Page 5 of Bought By Sin

For the first time in my sorry existence, I wanted my own power.

My freedom that I’d been robbed of since I was just a twelve-year-old girl with horrible parents.

Behind me, Tomas’s voice rang out loudly as he argued with the Garcia. More sweat dripped down my face, but refusing to budge, stubborn not to move at all, I stared hard at the man who threatened to kill me. Stinging agony filled my face and irritated my sinuses as I resisted the urge to blink. The salty sweat made my eyes water furiously, but I would not blink. I would not react.

“Huh?” He pressed the gun against my forehead. Exposed to the sunshine, the metal was hot already, almost like a brand. I still didn’t flinch. A single millimeter of a movement could prompt him to pull his finger on that trigger.

“Where are your friends hiding?” He didn’t take his eyes off me as he spat a wad of chew off to the side. A dribble of brown clung to his lip. “Where’d your friends take off to after trying to weasel out of paying up what they owe?”

Friends?

I stayed mute at his ridiculous demand.

Friends?

First of all, I wasn’t saying a damn thing. My silence was the only semblance of power I could trick myself into thinking I had. My word was the single thing that was mine, no one else’s, and so long as I kept my mouth shut, it would balance the scale somehow—at least in my mind.

Second of all, I had no clue. I wasn’t part of the Hernandez outfit by choice. I was their thing, their purchased slave and grunt worker on smuggling runs like this. I wasn’t one of them to have the privilege of knowing plans, hideouts, or anything that would count as intel. They didn’t tell me anything except what to do. Wherever they were hiding out here in the desert was a secret they had to themselves.

But thirdly, it was a joke. A downright cruel joke for this Garcia Cartel man to ever think I had friends. Or pals, a buddy, or even a moderate acquaintance.

Seething with hatred that simmered with that fact, I stared him down and dared him to make that mistake again. To repeat his stupid demand that I tell him where my “friends” were hiding.

I didn’t have any friends. I never had. I never would so long as I was stuck in this life of slavery and indentured captivity due to that contract my parents had signed ten years ago.

A decade of being a thing meant that I had owners. Masters. Bosses and leaders and supervisors. But no matter which Cartel currently had purchase of me, and regardless of where I was sold to, I would never be able to call any of the men who ruled this desolate world a friend.

“She ain’t telling you shit,” Tomas said from behind me, almost gloating.

My anger sizzled a little hotter at his smug tone.

Like it was a fact.

That I wasn’t a person to speak with but a thing to be conditioned and trained.

“Then you'd better start talking,” the Garcia thug said. Without taking the gun from the position at my forehead, he narrowed his eyes. “And you'd better think twice about trying to get out of here without paying up.”

“Hey, it ain’t my call,” Tomas said. “I ain’t the one who packed any bags. Ain’t no one told me what to bring or what was gonna happen. I’m just the messenger.”

“And what,” another man said from the side, near the car that had just arrived and parked, “you’ve never heard of anybody shooting the messenger?”

The man’s snark wasn’t uncalled for. Tomas could bluff and play innocent all he wanted, but it was a lie. The whole ride over here, they were all talking about how they weren’t instructed to pay the Garcias what was owed for a past shipment.

I couldn’t turn my head to watch the two newcomers enter the scene. One had stayed by the vehicles, and with him near, it meant this Garcia wasn’t alone. It was two against two.

With that other car arriving, though, it signaled that Tomas and I were now outnumbered.

What stood out the most was the confidence from this suited man who’d come with the Garcia runner. The kind of confidence and sarcasm only a boss or leader could get away with.

These two men weren’t runners. They weren’t the dirty grunt workers who moved product and snuck around at the border and on the highway.

Oozing authority and moving with the practiced stealth only a boss could. I tried not to react.

Don’t panic.

Don’t move.

Do. Not. Panic.