by K. A. Linde
“Hey, Steven,” she said, beelining toward him. The other guys dispersed when they saw that she was taken, but a few glanced over at her curiously as they passed.
“Hey, baby. What can I do for you?” His eyes crawled her body.
“I’m looking for my brothers,” she said impatiently.
“Do I know them?”
She gave him a disbelieving look. Holy shit! They had dated for over a year, and he couldn’t even recognize her in a change of clothes and a good long shower.
She snapped her fingers in his face, drawing his eyes up from her tits. “Steven, it’s me, Reyna.”
His eyes nearly popped out of his face. “Reyna Carpenter? Shit, woman!”
“Yeah. It’s different,” she said tonelessly. “Have you seen Brian or Drew?”
“Different? You look fucking amazing.”
“Thanks, but have you seen my brothers?” she asked. She couldn’t keep the impatience from her voice.
“They were out looking for you yesterday.” Steven whistled and ran his hand down her side boldly. “Little Reyna Carpenter all grown up and a woman underneath those jeans and T-shirt.”
“Cut it out, Steven.” She slapped his hand away. “You already know what I look like. I’m not here for you. I just need to see my brothers.”
“Don’t worry about them,” he said persuasively. He started walking her backward with this hungry look in his eye that she had seen before. It meant trouble.
“Steven,” she warned.
“Come on, baby. Don’t you want another round?”
“You’re the one who left me, remember? You wanted to get it elsewhere.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” he said dismissively.
Her back hit the wall of the warehouse, and she gasped. His eyes lit up. It was clear that he knew he had the upper hand, and he liked it. In this neighborhood, no one would stop him from coming on to her. She should have listened to her driver and thought about her safety. She just hadn’t thought she needed it from anyone here, least of all Steven.
“Where did you get these new threads?” he asked, plucking the fabric.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Reyna, you can tell me.” His hand ran down her waist, and she tried to push him away. Any advantage she’d had she lost when her back hit the wall.
“I’m not interested.”
“Explain to me how a girl with nothing can go from that to this overnight. Huh?” He eyed her up and down suggestively. “Either she’s a whore or she’s a blood whore. You been to Visage, Reyna?”
She looked away, unable to see the accusation in his eyes.
“Leave me alone!” But it sounded weak even to her ears.
“So you have! Let me see that neck.” He tilted her head, searching out the customary bite marks that signified someone was working for a vampire. She slapped his hand away, but he just grasped it and pinned it to her side.
“You can be a whore for a vamp. You can be a whore for me.”
His lips lowered to her neck. His large body pinned her roughly against the wall. No matter how much she moved or squirmed or kicked to try to loosen herself, she couldn’t get away.
Tears started flowing down her face. She had decided to go to Visage to help her family. She had worried the whole time that she would be used and taken advantage of by the vampire who took her in. But so far Beckham had done none of those things. He’d given her a place to live, a new wardrobe, and access to unlimited funds. He hadn’t even bitten her yet. Instead, her worst nightmares were coming true from someone she had known at home.
Her world had just flipped upside down.
Chapter 7
“Get off her!” someone cried behind Reyna.
She closed her eyes and tried to make it go away. This had been a mistake. She shouldn’t have come here. Not looking like this. But she had never anticipated that she wouldn’t even be recognizable. She knew she looked different, but she was the same Reyna.
Steven was hauled off of Reyna, and she stumbled away from him, gasping. She covered her mouth and watched as he was pushed backward.
“Brian! Drew!” she cried. Her brothers had saved her.
But they weren’t paying attention now. They were focused on Steven. He was outnumbered two to one, and while they had been friends at work, her brothers didn’t take kindly to anyone disrespecting a woman. She had seen them come home bloody more nights than she could count. They were the only people around here that stood up for anyone. They had always stood up for her.
Steven tried to throw a punch, but Brian grabbed his arm, twisted him around, and bent it behind his back. Drew landed a solid punch to his kidney and then another to his face. Then he swept Steven’s feet out from under him. Steven landed in a heap on the hard gravel floor. As he sputtered and tried to straighten himself, Brian kicked him hard in his ribs, and Drew got in a swift kick to the temple. Steven went slack, passing out.
“Brian! Drew! Oh my God, I’ve never been happier to see you!” Reyna cried.
They turned and stared at her. Drew’s eyes widened in recognition first. “Reyna?” he asked, confused.
Dear God, do I look so different in these clothes that even my own brothers don’t recognize me?
She rushed into Drew’s arms and buried her face in his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her and patted her twice on the back. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”
She swallowed hard and nodded. “I can’t believe he would do that.”
“We can’t either. Guy was a jerk. Forget about it. Just tell us where you’ve been. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Brian touched her arm gently and pulled her back from Drew. “What the hell happened to you?”
