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“Like I said, we’re working through confirming your reason for being at that compound,” the man says.
“Reason? You make it sound like I had a choice. Have you seen my body? I’m covered in fucking scars. They—”
He holds his hand up. As quick as I was to tell him he didn’t have control over me despite claiming the highest position in this club he has, I snap my mouth closed.
“We’re not saying you’re a liar. I’m telling you we have to confirm who you are.”
“For argument’s sake, say you find out I’m part of Raul’s fucking team, that I take pleasure in the things I was forced to do. What happens to me then?”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” he says, his refusal to explain more ominous than knowing exactly what he’s capable of.
“I want to speak to Alani!” I demand. “Cortez wasn’t there, and that means she may not be fucking safe. I want to speak with my sister!”
He takes a step back as warm hands clasp my shoulders. “Let’s go back into the room.”
I don’t know why I let her guide me out of the living room area of the suite. I consider that maybe she has a phone, and as a woman, she’ll be a little easier to sway.
“I want to leave,” I tell her once we’re alone in the bedroom. “If none of you will let me call her, then I’ll find someone who will. Cortez was using her to keep me compliant.”
She watches me, that same sympathetic look in her eyes she’s had since I first laid eyes on her back at the compound.
“Would you stop fucking looking at me like you can’t decide if I’m a lying psychopath or the saddest victim you’ve ever met?”
“The saddest victims I’ve ever seen have always been dead.”
“So then you think I liked doing what I did? That I made all those videos of my own free will? They threatened to send them to her and the police. When I told them no one would ever believe them, they said they’d take her and turn her into their most profitable whore. Have you ever loved someone so much you’d do anything to protect them?”
She doesn’t verbally respond, and I have my answer. It’s not that what I did is so incredibly reprehensible. She’s never had someone in her life that she’d burn the world down for. I think I’ve proven that I’d do anything imaginable to protect my sister, and I sure as fuck won’t apologize for it.
My chin trembles as I switch tactics. “Did you see these?”
Her eyes dart away when I open my robe to reveal my scarred flesh.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Do you think I liked it when they cut into me? That I like being hurt this way? Have you spoken with Nash? Ask him about what happened at that compound.”
“I’ll let you know what we find out,” she says, before turning around and leaving the room.
The door locks from the inside, but I feel no less like a prisoner than I did without the door at the compound.
I press my ear to the door, certain when they call the woman “Slick” that it’s a sexual term. It makes me second-guess my safety. They may be preventing me from leaving, but they haven’t made any overtures or looked at me the way Pirro and his men did.
Their voices grow too low and mumbled for me to understand anything else, but I don’t pull open the door. We’re several stories up in this suite of rooms, so it’s not like I can climb out of the window.
Knowing Cortez wasn’t part of the body count in that house makes my skin crawl. Pirro and every other man in that house were killed. I do feel a high level of gratitude for that, but I also can’t stop thinking about the other houses Cortez has just like the one I left. Taking down one team of men and shuttering the doors on one house of depravity doesn’t ruin his business. If anything, it’s a minor hiccup, and one he can easily resolve, considering all it would take is another trip to a college town to get more victims.
Chapter 18
Nash
“Then give me a fucking prescription for antibiotics,” I growl, uncaring that the doctor is looking at me like I’m a piece of shit.
“Mr.—” He looks down at the binder in his hands. “Cutler, I advise against leaving without medical consent.”
I inch forward, the way he shrivels a little making me feel somewhat better about my recent incapacitation. At least I still have some intimidation factor left. “You don’t even know my name. Why should I fucking listen to you?”
“If you leave, we aren’t liable for—”
“Get me the fucking prescription. Do I look like a man who’s willing to sue someone? I have other ways of righting the wrongs done to me.”
