Sweet Collateral Read online

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  He searches my face before he frowns. “You don’t know.”

  The way he looks at me- as if I’m offensive to him in some way, pisses me off, and a rare flash of anger spikes hard and fast through my bloodstream. I thought I was long past such emotions. “Should I?” I snap.

  A small smile touches his lips. “Careful, avecita.” His thumb strokes over the side of my jaw.

  I close my eyes, swallowing back the bitter anger. In a matter of seconds, I force all my emotions down into the dark place they usually live, shutting the door on them. There is no room for rage or bitterness here. Acceptance. I’m a whore. Nothing more.

  When I open my eyes again, he’s staring right back at me. His brows pinch slightly as he searches my expression for…I don’t know. And I allow myself to just drift away from this place, this moment…from existence.

  Eventually, the car pulls up to a solid metal gate, so tall that I can see nothing beyond it in the beam of the headlights. Armed men step aside, and the gates slowly glide open, revealing an enormous mansion beyond. The front of the house is illuminated by spotlights, reflecting off the bright white paint. The car stops right at the front door, and I’m dragged out.

  Pillars sit either side of the overhanging porch and row after row of tall windows line the front of the house. The smell of night Jasmine wraps around me, and I take a deep breath. It’s been a long time since I smelt anything other than cheap cologne and desperation. Everything about this house screams money and power, and it makes me uneasy. A ten-foot-high fence surrounds the property for as far as I can see, which means even if I were brave enough to try and escape, I wouldn’t get far.

  Rafael gets out of the car, and I follow, limping behind him. A middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform throws open the door and greets him. The coldness in his features instantly dissipates as he kisses the older woman’s cheek before saying something quietly. They both turn and look at me, and I see the pity cross her features as she takes in my disheveled state. She approaches and takes my arm, pulling me towards the door. When I limp forward, she stops, glancing down at my leg. The next thing I know, I’m being picked up by a burly man. My entire body goes tense in his hold, and I have to swallow back the bile that rises in my throat when his hands touch my skin, even as innocently as they are. I’m too aware, too wired. It’s playing havoc with my ability to switch off from…this.

  The man carries me into the house, and the maid is speaking to me, but I don’t listen. Despite my best efforts to stay calm, all I can hear is my pulse racing in my ears as anticipation crawls over my skin. We move up a grand staircase and along a hallway before she opens a set of double doors. Inside is a bedroom, and I’m dumped on the bed. The man turns and leaves without a word. It takes me a moment to notice my surroundings. Thick crème carpets and lavish furniture fill the room. Beneath me, the soft brush of satin sheets has me skating my fingers across the material. On the far side of the room are a set of open French doors. Warm night air blows through them, catching the long, gauze curtains. But now I am scared, because I’ve been in a house similar to this before; every bit as luxurious and seemingly nice. Whores aren’t kept in nice places,—they’re kept in brothels and dirty basements. This isn’t right.

  The maid bustles away through a door, and I hear the sound of running water.

  She comes back, stopping in front of me, a frown painted on her face. “My name is Maria.”

  I say nothing, and she sighs, her frown deepening. “You are safe here.” There’s no such thing as safe, and if there were, I certainly wouldn’t feel it in this house with those men. “You should wash the grime off. There are clothes in the closet. I’ll take these clothes and get rid of them.” She stands there waiting. I slowly pull the shirt over my head and then slip out of the denim shorts I’d been given at that bar, handing them to her. Her eyes trace my body, full of horror and pity. “I’ll send some food up,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. I know what she sees: a skinny girl covered in a lifetime of scars, something broken. “You need a doctor as well.”

  She ushers me towards the bathroom, grasping my elbow tightly to help me before she shuts the door. The enormous tub sits in the middle of the huge bathroom, the water steaming. Of course, they’d want me clean before they fuck me.

  6

  Rafael

  My phone rings just as I step into my home office. Dominges, the Sinaloa cartel boss, and Anna’s former owner.

