AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"They'll be fine anyway. I made Jake promise." I force a smile, wanting to make Carter feel better. "He never breaks promises."
Carter eyes the others, then rests his head on my shoulder and whispers, "They're looking for me. The traffickers that are left. I guess there's, like, a fucking bounty on my head or something…"
Something heavy and sharp settles in my chest. "I thought the fire was supposed to make it look like we all died?"
"Guess they saw through it. That's why Trav wanted me to come here."
I try to breathe. Try to fight off the panic. They won't get near Carter. Travis would never let them. Neither would Maison or Jake. Surely, they'll protect him. "Does that mean you're back for good?"
"No way." My gut sinks. Of course not. Stubborn little asshole. "I really like where I'm at. I'm not letting those fuckers steal my freedom again."
I sigh. "He's going to move into a cardboard box on your doorstep to keep you safe, you know."
Carter looks like he's fighting a grin. He doesn't have to ask who I'm talking about. "Yeah, there's a good chance of that."
"You two disgust me," I tease, not meaning it one bit.
"I'm sure you and Jake will be disgusting soon enough. In fact," Carter pauses, wiggling his eyebrows like he knows something. "I have some advice for you. A way to get that oaf to give into you."
My heart jumps inside my chest. Jake made it sound like he's ready to give in already, but he's run away before. I could use a backup plan. "Do tell."
"How do you feel about daddy kink?"
Chapter Thirty-eight
Jake
It feels strange, stepping back into the shoes of Benny Rivera. Since I don't have grunts to order around, it's me who is responsible for initially getting Scott Quinton set up. Maison helps, eager to prove he can do more than just sit on the other end of the phone giving us orders. Donning night vision goggles, we enter his pitch-black holding cell, cut off his clothes, get his wrists attached to shackles and those shackles attached to chains on the ceiling, and wrap a metal collar tight around his throat that forces his chin to stay up.
We take turns hitting him until he violently awakes, eyes going comically wide like that can somehow combat the darkness around him. He tries to get us to tell him what's going on as I use a machine to yank him by the chains up to his tiptoes. Then I hand Maison the hose from the wall and stand back while he gets his pound of flesh, covering the bastard head to toe with ice cold water - concentrating especially on his face and genitals.
“That was fucking therapeutic,” Maison tells me as we exit the room, wanting to keep Quinton wet, freezing, and encased in darkness for a while. We find Travis standing in the hall with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, his expression dark and distant. It doesn't seem like the experience was very therapeutic for him. I don't think he wants to be here at all.
That only becomes more and more evident as time passes. Every hour away from Carter seems to drag Travis further into himself, his hands shaking and his knees bouncing. I try to cheer him up at one point by letting him choose when Quinton sits in silence and when his ears are assaulted by German heavy metal music at full volume. It doesn’t even make him smile, his movements almost absentminded as he flicks his thumb between the settings, his focus somewhere else despite his gaze being locked on the night vision video feed of Quinton. Sending him off with an order to eat or rest doesn’t work either. And when I catch him on the phone with Carter at one point, his face is scrunched up like he's in physical pain.
But he rallies.
That’s one thing Travis Kenton is very good at. Regardless of how painful something is, of how badly he wants to fall apart, he’s always managed to force himself into finishing the job.
So, refusing to let anyone else step in for him, he dresses himself in a Nathan Roarke getup and gets to work.
There is a moment, though. When Quinton puts things together, when he twists and turns Travis’s mind until he has Travis convinced that he’ll never be able to keep Carter safe, when Travis completely unravels and pushes Quinton to the breaking point, then leaves him there anyway before he can tell us what we need to know just so he can suffer while Travis calls Carter to beg him to go to the safehouse. There's a moment where I think we've pushed Travis too far. But Carter goes to the safehouse, and Travis fucking takes a nap, and finally - fucking finally - we get Quinton to spill his guts. Metaphorically and literally.
Elliot was sold to a piece of shit named Aleksei Pavlov. The 43-year-old Russian man is old money, heading an investing firm that is well-known in our world for being a business front for all kinds of horrific shit.
Aleksei doesn’t have him anymore. He only wants innocent little virgins to break. Once that’s done, he sells them off to someone who wants a slave that’s more… trained. In this case, Aleksei’s business partner, Borris Pasternak. We do some digging - mostly Ace remotely deep-diving into Borris’s computer.
Turns out, we all have something in common.
Someone.
A man who is the head operative of his own operation in Ireland - the same position Travis was in our operation. Ronan. A good guy. A fucking fantastic guy, actually. A guy who would do anything he could to help us.
Travis breaks off to take a shower, Maison following behind him.
I take out my phone and call Ronan.
We’re getting Elliot. Whatever it takes.
