Chapter 5 Brooks #2
Those are victims. Girls who’ve been kidnapped off the street or out of clubs or maybe out of their own houses–I don’t actually know what taht part of the process looks like–and have now found themselves in the worst possible position.
They’re being held by men they don’t know, tossed into cells at night and told their lives no longer belong to them, and no matter how much they ask, they aren’t given any answers.
They’re starting to worry that this isn’t just some joke, and that they might actually be in trouble.
Depending on how long they’ve been in the ring, they may already know exactly where they’re headed.
My stomach turns and I nearly retch at the thought, but start counting the girls, just to try to give myself something to do.
Five to six attached to each man. God, that means fifty to sixty girls in this one group.
A quick glance at the first three I come to tells me that they haven’t been prisoners for very long, either.
They’re clean and still wearing the clothes they had on when they were kidnapped.
God, they probably still smell like the perfume they put on before they left the house.
Their families might not even realize they’re missing, yet.
Those men are the collectors, then. And that makes this one of the very early distribution centers.
I turn my eyes away from the girls and try to get myself under control.
There’s nothing I can do for them. Not right now, at any rate, and not by myself.
I’m just one lone girl in a very expensive pants suit and heels, courtesy of the fully stocked closet I found in my room, and though I have a butterfly knife I don’t have anything else.
Everything in me is screaming to get these girls out of here. To run down to that dance floor, knife in hand, and cut each of them loose, then hustle them out of the club. Killing men as I go.
But I’d never get away with it. these men are all armed–they have to be–and I’d be dead the moment I started anything.
Dead won’t get those girls out.
But staying alive, figuring out what’s going on, and coming back for them later...
Yeah, that might work. Which means I have to play my part.
“Collection gangs?” I ask smoothly.
Andre coughs as if he’s surprised I haven’t fainted yet, and I make a mental note to slice his throat open later. I’ve always hated the man, and now that I know he’s neck-deep in my father’s plot, I hate him even more. I want to watch his eyes while he bleeds to death on the floor in front of me.
I want to see the moment he realizes he’s going to die.
“Rather more sophisticated than that,” he says, his voice as pompous as possible.
Right. So I’m also going to cut off his dick before I kill him.
“And this is some sort of distribution center?”
He nods once. “One of the first.”
Perfect. So they kidnap girls and bring them here first–which means, I assume, that most of these girls were actually kidnapped in this district. They were at the clubs and restaurants, maybe even the gambling dens, with their boyfriends or brothers.
Gambling dens. My heart freezes at the thought, because those belong to the Boudreaux. Lucien has gambling dens of his own, from what I’ve heard. I wonder if he knows about this place. If he knows that girls might be getting kidnapped from the places he owns, the tables he frequents himself.
Did he know from the start? Have any idea that this was going on?
When he came to New York, he said he’d been following this ring for some time, and I suddenly wonder how much he knows.
Has he been tracking them for months? Does he know any more than I do?
Is there information he didn’t give me? I think that’s inevitable.
He’s always run the darker side of the city, and his sources are better than anyone’s.
How much does he know about this?
And where is he? I’ve been working so hard to figure out where I am and what my father wants with me that for a moment, I forgot that Lucien should be by my side.
And he’s not.
I let my eyes race around the room, like I might see him striding out of the backstage area and into the light, all sharp lines and dark shadows, but of course he’s not here.
Instead, I just see soldier after soldier, many of them now eyeing me like I’m some sort of exotic bird to be both feared and admired.
Eyes run up and down my body and come to rest on my face, calculating and curious, and I realize something else.
I don’t know any of these men, and that wouldn’t make sense if they belonged to my father.
Sure, he may have hired new men for the bigger enterprise, but these men are all new to me, and that reminds me of back at the mansion, where they were all new as well.
They all look much the same–dark eyes, hair, and beards, with faces that look like slabs of granite.
Almost no expression. No warmth in their gaze. Just cold, hard purpose.
These men aren’t from the Big Easy.
I don’t know how I know it, but the idea comes with such surety that I don’t question it once I have it.
These men are foreigners.
My eyes slide off the last man to the wall behind him, and my whole body jerks. Because there on the wall is some sort of cataloging system. It’s like a Google doc done on a chalkboard, column after column with notes at that top and check marks below. Place Collected. Age. Family Name. Destination.
And in the horizontal columns, girls’ names.
Even now, someone is standing at the board, adding new names to those rows.
Name after name. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.
That’s a catalogue of all the fucking victims–or at least the ones who’ve come through this building.
And my God, the details. There are columns for where they’re going and when, like the smugglers decide a girl’s fate the moment she comes in.
Other names in those columns who are potential buyers.
Each girl’s features and hair color, like that’s somehow important.
My mind rebels at the fact that they’re keeping records in such a strange way.
Have these people never heard of fucking computers?
But then I remember the people around me, and my guess as to their nationality.
These aren’t Americans. These aren’t even people from New Orleans.
They’re old world Europeans, if I’m guessing right, and maybe they like to do things differently over there.
I know that they do use computers–hell, I’ve seen the spreadsheets on some of them–but maybe they start here, with this strange chalkboard setup.
Or maybe they just like the girls to have to see themselves listed like cattle on their way to the fucking auction block.
That thought has my fingers twitching for my gun, and I suddenly wonder whether I can steal Andre’s and start shooting before anyone stops me.
Because this feels all sorts of wrong, and the idea that I’m in here, presumably interning or whatever they want to call it, while those girls are standing there sobbing, doesn’t sit right with me.
Before I can do anything, a shout rings out from the sitting are and I swing my gaze to the spot, panicked at the sudden noise.
Two men are facing off there, like someone called someone else’s mother a whore, and within moments they’re swinging at each other and other men are joining the fray, rushing from around the club like they’ve been waiting for this brawl to start.
One man picks up a chair and throws it, and another pulls out a gun and shoots the man next to him, and within seconds the entire club is erupting into shouts and chaos.
Men are rushing around, shouting orders, and one of the lights goes out.
Then the girls start screaming.
I’m frozen for a moment, confused at what’s going on, and am just about to run down to start grabbing girls in the dark when I hand clamps down on my shoulder and yanks me backward.
“Enough learning,” my father’s voice says in my ear. “We’re done here.”
He pulls me away from the dance floor and turns me toward the front door like it’s the easiest thing in the world, and as I’m hustled out of the building, my mind is full of the chaos we’re leaving behind, along with a set of very important questions.
Are those girls still alive? What were those men fighting about? What did all the columns on that chalkboard mean?
And along with that, a question that’s been bothering me for hours, now: Why the fuck am I the one here seeing all this, a mere girl who could be sold or stolen at any moment?
I saw Beau days ago at my father’s party, so I have to assume he’s still in town.
He’s the heir to the kingdom, at least in theory, and though I hate the thought of him being involved in any of this, I can’t afford to be naive.
He should be here, and he’s not.
Where is my brother?
Where is Lucien?
And why are the most important men in my life constantly disappearing on me?