Sweet Collateral Read online

  Rafael is waiting at the bottom of the stairs when I get there. His hair is damp from the shower, the rumpled clothing replaced with a clean shirt.

  “So what is it that you want me to do?”

  He turns and starts down the hall. “Come with me.” I follow, my bare feet whispering over the terracotta tile. At the end of the hall, he pushes open a door, revealing a set of stairs that lead down. Peering down into the darkness, a shiver of fear skates down my spine.

  “Scared of the dark?” he mocks.

  “Depends what’s in the dark.”

  With the flip of a switch, the stairs illuminate. I swear the temperature drops by several degrees as we descend. Stopping outside a door at the bottom, he turns to face me.

  “If you want to leave at any point, you can.”

  Reassuring words. I frown, and the door clicks open. The sight that greets me when I step into the room has me freezing in place.

  A figure hangs from a hook in the center of the ceiling, 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. 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 keeping him alive long enough that he doesn’t bleed out. It’s savagely morbid.

  The room 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. 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.

  Rafael leans against the wall, one foot kicking up against it as his thick arms fold over his chest. He studies 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.”

  “This is the guy who broke into my house and took you.” He smirks. “He told me all about it. Why he did it, who he works for…”

  “And? Who was it?”

  “Dominges hired them.” I don’t know who that is. “The boss of the Sinaloa cartel,” he clarifies.

  And that terrifies me, because why would a man who sold me now want me? “Oh.”

  “So, avecita…” He straightens away from the wall, prowling towards me with a lethal kind of grace. 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? He stops, so close that I can see nothing past the colossal expanse of his chest. “What are you going to do about it?” Minty breath whispers over my face and I tip my chin up to look at him.

  “Me? You want me to do something?”

  “This man hurt you.” His gaze drops to my neck, which I know is ringed in thick purple bruises. He strokes feather-light fingers over the abused skin, his expression darkening with each passing second. Rafael circles behind me like a predator toying with prey, and moves my hair to the side. “He took you, and he would have handed you over to Dominges without a second thought, avecita.”

  “I know.” My voice is nothing more than a broken whisper. The heat of Rafael’s body bleeds into my back, offering strength while threatening to burn me—such a precarious line. I resist the dangerous urge to lean into him, to take comfort in a man who I know can provide none. He may have saved me in a fashion, but this is just business to him.

  “This man made you powerless, Anna. Here. In my home. Where I promised you safety.”

  I turn to face him. “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.

  “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 slowly pulls a gun from the waist of his pants. “I don’t know how to help you any other way,” he says quietly, like a confession he dare not voice too loudly. “So I’m giving you the choice. Either way, he dies.” He holds the gun out to me.

  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, and I’ve seen enough of this cruel world to know my fate would be even worse than the one they inflicted on me for years. They would kill me. 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.

  “Wake him up,” I say. Without argument, Rafael 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. Rafael did that to him. I can picture him like an avenging angel, completely without mercy as his fists cause untold damage, driven by thick muscles and raw power.

  The man’s gaze slips to the gun in my hand before he lets out a laugh that turns into a hacking cough. “You’re going to let the girl kill me?”

  Rafael 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.

  “Can you shoot?” he asks.

  I shake my head, and a small smile graces his lips before he moves behind me. His body presses tightly against my back, and this time I do lean into him. The gun feels heavy in my hand, and I’m anxious about the prospect of ending this man’s life. Rafael’s steady breaths calm me, his chest rising and falling against my back.

  “I’ll help you.” The warmth of his breath caresses my neck, and I shiver. He slowly slides his hands down my arms, grasping my wrists before he lifts them. His entire frame encases mine as I focus on the man in front of me, the man who tried to send me to my death. For once I do not have to accept it. For once, I have the power.

  “Flip the safety off,” Rafael slides his thumb over a small switch on the side of the gun. “Close one eye and aim.” I do as he says, closing one eye and aiming the gun at the man’s head. I pause for a moment, seeing his face, the determined set of his jaw contrasting with the fear in his eyes. Yes. I want his fear.

