by D B Steward
Sonny scoffed at the statement. “What the hell does that mean? Why would I want you to be gay?”
Kelly puckered her lips and blew a kiss to the beautiful assassin. “Because you like me.” She winked. “You think I’m pretty.” Her voice took on a sing-song quality. “You want to have a million babies with me!” She giggled and Sonny rubbed her temples in frustration; she did not understand how this woman could get under her skin like this.
“You are so annoying!” She placed the plate down and stood up with her fists clenched tightly and her eyes blazing. She realized that she was overreacting by showing so much anger but she did not care. The gall of this woman, presuming that she knew Sonny so intimately when they had just met.
“You like it.” Kelly had a victorious smirk planted proudly on her face. “But I think you’re about to get even more annoyed at me.” Sonny covered her eyes with her hand and counted backward from ten in her head.
“What is it now?” She tiredly exhaled the words.
“I have to go potty.” Kelly pouted with bright puppy dog eyes. “Unless you don’t mind sleeping in a waterbed, you might want to untie me.”
This woman was rapidly becoming more trouble than she was worth, Sonny thought. She turned and walked away and out of the room while Kelly rapidly batted her eyes, watching her the entire way. She returned presently and as she walked toward the bed, she opened a butterfly knife with a flourish and a smirk. Kelly watched nervously as Sonny sliced through all the restraints at a speed that left Kelly gulping nervously. “Get up,” Sonny deadpanned with the blade still in her hand and the sharp tip casually pointed at Kelly. “Don’t try anything.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Kelly massaged sore wrists then wiggled her arms to get the blood flowing back into them. Wobbly legs that had not been moved since last night, having to pee, and nursing a painful gunshot wound in her ass had her staggering to the bathroom like a baby deer walking on a frozen lake for the first time. Sonny grinned at the sight in spite of herself as she followed the shaky woman down the hall to the bathroom. Kelly eventually reached her destination and steadied herself by gripping the doorframe with her hands. The toilet was right there in front of her, but as her goal was now in sight, she was presented with a new problem.
She turned her head slowly to Sonny and gave her a self-conscious chuckle, embarrassed at her current situation. “Um, I’m going to need some help.”
Sonny’s eyebrows raised up in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“Well, my legs feel like spaghetti right now, so I need you to sit me on the toilet because if I try to do it myself, I will wind up on the floor.” She punctuated her explanation with a nervous chuckle.
“You want me to put you on the toilet?”
“Unless you want to mop up a floor full of pee.” They stared at each other, their eyes dueling as neither wanted to back down. Sonny was weighing the pros and cons: could she handle the momentary awkwardness and was that worth avoiding a disgusting mess that she would have to clean up. There really was no choice.
Sighing and rolling her eyes, Sonny slumped her shoulders and conceded this particular battle to Kelly. “Fine. Come on.” She grabbed Kelly under her armpits and practically lifted the smaller woman onto the toilet.
“Wow,” Kelly said as she winced in pain from being dropped on her wound. “You are strong. You must work out.” Sonny crossed her arms and looked down at Kelly.
“Well?” Sonny looked at her pointedly, waiting for Kelly to get on with her business.
Kelly shrugged her shoulders and scrunched her face up. “I can’t go when someone’s watching. I get stage fright.”
Sonny moaned in irritation, looked up to the heavens, and then turned around. “Just go already.” Sonny closed her eyes when she heard the strong spray of liquid hitting the toilet bowl behind her. After a while, the sound continued with no sign of abating.
“I really had to go,” Kelly offered as the sound went on and on. Finally, the sound stopped and a moment later, the toilet flushed. “Okay, I done going potty,” she said in an imitation of a baby’s voice.
“Are you decent?” Sonny asked over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of quick movement out of the corner of her eye. She had let her guard down and she knew it, but there was something she found so disarming about Kelly King that was making her lower her guard around her. Consequently, she felt two arms wrap themselves around her neck from behind. Kelly was attempting a choke hold and was just about to lock it into place when Sonny dropped to a knee and pulled the ex-agent over her shoulder and down on the floor in front of her. There was a tangle of arms and legs and a quick struggle, but Kelly was in no shape to fight Sonny after getting shot in the ass the night before. In less than a minute, Sonny was on top of Kelly with her legs straddling the other woman’s waist and her hands pinning Kelly’s wrists to the floor above her head. The two women were breathing heavily and while Sonny’s face held a determined frown, Kelly’s face showed an almost apologetic smirk with raised eyebrows.
“Well, I had to at least try to get away.” Kelly laughed and Sonny shook her head and stared at her in disbelief before her dark eyes hardened in anger.
“Do not try anything like that again or I will hurt you, understand me?” Sonny’s voice was low and serious but Kelly, however, was seeing the humor from the situation and barely struggled beneath the stronger woman.
“Aye, aye, captain.” She chuckled before her eyes shifted down to her own chest and then back to meet Sonny’s eyes. “Um, do you think maybe I can put my tit back in?” Sonny’s eyes went wide as she looked down to Kelly’s chest—her left breast had slipped out of her dress and was on full display. Sonny’s mouth went dry and her jaw dropped as she was stunned by the sight of Kelly’s round and firm breast with its small nipple that seemed to be hardening right in front of her. Kelly noticed the reaction that was taking place on Sonny’s face and she grinned. “That is unless you want to put it back for me.”
