Chapter 14 #2
The room was dark, with walls lined with leather panels. In the center was a man in a navy suit, lounging in a plush leather recliner like he owned the world. A low table beside him held a crystal glass, half full. A remote rested in his hand.
On the far wall, I saw what looked like a viewing window, but it was opaque and flickered to life as the man pressed the button on the remote.
It lit up with images—bodies. Screen after screen of nude or barely covered females.
All with blurred faces and watermarked with serial codes and timestamps.
Son of a bitch.
It was a fucking catalog. Women indexed like objects.
I cursed, and the man turned, startled, as if annoyed by the intrusion. When he saw us, his eyes flickered to the far corner, and a shadow peeled out of it. A bodyguard in black, big and fast.
But I moved faster.
Two steps forward, pivot, elbow to the throat, twist the wrist, disarm. I caught the knife midair, reversed it, and buried the blade in the guy’s shoulder. A twist, a grunt, and the guard dropped.
The man in the suit scrambled to his feet, hands shaking, and backed against the wall.
“Please,” he gasped. “I didn’t?—”
He lunged for a switch. A panic button.
I didn’t hesitate. One bullet. Clean. Right between the eyes.
The screen flickered, then went dark.
Something icy spread through my veins. A sense of foreboding.
Then a speaker crackled above our heads. “Tonight’s auction will begin in sixty seconds. Digital transactions will resume after the live segment concludes. Please place your bids promptly. Our merchandise moves fast.”
My stomach clenched.
A room lit up on the other side of the window. A quick glance around showed that the walls were all lined with one-way glass.
The room went dark again for half a minute, then a spotlight shined down in the very center of the room. A woman stood under it, naked but for a G-string and a lace bra. She slumped on trembling legs in five-inch heels. Her eyes were wide with fear but unfocused. Sedated.
“What the fuck,” Wrecker breathed.
A disembodied voice began to chant numbers. “Ten thousand.” A bell chimed. “Twelve.” Another ring. “Fourteen. Do I hear sixteen?”
With each ding of the bell, the number rose. A new bid.
I couldn’t breathe.
It was a fucking auction.
My fists clenched so tight my bones ached. Rage coiled in my chest like a blade waiting to be unsheathed.
The lights dimmed. A final bell. “Sold.”
Darkness descended briefly, then the room lit up once more.
This time, it was a man. Young. Barely fucking legal. Wearing only a Speedo. Arms limp and mouth parted like he couldn’t quite understand what was happening. Just as drugged. Just as humiliated.
“They’re not only taking pictures of them,” Maverick said, his voice a growl. “They’re selling them.”
“They’re selling people?” Wrecker hissed.
“They’re trafficking,” I corrected. “Fucking monsters.”
I was stunned by this revelation. A fucking human trafficking ring, disguised under pixelated filth and dark web encryption.
Wrecker was already gone, pounding back into the hallway. “Gonna find the holding room.”
Maverick made for the landline in the corner. Old-fashioned rotary, red. The kind used for panic calls or locked systems.
He picked it up, dialed a number, and waited.
“Who’re you calling?” Hawk asked, still staring at the screen.
“Backup,” Maverick answered. “Local associates. Be here in ten. Not gonna handle this one alone.”
I nodded slowly, a brutal smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. “I’m going to see what’s left of Darren.”
The moment I reemerged from the elevator, the fury came with me.
The air upstairs felt thicker than before, as if the whole mansion had absorbed the stench of what we’d uncovered below.
Behind me, the walls were still echoing with the ghosts of the auction.
Glass rooms. Drugged bodies. People being bid on by monsters in designer suits.
I thought about Gemma. Wondered if this was where she would have ended up if she’d never called Lainie. Immediately, I shook the thought away. It would only lead to death and destruction. If the beast was released, no one would get out alive.
I focused on an image of her seared into my memory—safe in my bed, sleepy and satisfied. Staring up at me with those soft brown eyes, her tempting lips curled in a sweet smile.
I stalked through the corridor, boots heavy on polished hardwood, my fists clenching with every step. The walls vibrated faintly, with music still playing somewhere in the house. It grated on my already frayed edges.
Racer waited in the hall, his expression as hard as granite. “Storm’s got him in the guest suite, end of the hall,” he muttered, motioning with his chin. “Didn’t want him near the kitchen. Too many knives.”