  “And simply pull the trigger.” Rafael’s hands move over mine, holding the gun steady. In an instant, the man in front of me becomes every man who has ever hurt me, touched me, abused me. The rage that permanently simmers deep
beneath my forced indifference rises, gripping me in a red haze. I hate them all, and I want his blood. Without any more hesitation, I allow Rafael to guide my aim and squeeze the trigger. The gun explodes in my hand, raw power bursting forth. A hole appears in the man’s forehead as his head snaps back and he slumps in the chains. Blood spatters over the concrete floor, and for a second I just stand there listening to it trickle down a drain. I just killed a man. In a fraction of a second, I held power over life and death. And I feel no remorse. A strange sense of peace washes over me as though the blood running down the drain is taking with it all the pain and helplessness of the teenage girl I once was. Many men have hurt and used me over the years, and I’ve never been able to do anything about it. There was no punishment for their acts, no justice to be found, and I expected none because my entire life was an injustice. Maybe it still is. But finally, I’ve found some form of retribution, and it’s a heady feeling. I don’t want to place my trust in Rafael, but how can I not when he hands me gifts such as this? I would never have done this on my own, but it’s like he knows what I need better than I do.

  Rafael’s hands move away from mine, and I turn to face him. He takes the gun from me, sliding it into the back of his pants again.

  “Welcome to the cartel, avecita.” He drags one knuckle down my cheek with a gentleness that’s so at odds with everything he is. His gaze drops to my mouth and my heart does a strange little skip. I’m not sure if it’s fear or something else. Those dark eyes of his linger a beat longer before he snatches his hand away as though I’ve burned him. And then he walks out of the room without a backward glance. I take one last look at the dead man and follow Rafael. I just took a man’s life, and I don’t feel a thing. Does that make me a monster? If I am, it’s because they made me one.

  13

  Rafael

  I stand below the overpass, the hum of traffic a constant above us. Samuel is beside me, his arms folded over his chest as we watch the two guys in front of us heave on a rope, winching a body into the air by its ankles—the last of the Eight. The eight men Dominges hired. I’m sending a message to him. I’m Rafael D’Cruze, and this is what fucking happens when you cross me. The streetlights above cast an orange glow over the bloodied bodies, making the scene all the more grizzly. I’m not usually one for theatrics but Dominges just declared war. I glance at the body on the far right, gently swaying in the warm breeze, the neat bullet hole in his forehead. I can still feel the set of Anna’s body against mine, so full of determination. I expected her to be horrified, to cry or maybe run out of that bloodstained basement, but no. She embraced it, took that gun from my hands with barely a trace of hesitation. Something inside her rose to meet the challenge, and I can’t help but feel a sense of pride in the little Russian. That rage I so often see in her eyes pushed to the surface, like invisible fingers luring her to pull the trigger.

  She’s always had this cold distance to her, but what I took for broken suddenly seemed so beautifully ruthless when armed with a gun. Anna Vasiliev has every reason to be a mess, but in that moment, I saw her in all her perfectly ruined glory. My little bird is, in fact, a little warrior.

  The blood, the violence, the pretty little Russian with a gun… My dick had never been so hard. I’m not sure what makes me more sick; getting hard over killing a guy, or over a girl who’s spent her life being forced to fuck men.

  My phone rings, and I take it from my pocket, exhaling a breath when I see Nero’s name on the screen. I turn my back and answer it. “Yeah?”

  “How is it going?” he asks in a clipped voice.

  “Fine.”

  “So she’s okay?” I have to laugh at that. “Something funny?”

  “I’m not sure she’ll ever be ‘okay’.” I shake my head.

  There’s a beat of silence, the creak of an office chair. “Well, she needs to be.”

  “The girl has been a sex slave for….how long was she in there?” He seems to know things about her I’m sure she doesn’t even know.

  He clears his throat. “Nine years.”

  “Nine…” I try to work that out. She barely looks eighteen.

  “She was sold at thirteen.”

  Fucking hell. I drag a hand through my hair, fighting rage and a crushing sense of despair at the thought of a thirteen-year-old Anna being taken and raped. It makes me sick to my stomach. “What the hell do you intend to do with her?” I’m practically growling down the phone at him now. I agreed to this, but fuck if she doesn’t eat away at whatever sliver of moral compass I have left.

  “That’s my business. You agreed to this, and you owe me.” He’s right. Whichever way I turn with this, I’m cornered.

  “Fine, but whatever she’s worth to you, I have a feeling Dominges might have figured it out.”

  “Why?”

  “He hired some mercenaries to try and take her.”

  Nero lets out a string of curses.

  “They didn’t succeed of course.” I stare up at the bodies hanging like Christmas decorations from the underpass. “And I know he said he wanted her back so he could kill her, but this is extreme even for him. I can’t see him going this far over an escaped girl. If there’s something you want to tell me, now would be the time.”