Sonny looked dazed as she tore her eyes away from the other woman’s exposed breast and then back up to Kelly’s grinning face. Kelly wiggled her eyes suggestively and gyrated her hips under Sonny. The assassin’s cheeks reddened and she froze for a moment, then she scrambled up and got to her feet. “Get up,” she muttered, unable to look Kelly in the eyes. Kelly readjusted her dress and kept her grin in place as she began to sit up. She was having a bit of a hard time so she offered her hand up to Sonny.
“A little help?” Sonny looked at her finally and Kelly gave her the puppy dog eyes again. “Please? I promise I won’t try anything.” She wiggled her outstretched fingers and Sonny reluctantly took her hand and pulled her up. “Are we going back to bed, dear?” Kelly said as her arm was jerked by Sonny and they traveled down the hallway holding hands.
Chapter Nine
Tony Molinaro grew up in the “business” over fifty years ago when kids were used to run messages back and forth between people who could not trust the phone company. Roughing up whoever his boss pointed him to was no problem for a guy like Tony, a tough guy with a chip on his shoulder. Sal Molinaro was killed when Tony was only five years old while working in the same business that his son would follow him into, leaving a widow and a little boy with something to prove. Tony made his bones in his twenties and was a made guy by the time he was thirty, a rising star in the family, even a term of fifteen years in prison not slowing down his career. Once he was back on the streets, he was picked by Don Salvador to be his number two, his consigliere. The Don listened to everyone’s opinion, but the only opinion he ever trusted enough to follow was Tony’s.
The tan Cadillac sedan rolled to a stop and parked across the street from Kelly King’s apartment building, Tony held his driver’s arm back and pointed toward the front door. “Tommy, hang back a minute. Look.” They watched as two men walked out of the building. Tony didn’t know them but he knew their type, they were men like him. These men were not tenants, their eyes sweeping the street and their faces and postu
re all business. “Those are Popov’s men.” One of the men pulled out a cell phone and began to speak into it as the other man got into a black SUV and started the engine. In a moment, the man finished his call and got into the vehicle that presently pulled into traffic and disappeared around the corner.
“You think they got her?” Tommy’s eyes never left the rearview mirror as he posed the question to his boss.
Rubbing the light stubble on his chin with his calloused fingers, Tony was silent for a moment. “If she was there, they would have taken her with them. These people don’t do things like we do.” His face twisted in disgust; thinking of what Popov would do to Kels before he killed her turned his stomach. “Tell you one thing: we need to find her before they do.”
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The scream was muffled for the most part, although it could still be heard inside the house. The only thing she cared about was if it could be heard from the outside. Screams were just background noise to her now, having heard them and all their variations through the years. They desensitized her from the sound and the knowledge of the kind of suffering each type of scream was born from. The wail of agony of a maimed victim, the sound of realization that one’s life is coming to an end and that its last moments will be filled with unimaginable pain. Shrieks from devastated parents holding the mangled corpses of their children, mourning the loss of the dreams for their future, the loss of hope. Howls of the tortured and the raped, a noise that speaks to the disbelief that a fellow human being would willingly violate the body of another. The outrage born of the injustice of the victim’s very existence being defined from that point on by the actions of their attacker. The latter was the type of scream that Anna barely registered now.
The girl in the next room was new, having been brought over on the last flight, so she needed to be broken. Amina did not know the girl’s name, never bothering to learn any girl’s name; names were given to people and these girls were no longer people, just assets. She assigned them all numbers. From now on, they would be just numbers to be recorded in her ledger, the girls they were before were dead now, no longer existing. This one was assigned a number in the high hundreds. They were counted in order of their arrival, the numbers representing the passage of time. She was just another girl in a long line of acquired assets.
Amina Golovkin had been born a Bosnian Muslim in an eastern province near Sarajevo in the 1960s. When the war broke out in the ‘90s, she had been one of the thousands of women who had been captured by the Serbian army. She had watched her husband be executed and their children murdered right in front of her. On that day, she had died inside. The soldiers took her to one of the notorious rape camps and used her body as their sexual toy, passing her around, because to them she was less than human, only a thing to be used for gratification and then discarded like trash. Amina could not recall the number of men who had violated her during those months, nor could she remember their faces. The terror and degradation was so horrific that even her nightmares ceased after a while, her brain unable to cope with the trauma even in her dreams.
After the war, her soul had been completely destroyed, and her only motivation was survival. To survive in this cruel world, one needed money. The only way she could make money was to sell her body, which she had by then considered just a tool. She was no longer human. To her, humanity was a myth, a lie that she no longer believed in. To her, the world was not populated by human beings, only the predators and the prey. Amina had been prey for too long and vowed to herself that from then on that she would become the predator.
