Chapter 5 - Cal
CAL
Iknew Bolton was going to buck the plan and go full flaming Sagittarius, acting on a gut feeling and good vibes until everything falls into place.
Because he’s a fucking chaos gremlin with a big heart who can’t follow orders or think long-term.
The best we can hope for is to get out of here in one piece, and preferably not in police custody or body bags.
The risk he’s saddling us with makes my eye twitch. I should put my foot down and stop this impulsive nonsense, but I can’t say no to him.
Mandy brings us down a hallway, through a set of doors into a locked basement.
“Do you have a key?” I ask her, knowing full well she doesn’t have one.
She shakes her head, her empty eyes downcast. I can see why Bolton took to her so quickly—she’s a sad woman who needs a savior. And Bolton will always help when he can, even if it means giving away the shirt off his back.
“How about a bobby pin?” he asks. He glares at me, as if I’m the one ruining our plan and possibly getting us killed.
She takes one out of her massive hair, and Bolton picks the lock quickly. I knew he was a bit of a troublemaker when he was a teenager, but I didn’t know he was a Houdini.
What we see inside is enough to make my stomach roil.
My dinner is trying to come back up, and I have to take deep breaths of the musky air down here to stave off vomiting.
There are two women in large dog cages. One can’t be older than twenty.
She’s so small and frail, with twigs for arms and legs.
Bolton runs over to her cage and picks the lock. She doesn’t stir when he nudges her shoulder.
“She’s breathing,” he informs us as he carefully pulls her out and pls es up face up on the concrete floor. “I’m going to have to carry her out of here.”
He goes to the other cage and releases the second woman. She’s larger, but still malnourished and unconscious.
“I think her name is Ashley,” Mandy says, pointing to the first woman. “And I don’t know her name. She just got here,” she admits as she points to the second one.
As we carry them upstairs, I start to mentally plan where we’re going to house all these women and how we’ll get them medical care. I have connections, but it will be difficult to keep them all together in one place.
I lead us to the top of the stairs and out of the hallway, stopping when I hear angry male voices.
“I found John in the broom closet, knocked out cold. Mandy is missing, too,” a scratchy voice shouts.
“Fuck!” A second, louder voice shouts. There’s a loud thud, like he’s possibly punching a wall. “I don’t need this type of shit tonight. Let’s try to find her. Maybe you missed her on the floor.”
The pounding of footsteps echoes away from us, then a door slams. I turn to Bolton, who has the first woman sitting against the wall. He can barely hold her as we climbed the stairs. I have no clue how we’re going to pull this off. We may be fucked.
“Got any great ideas?” I snap.
“Yeah, I do.”
He smiles as he goes into one of the rooms and comes out with a roll of paper towels and a lighter.
He lights the paper towel on fire and places it under some floor-length curtains.
Then he pops the top off the lighter and dumps the lighter fluid on them.
They ignite, spreading to the shit-colored carpet.
“Let’s go, I think there’s a fire alarm by the main door up here.”
He pulls it right before we walk through the main doors to the stage room.
The sprinklers turn on and all hell breaks loose.
Patrons run out of the front door, and some women try to make an escape.
Others are confused or too drugged to realize what’s going on.
Mandy helps Bolton carry Ashley toward the door, but a bouncer blocks their path.
“What the fuck are you doing, Khloe? Get back downstairs!”
He tries to grab her, but Bolton knocks his arm away. Then he knees the bouncer in the balls. He drops to the floor, screaming profanities at my husband. I lean down and punch his face hard enough that he blacks out.
One stripper almost barrels into Mandy, her breathing heavy and stuttered. “There’s a fire in the back! We gotta leave!”
“Are all the girls out safe?” Mandy asks.
We didn’t even have the chance to clear the back rooms before Bolton set his impulse fire.
“Yes. Unfortunately some sleezeballs got out too. Gia is checking the dressing room, and Flora is checking the bathrooms.”
“We checked the basement,” Bolton chimes in. “If we’re reasonably sure everyone is out, we should go too. The smoke is gathering in here.”
We leave through the front door and somehow pile all six of us in the car.
I make a quick phone call, explaining to my security firm in broad terms that I have four women who need a place to lie low and medical attention.
Thankfully, I pay them enough to use the utmost discretion, so they don’t ask follow-up questions.
