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He sobs and shakes his head. “I don’t know more. If I did, I’d tell you.”
I know about the LeClerc Cartel. Rather than serving lowlifes with junkie girls and runaways, they cater to the immoral elite. Men with cash to spare who don’t mind buying sex or slave labor. The Cartel has a large gathering every year where they show off their best merchandise. It is the biggest event they put on all year, and, if my memory serves, it is coming up on a year since the last event.
“When is the auction?”
“I don’t know,” the man says, slapping the pavement with his palms. His hand splashes in his own warm blood, and he groans. “Can I get up? Please?”
His voice is weak. Even if I do let him up, I’m not sure he’ll make it to the end of the alley.
“Where is Milaya?”
He screws up his face and shakes his head. “Who?”
“My daughter!” I roar, furious that this piece of shit who helped kidnap my daughter doesn’t even know her name.
She meant nothing to him. Just another job.
“I never saw her,” he says. “My job was to take out the guards. That is it. Once the job was done, a separate car dropped me off here. I didn’t see where they were taken.”
I shift the weight on my foot, digging the toe of my boot into the soft flesh of his windpipe above his collarbone.
The man’s eyes pop out and his lips go blue around the edges. He claws at my foot, panicked, but just as his eyes start to roll back in his head, I lift my foot and back away.
He gasps for air, but the breaths are shallow. His coughs sound wet and phlegmy.
He doesn’t have long.
I want to stay and end him myself. I never had any intention of letting him live. Mess with my family, and you won’t live to see another day.
But based on how much blood is in the alley, this man is dead anyway. And I don’t have the time to spare. I need to find my family.
So, I walk down the alley and leave the man to bleed out.
3
Eve
Things come to me in flashes.
Brief moments of light so bright and quick that I don’t know what is real and imagined.
My head hurts, but the sensation ebbs and flows, coming and going in waves until I can’t pinpoint the source of the pain.
I open my eyes and see black leather right next to my face. I see my own arm draped over the edge of a car seat. I see the glowing knob for the radio on a car stereo.
Then, I see Luka.
He is in bed next to me, his strong arm wrapped around my waist. The woodsy smell of him curls around me like a blanket, and I take deep breaths.
Then, Milaya begins to cry.
I move to get up, but Luka kisses my shoulder and nuzzles his face against the back of my neck. His body is warm against me, and his hips circle against my backside. “Don’t move. I’ll get her.”
I turn around and catch his lips with mine, sucking on his lower lip until he groans. “I’ll be waiting.”
Luka leaves, and I roll back on the bed and throw my arms over my head, sinking into the mattress.
There are few feelings as good as the after-sex glow. The warm, sated ease that seeps into every muscle, taking with it any worries I may have had prior. The best part of that glow, however, is snuggling into Luka’s broad chest and wrapping myself in his warmth.