Soon, she had assembled her own stable of assets and her operation grew and grew. In time, she had become a trader on an international scale and that was how she gained the attention of Ivan Popov. Ivan saw the international sex trade as an easy way to make money, far easier and less dangerous than drug trafficking. He provided the funding and the arrangements for Amina to move her assets into the United States and in return, the younger Popov had become her business partner.
Now Amina found herself in a precarious position. With his flashy lifestyle and his need for attention, Ivan had made himself a target. Amina now had to worry about her partner being eliminated by a rogue assassin, jeopardizing the means of shipping her wares. Adding to her complications was the recent development of the elder Popov’s discovery of his son’s unauthorized use of his employee in Immigrations. Petrov could wipe out Amina’s operation and end her life with little-to-no effort if he chose to do so. Amina could not allow that; she had vowed to survive no matter what and she would, even if she had to betray her partner to do it.
So she sat there in the cramped and filthy room, contemplating her options, all the while not hearing the terrible screams that traveled throughout the house.
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Reggie fumbled the keys to his big Ford truck while he was trying to transfer his coat and his briefcase to his other hand. “Shit.” He squatted down to retrieve them from the ground and as he felt the strain on his legs, he told himself that he needed to get back to the gym soon. Too many long hours behind a desk and too many donuts had been replacing his regular visits to the gym. With a huff, the large man stood up again only to see a woman in a black business suit standing on the opposite side of his truck.
“Agent Burns? I’m Nancy Timmerman, Homeland Security. Is there somewhere we can talk?” She was on the short side, Reggie guessed she was about five foot two with a short afro cut and ebony skin. She was built like a fire plug and looked tough as nails. Reggie was a big man but he knew that he did not want to get on the bad side of this woman.
“Sure.” With his key fob, Reggie unlocked the doors to his truck. “Hop in.” Once he had tossed his files and his coat into the back of the cab, he turned back to face her. “So what’s going on that Homeland wants to talk to little old me?”
She opened the file folder she was holding and pulled out a sheet of paper along with a photo of a woman he did not recognize. “You’re friends with Kelly King,” she stated. It was not a question; she already knew the answer. “Formerly of the FBI, did a little time, and now works as a bounty hunter for the mob.”
Reggie frowned as he looked at the report. Why was Homeland interested in Kelly? “You seem to know all about her, what are you talking to me for?”
“King has gotten herself involved with a woman named Sonja Moretti. We have been trying to make contact with Moretti for a long time now but haven’t been able to. We want you to relay a message to Moretti through King.” Her tone was all business and her brown eyes never wavered from his. “Homeland is interested in a meeting with Moretti, and we would be grateful if King would arrange it.”
Reggie chuckled and Nancy raised an eyebrow in response. “What’s so funny?”
“It’s just that if Kelly heard you calling her King, she would refuse on general principle. She hates that.”
Nancy gave him a humorless smirk. “Well, I’ll keep that in mind. When you get the message to her, have her call me here.” She handed him her business card with her number printed on the bottom.
“That’s if I get in contact with her. She’s a very busy woman.”
Suddenly, a piece of lint seemed very interesting on the leg of her pants as Nancy busied her hands. “Yes, she seemed to be very busy with that shootout at Ivan Popov’s nightclub.” She looked up to see Reggie’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh, you didn’t know. Well, I’m sure she’ll share it with you when you speak again. Have a good night, Agent Burns. I’ll be in touch.” She opened the truck’s door and stepped out of the cab. Reggie watched her get into a dark blue Ford sedan and drive off.
He shook his head as he looked down at the photo of Sonny Moretti in his hands. “A shootout with Russian mobsters and now there was Homeland Security sniffing around? Oh Kels, what have
you got your dumbass mixed up in now?”
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Kelly had watched Sonny clean her guns for what felt like forever; a Glock, a Heckler & Koch MP7A1, and a Remington 700 rifle with a scope that Kelly was pretty sure could see a nickel on the moon. The cleaning and inspecting had gone on for an hour now and Kelly was getting bored. At least she was comfortable; Sonny had propped her up on the bed and kept her legs untied, and although her hands were still bound in front of her, the freedom of movement was much better than being tied to the bed. “Sonny? I’m cold!” Kelly whined in what she hoped was an annoying child-like voice.
The assassin did not even look up as she assembled her pistol. “You’re not cold. The temperature is just fine.”
“To you maybe,” Kelly grumbled. “You’re not the one dressed only in a bra and panties.” Kelly raised her eyebrows up and down. “But that’s how you like me, right? All tied up, helpless and half naked. Are you into bondage, Sonny? Because I can totally get behind that.”
Sonny finished her work and set the pistol down carefully on the cleaning mat in front of her. “It’s not going to work.”
“What?” Kelly wished she could read Sonny. She had been trained at Quantico to be able to pick up on facial tics, body language, speech patterns, numerous ways to get inside a person’s head. With Sonny, it was like talking to a brick wall. The woman was closed off like a safe. She wondered if that was due to the world of isolation she lived in or if she was just a bitch. Either way, Sonny lacked basic social skills. Kelly felt sorry for her the more she thought about it, and then she would look down at her bound wrists and feel a little less sorry. “What won’t work?” she asked innocently.