Trey

by Shandi Boyes

  “Nuh-uh,” I growl out on a moan when her tongue attempts to lick up the droplets of spawn coating her lips. Her tongue will never reach the murky white substance on her cheek and eye, but when I teach a whore a lesson, I do it the right way. “You want to be a whore, so I’m gonna treat you like one.”

  Careful not to trip on my jeans huddled around my ankles, I take a step back before yanking the rigid material up my tattooed thighs. Once I have my still-throbbing cock tucked away, I nudge my head to the parking lot at the back of Clarks. “It’s late, so you better get home before your daddy gets worried about you.”

  Although shocked at my dismissal, especially since its barely noon, the blonde dips her chin before her hands dart up to clear away the mess on her face. “Nuh-uh,” I repeat, louder this time. “You’re a whore, remember? It’s about time your daddy learns of your career aspirations.”

  Smiling, I smear in the blobs of cum that’ll most likely fall when she stands before shifting on my feet to face August, or Eight as he prefers us to call him. He’s a newbie to Nikolai’s crew, so he’s the best one to free from the bunkers while we wait for an update from Nikolai on where we’re going next.

  He’s preparing to send his girl back to Hopeton, aware a war is about to begin. If I were smart, I would have done the same thing with India. Alas, back then, I was only twenty-two. I had no clue how fucked-up this world is, much less the people who think they run it.

  “Follow her home. If she touches her face at all during the commute, revoke her privileges to Clarks.” The whore gasps in a sharp breath. It’s barely heard over the chuckle of Nikolai’s men.

  Nikolai is my brother in arms. He took me in when my wish to make India mine almost caused my demise. He’s Russian, fucking filthy, and hates the man who raised him with every fiber of his being.

  I want to say I had the same issues with my father. Regretfully, it was the respect I had for him that got him killed. Have you ever thought about who you’d choose if forced to pick between the woman who made you realize you had a heart in your chest and the man who gave you life?

  It wouldn’t be an easy decision for the strongest man to make, much less one who had a gun held to his head, and a threat to kill them both if you didn’t pick one.

  Did I pick right? You tell me. I’m in a foreign country, second-in-charge of an entity turning over three billion dollars in assets a year, and fucking whores who can stir my cock even without drugs lacing my veins. Some will say I’m living the life. Others would fight for better. I say quit complaining and take what you’re given. Things aren’t the best they could be, but they could be a whole lot worse. I could be in the ground like my father, his entire existence ruined because his son couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.

  As Eight marches the whore with my spawn on her face to his car, I slump back into the two-seater couch I woke up on. This place fucking reeks of sex and blow. It’s a smell I usually crave, however, the havoc brewing in my gut is snuffing my body’s usually positive response to the lifestyle I was raised in.

  This is life for me—drugs, whores, and guns. I was raised around them, craved them, and have been destroyed by them, yet, they’re the only things that make me feel alive, although not once have they caused my heart to patter in my ears.

  Two

  Sales Docket Number 12574

  Bile burns the back of my throat when I ram my fingers down as far as they can go. I can’t believe I was so stupid not to check the food they slid through the slot this evening. I’m starving, and my body is showing signs of malnourishment, but still, I can’t believe I trusted these men. They sell women as sex slaves. As if that isn’t bad enough, this sanction doesn’t do one-and-done sales. They auction the same women over and over again, only stopping when they’re either killed by one of the brutes paying to spend an hour with them, or they die from starvation.

  I’m teetering close to having both causes of death placed on my death certificate.

  The men in this sanction pay top dollar for a woman to occupy their time for an hour. The thousands they hand over ensures their stipulations are the highest I’ve seen. They don’t just want beautiful, charismatic women with flawless bodies and tight vaginas, they also want them to be full of tenacity and to have the gall to get through the four or so men a night they’re expected to ‘entertain.’

  When I was given to Vladimir Popov, founder of this sex-trafficking ring, I had the curves needed to entice top dollar, the wavy blonde locks men like to grip, and bright blue eyes that were full of life. But since I also have the shyness of a mouse, I’ve been overlooked more than the women I arrived here with.

  Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining I’m not fetching top dollar. I’d rather starve to death than be brutalized by men who see women as nothing but commodities more than necessary, but I honestly don’t know how much longer I can live like this. The small portions of food they’ve been giving me the past ten weeks are now laced with hallucinatory drugs with the hope of sparking a personality out of me, and the once meaty parts of my body no longer exist.

  I’m nothing but skin and bones.

  That won’t stop these men, though. Some will beat me to rouse a response from me. Others will stroke themselves from a distance, happy for my nudity to get them off. Then there are the ones who won’t care if I never speak to them. They paid for me, so they’ll do whatever they want to me.

  They’re the men who scare me the most.

  Once I’m certain the food in my stomach has been expelled, I frailly climb the cracked bathroom sink to wash my vomit-smeared hands. As I stare at myself in the scum-coated mirror, I try to recall a time when I felt pretty and cherished. It was so long ago, the memories are fading from my head as quickly as the light is from my eyes. I barely recognize myself, so I doubt anyone who saw me previously would. I’m not out to impress anyone, so I guess it doesn’t really matter how I look, does it?

  Ignoring my grumbling stomach, I step over the sloppy meat concoction I think was supposed to be shepherd’s pie before making my way to the main part of my ‘room.’ It’s more a prison cell than a bedroom, and the fact I have a mattress and attached bathroom doesn’t glam it up in the slightest. If anything, it makes it worse. Only the women Vladimir wants to ‘entertain’ his guests for the night get mattresses. The thought alone has me wanting to vomit again. I would if it would bring up anything but my stomach’s lining.

  When I slump onto the bed, too tired to remain standing, my eyes stray to the goop I knocked over when I realized it tasted funkier than it should have. It looks like someone had an accident on the floor, and it pops a brilliant idea into my sluggish head.

  “You think you’re smart, don’t you?” My teeth crunch together when Vladimir backhands my cheek for the second time. He must be super mad because he usually makes his goons do his punishments on his behalf. “You wasted both my time and my money this evening.” The urge to bend in two overwhelms me when he gets right up in my face. For a guy pushing seventy, he’s fit and healthy, but his insides are so hideously ugly, no number of good genes can save my stomach from heaving about his closeness. “And to think I was going to invite you to the feast after this round of guests.” He taunts me with food as he knows it hurts me more than his earlier threat about selling me twice this week. “Now, you won’t even get the scraps left on their plates.”

  I deserve to be punished. I wasted food, but at least I put the sloppy meat of my ‘dinner’ to good use. I coated it from the apex of my thighs to the back of my knees. The man who paid three thousand dollars to spend an hour with me was less than impressed he didn’t get a woman close to the image Vladimir uses to sell me each week, and it had nothing to do with the fact I looked like I had pooped my pants.

  He wanted the woman I was before I was shunted into this life, the one who exuded freedom even though she’s never truly been free. He wanted Kristina, a woman I no longer am, and will most likely never be again.

  After delivering the rest
of his scorn solely with his eyes, Vladimir releases my face from his clutch before stepping back. The chains holding me hostage from a U-bolt in the ceiling jangle on the protruding bones of my wrist in rhythm to his boots tapping across the concrete.

  When I unearth the reason his punishment was reduced to two slaps tonight, they clank even more. A large brute of a man is standing in the doorway of my room. He has a fire hydrant hose in his hand and an abhorrent smirk on his face. Even if my ruse was real, it won’t be effective the instant he switches on the nozzle that’s dribble has more pressure than the shower in my bathroom.

  Confident I’ve caught the gist of what’s happening, Vladimir smirks a smug grin. “Get her washed up now. I’m feeling generous enough tonight to share her with the men unable to bid… once she’s finished serving the ones stupid enough to pay for her.”