When we drop them off, Bolton promises to visit—which will not happen. We can’t tie ourselves to this, lest we get caught. I highly doubt those women will call the police on the men who freed them, but we’re not taking any chances.
I’m quiet for the rest of the ride. Anything I say to Bolton will cause a blowout argument.
We’ll both say things we regret, and I can’t deal with his emotions and my own right now.
He must feel the same way because he spends the entire ride staring out the window.
When we finally get into the penthouse, he barely looks at me before going into the guest room and slamming the door shut.
A few minutes later, I can hear the shower running from outside his door.
My mind races as I ready myself for bed.
I bribed Scarlet for information in a backroom.
What she told me paints a picture worse than anything Bolton and I could have imagined.
Melton isn’t simply trafficking the girls in New York and the surrounding suburbs.
He’s part of a much larger network auctioning them off to buyers all over the world.
They take girls and women from all walks of life and sell them into a life of sexual slavery and abuse.
Scarlet’s story broke my heart—her own parents sold her because they couldn’t afford four kids, and she was the only girl.
They didn’t think it was worth keeping me when they had three sons…so they sold me on my fourteenth birthday. I’ve been working in clubs all over the country for the past six years. Most of the girls haven’t lasted nearly this long. I’m surprised I have.
Her words churn in my mind, making all of my anger rise to the surface.
Every woman trapped in that hellscape has a similar story.
They’ve all suffered and deserve freedom.
But instead of making a careful plan to extract them all safely, Bolton acted impulsively.
We don’t know where any of those women are right now—we’re assuming they all made it out safely.
Where will they go? How will they get a better quality of life without resources?
Scarlet said some of them are drugged daily to make them compliant, so how do we know for sure they will not fall into equally dire circumstances on the streets?
Bolton comes in and grabs his laptop from his bedside table. He ignores me again, and this time I can’t handle the silent treatment.
“What did Mandy tell you?” I ask him.
“That everything we thought about that place is true. Those women were lied to and kidnapped, held against their will, and drugged. Some of them were lucky enough to sleep in a cell, and others were kept in cages. It’s a fucking nightmare.
” His voice cracks with emotion. “I’m not entirely sure Ashley is a legal adult… ”
“Based on what Scarlet said, she probably isn’t. This isn’t a local ring—Melton is part of a larger syndicate trafficking girls and women all over the world.”
“Did she tell you this while sitting on your lap, or when you gave her the watch I got you for Christmas?” He gestures to my empty wrist, where I wore his watch a couple of hours ago.
“Sometimes you have to barter—”
“Yeah, call it bartering. You didn’t have to let her sit on your lap and touch you. You didn’t have to flirt with her. I got information just fine without doing either.”
“You have no right to be a jealous little shit—I was keeping our cover. Your impulsive operation ruined our plan. Now we don’t know if all of those women got out okay or where they are now.
All because you heard a sob story and wanted to ride in on your white horse and save the day.
Now they could be wandering the streets with nowhere else to go.
Or the bouncers could have tracked them down.
They may know our faces, too.” Jesus fucking Christ, I didn’t even realize they saw our faces.
“I—”
“No. Shut up, Bolton. You ruined everything. There’s no excuse for what you did tonight when I explicitly told you to stick with the plan. This is why I didn’t want to bring you!” I bellow, the words radiating into the room and crashing into him like a landslide.
As soon as I finish, I know I went too far.
He stands frozen, his face scrunched up.
Tears well in his eyes, and his lip quivers.
I take a step toward him, but he bolts into our bedroom.
The click of the door locking behind him echoes through the entire apartment.
I should follow him—use my key to let myself in and fix this—but I can’t bring myself to move.
I’m weighed down with shame and anger, and I don’t know if I want to. Everything I said was true.
So why do I feel like such a piece of shit?
He emerges with a suitcase, fully dressed in jeans, a hoodie, and sneakers.
“It’s almost midnight. Where are you going?”
He doesn’t answer me. Instead, he places his wedding ring on the coffee table and wheels his suitcase toward the door. I catch up with him, and he whirls around. The pain in his eyes could slice me open.
“Don’t you dare follow me, or use your stupid fucking app to find me. Leave me alone, Callum. I swear to fucking God, you’ll never see me again if you so much as text me.”
He opens the door, slamming it behind him. I pull up the garage feed on my phone and see him get into his car and pull out of his spot. My heart drops into my stomach, and the anger and shame inside me multiply until I can barely breathe.
My husband just left me.