Chapter 3
KAYLA
My blood boils, my pulse battering as I slam my knuckles over and over against my steering wheel.
That man from the bar… His breath reeking of liquor, his leery gaze running down my body like he was picturing himself in places others have invaded.
I couldn’t help the emotions he brought out in me. The desire to end him, to take a bottle to his throat, overwhelmed me until I forced myself to leave.
He laughed as I flipped him around and subdued him. Like I’m some big joke.
Thinks he can touch me without my permission? Not anymore. No one will get to do that again.
As soon as I walked out of the bar, I wanted to return and find him. I wanted to do bad things.
Would I have done it, though, if I’d had the chance? Would I have taken his life? Could I be pushed far enough?
My phone rings and I look down at it to find Elsie’s name. Taking a deep breath, I fix a smile and answer it.
“Hey!” I hope she doesn’t catch the nervous skittering in my voice.
“Where are you?” Her question is lined with worry as I shut my eyes and steady my breathing. “Your mother called looking for you. Said your phone was going to voicemail and she started to panic.”
I blow air into my cheeks and shake my head. “I’m fine. I was just out on a drive. It helps clear my mind. I saw she called. I just didn’t want to deal with her constant worry. It drains me.”
Staring at the ceiling, I wonder how different my life would be if I wasn’t who I am.
“Oh, Kayla. I’m sorry.” Her pity is reflected in each syllable. “I wish you’d talk to me about what happened after I escaped. I should never have left you.”
“Don’t you dare say that!” My throat snaps with a raw ache. “You had to go. You couldn’t stay when you had a chance at freedom.” Tears line my eyes. “Sometimes…”
“Yeah?”
“Sometimes I just wish I’d left with you.” The words leave in a quiet whisper, the scars on my back stinging as though the wounds are still fresh.
Through the phone, I hear her cry. “I sometimes wish I hadn’t left. That I’d stayed with you.”
“No you don’t, Elsie. Believe me, you don’t.” I close my eyes and remember the things those men did to me to make me talk.
The Bianchis thought I was weak. That I’d rat on my best friend.
I guess they didn’t realize how strong they truly made me.
“Tell me where she is, you little bitch!” Agnelo snaps the whip across my back while I hang in the middle of a room at the club they use for shows.
Not the kind you think. The ones where they force us to perform on each other for the viewing pleasure of their paying customers.
But now the place is empty except for him, his brother, Faro, who’s the don of the Palermo crime family, and other men who came to watch what he’s doing to me. All of them cackling like my pain feeds their madness.
Because of course it does. They’re beasts in three-piece suits. Kissing their children goodbye as they send them off to school while they do vicious things.
Another strike lands hard against my throbbing flesh while I whimper, sobbing as the agonizing pain overtakes me.
But I won’t give Elsie up. I won’t tell him where she went. And hopefully, the man with the scar on his cheek, the one whose car she escaped into, won’t find her and bring her back.
I want her out of this place. Someone has to come out alive. So many of us have been killed, either for running or trying to get help. Others were disposed of for trying to hurt the men who hurt us.
It's debilitating to be powerless this way. Knowing in the end, nothing will stop the monsters from eating you alive.
Palms clamp my hips, Agnelo’s hand lowering between my thighs as he touches me there, groaning with sadistic pleasure as he enters me with two fingers. I fight it, trying to tighten my legs, but two men come to hold them apart while he continues to invade me.
The blood from my back drips across the floor while he tortures me. It’s as though I’m burning at the stake. Cast into the flames that char through my veins. I don’t even want to see what my back looks like. What he did to it.
“If you don’t talk, we’re all gonna take turns.”
He uses his other hand to trap my throat, the whip tangling between my bare breasts. There is promise in his words, and I know he means it. Not as though it hasn’t happened before. Many times. Why should it scare me now? What else can they take from me that they haven’t already?
“G-g-go ahead.” I let a small laugh spit through my teeth.
He growls sadistically before he tells the men, “Do it. Make it hurt.”
They sneer, and that’s when one of them starts to unbuckle his belt, the clinking resonating as he lets himself free from his slacks. And when he grabs both of my thighs and enters me, I close my eyes and I dream.
And in it, I’m free.
While they’re dead.
Every last one of them.
