Chapter 2
Donavan
When one more drunken college kid bumps into me, I have to remind myself why I’m here. It’s the only thing keeping these assholes alive. If I were in a bar in Mexico and someone jostled me, I’d likely slit their throat and dare anyone to say a fucking thing about it.
I might as well be standing in the middle of fucking Mayberry for how prim and proper all these fucking people are.
Sure, they’re drinking underage, but that’s about the extent of their rule breaking.
I haven’t smelled the acrid scent of pot.
I haven’t seen anyone shoving a handful of pills into their mouths before taking a long pull from their red party cups.
I didn’t even see the hint of cocaine on the bathroom counter when I took a piss a few minutes ago.
They think they’re all badasses, breaking a few rules, drinking a little too much. I’m surrounded by a group of pussies, and the longer I stay in this fucking too-stuffy house, the more my fingers twitch to thin the world of a few collar-popped douchebags.
She doesn’t seem any different from any of the other girls here trying to pretend to be a woman.
I don’t care how many times she lifts the flask to her lips.
I don’t care how bored her eyes are with this entire scene.
She’s no different from any of the others.
She’s just cattle, unassuming and willing to be guided around without asking questions.
She wouldn’t survive a day of what her sister had endured the last six months.
I move after she locks eyes with me. I’ve never been good at being incognito.
I’m a massive motherfucker, and too old not to stand out in this type of crowd.
It’s life experiences rather than my age that make me older.
I’ve seen a lifetime of shit in my nearly twenty-three years, so much that there are days I feel a hundred.
She’s a paycheck, literally money in the bank, but as boredom grows, I consider it not even worth it. I still haven’t figured out why the cash even matters to me. It’s not like I spend much money. There aren’t material things that keep me working. The things I long for can’t be purchased.
She’s too young to be drinking. Hell, if I saw her on the street, I’d think she was a high school student, not college-aged, but they all started looking too young years ago.
She’s no different at eighteen than I imagine she was at fifteen.
I have no doubt she’s been sheltered. As a matter of fact, I know she has been.
Nash, one of the men who works for Angel, is the one who requested this favor.
Unbeknownst to the girl searching the room for me, her sister was abducted, and despite having numerous opportunities over the last six months with weekly phone calls, she hasn’t once confessed that she’s been held in a sex den, forced to perform all sorts of depraved things.
They allowed her to call weekly, and Ayla never opened her mouth to warn her sister that her life would soon look as horrific as Ayla’s does.
The men who threatened to hurt Alani if Ayla didn’t do as they said, are the type to keep their promises.
Only a few days ago, those men sent a warning—a video of Alani at college.
You see, they didn’t exactly take kindly to us raiding the house where Ayla was being held captive and forced into sexual slavery.
We weren’t there for her but for Nash, one of Angel’s operatives who had also been abducted while trying to get information about the group.
He fucked up, and we were forced to save him.
Pulling him from that hellhole also meant pulling the women out, too.
Nash and Ayla are having trouble getting back across the border, and that’s why I’m here.
The threat on Alani is real enough that I’m getting paid to watch an underage girl get drunk around a bunch of horny boys like she isn’t in danger.
As real as the threat is against her from the trafficking ring, there are threats here as well.
I watched one threat hand her not one but two different flasks before walking away, only to refill one and return to her.
It’s clear the boy is trying to get her drunk, and she just smiles at him and takes what he’s offering.
She’s clueless and misplacing her trust where any of these assholes are concerned.
Any man in her life is capable of hurting her, even if that was never his intention.
She doesn’t seem to care about the danger she’s attracting.
Even my sneer when we locked eyes a few moments ago only makes her hips swing harder, the roll of her body more enticing than it should be.
I’m not the only one watching her. Several guys on the perimeter of the makeshift dance floor have locked their eyes on her.
I evaluate everyone as a threat. As douchey as they all look, anyone here could be someone sent by the Cortez cartel.
We took out many people when we went to Mexico to get Nash, but the head of the family was gone.
We’re not cocky enough to think we eradicated the problem or even scared them a little.
If anything, going in and killing their men only angered them more.
Taking the women, their means for income, is enough for them to seek vengeance on anyone they previously threatened.
Alani is in danger and doesn’t even know it.
I don’t let myself be seen again by her until I want her to.
Although I don’t look the part of the drunken college student, I’ve never had a problem disappearing.
It’s why five years ago it was so easy to fake my death and walk away from all of it.
Any connection I had to family was severed the night Marcello cut my baby from Maya’s womb before letting her bleed to death right before my eyes.
Elio Lombardi died that night.
The world I left and the world I entered were never supposed to cross paths, but that didn’t prevent my sister from popping back up in my life, swearing she’ll hate me forever for the pain I caused her and my family.
She claimed my mother died of a broken heart after my death.
I should feel something about that. It should make the muscle in my chest clench.
There should be regret or something, but I feel nothing.
I recognized my sister that day at Angel’s office, but the sight of her didn’t spark anything inside of me. I wasn’t hit with a wave of nostalgia or regret for letting her think I was dead for five years. The pain of betrayal in her eyes didn’t tug at something inside of me.
