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Raine: I have to pick my sister up. Can’t make it today.
I relayed the
text she sent aloud, shoving my trash onto a tray, prepared to retreat to a secluded room and scream down the walls.
“Um, Raine‘s sister died three years ago,” Melody said.
I stopped in my tracks and looked back at her. “Then I don’t understand.” I rubbed my head, knowing in my gut that this was Mateo’s doing. Once again, he was a step ahead of me. I’d never told him who I was going to meet.
“Maybe it’s nothing. She could just be scared,” Peyton suggested, not sounding like he believed that at all.
Chapter Twenty-One
I rushed into the house with no semblance of calm.
My feet carried me straight towards the voices coming from the room with a bar and a pool table. The doors were shut, and I threw them open.
Mateo didn’t look surprised to see me, and his two companions both seemed amused by my bravado entrance.
“What the hell are you doing?” I looked at the four women on their knees.
They were in nothing but bras and G-strings. The dresses they’d arrived in sat in a pile of the floor.
“You just interrupted a business meeting,” Mateo said, taking a drink from the tumbler in his hand.
“What kind of bus…what the fuck is wrong with you?”
He laughed, pissing me off even more. I wanted to wrap those girls up and ship them far away from this world. None of them looked up, keeping their faces downturned like well trained dogs.
“It’s broad daylight outside,” I seethed.
“Is it better to sell women at night?” He smirked. “Take them to our regular and see what he wants. Take whomever is left to Malignant.”
With a flurry of movement, the women were re-dressed and being ushered from the room with no ounce of dignity left in them.
“You.” I shook my head, expelling a breath.
“I’m doing the same thing I’ve been doing since I was seventeen. If I didn’t make these transactions happen, someone else would, and they wouldn’t be as nice about it as I am.”
I scoffed, running a hand over my brow. “Did you touch them?”
“Ah, and there is the source of your real anger.” He stroked his chin, studying me with hooded eyes. “Do you truly think so lowly of me? That I would disrespect you by seeking fulfillment from a whore?”
“The source of my anger isn’t because you might have stuck your dick in someone else. It’s from you feeding a man to alligators, having me burn my initials into a man’s chest, and stopping my every attempt at finding answers!”
“Alex deserved much more than he got after what he did to…” He stopped himself, draining the rest of his tumbler.
“Going to Raine was a very bad move, anjo.” Hearing the obvious threat in his voice should have been my warning sign to stop while I was ahead.
With my own emotions in a tumultuous tailspin, the warning sparsely registered.
“You’re fucking insane!”
“Soon enough, you will be too.”
“Maybe that’s the problem, because I’ll never be like you,” I said. It was harsher than I’d intended.
Glass shattered against the wall, missing my face by a hair’s breadth. When I realized he’d thrown his tumbler at me, my brain kicked into high gear and told me to run, but my legs stayed cemented in place.