“Kayla?” Elsie calls from the other side of the speaker. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah.” I shake my head and pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’ve gotta get some sleep. I’ll text my mom.”
“Before you go, I wanted to talk to you about having a bodyguard. I know you dismissed it last time, but—”
I groan, throwing my head back against the seat. “Not this again.”
“Please? It’ll help me not worry. With this killer on the loose and someone trafficking again, I don’t like you out there without protection. Between you going to college in the city and then driving an hour home, I want you to be safe.”
“I’m safe. I swear.”
I don’t want to feel like I’m caged again.
“Just think about it, okay? Michael insists, and so do I. Jade and I have one, and we can still do whatever we want. It’s not prison, Kayla.”
Then why does it feel like it?
I don’t want someone following me around, keeping tabs on me and what I do.
He’s going to report to Michael and tell him about the bars I go to. Tell him about the other stuff… I can’t let anyone find out.
“I’ll think about it,” I lie right through my teeth. “Get some rest. Love you.”
“Love—”
But I drop the call before she can say any more. I know she loves me too. But I can’t be a prisoner again.
ADRIEL
“What the hell are you doing?!” Casius roars, standing on the plastic that covers the span of one large room in my basement.
His hands are free. The drunken fog no longer coats his vision. There’s nothing stopping him from attempting to overtake me and run. I like a good chase.
I’m glad I get to do this while he’s conscious.
Unspooling the garrote, I clutch it in both hands as I take slow, menacing steps. He moves back, his eyes wide as he takes in my movement, the wire that will soon trap his throat.
But it won’t kill him. No, it will spill enough blood to make him wish for death. And once it comes, it’ll be in the form of flames.
He will know true suffering, and he will deserve it.
“You’re insane,” he whispers. “You need help. You…you can’t do this.”
He trips against the chair behind him and clutches the back of it with both hands, as though a measly chair will save him. He lifts it in the air and throws it at me with a roar, but I merely smile and shove it away.
“It’s always the insane ones who think everyone else is crazy.” Dry laughter escapes my lungs, while his eyes only grow with fear. So much of it, I rejoice in it.
It’s what his victims felt. The way he didn’t care when they did. I don’t care either. There is this detached feeling I can’t explain in words, but it helps not to have it. Makes it much easier to stomach.
As he tries to rush around me, I grab his hair and throw him on the floor, his body beneath mine. Before he can do a thing, the wire cuts into his throat, blood beading around it. I push it further into his skin, sinking it with gradual power, hard enough for him to know this is it.
His hands fight me, but it’s too late. When his movements slow, I drag him up with me and bring him to the far end of the room where an electric furnace waits.
By all appearances, it looks like a regular wall, a painting of sunrise hiding the opening.
And even then, when the artwork is removed, it’s as though it’s a white wall.
Nothing there at all. But with the press of a button on my keychain, a rectangular section of it opens to reveal Casius’s new home.
He groans while I hold him up with the wire still cutting into him.
“You will die today. You will see what hell is like. It’s what you did to those women, didn’t you?” I taunt.
It gives me pleasure. I want his agony.
“Confess.” I pulse the cord around his throat. “Tell me how many.”
“F-fuck you,” he grumbles, choking on his words.
“If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll cut every limb from your body and burn you after. There’s a saw I like to use. Take my time with it too.” I chuckle menacingly.
“P-p-please…” he cries, and from the sound of it, I know he believes me.
“Tell me.” I crush my molars, needing this to be over.
“T-twelve,” he stammers, choking out the words. “There…there were t-twelve.”
“And what did you do with them?” I hiss.
He cries. How fucking pathetic.
“What did you do?!” My scream makes him shiver.
“I—I—I r-raped them, then…”
More fucking tears. My God, I just wanna kill him.
I tighten the wire.
“Th-then I—I paid off the cops and the g-girls,” he pants.
“You disgust me.” I press another button, and the flames roar to life.
His chest climbs with small breaths.
I chuckle victoriously. It’s what I wanted. His confession.
“I will savor your screams.”
The cord cuts into him as he fights me while I bring him closer to his end. Lifting his smaller frame up by his hips doesn’t take much effort, even while he tries to get back down.
But as soon as the flames lick his face, it’s over.
He roars as I push the rest of him inside and lock the door.