  “Just protect her. No matter what.”

  “You’ll be the one with the debt by the end of this.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I owe you my first born child. I know.”

  I smile as I hang up. Turning around, I give the bodies one last parting glance. “Let’s go!”

  I sit on the sun lounger, cigar smoke drifting over my face as I watch fireflies dance in the darkness. I’m rarely alone. Even my own home is like a fortress, full of soldiers and staff. Someone always wants something from me. Out here, the air feels a little easier to breathe, calming. Smoke dances through the night air as I exhale, the scent mixing with night Jasmine and chlorine. Lifting my beer to my lips, I take a sip, the ice-cold liquid sliding down my throat. Something moves in the darkness beyond the glow of the pool, and I narrow my eyes.

  Slowly, I uncoil from my spot on the lounger and reach behind me, my fingers wrapping around the gun tucked into the back of my jeans. Stalking around the edge of the pool, I keep hold of my beer and walk out into the gardens. Moving through the gap between the hedges, I snap my gun up in front of me when something moves in my periphery. Haunted blue eyes lock with mine without a trace of fear. I lower the gun and tuck it back into my jeans.

  “It’s late, Anna. You shouldn’t be creeping around in the early hours of the morning.”

  Her chin touches her chest, and I swear I see the hint of a smile before her hair covers her face. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d creep around out here.”

  Did she just get fucking smart with me? “You know, the gardens are kind of pointless if you can’t see them.”

  “I like it.” She turns away and starts walking towards the pond. I find myself following her, watching as she trails her fingers over the petals of the roses as she passes. She’s barefoot again, and her floor-length white skirt brushes the grass as she walks. Golden hair falls down her back, messy waves almost brushing her ass. She looks like a lost ghost, wandering in the darkness, haunted.

  She stops at the pond and sits on the edge again, brushing her fingers across the surface of the water. The fish swim up to greet her, opening and closing their mouths, trying to suck on her fingers. For a moment she looks…serene.

  “Nightmares keeping you awake, little warrior?” She nods once. “Is it the first time you’ve killed someone?”

  “No,” she breathes. “I once belonged to a man who liked to break young girls.” She keeps tracing patterns in the water. “And when his methods didn’t break me, he’d get angry and make me kill one of the others.”

  “He didn’t kill you though.” I try to keep the bite of anger out of my voice.

  She shakes her head. “I escaped a couple of times. I was always forced to watch the girls who ran with me die. I wanted h
im to kill me. More than anything. But I was his favorite.”

  “You kept trying?”

  “I knew that the second I stopped trying, was the moment he’d finally broken me.” Her eyes drift closed. “There are some fates worse than death.” Her voice remains strong and steady, full of strength. Fuck, if she doesn’t make me want to hold her and promise her all the safety in the world. I want to demand the name of such a man so I can end him, but this isn’t my fight. It isn’t my business. I take a seat on the edge of the pond, and I don’t know if she’s even aware of the way her body tilts towards mine.

  “You’re a survivor.”

  “Survival,” she breathes. “It seems so pointless though, doesn’t it? What kind of life is this?”

  Without thought, I take her hand, clutching it between mine. “One step at a time, avecita.” She stares at her hand in mine. “Firstly, you should probably stop hiding in the garden at night.”

  “I like the darkness.”

  “Why?”

  Her eyes meet mine, a soft smile whispering over her lips. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you? You can’t see the stars without the dark.”

  “Poetic.” I sip my beer before offering it to her. She eyes the bottle warily. “You’ve never had beer?” Her teeth sink into her bottom lip and it shouldn’t draw my attention, but it’s so innocent and yet… “Try it.” She releases my hand, and takes the bottle from me. She tentatively lifts it to her lips and tips the bottle back, swallowing before her face scrunches up. I laugh and take the bottle back. “It grows on you.”

  She retreats into her silence. Nine years of slavery. How is she still half sane? I’ve heard the stories of Sinaloa whores trying to escape and being beaten to death, or worse, escaping and being thrown into some of the nastiest brothels they have. Some even manage to kill themselves, although they make it hard for them. Most of them don’t survive a year, and the ones that do are mentally ruined by that point. Nine years. I’ve never heard of one making it so long. And though she’s undoubtedly damaged, she’s strong. When I look in her eyes, I can see the torture and the pain, but she wears it like an impenetrable shield. I can’t help but respect that kind of tenacity to survive.