Both of their eyes went wide when they got a good look at her. She couldn’t imagine what she looked like to them right now. She wasn’t in the fanciest clothes in her new closet, but it was nicer than anything they had ever seen before. Her skin was practically flawless. Her hair was shiny and smelled like lavender and honey.
“Let’s go home, and I’ll tell you all about it,” she promised.
Brian shook his head and crossed his arms. He was the older of the two, and he always played parent. He had worry lines in his forehead and his mouth was set in a stern frown. It was clear that her absence had done a number on him. He looked too fatigued for someone so young.
“We need to talk now, Reyna. You scared the shit out of us. We had to miss work. We’ll never make that money up! There needs to be some real explaining.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry. I can explain.”
“Then explain,” Drew said, trying to mold into the same stance as his brother. He had always idolized Brian, but he was so much softer and more artistic. If anyone in her family needed to get away from the warehouses it was Drew. He was too smart and too creative to be stuck in a factory.
“Come on. I have a car waiting for us around the block.”
She glanced around anxiously at the people who were walking out of the factory. They kept looking down at Steven’s body and then up at her new clothes. Rich people were not welcome in this area. They were more likely to get mugged or killed. She should have thought better about this.
“We’re drawing a crowd,” she whispered.
Brian and Drew seemed to get clued in on what she was saying and gestured for her to lead the way.
Drew rushed forward to stand next to her. He leaned over and whispered into her ear. “A car, Rey?”
“I’ll explain at home,” she said sheepishly.
Luckily when they made it back to the car, it was still perfectly intact, the driver still seated inside, not a dent or scratch on the shiny black exterior. Something she couldn’t say about her own appearance. Brian and Drew looked beyond shocked.
“Tha
t’s not a car, Reyna,” Brian said. “That’s a very very expensive car. You’re freaking me out.”
When the driver saw them approaching, he hopped out of the front. “Here you are, Miss Carpenter.” He opened the door for her. She smiled at him and tried to avoid the looks her brothers were giving her. This wasn’t going to be fun.
“Reyna, start talking,” Brian demanded once they were inside the car and on the way back to their apartment.
She nodded her head at the driver. “We’ll talk when we’re alone.”
The short drive was tense.
Drew kept a close hold on her as if he thought that she might disappear again, but she knew Brian was seething. He probably realized more than Drew had that something had gone very wrong. And as the patriarch of their family, he was responsible for making sure that didn’t happen. She wanted to reassure him, but the truth was…something had gone very wrong.
Once the driver pulled up in front of their apartment once more, they piled out of the car. When she saw the total cost for her drive, her body froze. No way was there enough money to cover that. Rising fuel prices had made public transportation a necessity, and in most places people just walked. She had walked all the way to Visage hospitals after all.
“Would you like me to wait, Miss Carpenter?”
“Is it going to cost me a small fortune for you to do so?”
He laughed. “I’m afraid so, but I doubt Mr. Anderson would mind.”
She sighed. She couldn’t live off of his charity like that. She would find another way back. “No. I’ll call for another cab. There’s a number for that on the Internet, right?”
The man gave her an amused look. “Everything is on the Internet.”
“Oh, good. Then you can go.”
“Are you certain? I don’t mind staying.”
“No, it’s okay.”
Shutting the door behind her, she followed her brothers up to the third floor of their building and then into their tiny one bedroom again. When she had been in here in a hurry earlier, she hadn’t truly noticed the extent of the difference between her home and Beckham’s penthouse. One day and it already felt too small, cramped.
But at the same time, it felt…homey. Lived in.
Beckham’s place in comparison was stale. There was no love there. All the money in the world couldn’t make a house feel like a home.
“We’re here,” Brian said. “Now talk. Where have you been? Why are you dressed like that? How did you get a car like that?”
Drew frowned and looked away from her. It was as if he already knew the answer. Brian didn’t want to believe it. He had to hear it from her before it could be true.
“I went to Visage yesterday.”
“What?” Brian cried. “No!”
“I put in an application weeks ago. My number was called. I went to the hospital, went through testing, and was placed with a Sponsor.”
Her brothers looked horrified. Utterly horrified.
“You didn’t,” Brian said softly.
“I did.”
Seeing his pain made her confidence waver, but she couldn’t go back on it now.
“I was placed with a high-ranking Visage official, Beckham Anderson.”
“We don’t care what his name is,” Drew spat. “We care that he’s made a blood whore of our sister.”
Reyna flinched as if he had slapped her. “He hasn’t…well, I guess not yet.”
“How could you do this?” Brian asked.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Reyna said, pointing her finger at her brothers. “You two work day in and day out to make scraps, and for what? This one bedroom apartment? Barely enough food to feed ourselves? Half the time we don’t have electricity or running water. You work too hard for too little, and I couldn’t just sit around and let it happen any longer.”
“So, you decided to feed those bloodsucking bastards?” Brian yelled.