If I had my way, I’d record this moment so I could play it over and over.
With a fucking smile on my face.
The next day, I’m back in the city, having had a few meetings with some clients, one of whom has forced me to talk shop at a strip club.
Now, I don’t normally like to frequent these places. They reek of sin and seduction, and not the kind of sins I desire to partake in.
I enjoy women, sure, but on my own terms, and only when I need them to satiate the hunger inside me. Which is never that often.
I don’t need them for affection, nor for some convoluted idea of love. They know exactly where I stand. It’s the sexual gratification I’m after—theirs and mine. And once that’s served, we go on our merry fucking ways.
“You’ve gotta live a little, man!” my new client, Matthew, hollers into my ear.
The music blasts as he stares at a woman with olive skin, her breasts bigger than her head. But he doesn’t seem to mind.
Her lips curl as she takes me in, giving me a wink as she squats and whispers in my ear. “Want a private, handsome? I’ll make it extra special for you.”
She tries to make herself sound enticing. I can respect that. It’s her job, after all. To make every sucker here feel like he’s the most important man in the room.
Smiling to be polite, I shake my head. “Wife wouldn’t approve.”
“Well, aren’t you a keeper?” She giggles as she rights herself and goes straight to Matthew—with the same offer, I’m sure.
But, of course, he’s a lot more eager to say yes.
“Keep the seat warm for me, will ya?” His eyes dance with excitement as she drags him toward the other side of the room.
With a shake of my head, I take a swig of my beer, about to head out, when a woman happens on the dance floor, and I instantly lower the bottle, my eyes unable to stop staring.
Not because I’m attracted to her or she’s suddenly my fucking soulmate. I don’t believe in that bullshit.
No.
I stare because I know her.
Well, kind of.
My mouth tips up on one side. The memory of when she flipped Casius over like she wanted to cut his eyes out with her nails fills my head until I can’t help but wonder everything about her.
Of course I looked her up once I noted her license plate that night.
I know her name. I know where she lives too. But I left it at that. My curiosity died there, so I stopped digging.
But now? I want to dig until my fingers bleed. Until I know everything there is to know about Kayla Jenkins.
A stripper? I didn’t see that coming. Not that there’s anything wrong with the profession. It pays. But she didn’t seem like the type. Clearly, I was wrong.
Men whistle as they take in all of her, from the pink pasties covering her nipples to the matching G-string that barely covers her pussy.
Her light brown hair glistens as she wraps her arms around the pole and swings, like it’s a friend she knows well.
Her back is concealed with a nude-colored mesh piece that connects to her panties and around her throat in a glistening choker.
Her back is the only part of her she keeps hidden.
And it makes me wonder why. It’s possible she just prefers it that way.
Likes the outfit. But something tells me there’s more to this.
She doesn’t see me watching her. Why would she? There are dozens here just like me.
As she closes her eyes and flips upside down, gyrating in reverse, I can see she isn’t doing this for anyone but herself.
She continues into the next song, making the men groan and say despicable things, and it fills me with disgust.
Her pasties are now gone, thrown for some poor sucker to catch, someone who’ll never get a woman like that, not even in his dreams.
She is attractive. Of course she is. Any fool with eyes can see that. Beautiful by all accounts, her eyes a hazel dream, high cheekbones, and full lips. Her thighs are strong, lean muscles flexing, and I’d guess they’d have to be with the strength it takes to work the pole the way she is.
I feel as though I’m violating her by taking in her breasts, a little more than a handful, and I hate that my cock grows at the sight of her. Hasn’t for the others, not unless they have their mouth wrapped around it.
My attraction to her must be based on what happened with Casius, the way she handled him. Nothing more.
She finishes her dance and gives the crowd a little smile. But as she happens to start toward the back, one of the men roughly grabs her ankle.
“Come on, baby, take off those panties. Show us that cunt,” he cackles.
Two security guards immediately lunge at him. But before they drag him away, she lifts up her foot and presses her thin stiletto into his shoulder, her face set with a sneer.
I register the tightening of her fist against her hip, and that makes me grin.
Her chest pumps with the heaviness of her breaths, then she’s turning toward the back of the stage while the man is heaved out of there.
While the last bit of her disappears behind the curtain, I start to wonder who this Kayla really is and why I care to begin with.