Chapter 2 #2
Strolling into the kitchen, he found their cook, Ernie, about to head downstairs with the trolley filled with breakfast plates.
Usually, the cook was the one to take meals down, but when Emma Beaumont had been abducted from the side of the road when she stopped to help a motorist in need, Nathan had taken over the task.
Mateo knew it was because the man wanted any excuse possible to check in on Emma.
He didn't have anyone to check on, yet he felt a responsibility to the other women now.
With Nathan gone, there were only he and two others left here, and they still didn't have what they needed to get to the head of Azure.
“I got it, Ernie,” he said, reaching for the trolley.
The man startled. “What is it with you guys and delivering meals all of a sudden?” the cook grumbled. “First that traitor Nathan, and now you.”
“Don’t know that Nathan was a traitor,” he said.
He’d mentioned a few times the idea that Nathan was just a man so obsessed with a woman he couldn’t see anything else.
The last thing he wanted was Azure considering the possibility of a traitor in their midst. Either way, Nathan was dead if any of them ever spotted him, but according to Falcon, the man was tucked safely away with Emma.
“He betrayed us, left without a word, and I heard a rumor that the man who bought the blonde firecracker was killed. We know what happened. He lost his mind and went after her, killed to make her his. That’s betrayal if ever I heard it,” Ernie said.
“Azure still got paid for the girl, does it really matter if she now belongs to Nathan instead of some guy in Kenya?”
As he maneuvered the trolley into the elevator, he wondered what was going on with him.
He didn't get soft. Not for anyone. Well, anyone other than his pretty little mouse. But Ally aside, he’d long since stopped letting emotions dictate the way he lived.
He still had a moral compass, a sense of justice, perhaps one that had been too sharpened by the ordeal that almost killed him as a teenager.
Refusing to indulge in anything as pointless as emotions, especially for people he was already doing everything within his power to shut down the trafficking ring for, he waited for the elevator to reach the basement level, and once it did, he rolled the trolley out.
“You're here early,” Van said, sticking his head out of the guard’s room down this end of the corridor.
Didn't the man do anything but sit around in there watching videos? It seemed like no matter what hour of the day or night you came down here, Van was there. Never in his life had Mateo met a colder human being than Van. Given that he’d been a cop for half a decade, then spent over a decade working undercover, that was saying something.
While Mateo had learned to shut down his emotions, focusing on very specific things, Van just seemed completely empty inside.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said with a shrug. Completely honest, although he’d tried to sleep in his car, being so close to Ally and not being able to go to her had him edgy and unsettled in a way he hadn't been since he was fourteen years old, and he’d learned the hard way that when pushed to their limits, people always prioritized themselves.
“I bet,” Van said with one of his trademark smirks, but there was something underlying the man’s expression that put Mateo on edge.
Probably just the lack of sleep catching up with him.
Plus, the stress of spending twenty years refusing to let anyone get close to him, then falling for Ally basically on the spot.
He’d done his best to stop it from happening, to shove those feelings away because there was no space for a partner in the life he’d chosen for himself.
But how was he supposed to resist her soft voice, expressive eyes, and sweet, shy personality?
Starting at one end of the row of cells, he waited outside each one for the woman inside to sink down on her knees, palms on their thighs, gazes fixed firmly on the floor, before opening the cell and setting their breakfast down.
They wouldn't touch the food until they were given permission to, and some of the guys got off on making them sit there, in their submissive position for ages before allowing them to eat.
He, on the other hand, did not get off on torturing women.
This was a job. One he was good at because of his ability to shut his emotions down and focus on the details of what needed to be done.
It wasn't that he didn't see these women as human beings, it was just that he was able to shut down any emotion he might feel for them because it wasn't productive.
How could he do his job if he was constantly outraged over the mistreatment of these poor women?
One by one, he left meals for the women.
All the way down one line of cells, then working his way back up the other side.
Emma had been the most recent addition to Azure’s stock, so everyone else here was well enough trained that they got down on their knees without complaint, knowing they’d be punished if they didn't.
It wasn't until he reached the third last cell on the second side, that the woman inside it didn't move.
Did they have a new one? He shouldn’t be surprised if they did, they usually had between twelve and twenty women at any one time, and with Emma gone, that stock had to be replenished, but he hadn't heard about a new arrival.
When he looked over at the small figure huddled against the back wall of the cell, his heart stuttered in his chest.
Red hair.
It spilled in waves in a curtain around where the woman had her face pressed into her bent knees.
Arms were curled around her legs, and although she was wearing a hoodie, it had moved up enough to expose her wrists, and he saw the delicate torque bracelet with a pearl on one end and a diamond on the other.
Mateo knew that bracelet.
He should.
He was the one who had bought it on his and Ally’s six-month anniversary.
At the time, he felt a little silly doing it.
Six months was nothing to be celebrating, wasn't even a year yet. And they were only dating, it wasn't like he’d proposed and they’d gotten married.
But he’d spotted it in a jewelry store when he was at the mall with Ally, and it had immediately reminded him of her with its delicate beauty.
No.
It couldn’t be her.
Couldn’t be his girl.
Not here.
Not in this hellhole.
His girl was too special to wind up in a place like this. A place that destroyed anything good, broke people down into nothing before rebuilding them to be the perfect compliant slaves. His girl had already been through so much, lost so much, been hurt by so many people.
Maybe it wasn't her. She wasn't the only woman in the world with red hair, and it wasn't like the store only made one bracelet. It had to be someone else.
Had to be.
But as though sensing she was being watched, the woman lifted her head, and their eyes met. Hers widened in shocked horror as Mateo schooled his features into passive disinterest even as his world shattered into a million pieces.
He’d walked away from Ally to protect her from the monsters he worked with, and yet she’d wound up in their clutches anyway.