avecita, what are you going to do about it?” He straightens away from the wall, prowling towards me with a lethal kind of grace. It would normally scare me, but it doesn’t because this monster is on my side. An unfamiliar sense of security washes over me when he moves closer, and I frown because I can’t quite compute this sudden trust in him. It’s not rational. But then, does it need to be?
“Me? You want me to do something?”
“This man hurt you.” His eyes drop to my neck, which I know is now ringed in thick purple bruises. He reaches out and strokes feather-light fingers over my throat, his expression darkening with each passing second. Rafael circles around behind me, his fingers remaining on my neck as he brushes my hair to the side. A shiver skates over my body at his touch and goosebumps erupt on my arms. “He took you, and he would have handed you over to Dominges without a second thought.”
“I know.” My voice is nothing more than a broken whisper. I can feel the heat of Rafael’s body behind me, offering strength while threatening to burn me—such a precarious line. I resist the dangerous urge to lean back into him, to take comfort in a man who I know can provide none. He may have saved me, but this is just business to him.
“This man made you powerless, Anna. Here. In my home. Where I promised you safety.” His voice is rough, restrained.
I turn around to face him, tilting my head back to meet his eyes. “That’s not your fault.” I place my hand against his chest and feel his heart racing beneath my palm.
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and I drop my gaze away from his, focusing on the sight of my hand on his chest. Willingly. I’m willingly touching him. I frown at the unfamiliar sight, and my hand falls away from him.
“He’s going to die, avecita.” He nods towards the bloodied man. “I think you should do it.”
My eyes go wide, snapping to his instantly. “What?”
“He wronged you, and in my world, that warrants a payment of blood.” He reaches behind him and slow
ly pulls a gun from the waist of his pants. “I don’t know how to help you any other way,” he says quietly. “So I’m giving you the choice. Either way, he dies.” He holds the gun out to me.
My crutches hit the ground with a crash when I shove them away. Tentatively, I reach out, wrapping my fingers around the cool metal. I wait to feel something…a sense of anxiety, or a whisper from my conscience…anything. All I feel is the heady rush of power that comes with holding that weapon, a power I’ve never once had before. I glance over my shoulder at the unconscious man. He would have handed me back to the very people I escaped, to a man who was willing to hire people to break into Rafael’s house just to get to me. “Dominges would kill me,” I say, more to myself. With the weight of the gun in my hand, my numb indifference splits like the parting of a curtain, allowing years of pent-up rage and bitterness to slither through to the surface.
“You escaped him. You make him look weak. Men have died for far less in the cartel,” Rafael growls.
“Wake him up.” Without argument, Rafael moves around me and walks over to a small sink I hadn’t spotted in the corner of the room. He fills a metal bucket with water before tossing it at the prone man. Jerking awake, the guy drags a rattling breath into his lungs. When he lifts his head, I see that one of his eyes is swollen shut. Blood streams from his mouth and nose and his jaw is an array of different colors. I know Rafael did that to him. Closing my eyes, I can picture him like an avenging angel, completely without mercy as his fists cause untold damage, driven by thick muscles and raw power.
When I open my eyes, the man’s focus is on me, his gaze slipping to the gun in my hand. He lets out a laugh that turns into a hacking cough. “You’re going to let the girl kill me?”
Rafael walks over and grabs a handful of his hair, wrenching his head back. “You should be thankful. You get to die at the hand of a beautiful woman with a bullet. I would have just started removing body parts until you bled out.” The man’s Adam’s apple bobs before Rafael drops him and moves back to my side.