  As my throat works hard to swallow, my eyes rocket to Vladimir in silent pleading. He’s dressed to the nines, which reveals his guests tonight are more aristocrats than the bottom-dwelling mobsters he usually caters for, but still, I’m worried. Vladimir only ever gives away his whores when he has no intention to sell them next week.

  This isn’t an industry you leave alive. If I’m done being sold, I am done. The lights once in my eyes will be permanently extinguished, never to be relit.

  “Do you have something you want to say, little girl?” Vladimir asks when he spots my pleading stare, his tone mocking.

  Pleas sit on the tip of my tongue, but no matter how hard I try to relinquish them, I can’t. I’d rather die silently than speak a ton of words I can’t take back.

  “Ah, such fight,” Vladimir croons like he’s four decades younger than he is. “If only the men could see that via a video lens.”

  After clicking his fingers two times, he exits the room. Not even two seconds later, I’m blasted with icy-cold water. The pain is horrific. It feels like my skin is being scraped off with a cheese grater. The sting ripping through my body has screams roaring up my throat and whizzing out of my nostrils with breathy gasps, but not a peep escapes my lips.

  I won’t give these brutes the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I could. The only good thing about being hit with enough water to fill a lake is the ability to deny the salty blobs wanting to slide down my cheeks, but I won’t because I told myself I’d never cry in this room. I made a promise to remain strong no matter what, and although this shouldn’t count because it hurts more than I could ever explain, it does.

  I will not cry for these men.

  I will not break.

  I will win, even if it kills me.

  By the time the unnamed man turns off the hose, my clothes are shredded off my body, my bedding is drenched through, and the silver tray my dinner was delivered on is wrapped around the pipe I was cuffed to my first five days here.

  When the hose’s nozzle drops to the concrete ground with a clang, I collapse against the chains holding me hostage, incapable of balancing on my tippy toes for a second longer. Although I’m sparkling with the cleanliness I haven’t experienced in weeks, every inch of my body is aching. I feel like I’ve run a marathon, but there will be no reprieve for my tired muscles. That isn’t the way these men work.

  Another silent scream pops into my head when the brute fists my hair to yank my head back. His evil eyes glide over my face, down my neck, and across my collarbone before he stops on my breasts. Compliments to good genes I got from my mother, that’s the only part of my body with any meat left on it, and even then, it isn’t much. It would be barely enough to fill a hand.

  “You scrub up good,” the goon grunts, half laughing, half moaning. “Let’s hope your line of visitors isn’t too long this evening. I’m not into necrophilia.”

  I’m so dead on my feet, I fall into his arms when he releases my wrists from the contraption bolted to the ceiling. I am anticipating for him to carry me back to my bed, so the parade of men he mentioned can commence getting their money’s worth, so you can imagine my shock when he heads for the door Vladimir exited minutes ago.

  The air outside of my room isn’t any less stuffy, but I suck it in like it’s full of the nutrients I’ve been lacking the past ten weeks. Once I have my lungs as revitalized as my determination to live, I ram my palm into the brute’s nose, kick out of his arms with a grunt, then hightail it down a corridor lined with padlocked doors.

  I should bolt straight for the closest exit, but since that would make the torment of the last ten weeks utterly worthless, I shout one name on repeat before bobbing down to peer through the keyholes on a handful of doors.

  With none of the words shouted back at me done in Czech, I make it almost six doors down before Vladimir’s goon catches up to me. He punches me in the stomach, winding me even more than my sprint before he tosses me over his shoulder like I’m a rag doll and stomps down the corridor. Most women would kick, thrash, and wail when they’re being carried so brutally. I’m way past normal. I don’t fight him at all. I merely still my movements and prick my ears so I can listen for an accent similar to mine.

  There are so many women, more than I could have possibly imagined. Their accents are from wide and far. It takes him marching us down a third corridor before I hear one close to mine, but when I do, it launches my heart into my throat.

  “Ana?”

  The fight I failed to give earlier roars out of me in uncontained violence when the faintest voice whispers back, “Kristina?”