  I can’t remember the last time I even spoke with him. The little Russian has been in my possession no more than a few hours, and he’s calling me. Too coincidental.

  I answer the video request and his aged face fills the screen, grey hair neatly combed back. “Ah, Rafael. Good to see you.” I do not like the man, but the cartel is as much about politics as it is about cocaine and blood.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  He inhales on a cigarette. “You have something of mine.”

  “Oh, and what is that?”

  “The Russian girl. I’d like her back.” He smiles like a shark. He isn’t asking.

  Laughing, I take a seat behind my desk. “She’s not mine. I believe you negotiated a fair sale via a fence. The buyer paid for her, and now he owns her.”

  “Then tell your buyer that I’m willing to refund him, plus a little extra for his trouble.” He snaps his fingers, and a girl staggers into view beside him. He drags her into his lap. She’s gagged, blonde hair sticking to her damp cheeks. The shirt that she’s wearing has been torn and hangs off her, barely covering her breasts. A terrified whimper makes its way up her throat as he gropes at her. “Looks just like her, doesn’t she?” A sick smile pulls at the corners of his lips. “I’m sure your buyer will find this deal very satisfactory.”

  “Why do you want the Russian back so badly? Is there something special about her?” I want to know why Nero wants this girl, why the Italian would buy a Mexican sex slave and go to all this trouble without reason.

  “She’s a whore. I want her because she escaped! That little slut is making me look weak.”

  I force an image of indifference. The truth is, every time I think of one of those girls in those places, all I see is my mother; a broken whore, or my sister; a junkie willing to do anything for a fix.

  “You’d rather lose money just to kill her?” I lift a brow at him. “That’s bad business, Dominges.”

  He grins. “A poor reputation is bad business. She now owes me a lot more than the ten million she fetched.” Ten million! He could buy a hundred of the most beautiful slaves in Mexico for that money.

  The look in his eyes tells me he’ll do a lot more than just kill Anna, and he’ll enjoy every twisted second of it. He grabs the girls throat, and she starts sobbing.

  “This one is worth a lot of money.” He strokes a hand down her face, groping at her body. “She’s American.” Some unsuspecting tourist snatched off the street no doubt. “Contact your buyer.”

  “There’s no point. I know he won’t sell the Russian. I’m just saving myself the effort of a phone call.”

  With a snarl, Dominges presses a gun to the side of the girls head. A sick smile covers his face before he pulls the trigger. Her head snaps back on a loud bang before her body falls from view. Inside, I want to kill him, but outwardly I’m the image of calm. Cold. A cartel boss. I pity her, but I have to pick my battles. I couldn’t save her because I can’t care about the fate of every kidnapped and abused girl in Mexico. It’s not possible, and it’s not my problem. The fate that awaited her… that bullet was a kindness, a bittersweet mercy.

  “Fuck up her body and hang it in the compound. Tell the girls that it’s the Russian,” Dominges snaps at someone off screen. “I had hoped for your help in this matter, Rafael.” He feigns disappointment, though I suspect he knew I wouldn’t help him. It’s not in my nature to do him favors.

  “You know I don’t deal in slaves, Dominges. She’s just a favor. I won
’t go back on my word.”

  “Ah, yes, the honorable cartel boss. A good businessman would sell her to me, take the money, and tell your buyer she escaped.”

  I smirk. “And announce to the world that I couldn’t contain a helpless whore? That would make me look weak.” His face becomes positively murderous, and I chuckle to myself before I hang up.

  Ten million dollars.

  “Carlos!” A few seconds later he steps into the room. “I want anything and everything you can find on the Russian girl and Nero Verdi.” I release a long breath and slump back in the chair. “I want to know what kind of collateral ten million dollars buys.”

  I glance at the wall of monitors, watching as Maria and the doctor tend to Anna on the bed. Seems the little bird is hiding secrets…or she is the secret.

