Chapter Eight
The woman was downright infuriating.
Berta Lanza’s words from several weeks ago played in my head on repeat.
Calista is a brave woman.
Calista has made it her mission to bring awareness but also to rescue and return victims home.
Much like what Saint here does. These women need a champion, a savior, and she has a beautiful soul, so she’s decided that savior will be her.
She reminds me of you, Catarina. Mia too.
Brave. Strong. But not as smart. She wants to save the world, not just those she can.
Not as smart.
I had no doubt Calista was smart, but she was dangerously stupid with her safety.
What the hell had she been thinking, making herself a target, purposefully getting taken? For what, information? Jesus fuck, she could’ve been killed. She could’ve been raped.
Had she been?
My mind raced through every interaction I’d had with the woman. No hollow, haunted eyes, no recoiling from men who were much bigger and stronger than her, no timidness, jumpiness, anxiety. Of course, just because I hadn’t seen any signs didn’t mean shit.
No, she had to have escaped that cruelty. I wouldn’t allow my brain to contemplate the alternative.
I raised the palms of my hands to my eyes and pressed hard in an attempt to vanquish the horrific thought.
When I dropped my hands, my gaze went back to the view in front of me.
From the window, the world’s tallest skyscraper stood proud.
The Burj Khalifa, UAE’s latest claim to power.
Below, the famous fountain was inactive.
Later, the crowd would gather and watch what was now considered the world’s largest water shower.
Dubai was famous for a great many things—all of them a facade.
All of them hiding the truth.
All of it built by slaves.
Not that polite society liked using that word.
Society played moral gymnastics to make the world around them more palatable.
Well-meaning intellectual types liked to distance themselves from uncomfortable realities.
They played word games: forced labor, hazardous working conditions, unpaid services, servitude.
It freed them of the inconvenient guilt of enjoying the luxury built by poor, desperate, and beaten-down men.
When in truth it was fucking slavery.
There was no way to pretty up the actuality.
But we did that now too. Your truth. My truth.
We warped the truth and made it subjective.
We hijacked words, changed the meanings to fit the narrative.
We called women and men and fucking children being kidnapped and sold human trafficking, exploitation, instead of calling it what it was—sexual slavery. Because it was less offensive to hear.
The longer I stared out the window at a building that was built by slaves, the more my disdain grew.
A beautiful skyline, luxury, money, all hiding the truth—the vile, revolting, disgusting truth.
Right now, as I stood in the extravagant display of wealth, there were women and men and children down somewhere in that city being raped. Unspeakable trauma being inflicted.
Fuck.
I turned my back on the window, unable to stomach my own thoughts.
The need to hunt down, maim, kill every man who dared to harm the innocent was a living, breathing beast inside of me. A monster I didn’t bother to control. The people who perpetrated those atrocities didn’t deserve mercy.
I wondered if Calista felt the same way I did. Not that it would excuse her for putting herself in a position where something precious could’ve been stolen from her in a way that would forever mark her . . . but it would explain her asinine behavior.
Christ. The thought made me murderous.
I bowed my head and blew out a breath. I had five minutes to pull my shit together and meet Pete, Fallon, and the woman who was driving me insane back downstairs.
The woman who was currently in the bedroom next to mine with nothing but a wall separating us and a shared balcony that connected the rooms. This was torture. Pure fucking torture.
The two-story penthouse was cavernous and disgustingly opulent.
The wall-to-wall marble floors throughout the apartment extended into the bedrooms. The thick rug under the bed protruded just enough for your feet to hit plush carpet, yet it did little to purge the cold and uninviting feel.
There was nothing—from the gold trim on the furniture to the teal-green walls to the ugly brown silk comforter—that fostered warmth.
Nothing in the room made you want to come in here after a long day and relax.
I hated everything about this room and the penthouse in general. I’d take my condo in Imperial Beach with my view of the ocean over this monstrosity any day.
With a final exhale that did nothing to quell my loathing, I started for the door. As soon as I stepped into the hall, I nearly ran into Calista.
“Sorry,” she muttered, and tried to move past me.
I did that. Made her want to avoid me, since I’d been a dick to her again.