  “Ana!” I fight and fight and fight to be freed. I dig my nails into his huge shoulders, bite at him, and kick him with all my might.

  The harder I fight, the tighter the goon holds me.

  “I’ll come back,” I promise in Czech, on the verge of tears, scared I’m so close to my dreams, yet still so far away. “I will find you. I promise.”

  A grunt rattles my ribcage when the man tosses me into a room at the end of the corridor Ana is in. Even with my lungs void of air and my backside sporting an aching sting, I spring onto my feet and race to the door, praying I can stop it from shutting before I’m once-again locked away in the nightmare of my thoughts.

  My effort comes too late. I’m not just naked in a room too elaborate to belong to a slave, I’ve caught the eye of Satan, and he isn’t a man who’s happy to look from a distance.

  “Mika is right, you do scrub up nicely, little girl,” Vladimir mutters, stepping closer. “Now I just need to find a way to discover if your moans are as sweet as you taste.”

  Three

  Trey

  A war is coming. I can sense it in my veins and feel it trickling through the fine hairs on my arms. It’s the same sensation I got in the butler’s pantry six years ago. Not only are Nikolai’s men thirsty for bloodshed, so are men who don’t belong in this fight. The Popovs own Las Vegas. Nothing happens here without their consent, so why the fuck does Alexei have his crew barricading the hospital Roman was taken to?

  Roman is Nikolai’s advisor. He’s at least mid-fifties, if not sixties, yet he has no issues keeping up with the rest of Nikolai’s crew. Nikolai chose well when he demanded for Roman to take Justine back to Hopeton to save her from a wayward bullet. He learned lessons from my failed takeover bid years ago and put steps in place to ensure his outcome was better than mine.

  Regretfully, Vladimir had the jump on us. Roman was shot earlier today. If reports are anything to go by, Vladimir’s goons needed more than a bullet to take him down. They also chloroformed him.

  It’s all part of Vladimir’s game. He can’t fuck with Nikolai if Nikolai has no clue he has his girl. He kept Roman alive for a reason, which is why I need to get him out of the hospital he’s holed up in and back to the compound so we can unearth his reasoning.

  I drag in a long drawl of my recently lit doobie before devoting my focus to Eight. “How many men do we have in total?”

  He checks the figures scribbled in his notepad. “Four each on the front, back, and side entrances, three at the crossover, and two spotters on the overpass heading west
.”

  “Nero?”

  “Tying up loose ends.” He fans his hand in front of his face to ward off the smoke plume escaping mine. “We’ll be down to the final four soon.” The direction of his eyes reveals who he’s referencing.

  While following the direction of his gaze, I push down on the old crank mechanism on my window, understanding not everyone is a fan of secondhand smoke—even when it’s the best weed in town. “How far out is recon?”

  Eight twists his lips before he shrugs. “Twenty, thirty minutes. Give or take.”

  “We can’t wait that long. Justine has been gone for hours. Time isn’t on our side.”

  He jerks up his chin in agreement. “Then what do you want to do? Nikolai wants Roman no matter the cost, so perhaps we should think outside the box.”

  I take a few seconds to deliberate on his suggestion. It awards me nothing but a surly attitude. “Have you ever considered just walking up and knocking on the front door?”

  Over the game of men believing they’re in charge when they aren’t, I slide out of my 1966 Shelby GT350 and hotfoot it across the street. Eight, although quiet, quickly catches up with me. I’m not surprised with how long his strides are. We don’t just call him Eight because his name is August, and he was born in the eighth month of the year. It’s because his super long legs would have you believing he’s eight feet tall, and during drug-fueled benders, he usually has eight whores going at once.

  I won’t mention the fact he also only has eight fingers, or that his cock may only be in the eight-inch category. He’s a little sensitive about those parts of the equation, so it’s best we keep those facts between us.

  Approachability isn’t something gangbangers often use, but I give it a whirl. “What’s up, boys? Alexei got you chasing ambulances now. Did you miss the memo? You don’t need a prescription for marijuana anymore. You can get that shit at a shop.”