  Such a broken little thing, cowering away from the doctor. Right up until he tries to inject her with something. Then she’s like a feral animal, and Maria can’t hold her down. She leaps off the bed, limping to the balcony. Would she jump? Shit. That would be problematic.

  Pushing to my feet, I stride upstairs, toward her room.

  When I walk in, Maria is crying as the doctor attempts to restrain Anna on the balcony. Scratches cover his face, and she’s screaming like a banshee as he drags her back inside. “Calm down,” he says. Which seems to be working so well.

  I walk over to them and grab her throat. “Enough.” She stills, the fight leaving her at once, replaced with vacant tear filled eyes.

  The doctor releases her, letting out a sigh. She just stands there like a statue with my fingers around her throat, and as useful as her conditioned response is, it makes me sick. “Get on the bed, Anna.”

  Silently she crawls onto the mattress and lays down like a damn corpse. Like a slave obeying a master. Bile threatens the back of my throat and I have to force it down. Maria fusses over her but the girl doesn’t even acknowledge the older woman.

  “Do you know what drugs she’s been taking?” the doctor asks me.

  “No. She was given methadone in the last twelve hours.”

  It isn’t uncommon. Traffickers have been known to kidnap girls off the street, but slaves must be compliant, and no matter how broken, a girl will always long for her freedom, perhaps even risk death to escape. So, they drug them, get them so hooked on heroin that they won’t leave because they can’t be without their source. She doesn’t look like a heroin addict. She lacks the sallow, feral look they usually possess.

  “Anna, are you going to tell the doctor what you take? Or don’t you know?”

  “Please don’t,” she begs. “No needles.”

  “You either speak, or he takes blood. With a needle. Your choice.”

  “Ketamine,” she whispers.

  “Well, that explains the tremors and nausea. I’m afraid you’ll have to ride it out. As I was saying before, the ankle isn’t broken, but judging by the swelling, definitely torn ligaments. If you’ll just let me give you anti-inflammatories—” He picks up a syringe of liquid from the nightstand, and Anna snaps out of whatever trance she was in. The tiny little girl goes from flat on her back, to off the bed in a matter of seconds.

  “Anna.” I bite back the urge to snap at her as my patience dwindles. I grab her from behind, dragging her up against my chest. She fights as I haul her to the bed, climbing on it and pinning her against me. The doctor looks horrified as he watches us. As she thrashes against me, my mind flashes to my sister—to a time when it was her I held like this. I swallow around the lump in my throat and tighten my arm around her chest.

  “Anna. No one will hurt you.” I stroke over her hair like I would a spooked horse—like I used to with Violet. Her chest heaves under my braced arm, and I can feel her heart pounding through her ribs. “Just knock her out, doc.”

  “I…” He hesitates.

  “Fucking do it,” I grunt as Anna throws her head back, writhing as though she’s in physical pain.

  He draws up a different syringe.

  “No, no, no,” she cries, and it tugs at something in my chest.

  The doc manages to hold her arm still enough to jab her. She fights, even as the plunger slowly releases sedative into her veins. Her breaths even out until she becomes dead weight in my arms, her cheek resting against my chest. Her lips part slightly, and long lashes fan over her pale cheeks. How can a girl who is undoubtedly tainted by god-knows- how-many men, look so innocent and pure?

  The doctor clears his throat, and I snap my gaze to his, shifting my weight out from beneath Anna’s tiny frame. “Do what you need to,” I say gruffly and leave the room without a backward glance.

  Too close. She hits too close to home.

  7

  Anna

  I come to slowly, my vision blurring as I blink my eyes open. Bright light pours through a nearby window, and tiny dust particles catch in the sunshine like bits of glitter. The last thing I remember is a needle, and I shudder at the thought. I’ve been terrified of needles ever since I was first sold and had to watch scared, newly acquired slaves lined up and injected with Heroin. That burning, delirious sensation is one I never want to experience again, and oh, how they tried to get me hooked, dependent on them for my next fix. It would have been so easy to give into it, but I knew the second I did, I was every bit their captive. As long as I had my own mind, they never truly had me. In the early days I thought of my sister, of getting back to her, but as time went on it just became about getting through the next day, because I’d already made it so far.

