Chapter 27 Once You Die
It was another normal morning, so I woke up alone, and my first thought was about her. Was she happy over the results of the election? She’d worked so hard she got the flu and was bedridden for five days. My gorgeous little one.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t just lay there all day and night, dreaming of her and how successful she’d become since I was still in the pit of hell.
So, I got ready for the day, then headed to my office, where I had to go through a hundred encoded emails from new customers, trying to identify their locations and identities. The phone rang.
“Yes, Manolo?”
“Sir, there’s a cleanup issue on the seventh floor.”
Goddammit. Again? This was the third slave this year. “Which slave?
“295638X.” I sighed at the confirmation that it was as I’d suspected, another slave murdered by someone I just couldn’t catch.
“So, that’s... Lord Adler’s girl, right?”
“Yes.” Again, I sighed because I was not looking forward to dealing with him.
“Okay.” I hung up on him.
Lord Adler had always been a pompous idiot who envied my position in the center.
He thought himself the rightful person to manage the business.
Master didn’t trust him enough. But he wasn’t stupid enough to kill his own slave.
I was almost sure it was that doctor I especially abhorred, Dr. Lansbury.
He was a sick motherfucker, loved torturing the slaves in the medical unit even when he had no permission, but I needed proof before I could report him.
We were so short on medical staff as it was.
Finding doctors was especially difficult.
He was escalating too. The first girl, he’d killed four years ago when I’d gone to Monaco, but the last three were months apart.
I wanted to torture it out of him so bad, but Master didn’t like losing doctors.
They were very hard to find and convince to work with us.
He’d insisted on proving Dr. Lansbury guilty first.
I sucked my teeth and shook my head at the thought of what that girl had endured all night.
On top of that, a slave was a minimum of a nine-million-dollar loss.
It wasn’t safe to come up short on quotas.
My thoughts were interrupted by the alarm bell I had in assigned for Ben’s texts through my phone.
Ben: Are you there?
Me: Of course. What’s up?
Ben: Here is the list of new slaves coming in twelve hours.
Me: That’s quite ahead. Where are they coming from?
Ben: …. Spain ….
The picture took its sweet time downloading before popping up. Most of the girls were fooled by our men online on this game that made it so easy groom them through its chats or they’d act like a boyfriend and within a week or two have them eating out of their palm.
My eyes stopped sweeping the list when they reached her name, and everything that had been in my mind about Lord Adler, the new dead slave, and Dr. Lansbury had disappeared.
That was not a common name, especially in fucking Spain.
The fact that it was her name and the correct age had my heart hammering against my chest and my stomach falling.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I yelled, then slammed my hand on my desk. I knew it. I knew the minute we let Callum out he’d find her. God! And her family was still in Spain? What part of run did she not understand? “Fuuuuucccckk!” I slammed my hand again, not caring how much it hurt.
Me: Do we have any medical records on them? Send me everything.
Ben: As soon as I get it, it’s yours.
I looked at the list a few times to confirm my eyes had not deceived me.
As soon as I’d returned from Monaco, I’d told Ben almost everything that happened there.
So, once in a while, he’d send me the names and records of the incoming slaves so if ever the day came, nothing would seem out of the ordinary.
Part of me had stayed because, although I tried to deny it, I knew they would catch her sooner or later. I had to stay, just in case.
I walked through the halls with my hoodie on and my hands in my pocket, not so aware of myself, as if someone else were taking my steps to the cell where Adler’s slave had been kept three floors below my office.
There was a crowd at the cell’s open door—Lord Barrington, Adler, Delrisso, and Calvin.
I rolled my eyes. This was not the drama I fucking needed.
“Gentlemen.” I nodded at them and was about to walk in when he came out and blocked me. He was shorter than me, so I had to look down at him.
“What are you going to do to stop this? Huh? How long are you going to allow this? He got my girl now! My. Fucking. Girl!” Lord Adler yelled.
“She was doing so good too,” Lord Calvin said from Adler’s left.
