Men are walking through the halls, visiting room after room and either shouting at the girls or testing them for how willing they are to be handled.The girls are turning their faces away.Pretending they’re anywhere but here as the men run rough, uncaring hands over their bodies.
They’re working so hard to disassociate that I wonder if they even remember where they are, or what their names are.
The men move through the rooms like they’re entitled to every girl there, writing on their clipboards and shouting instructions at the other men, and the girls are just...
Chattel.
They’re so dehumanized that they barely even react like human beings.
And they have no shelter, no privacy, because there are no doors between them and the hallways.The one bastion of protection and privacy has been stripped from them, so they have no place to hide anymore.
I feel bile rising up the back of my throat and swallow it down as quickly as I can, retreating back into my mind.There have to be at least two hundred girls here, but this is just a holding warehouse.A place to hold the girls until they’re due to be shipped out or auctioned off.So these aren’t the girls who are shipping out tonight–at least not in theory.I guess they could be–the men could just take a bunch of these girls and move them to the next house, where they’ll be prepped for shipment–but that doesn’t make sense to the process I’ve seen before.According to my own time in the ring, the girls who are being prepped for shipment should be moving through the catacombs, stopping at a series of underground rooms as they make their way to either Canal Street or the port.
I don’t know where this warehouse falls in the larger scheme of things, but I think it must be near the start of the process.
Either that or different girls follow different routes.
I put that to the side as too complex, since it would mean I don’t actually know the whole process, and see that we’re nearly to the other side of the warehouse, now, and the walkway that runs around the circumference.There, I see a girl around my age, with jet-black hair and dark eyes, a clipboard in her hand and glasses on her nose.She’s wearing a sharp business suit and heels, and looks like some sort of administrative assistant.
Far more professional than anyone else I’ve seen in here.
“Ah, Samantha,” my father says, a smile lighting up his voice.“Brooks, this is my assistant, Samantha Duhon.”
Samantha Duhon.
I don’t know her personally, never did, but I know her family.Sean Duhon is head of one of the oldest and most powerful families in the city, but he’s also an outlaw.A freelancer.He doesn’t work in a specific industry or sector of the city, like most of the gangsters down here do.The Boudreaux are in gambling and weapons, the Landry family in shipping.Benoit is a businessman, but deals with shipping, and Crow Lafayette runs gambling dens, entertainment venues, and whore houses.
Sean Duhon does whatever he wants, and that makes him dangerous to everyone else.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that one of his nieces is working for my father.I’d like to think Sean put her here to keep an eye on Dominick Landry and what he’s doing, but it’s far more like Samantha was offered as a way for Sean to get his hand into the money.
I immediately hate her.
Her eyes run up and down my body, one brow lifted arrogantly, and I’m guessing she’s thinking the same thing about me.When her eyes come to my face, I offer her a feral grin, and hope it says exactly what I want it to say: That I don’t trust her, and that I’m not going to make her job easy.
“Brooks,” she says quietly.“Finally I meet the girl who left her family behind for New York.”
My smile turns even sharper at that.“Had to get out of New Orleans to find some real prospects,” I return.“See how the world actually works so I could come home and introduce New Orleans to real power.If you catch my drift.”
Look, word play isn’t usually my thing, but when the situation calls for it, I can hold my own.
Samantha’s eyes narrow, then flash to my father, and I wonder if he’s told anyone else that he wants me to take over the family business.I wonder, further, if he’s fucking explained why to anyone else, because it still doesn’t make any fucking sense to me.Surely my father realizes that this isn’t what I’m built for.I want to bust these girls out, take them home, and feed them chicken noodle soup.Give them warm, fuzzy pajamas and get them back to their families.
And I’ll do it the first chance I get.
So why in Christ’s name is my father taking me through his warehouses and explaining the process like I’m on board with any of this?He has to know he can’t trust me.Has to realize that I’ll screw him over the first chance I get.
What’s the catch, here?Why is he doing this?
And where the fuck is my brother?
“Samantha is going to take you downstairs and show you how things work down there,” my father says suddenly.
I watch Samantha jerk at that, like she had no idea that was going to be happening, and when her eyes turn to me again, they’re cold and brittle as black ice.
Oh, she definitelydidn’tknow that he brought me here to show me how to run things.
And now she’s starting to feel threatened.