Good. I wanted to bleed Darren somewhere quiet.
I didn’t knock. Just shoved the door open with the heel of my hand and stepped into the room like the devil had come to claim Darren’s soul.
The bedroom was plush. Gold accents, silk curtains. Velvet chairs arranged near a crackling gas fireplace that tried to pass as elegant but felt staged—like everything else in the house.
Storm stood calmly to the side, one hand wrapped around his gun, the other resting casually on the back of a high-backed chair.
Darren Thomas sat trembling on the cushion.
He was bound, bruised, and already bleeding from a split lip and swollen eye.
His tailored suit was wrinkled, the collar torn, and sweat plastered his thinning hair to his forehead.
The moment I walked in, Darren tensed. Coward.
But it wasn’t him that stopped me in my tracks.
It was the wall.
Six framed photographs lined it in staggered columns. Boudoir portraits, blown up and printed in high gloss. Women in lace and satin posed artfully, unaware their beauty had become part of a predator’s trophy room.
And there—centered, larger than the rest—was Gemma.
My Gemma.
She stood barefoot, back arched slightly, hair tumbling down over one bare shoulder, the lighting caressing her skin. So beautiful. Confident. But still vulnerable.
And framed like a fucking trophy.
Something inside me shattered.
I didn’t even register crossing the room. One second, I was frozen—shocked and hollowed out by the image of her. The next, I was across the floor, fists buried in Darren’s face, blood flying like flecks of rust across white walls.
Storm didn’t interfere. Not at first.
I wasn’t gentle. I wasn’t quiet. Snarling sounds tore from my chest, and I felt the pressure leave me every time my knuckles cracked bone.
Darren’s head whipped back and forth under the barrage, blood splattering onto the armrest, the floor, and the sleeves of my shirt. He wasn’t fighting back. Couldn’t.
I kept going, and the beast was finally free to rain down hell. A bone snapped, and Darren screamed through broken teeth.
Storm finally stepped forward, voice calm but edged with warning. “Brother.”
I kept going, kneeing the chair, rocking it back so Darren flailed, wheezing through a broken nose and split, swollen lips.
Storm let me continue until Darren barely breathed.
Then he caught my wrist. “Enough.”
It wasn’t a request.
“Not yet,” I growled.
Storm didn’t blink. “Need his face at least partially intact. For now.”
Slowly, deliberately, I lowered my hand.
Darren was barely conscious as he slumped to the floor. His face looked like raw meat—eyes swollen shut, lip shredded open, blood soaking the front of his shirt. He moaned in short, shallow bursts. Pitiful and weak.
Storm pulled him upright with one hand and shoved him back in the chair.
At that moment, the door creaked open again.
Maverick walked in, took one look at the scene, and exhaled a slow sigh. “Couldn’t have left one cheek untouched,” he muttered, glancing at Darren’s obliterated face. “Gonna take a day or two before he can form words again.”
I shrugged, flexing my blood-slick fingers. “Doesn’t need words. Needs to remember pain.”
Maverick met my eyes across the room, but there was no judgment. Only approval.
“We’ll get what we need out of him once Blade takes care of the swelling. He’ll talk. Eventually.”
“Gonna make fucking sure of it,” I said, low and brutal.
Maverick nodded. “Backup is arriving now. Storm, you and Racer move the victims to a bedroom upstairs. Find them some clothes. Wrecker and I locked the customers in the viewing area.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “Told ’em we were putting them up for auction as bitches to the nearest prison.”
Storm snorted, and Racer coughed a laugh. Any other time, I’d have appreciated the levity in a destructive situation like this. But the only thing on my mind was Gemma. I needed her in my arms. Needed to be inside her. To remind myself that she was real. Safe. Mine .
“Hawk,” Maverick said, his voice dipping. “You good?”
“No,” I replied honestly. “But I will be. I’m going home.”
Mav’s eyes narrowed slightly, studying me. “To Gemma?”
“Where the fuck else?” I snapped.
“Just makin’ sure you weren’t planning to camp out in The Room until your punching bag arrives.”
I grunted. “Not worth being away from my woman.”
“I hear that,” Storm muttered.
Crossing the room, I paused to look once more at Gemma’s framed photo. She didn’t belong on this wall. Not in this nightmare.
I took it, removing the frame so I could keep her close to my heart.
And left Darren in the wreckage of his sins.