44. Cam
I actually miss that damned cat.
It’s stupid, but the silence without her is louder now. Every corner I turn, Nell is there—etched into the shadows, in the echo of her laugh, in the last look she gave me before they took her.
If I’d just been faster.
If I’d answered my goddamn phone. None of this would have happened.
I replay it over and over—every second I could’ve changed. Every moment I failed her.
But I can’t let myself think about what they’re doing to her right now. I can’t picture her in that place, her body treated like something less than human. The thought alone is enough to make my hands shake and my vision blur with rage.
The fury’s always there, simmering just beneath the surface. But I can’t let it take me today.
There’s work to do.
More sites to infiltrate.
More masks to wear.
More lies to tell until I’m close enough to burn this entire operation to the ground.
And when I find her—
God help the men who touched her.
The hotel room is sterile. Beige walls. Thin carpet. A bed that smells faintly of bleach and cigarette smoke. But it’s quiet, and for now, that’s enough.
I lock the door behind me, double-check the latch, then pull the blackout curtains tight. The moment the light disappears, I let out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding, and the mask slips off.
I shrug out of the jacket, toss the burner phone onto the bed, and sit at the desk, pulling my laptop from the false bottom of my duffel. The screen glows to life, and with it, the weight of everything I’ve seen today.
I plug in the flash drive I lifted from the office. It hums softly, loading files—names, dates, locations. Shipment logs disguised a.
“deliveries.”
Photos. Some of them blurred. Some of them not.
I force myself to look.
Because one of those girls might be Nell.
I scan the files, cross-referencing with the map I’ve been building. Red pins mark confirmed sites. Yellow for suspected ones. The network stretches farther than I thought—across cities, borders, even oceans. But I’m getting closer. The site I visited today links directly to a holding facility two hours south. A name keeps popping up in the logs—Lot 27 – High Value.
My stomach knots.
It could be her.
But it’s not her.
Just another nameless girl—one more broken body in a sea of hollow eyes and haunted faces. I stare at the screen, willing it to change, to give me something—anything—that leads to Nell. But all it gives me is more proof of how deep this rot goes.
My phone buzzes on the desk.
Talia.
She’s been checking in more often lately. She knows how close I am to the edge. This mission was never supposed to be personal, not with Darcy anyway, but now it’s a razor pressed to my throat. Tactical precision is slipping, and she can feel it.
I take a long pull from the whiskey bottle, the burn grounding me just enough to answer.
“Hey, Talia,”
I say, leaning back in the chair, eyes aching from hours of staring at the screen.
“How you holding up out there?”
“Still breathing,”
I mutter.
“Got more intel on the Broker—shipment logs, movement patterns, a few aliases. But it’s thin. I don’t think it’s going to give me much before the auction.”
She’s quiet for a beat. Then.
“Did you manage to confirm where they took her after?”
I exhale slowly, rubbing a hand over my face.
“Not yet. But we know the Broker bought her. That much is confirmed.”
And that changes everything.
If he’s holding her personally, she won’t be in the next auction. They don’t usually move girls once they’ve been brought that fast—not unless they’re trying to erase a trail. Most of the time, they keep them for weeks. Sometimes longer. Conditioning them into little puppets. Breaking their souls and sometimes their bodies.
I clench my jaw.
“I need to be ready,”
I say.
“If she’s still in his possession, I’ve got one shot to get her out before she disappears again.”
Talia’s voice softens.
“You’re not alone in this, Cam.”
But I am.
Because no one else knows what it’s like to see her face in every girl I couldn’t save.
“We’ve got eyes on a couple of auctions too,”
she says, her voice back to its usual steel.
“If anything useful surfaces, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Cheers Talia.”
I end the call with Talia and let the silence settle. The kind that winds in your bones when you’re standing on the edge of something irreversible.
I turn back to the laptop, the map still glowing on the screen. The Broker’s compound—if you can even call it that—isn’t just a house. It’s a fortress dressed in luxury. Gated perimeter. Private security. Surveillance on every corner. But I’ve studied the blueprints, watched the patterns, traced the routines.