“I looked for work. You both know I looked everywhere for work. But no one would hire me.” She threw her arms out wide. “I’m nobody. I’m nothing. I’ve no education. No skills. There was no other choice.”
“There’s always a choice. And you knew it was the wrong one, which is why you didn’t tell us,” Brian said.
“Don’t judge me, Brian!” she snapped. She had made her decision and she was sticking to it. “I did what I had to do. And better yet I got put into a system where I make double the average employee.”
“Call it what it is, Rey. Blood escort,” Drew said.
She couldn’t look him in the eye. She was too ashamed of that word. Steven had made her feel like a whore, and she had offered herself to Beckham last night like a whore. Maybe he was right.
“Why are you making double?” Brian demanded. His arms were crossed and he looked pissed. This wasn’t the happy reunion she had been hoping for.
This was the part she had been dreading. Most Visage employees rotated monthly, with time off with family when they weren’t needed. Her situation was different. And she knew that her brothers were going to hate it.
“Because I signed up for a new position. One of the doctors has been developing a new match system,” she said carefully.
“Isn’t it just done by blood type? How can it be new?” Brian asked.
“Well, they’re trying to find individuals who are interested in a longer term position.”
Brian furrowed his brow. “How much longer?”
“Um…indefinitely.”
Drew stalked away from her. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“They want to keep you as a feeder forever?”
She shuddered. She couldn’t be with Beckham forever. There was no way she could do this forever. “No! It’s just a permanent living situation. Once I have enough money, I’ll come back home. We’ll be able to afford a better place. I could go to college. We could make something of ourselves.”
“You think those bloodsuckers are going to let you leave once they have you trapped in their system?” Brian asked. His eyes were steely.
“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about! That’s not what they’re doing!”
“You can’t do this, Rey,” Drew said.
“It’s already done!” she told them. She took a step back. They weren’t making her budge on this. She had already weighed the pros against the cons. There was nothing they could say to change her mind. “I’m living in the city now. I’m staying with my Sponsor. He gave me all these new clothes and access to a driver. I can’t leave.”
“He bought you. Like a slave,” Brian said softly. “Our little sister is enslaved to a vampire.”
“Oh my God, I am not enslaved!”
“He gives you money, buys you new clothes so that you’re completely unrecognizable, and lets you stay in his place. He is making you completely indebted to him. So when he takes your blood, you feel like you owe it to him. You feel like your place is beside a monster, when your place is here.” Brian grabbed her hands in his. “With us, Reyna.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Drew said. “Come back. Let us take care of you. We were doing fine.”
She pulled her hands away from her brothers. “Fine? This is your idea of fine?” She shook her head. “We deserve better than a shitty apartment. We deserve better than a moldy, drafty bedroom that makes us sick. We deserve a job that pays us fairly and that doesn’t work us to death. We deserve real food, a livable wage, access to healthcare and so much more! You can’t sit here and tell me that we’re fine. Because we are far from fine.”
Her brothers looked away from her. They couldn’t deny the things that she had said. They really needed the money.
“This is my choice. You guys took care of me my whole life. Let me take care of you now. I’m going to send back the money to you so you can start living better.”<
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“Rey, please,” Drew said.
“We can’t let you end up like this,” Brian said. “After everything we did to raise you…”
“I love you guys, but I couldn’t ask for a better position. I’m not changing my mind.”
Drew came over to her first. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in for a big hug. As solid as she had been when she had told them about her situation, she was still so frightened. She couldn’t even tell them about Beckham. They would freak out if they knew what he was really like.
“Get over here,” Drew said.
And then Brian’s arms fell around them both. She tried not to get choked up, but the truth was she didn’t know when she would be seeing them again.
If she would be seeing them again…
Chapter 8
“Oh my God, what is the time?”
Brian pulled out their dad’s old pocket watch. “Quarter to five. Did you want to get dinner?”
Reyna jumped to her feet. “Quarter to five! I need to leave. I have to be back in the city. How did it get so late?”
When she had lived here, she had rarely had time to hang out with her brothers. They were always exhausted from working fourteen-hour days. Time had just slipped away from them. She had only meant to stay a short while and be back before Beckham even noticed. Now she was worried that she was going to be massively late, and they were supposed to talk tonight.
“Shit!”
She reached for her purse and pulled out her cellphone. She hadn’t checked the thing all day. In fact, she had completely forgotten about it after she had sent Beckham that text message this morning.
“Is that a cellphone?” Drew asked in awe.
“Yeah. Beckham gave it to me.”
“He gave you a cellphone?” Brian asked. He was clearly displeased with how much wealth the man was displaying, but there was really nothing he could do about it at the moment.
She fiddled with the display until it lit up and then her heart plummeted. Two missed calls and two text messages from Beckham. Also one voice mail, which she didn’t know how to access. She clicked on the first text message.