I think a part of my thoughts at seeing her again would have some sort of effect on me. It’s why I kept my distance, why I never went back to Chicago. The only fear I’ve felt since watching the life drain out of Maya’s eyes that night was the sheer terror of feeling anything again.
Not long after that night, a car wreck provided the perfect cover for my disappearance.
I shift in the shadows once again, my movements dictated by her search around the room.
She doesn’t have any idea how bad her night could be, how attractive the uncontrolled sway in her body caused by the alcohol is to traffickers.
Her hips move in a way that makes every man in the room think about taking something she isn’t offering, and there are even parts inside of me that feel that tug of attraction.
Hell, she may not even be the type of woman to turn down any offer thrown her way.
Maybe she’s equal opportunity. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had her family fooled.
Ayla may think her sister is young and inexperienced, but the way her body moves to the music tells another story.
The song changes and she walks away from the gyrating bodies on the dance floor, forcing me to shift again to keep an eye on her.
It’s not often that I get to take such an easy job.
More often than not, I’m in a situation where getting shot is a real possibility, and although one of the men here may have been sent by Cortez, it’s unlikely my night will end by dodging bullets.
The douche, trying to get her drunk, offers her another flask as two more men join their little group.
The additions to the group look bored and a little out of place.
The eyes on the tallest one scans the crowd in a knowing way, and it makes my hackles take notice.
His perusal of the people around him is too knowledgeable, too aware.
I step out from behind a group of cackling females, paying no attention to them when their laughter falls away, as I make my presence known.
Alani locks eyes in my direction, as if she can sense me looking at her.
If there is someone from Cortez’s group here tonight, it’s the man standing with her.
The girl needs to be taught a lesson, but I wouldn’t get paid if she’s taken right out from under my nose.
As horrific and brutal as the Severino family is, I know Angel Guerra can be just as brutal.
Letting Alani get hurt under my watch can’t happen.
She isn’t as sure on her feet as she should be as she crosses the room toward me.
I want to warn her, to remind her that bad things happen to obtuse little girls, but the second she’s close enough, her hands are on my chest, the warmth of her palms settling against my skin through my t-shirt.
Her hips move to the music, the brush of her body against mine more enticing than it has any right to be.
I can’t open my mouth to tell her there’s a bullseye on her back, that drawing so much attention to herself is dangerous even if she wasn’t being targeted already because of her sister.
She should know better than to act the way she’s been acting.
Hell, another girl her age was abducted from this school.
She was at the same place Nash and Ayla were, and the sole reason we clashed with Cerberus, in Mexico, a few days ago.
No one was looking for Ayla because her cover was she was out of the country working with some humanitarian group, but the other freshman girl who disappeared was missed.
Her family loved her, looked for her, ultimately reached out to that fucking group in New Mexico who found her.
The girl rolling her body against mine right now has been given a second chance, earned through depraved things that happened to those other two women, and she’s squandering it.
She’s the complete opposite of Maya, from her dark hair and light eyes to the assertiveness in her touch.
She didn’t ask permission to touch me, and the fact that she’s taking such liberties makes me want to teach her a fucking lesson.
I have no doubt she’ll see the errors of her ways if I were to put my hands on her without consent.
The double standard of it makes me grind my fucking teeth.
I hate that she happens to be exactly what I’d hunt if I were on the prowl. I’ve never wanted the reminder of Maya. The threat of those memories could possibly be the only thing that has the power to crumple me, so I never give them the chance.
Women like Alani are easy to walk away from.
They don’t linger in my head, thinking that if I could come back from the dead, so could she.
There have been times that hope has had the ability to sneak inside of me.
That I could somehow forget watching the life drain from Maya’s eyes, that I could forget that she only died because I loved her.
Her only mistake was loving me back, and that cost her everything.
I drag my hand up her side, resting it on her hip. I’ve been tasked with keeping an eye on her, and with her body pressed against mine, it’s just gotten easier. This way, I don’t have to contend with the tall guy across the room who was standing near her a few minutes ago.
I pull her closer on instinct, but it’s less about protection and more about the way she rolls her hips against mine. She looks shocked when my cock thickens in my jeans, as if she had different intentions with the way she’s moving against me.
The glint in her eyes speaks of some sort of victory she feels like she’s accomplished, and that desperate need to teach her that fucking around with the wrong man will only bring her trouble begins to fester once again.
She’s fucking trouble, and I don’t mean only in the way that letting her leave here with another man would compromise my ability to keep an eye on her.
She spotted my darkness, distinguishing it from every other gaze in the room without hesitation. I can tell she wants the danger. She’s the type of girl that craves it, but she has to know I’m not the give a gentle swat to the ass and call it kinky type of man.
Instead of arguing in my head, I make up my mind, grabbing her hand and pulling her from the house.
She doesn’t fight me, and not once does she glance back over her shoulder to let her friends know she’s leaving.
I could be dragging her to her death. From the devious glint in her eyes as I open the passenger side of my truck for her, this is exactly what she’s been looking for.
As I round the truck, I look back at the house, locking eyes with the guy who kept handing her the flask. His face falls as he realizes he lost whatever battle he was fighting.
There’s no point in gloating as I climb inside my truck. He could never handle a woman like her, but he shouldn’t worry for long. It’s not like I ever keep the toys I deem worthy. I only play with them for a while before tossing them out like trash.