“You need to get this place under control, Sir,” Lord Barrington said.
I smiled and nodded once. They were trying to piss me off and were close to succeeding, but I was too distracted, thinking of her.
“I’m sorry, are you all going to allow me inside so that I can see the body, or are you going to stand here crying over a fucking slave?
” They glared at me, opening the path for me to enter.
I sighed as soon as I saw her. He’d dressed her up in a Harlequinn costume with black diamonds covering the body suit and hung her from a noose.
Her brown hair was in two pigtails, one of her legs was hanging from the ceiling and the other was flat.
He’d let her choke to death. He’d taken out her eyeballs.
The blood had already dried on her cheeks.
So, this had been done many hours before.
All the victims were hung the same but in different costumes.
The last victim had blood coming out of her ears.
So basically, see no evil, hear no evil crap. I don’t have time for this.
“What time did you get here?”
“Six. I was going to test her today so that she could finally go outside.”
I called Manolo.
“Yes, sir,” he answered.
“Have the medics come get the body. I want an autopsy. Have Dr. Avery do it.”
“Dr. Avery doesn’t get here until tomorrow.”
“Then I want a guard with the body until he arrives.”
“Of course, Sir.”
I hung up and turned her body around. Her pants were ripped and his cum had spilled out of her, staining them. Of course, I could have had everyone’s DNA tested, but last time I’d tried that, no one matched. Motherfucker.
“Adler, come with me,” I commanded, heading out, and the medics rolled in the bed.
Without a word, he followed me ’til the end of the hall where I pressed the button to the elevator.
We stared at each other. His eyes were swollen and red.
“When was the last time you were in there? And don’t fucking lie to me because I do not have the time. ”
“Last night...”
“Who else was there?”
“Calvin, Barrington, Black, Thomas, and Lansbury.”
“Lansbury? He was in there? What—What were you all doing?”
“We just partied. But she was fine. She did a great job. That’s why I was planning to test her today. I left her resting on her bed.”
“Whose idea was the party?” I asked.
“I’m her trainer!”
“Yeah, you were! What the fuck, Adler? I thought you were fucking better than this?”
“We were just de-stressing.”
I stopped the elevator, grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him, slamming his back against the wall.
“De-stressing about what, Adler? Your only responsibility is to fuck a girl every day and show her how to survive men like us? That’s what’s stressing you out?
Or is it the near one million dollars you’re earning for teaching a girl how to fuck?
Or is it that you miss Master and all his buddies fucking your every hole on that table? What the fuck?”
“You may not like this, Sir, but there are men who like to share their girls. And a girl has to learn.”
I let him fall, then grabbed his head and banged it against the wall before I pressed the button again. “So, you were all there for the other dead girls as well.”
He moaned while sitting on the floor disoriented. “Answer meeeeee!” I screamed.
“Only the last two. I don’t know anything about the others.”
I sighed. Today is not the mother fucking day. “And still, you allowed the party?”
“Yes.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“Barrington and Lansbury.”
I nodded.
“You now owe us four million dollars.”
“What? You didn’t do that to Barrington when he lost his girl. That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Oh, yes it does. She was your responsibility, you fucking idiot!”
He looked at me with pleading eyes and then the pathetic tears trailed as if he were some wimpy teenager.
“I didn’t want her to die. We were just having fun, and just because we were there, doesn’t mean it was one of us.
I was the last person with her. She was alive.
She wasn’t dressed like that or hanging! ” He started sobbing.
“I want the money before the end of the night. Don’t you dare tell the rest what you’ve just revealed to me.
And don’t even try to paint me as the bad guy.
You owe me your fucking life. I’m covering your ass for this.
If master got wind of this you, your wife, your daughters and your fucking entire family would be killed within twenty-four hours. You know this.”
He nodded. “Thanks, Sir.”
“I need you to grow the fuck up, Adler. If you would have done your job right, your girl would still be alive. Instead, you risked your entire family’s life.”