  I turn my head into the pillow and catch the faintest trace of a citrusy scent I know far too well for so little interaction: Rafael. He held me down while that doctor put a needle in my arm, and it makes me hate him. I feel violated in the worst way.

  Pulling back the covers, I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, only to find a bandage covering my foot and half of my calf. The pain in my ankle is muted to a dull ache and judging by the grogginess swirling through my mind, I’m guessing they’ve given me some kind of drugs. Nausea still lingers in my stomach, and though I’m cool, my naked skin is clammy. The clothes Rafael gave me are discarded on the bed as though I tore them off in the night.

  The lavishness of the room has a slow resentment burning in my veins. This place, this room, it’s all just a gilded cage waiting to unleash its twisted horrors. I was thirteen when the Russian Bratva dragged me out of the orphanage I’d been in since I was five. I learned that night that there is no such thing as innocence, only monsters and victims. That is until I was ‘saved’. I remember so clearly the first time I was brought into a house similar to this, seemingly rescued from the torment of the Bratva by a man who promised I was safe now…as long as I did what he wanted. What he wanted has haunted me in ways that have driven me to near madness.

  Rafael is no better. He’s a man who profits from the suffering of women, who trades in flesh and souls. And I am his prisoner. Freedom was so close that I dared to hope. That hope is now eating away at me, whispering of injustice and wrongness. My blind acceptance is fraying, worn away by anger so hot that it feels as though it’s physically burning me.

  I glance down at my bandaged leg again with a frown. Most people wouldn’t have bothered to fix it. I shake my head. In this situation, kindness is merely a prequel to cruelty. I know this path well. For the first time in a long time though, I latch onto the anger and the bitterness, allowing it to consume me. If I wait for my leg to heal, perhaps I can escape this place. Maybe I can actually make it out, or die trying.

  A car engine hums just outside the open balcony doors, distracting me from my thoughts. I get up, stepping onto the cool marble floor and shifting my weight onto one leg. As soon as I step outside, the wind caresses my cheek, catching the gauze curtains and making them billow around me. Warm sunshine instantly bathes my skin, and I close my eyes, smiling as I tilt my face up towards the blinding orb of light creeping into the sky. I’d forgotten the way its rays could heat me to my very soul. The sound of tires crun
ching over gravel draws my attention, and I glance over the railing to watch the enormous gates swing open for an SUV. The gate closes behind it, the armed men taking up their guard once more. In the daylight, I can see the full extent of the fence more thoroughly. It’s solid metal all the way around, and armed men patrol the perimeter at various points. The place is like Fort Knox. It looks like the ‘die trying’ is far more likely than making it out of here.

  There’s a knock on the door, but I ignore it. A few seconds later, Maria is standing in the doorway to the balcony.

  “Rafael wants to see you. You need to put some clothes on,” she says, trying not to look at my naked body. “You’ll need these.” She produces a pair of crutches. I stand up and hobble back inside, sitting on the edge of the bed. “What would you like to wear?”

  I say nothing. I am a slave. I’m not allowed to think or feel, only do as I’m told, and to do otherwise… I’m not falling for that. Silence reigns for few seconds before Maria disappears into the closet, coming back with a pale blue dress. “This?”

  Standing, I put on the underwear and summer dress that Maria places on the bed. It feels strange to wear clothes so much. I thought I’d have been grateful for the normality, but I find the material feels uncomfortable clinging to my bare skin. For a moment, she stands there, wringing her hands as if she wants to say something. She doesn’t though. Instead, she opens the door, offering me the crutches. I ignore her, choosing to hobble down the corridor instead.

  Men move freely around Rafael’s home, most of them armed and covered in gang tattoos.

  I’m shown to a door before she walks away, leaving me to face him. Lifting my hand, I hesitate for a second before I knock, and wait.