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He nodded again. He could see that she was turning all this new information over in her mind, so he waited.
Finally, she met his gaze straight-on. “Let’s say I choose to believe you for now. So tell me about this Starlin Group. I take it they’re a significant player.”
“One of the biggest.”
He gave her numbers, something an accountant would appreciate: The Starlin Group moved twenty thousand human women through its organization every year. Between the prostitution houses they owned in a number of countries worldwide, as well as the auctions they sustained in the vampire world, they generated eighteen billion dollars a year.
Then he added the worst stat of all: without exception the human slaves died, so the inventory had to be replaced at a quick, steady pace.
She stared at him, a deep frown drawing her brows together. “All of them?”
He nodded once, slowly.
“How? Why?”
“In a slave situation, a certain percentage of humans, about fifteen percent, will not live beyond the two-week mark even if they’re treated well. Ultimately, it’s a matter of the will.”
She pressed a fist into her cheek, her eyes pinched. “And after the two-week period?”
“A second transition occurs at six months, but the survival rate drops to fifty percent. Beyond that, only a handful live past two years.”
“Oh, dear God. So my life expectancy, in the best of circumstances, would have only been two years.”
He nodded. “But I also want to stress that in the Starlin Group, the percentages are much worse.”
“Because of the sadistic element.”
“Yes. The torture. Humans just don’t hold up well.”
“Are there other auction houses in your world?”
“A few, but not at this level.”
“And you intend to take this beast down.”
Again, he nodded.
“Are you working alone?”
“Pretty much.”
“But how can one man really bring down an entire organization?”
“It will still take time, but the most critical element is that I need to find out who runs this show. The head guy, the brains behind the operation, must be eliminated first. After that, I’ll use my resources to take every single member of this club down, one by one, until nothing is left.
“Despite my efforts to find him, the man who’s behind Starlin remains one of the biggest secrets in our world. He goes by the code name Scorpion, and to my knowledge only one man has access to him, a man called Engles.”
She frowned slightly, tilting her head. “Do you know, I used to think you had to be involved in black ops missions of some kind. You had that look. I’m beginning to think my first assessment of your character was right. So are you some kind of military man in your world?”
He shook his head. “No, not at all.”
She looked him up and down. “You’re big enough. You look like you could take anyone down, which means the real question on my mind right now is why you’re so intent on breaking up the sex-slavery operations in your world? Why are you so determined to destroy Starlin? Why do you even care?”
She got right to the heart of the matter, he’d give her that, but just how much he should tell her, he wasn’t sure.
On the other hand, he suspected that to hold back now, to not tell her the truth, would be the last straw for her. And because he was so close to really getting inside Starlin, he decided to risk it all. He’d tell her what he’d never told another living soul, vampire or otherwise.
He drew a deep breath and held her gaze steadily. “I was a sex slave once, held by my captor for over a century. I know what it is to endure abduction and sale on the block. Everything you would have suffered as a slave, had another man won the bid and brought you to a room like this, I experienced at the hands of my captor. But worse.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand. “I’m not willing to talk about what happened to me, except that it was bad, as bad as it gets. That I survived is nothing short of miraculous, but every day I promised myself that if I ever escaped, I’d tear this depraved part of our world down, if I had to do it with my own bare hands.”
Angelica wondered if she’d ever be able to blink again. She still sat on the table, her hands clasped tightly together, staring at Reyes, and trying with all her might to process so many revelations: his mission, his reason for buying her, and the fact that he’d suffered as a sex slave himself.
She looked away from him, letting this new tsunami of information sweep over her. That feeling of having been tackled hard and slammed to earth struck her again.
She met his gaze once more. “So if I’ve truly understood you and if I can believe you, then you saved my life by buying me at auction.”
“More than you know. Damien Engles, the man I referred to earlier, had made it clear to me before the auction began that he intended to purchase you and that I was not to interfere. But I already knew his reputation. Human slaves don’t live longer than a week in his house. He savors the killing element as part of sexual gratification. The worst kind of monster.”
“And he was intent on having me.”
“Absolutely. He liked your fighting spirit, your defiance.”
Reyes turned suddenly, crossing to a nearby shelf and picking up what looked like a small leather bag. When he returned to her, he pulled out a weird-looking glove, then slipped it on. “I want you to take a good look at this.”
Her gaze moved slowly down to his hand—and what she saw forced all the air from her lungs. Each fingertip held a sharp steel claw. She tried to breathe, but couldn’t. Every part of her body felt frozen, immobile. Nothing she’d been exposed to in this world had truly sunk in, not even his comments about sadism and torture, until she stared down at the leather device. The middle finger had two claws, about a quarter inch apart. “And this group uses this thing?”
“Some do. Engles, most certainly.”
She shook her head, staring at him. He tucked the glove back into the bag and in a quick flick of his wrist tossed it back on the shelf.
She pulled the lapels of her robe tight together once more. Her voice came out on a whisper. “You didn’t just save my life, you saved me from a kind of torture I can’t even begin to imagine. My God.”
For a long moment, she covered her face with both hands. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to get the image of that glove out of her mind. But maybe that was a good thing, given her present circumstances.
