I lean back and take a deep breath before standing and walking over to a window. Duke looks up at me as I walk past him. I don’t pay him any attention, because he wasn’t around back then. He doesn’t know what it was like.
My father wasn’t always in this business. Before he was a killer, he was a sex trafficker.
Maybe that’s putting it too lightly. My father had a huge network of men in eastern Europe that would kidnap young attractive women and smuggle them over into the United States. From there, my father broke them utilizing a whole slew of methods, many of which he taught me over the years.
I’ll never forget his favorite method, and the night he first showed me. It was late, probably after midnight, and I was already in bed. He came upstairs reeking of vodka and woke me up, then forced me to follow him. He took me out back into the old horse stable we had out there.
But of course, it wasn’t a horse stable. The inside had been gutted and renovated, turning the old horse paddocks into cells with thick steel doors. Inside each cell was a woman.
I was ten years old.
He brought me into the first cell on the left where a girl maybe sixteen years old was huddled in the corner. My father told me to stay still and watch as he took his belt off and beat the girl until she obeyed him. By the time he was finished she was bleeding and crying, but at least she was down on her knees with her forehead on the ground, submitting to him.
“See, son?” he said to me. “That’s how you break a girl for the first time. She needs to know that she’s a rotten piece of shit, and without me, she’s nothing.” He spit on the ground before pulling me out of the cell, leaving the girl alone in her agony.
I hated him, but I didn't know why. His methods were cruel, brutish, and awful. But he had other methods, some clever. They played on the women’s desires and fears, created a bond of friendship and trust. He only used those tactics on women that wouldn’t obey him under threat of violence alone.
He gave up being a trafficker not too long after that night. His guys got pinched overseas, cutting off his supply of girls. Then a few women got away, forcing him to move away from the area, and he never got back into the business.
But everyone knows what he did back then. It’s honestly a miracle that he never got caught, and probably entirely because he got out when he did.
That’s why Marco is giving me this girl, though. Marco knows what my father used to be, and he knows that my father showed me some of his methods.
He’s not wrong about that. I can break this girl and turn her into a sex slave if I want. I can do all the sick, disgusting things my father used to do. I can beat her and break her physically and emotionally without a second thought.
But I don’t want to. I return to my laptop and look at her pictures again, frowning slightly to myself. I don’t want to make this girl bleed and beg for her life. I have no interest in that. I’m a hitman and a killer, but I’m not a rapist and a woman beater. Maybe I have a darkness inside of me that needs to be fed, but I do still have some humanity left in me.
And she’s so beautiful. There’s an innocence to her pictures that surprises me.
The more I look at her pictures, the more I want her. It's completely unexpected, but I want to see her, touch her, and taste her so badly.
This deal is happening whether I want it to or not. I’m sure my father would be more than happy to take the girl and to break her, even though he’s older now and not as strong as he once was. I’m sure he still gets off on that shit, no matter how gross and disgusting it may be. Which means I have to keep her away from him.
I have to take her. Maybe I’m doing it for the wrong reasons, but I need to make her mine. I’m in this already, and there’s no turning back.
I reach down and absently stroke Duke when he comes over and curls up at my side. I know I’m trapped, and there’s no turning back. I’m going to take Grace and make her mine, no matter what.
Maybe I’m doing it to protect her. Things would be so much worse if my father took her. Or maybe I’m doing it because I’m a selfish prick, and I’m drawn to her in a way that intrigues me.
Either way, I hate myself for it, but I’m going to follow orders. I’m going to take Grace, break her, and then I’ll kill her uncle.
I turn back to my laptop and begin to make my plans.
Chapter 6
Grace
* * *
My eyes slowly open, and I have to work hard not to groan at the pain pounding in the back of my head. The throbbing makes me wince. The floor I’m lying on is cold. Where am I? It’s only a second before the memory comes back to me.
I didn’t have a chance. My heart sinks as I realize how easy it was for them to take me, just as my father promised they would.
I was so full of hope when the guards stayed back and let me walk through the doors of the restaurant and out into the chill of the night.
I didn’t have a chance to run away. I don’t think I even made it ten minutes when three large shadows surrounded me and before I could even breathe, whack! The blow was delivered tight to the back of my head, and I collapsed into darkness.
My jaw clenches as anger rises in me. It was so fucking easy for them.
