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The long, raised, jagged line that ran from Nikolai’s eye to his jaw was pronounced, even in the shadow, and Anteros realized he’d always been soft with Nikolai. He’d seen himself in the boy, but he hadn’t looked hard enough, hadn’t seen that Nikolai would never have been satisfied, not until he’d taken everything. But unlike Lucio, Anteros wasn’t going to sit back and die.
Anteros tightened his fists, fabric curling between his fingertips.
This ended now.
As if Nikolai could read his mind, he said calmly, “You kill me now and you’ll never find her.” Nikolai’s gaze shifted to where the two crates opened to the docks. Keeping his grip tight, Anteros followed the line of sight. Women were marching single file and that only meant one thing: they were getting ready to be loaded onto the freighter.
“You better hurry.” Nikolai’s amused, cocksure tone brought Anteros back. An infuriating smirk twisted the jagged scar on his face.
Fuck.
He’d almost gotten distracted. Anteros wanted to end it right fucking then, but instead he shoved Nikolai against the corrugated metal and ran out to find Frankie.
The women marched in a line behind a soldier while another held their back with a semi-automatic.
Frankie wasn’t among them.
All at once, relief and disappointment flooded him. If she wasn’t there then she was safe from The Institute a little while longer, but if she wasn’t there, he still had to find her.
The women were dirty from head to toe—clothes ripped, skin covered in splotches of blood and mud, hair tangled. Anteros felt that weird feeling again, that odd lump in his gut, as he thought about how he’d been doing this to women for years. The women had always just been numbers on pages, a bottom line. Here though, watching their bare feet get cut on the frozen asphalt, the numbers took life. They bled on the page the same way their feet did.
Anteros refocused, crouching deeper into the shadows behind a metal container. Their bloody feet left a trail and an idea struck him—he could follow that back to where they’d come from. He waited an agonizingly long time for the women to be loaded into the crate then followed the red droplets until they ended before an open container.
Next to the open crate was a closed one. That was her crate; he fucking knew it. It was idiotic to be standing out in the middle like he was, the orange light broadcasting his location.
But he couldn’t stop.
He just stared.
She was right inside. Probably in pain, probably confused, scared. Anteros took a step toward it, jaw clenched.
“Lee, all I’m askin’ is haven’t you ever wanted to sample the fruit?” Anteros quickly flattened himself beside the crate opposite Frankie’s as two soldiers appeared.
“Yeah, but that’s not our job, Tucker,” the other one, or Lee, replied.
“Who gives a…shit! I forgot the key.” Tucker rifled through his pockets then pulled them both out, chagrined.
“Are you fucking me right now?” Lee snapped. “We’re gonna be late. The other bitches are already loaded.”
“What do you want me to do?” Tucker asked, equally pissed off. “You want me to run back and get it or do you wanna keep hounding me?” In response, Lee motioned angrily toward the way they’d come and Tucker ran off in that direction.
Lee leaned against the crate and pulled out his phone, the blue light making his beady eyes glow. Anteros cracked his knuckles. Frankie was the fruit they wanted to sample.
He would rip the
ir goddamn throats out.
Anteros wasn’t going to pretend he’d been benevolent. It wasn’t until Frankie that he really thought outside himself, but the men under his employ never “sampled the fruit”. It wasn’t because he’d cared about the women; it had always been about the bottom line, and a bruised peach sold for less.
All he wanted to do was slam Lee’s worthless head against the ground, open the crate, and get Frankie, but he still didn’t have the key. If Tucker got back and found Lee dead, he would sound the alarm.
Anteros would save her, but he would wait for the right moment. In this dirty underground world where you were either predator or prey, Anteros would always be her predator. He would be there in the shadows, even if she didn’t want him.
Eighteen
Pounding. Throbbing. Oh fuck, that’s my head.
I sat up slowly and rubbed my eyes, disoriented and expecting to see, but it was pitch-black. It smelled musty and dank like being too close to water, and there was also something strong like body odor—like really, really bad body odor. The floor was hard like metal and had big corrugations. Was I in some kind of giant metal box?