There’s a weakness.
There’s always a weakness.
I pull up the satellite images, overlaying them with the floor plans. The loading dock on the east side is the only blind spot—no cameras, minimal lighting, and a rotating guard who disappears for a smoke break every night at 2:17 a.m. like clockwork.
That’s my window.
I start sketching the plan in my notebook—entry, sweep, extraction. I’ll need to disable the alarm system first. The breaker box is in the maintenance corridor, just off the kitchen. From there, I can move through the servant’s wing—it’s less guarded, easier to navigate.
I’ll need gear; lock picks, a silencer, a burner comms unit. I’ve already stashed most of it in a safe house two blocks from the compound. I’ll go light—no backup, no noise. This isn’t a siege. It’s a ghost operation.
Get in. Get her. Get out.
I pause, staring at the name I’ve circled on the floor plan: Lot 27.
That’s where they’re keeping her. I can feel it.
I flip to a fresh page and write it again, like a vow; Nell. Room 27. 2:17 a.m.
I close the notebook and sit back, the weight of it all pressing down on me. If I fail, she disappears. If I hesitate, she breaks. And if I die—well, at least I’ll die trying to bring her home.
I’ll use the auction as a sweep—get a feel for the layout, the security, the rhythm of the place. Blueprints are useful, but real eyes on the ground? That’s where the difference between success and failure lives.
Then I’ll strike.
If I move fast enough, I can still preserve my alias—stay embedded, dig deeper into the ring once Nell is safe. I’ll be in a position to save more of them. To dismantle this operation from the inside.
And when the time’s right, I’ll take the Broker down myself.
Piece by fucking piece.
I can’t stare at the screen any longer. My eye has been struggling for days now, and the constant glare of artificial light only makes it worse. The blindness is creeping in—slow and steady. I’m learning to live with it, one blurred day at a time.
I collapse onto the hotel bed. The mattress is too firm, the pillow too soft, but I don’t care. It’s enough.
But rest doesn’t come.
My mind drifts—always—to Nell. To the night I lost her. I remember the way she looked at me, the way her fingers curled into my shirt like she didn’t want to let go. I wanted her then—wanted to lose myself in her, like I had before. Not just for the heat of it, but for the connection. The grounding. The truth of her.
I miss her scent. Her voice. The way she saw through me like no one else ever could.
And when I get her back—when, not if—I’ll make sure she knows exactly what she means to me.
I flick back through my phone to the night she pleasured herself on her bed with that damned toy. The way her back arched into it, the way her teeth dragged over her bottom lip.
Fuck. I need her back.
My dick is growing uncomfortably hard, just as desperate to be back inside her as I am. And before I grow sexually frustrated as well as emotionally battered, I fist my dick punishingly. This isn’t a casual wank, this is a demand for release.
I want it to be over, because until I have her back in my arms, safe, this isn’t a good use of my time. My movements are punishing, pulling down a little too forcefully.
Right now though, I need the pain. I need to feel something other than grief and anger.
I watch her over and over on repeat, wishing it could be a live stream, that all of this could be over. I grip tighter, forcing myself to endure the uncomfortableness of it, because I need to hurt.
My balls tighten, but I’m not ready yet. I jerk my hand faster, imagining it’s her riding my cock, imagining the way her hands will grip into my chest, and she’ll moan my name.
I still remember how tight she was, how her body accommodated me, how wet she was for me. I will make her feel like that again. I know it.
I’m going to show her how good it feels to be tied up, utterly defenceless, and be forced to orgasm over and over again. I’ll show her the darkest side of myself, the one even Kyla retreated from, and I know Nell will embrace it. She’ll let me do whatever I want to her body without making me feel weird for doing it.
Christ, that woman tied to a spreader rack will be a sight…
I come before I have chance to grab a tissue, my release squirting over my stomach, leaving me sticky and used up. It’ll do for now. It’s scratched the itch and cleared my mind enough that tomorrow I can focus back on my work.
As long as I last longer than that when I see her again, we’re all good. No two minute wonders when she’s back.
I just wish it was her mouth around my cock and not my own damn hand.