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What Hank wasn’t saying was that if something happened to Ivy and it was discovered that we sat on critical information, the timeline will indict us for sure. I nodded in agreement. “Let’s see what Frankie has to say.”
Ivy
My head ached like a mother and my mouth tasted of copper. I wiggled my hands and found them tied tightly behind my back. The hard, wooden chair I was sitting in, made my butt numb. How long had I been unconscious?
My vision cleared and I saw the interior of a dingy warehouse, the watery light from the ratty fluorescents hanging from the ceiling the only complement to the milky sunlight filtering in from the filthy windows.
Where was I? What’d happened?
I remember crying myself to sleep on the sofa. I remember waking up to the horrific sound of my door being kicked open.
Men wearing ski masks rushed into my house and grabbed me. I fought against them but there were too many and they were too strong.
I kicked and my foot connected with the lamp.
Then a heavy fist plowed into my face and I was gone.
One hit.
TKO.
And here I was.
Tied. Lost. Afraid.
Possibly with a mild concussion.
And no one knew where I’d gone.
I winced as my tongue sought out the sore spot on my lip, finding the source of the blood taste in my mouth. My lip had been split open.
Jesus, I’d had my fill of getting my ass kicked.
If I lived through this I was going to take self-defense classes.
The main point of that statement: if.
Because if I was a betting woman, I’d say my odds were slim.
A man with an entourage walked toward me. He was dressed in a way that revealed his vanity. I recognized him right away.
This was the man I’d been looking for at the club who hadn’t shown.
Now I figured out, he must’ve been tipped off that I was a plant and stayed away.
Did I play dumb? Start crying and begging to be let go? Could I pull it off?
But before I could start, Terano started talking first.
“You are very beautiful,” he stated as if he were assessing my worth. He gestured to his henchmen. “Let me see what she has to offer.”
I didn’t have time to wonder what he meant.
Two men wrenched me out of the chair and ripped my shirt from my chest, shredding the thin material as if it were made of gossamer.
I gasped in horror as I stood there in the remains of my sleep shirt and my pajama bottoms, my breasts on display.
Terano walked to me, his cold dark eyes nothing like those of Jameson’s, and tested the weight of my breasts with his palms. “Nice. Natural. You will fetch a good price.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I managed to bite out, shooting a glare at the men propping me up. “You’re in a lot of trouble. When my friend finds me…”
“You’ll be long gone,” Terano cut in with a small smile. “Jameson Reed…I almost feel sorry for him. Constantly chasing the crumbs I leave behind, starving for the win he’ll never get. You see, I have important friends who see to it that their investments are well-protected. Jameson Reed is destined to lose and always was. You’d think he would’ve figured that out by now.”
If Terano had known about me…that meant he knew about Frankie, too.
I tried to hide the shudder of fear. Jameson would find me. He had to.
Be brave, Ivy.
“Are you a virgin?” he asked.
“That’s none of your business,” I spat at the hateful man. “Go fuck yourself.”
Terano graced me with a thin smile that made my blood run cold.
He jerked my pajama pants down and shoved his finger inside m, scraping tender flesh and violating me without once losing his smile.
OHMYGOD!
Tears burned under my lids but I held them back. I wouldn’t cry in front of this pig.
He withdrew his finger and slid it under his nose. “Tight. And clean. You may not be a virgin but you haven’t been fucked so much that you’re loose. You are in luck. I have someone who loves girls like you. Will pay a very high price for his dolls. If only he didn’t break his toys so easily.”
I lifted my chin. “It shouldn’t surprise me that you traffic in human beings as well as deal drugs,” I said coldly. “You’re a disgusting human being and someday karma will kick your ass.”
Terano chuckled then gestured to the men holding me. “Take her, get her cleaned up. I have calls to make.”
Terano walked away and I was dragged out of the main room, down a flight of stairs where I was flung to the floor, scraping my palms as I went down.
“Get her ready,” the one man grunted to seemingly no one until I saw a small Chinese woman appear from the shadows. She bowed and they walked off, locking us in together.
“I’ve been kidnapped,” I started to tell her but the woman slapped me so hard across the face that I saw stars.
“You will learn to curb your American tongue. Real men do not like a woman who speaks so freely. Come. You smell of sex and filth.”
My cheeks burned but I dragged myself off the floor and followed the little woman with a vicious backhand down a dark hallway until we emerged in another room where other girls were huddled on thin cots, their eyes big and scared.
What the hell had I stumbled into?
“Get in the shower, scrub yourself clean. Use the scented soap after you’ve done a thorough cleanse.”
“I’m not dirty,” I shot back with a scowl and the Chinese woman raised her hand as if to slap me again. I held my ground. “Go ahead and try little woman. I’ve had meaner people than you try to do worse.”
At that the Chinese woman just cackled as if the joke were on me somehow and walked away.
I climbed into the dingy shower and quickly showered, gritting my teeth against the freezing water and stepped out where I wrapped myself in the clothing left behind.
I lifted the thin, see-through shift and balked. It was too fucking cold to wear that piece of tissue but all I had were my pajama bottoms.
My shirt was in shreds.
I quickly donned the shift and then jerked my pajama bottoms back on.
At least I was partially covered, unlike the other girls shivering down in this hole.
The little Chinese woman was gone. I went to the door and tried to open it but found it locked tight.
I had to try.
“Did you think they’d just leave the door open?” a caustic female voice at my back said. I turned and saw one of the women looking at me. “And besides, even if you did manage to get out, you’d never get past the guards at the top of the stairs.”
“Well, I don’t plan to be sold off like a prize cow or something. There has to be another way out of here.”
“Don’t get us in trouble,” another girl said fearfully, curling into a ball on her bed. “Bad things happen to the girls who make a fuss.”
“Sounds to me bad things happen to girls who don’t make a fuss,” I countered, glancing around the room, looking for some way to get out. I returned to the belligerent one. “What’s your name?”
“What difference does it make? Our identities will no longer be ours by the time we leave this room.”
“What is your name?” I persisted. I wasn’t letting go of who I was and I wasn’t going to let them either.
“Darian,” she answered after a short pause. “What’s yours?”
“I’m Ivy and we are getting out of here. My friend is an undercover detective and he’s been chasing after this Terano guy for two years. He’ll figure out what happened and come for me.”
“Ain’t no one gonna come for you sweetheart,” Darian disagreed. “Terano is big time. Why you think he hasn’t been busted yet? You think we’re the first shipment of girls he’s ever sent out? Hell no. He’s the king for a reason. He provides services no one else can get. And he’s got powerful friends.”
“So I hear,” I grumbled, not willing to lose hope. I knew Jameson would do whatever it took to find me. He might not want to admit it but he felt something for me and I was going to cling to that belief because that’s all I had to get me through this moment. “How long have you been down here?”
“A week.”
“A week?” I shuddered. “That’s horrible.”
It was cold, dank, and smelled of mildew. I could only imagine this was what it felt like to be buried alive. “So Terano is not only a drug dealer but a human trafficker, too? Good. Then at least when he gets busted, he’s guaranteed to go down for a long time.”
Darian shook her head. “You don’t get it. He’s got friends who keep him safe. He lines their pockets and they do whatever it takes to keep him in business.”
“Who is protecting him?” I asked.
“Like I know names,” Darian scoffed. “All I know is that what Terano wants, he gets. And he must’ve wanted you for whatever reasons because you ain’t leaving this box unless you’ve been sold to the highest bidder.”
“Or unless she’s carried out in a bag,” the scared girl provided. “That happened to Molly.”