I didn’t want to be an asshole, I just couldn’t figure out what it was about her that made me want to bang my head on the wall, or toss her over my shoulder and lock her away so she couldn’t make shitty decisions with her safety, or kiss the living fuck out of her to shut her up.
“How’s your room?” I asked, as if I had the right to speak to her after I’d been a monumental prick just a few hours ago.
Those pretty eyes flared.
Yeah, sweetness, I get it, my audacity knows no bounds.
“It’s an in-your-face display of wealth.”
My lips twitched at her description mirroring my own.
Which spurred me to ask my next question. “How do you like the view?”
Her grimace said it all, but still she answered.
“You mean the view of the city built by slave labor and corruption? It’s repulsive and makes me want to track down every land developer and stab them in the heart for exploiting people from around the world who came here with the promise of opportunity to better the lives of their families. How’s yours?”
“Same, sweetness.”
She tilted her head a fraction and narrowed her eyes.
“With one slight difference,” I continued, before she could unleash that runaway mouth of hers and call me a much-deserved name. “Disembowelment is far more painful than a quick and easy blade to the heart.”
Calista nodded. “You’re right. And while I don’t mind mess, cutting someone open from throat to groin to remove their innards takes too much time. My way is quick and efficient.”
Fuck but I liked this woman.
“Fair.”
I gestured for her to precede me down the hall.
“Scared I’ll shove you down the stairs if you go first?”
I hadn’t thought of that, but now that she had, I realized I was off my game and needed to focus, because Calista would absolutely shove me down the stairs or over the balustrade.
“Just being gentlemanly.”
She gave me an unconvinced look before she skirted around me and started down the corridor.
“I don’t believe that,” she noted.
As crazy as it was, it was the truth.
“I don’t care what you believe.”
She huffed a cute, annoyed breath as she clomped down the stairs. Her red Vans squeaked going from the solid white treads to the gold-veined marble in the foyer.
“Good thing it doesn’t rain here or this floor would be slippery as fuck.”
“Huh,” she mumbled.
“You don’t agree?” I asked.
“No, I was thinking almost the same thing but about getting out of the shower, wondering how many people have courted a concussion in this place because they didn’t dry off their feet.”
I hadn’t bothered checking the bathroom in my suite, but now I’d make sure there were ample towels to put on the floor.
“This place sucks,” I grumbled.
“Agreed.”
With every agreement, I felt something tighten in my chest. I didn’t want to have similar thoughts and opinions as the woman who drove me insane.
I wanted her to be a raving, stuck-up diva with a bitchy personality.
Instead, her only flaw was reckless abandonment for personal safety, and if I was being totally honest, I couldn’t fault her for that when I put myself in danger all of the time, as did my teammates—and I didn’t get in their faces when they did.
Why the fuck was I thinking about this?
Christ, I had a serious problem.
Thankfully, before any more opinions could be shared, thus me finding out I had more in common with Calista than I was comfortable with, the living room came into view.
“You look ridiculous,” I told Pete.
The stark-white couch he sat on was absurd. The seats were deep, but the back was so low, it stopped at the middle of Pete’s back. He looked like a giant. I glanced over to the matching couch and cringed.
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you give me your chair,” I propositioned Fallon, who was sitting in the only chair in the room.
“Nope. I scouted this chair before you idiots went up to check out the bedrooms.”
Sure enough, Fallon’s backpack was resting on the floor by his feet.
“I hate you,” I grumbled, and moved toward the hobbit couch.
“You hate that I’m smarter than you,” he quipped.
He was probably right. Though I blamed Calista. If she hadn’t muddled my head, I would’ve scoped out the living room before going upstairs, and my ass would’ve been sitting in the comfortable chair.
Calista’s gaze went from couch to couch. Unsurprisingly, she made her way to the one opposite me and sat next to Pete. This had the unfortunate consequence of being in my direct line of sight.
“Shep sent over a full report. There’s not much in there that’s useful,” Pete started. “Kiara Das, nineteen—”
Calista startled and glanced over at Pete before interrupting, “How long has she been here?”
“Three years.”
I knew Calista did the mental math when her head twitched.
“She was sixteen,” she whispered through gritted teeth.