by Lynn Burke
“Never said there was. Aren’t there clubs and shit you could go to? Those secret places down in Boston that’ll take thousands from your pockets so you can tie women up for your sick pleasure?”
“It’s not just for my pleasure, you callous prick.” He scowled. “It’s all about giving a submissive what she needs.”
“Call it what you will.” I lifted my tonic. “Just saying that shit isn’t for everyone, but there are those out there willing to pay for it if you really want to go find them.”
My cell vibrated, and I pulled it from my back pocket. The guard at the front gate—one of the prospects hoping to get his patch within the month.
“What’s up?” I spoke into my cell while glancing toward the window even though I wouldn’t see the gate from the angle.
“There’s a woman out here asking for your old lady.”
I frowned, glancing over at Pia. “She give you a name?” I asked, remembering all-too well the night Ben Thode and his daughter Shaun had shown up asking for Warden.
“Won’t give me her name, but she’s beat up pretty bad. Looks like she’s walked a long fucking way in the cold, too. You better get out here.”
“Shit.” I hung up and stood, motioning toward the door with my head when Devil glanced up at me.
“What’s up?” he asked, setting his beer aside and hopping to his feet.
“Someone at the gate, and you’re the only other officer here right now, so you’d better come along.”
“Who?” he asked, following on my heels across the club.
I shoved open the front door and caught Pia’s eye before stepping outside. Curiosity lit her gaze, but I didn’t show any emotion. Didn’t want to set her nerves on end.
“Not sure,” I muttered to Devil before stepping outside.
A few strides across the parking lot took me close enough to the gate I recognized the young redhead.
“Roll it open!” I barked at the prospect, my focus glued to Dasia.
Battered and bruised, a little hunched, but she held her head high, her eyes slightly hazed and uneasy as fuck.
Dasia slid through the gate but paused a few feet inside as we approached, the gate clanging shut once more behind her.
“Holy fuck,” Devil muttered as a brisk breeze ruffled what had at one time been bright red hair.
She hugged herself, her clothing little more than rags stained with blood and who the fuck knew what else.
“Dasia?” I stepped close, unable to touch her shivering body. “The fuck happened to you?”
She glanced beyond me toward the club, fear in her eyes. “Is Miss Pia here?”
“She’s inside.”
“Who the fuck did this to you?” Devil ground out, and I glanced over to find his entire body vibrating as he ripped off his zipper-down.
Trouble.
I pulled my cell from my pocket again.
Dasia warily eyed Devil as he placed his sweatshirt around her.
“Put your arms in,” he told her, his tone gentler than I’d expected for the anger tensing him the fuck up. He gently gathered her hair out of the way as she did as told.
“Got a friend here to see you, little lamb,” I told my woman when she answered, keeping an eye on Devil while he attempted to set Dasia at ease, “and you better get out here before Devil eats her up.”
“Who is it?”
“Dasia.”
“What?” She fumbled with her phone as I took in Devil’s instincts to care for Dasia. He had a good thirteen or so years on the girl—the fucker was in for a crushing eye opener.
The club door slammed open behind me, and I turned as Pia rushed toward us. “Dasia!” she called out with a rush of happiness and fear in her voice.
I clenched my teeth, expecting her hormones to bring on a rush of tears as she’d been doing with anything even remotely tiresome, worrisome, or annoying.
“Holy… Wow.” She pulled up short of yanking Dasia into her arms and lowered her head to better see the young woman’s pale face. My ever-observant little lamb. “Dasia?”
The young girl broke down and threw herself into Pia’s arms. Pia glanced up at me while wrapping Dasia in her embrace, but I shrugged, shaking my head, letting her know I didn’t know jack shit.
She glanced at Devil, but he couldn’t seem to tear his focus off Dasia’s mess of red hair knotted to fucking hell—and the fact more skin showed than was healthy for a young woman in the cool September breeze.
Devil’s focus dropped to Dasia’s ass barely covered by ripped cotton shorts.
“She’s only seventeen,” Pia hissed at him.
He didn’t twitch.
I elbowed the fucker. “She’s seventeen,” I growled, “and beat to fucking hell, you sick fuck.”
Devil blinked—and cursed. “Gotta figure this out, Ryker. Gotta get whoever did this to her and end him.”
I knew the feeling—too fucking well.
Tension continued to radiate off Devil as Pia murmured to Dasia, stroking her back through Devil’s sweatshirt. “You’re safe with us, understand?”
Dasia nodded against Pia’s shoulder, a shudder rippling through her. “I-I knew I would be if I found you here.”
“How did you know where to look for me?”
“The biker’s rockers on his cut—I knew you were dead gone on him, and I’d seen enough lust in a man’s eyes to know he wouldn’t be able to stay away from you.”
Pia glanced up at me, and I recognized the itch she confessed to daily to smooth the furrow between my eyebrows.
“What happened to you, Dasia?” I asked, my voice low, seemingly unthreatening, but Pia’s gaze narrowed at me before glancing to Devil and back again.
“Not the conversation for right now, Ryker. We need to take her home and get her cleaned up. Warm and fed.”
I forced myself to take a calming breath while noting Dasia’s bare, hairy legs and old, beat up sneakers. Trust Pia to go straight to the mothering while I craved answers and retribution.
“I’ll go get the truck,” I muttered, thankful as fuck my woman was my opposite. She knew best, always did. Wrapped around her little finger? Bet your goddamn life.
“Devil,” I barked, ripping his focus off Dasia. “Give Vigil a call for me. Let him know what’s going on.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he nodded, finally tearing himself away to stalk toward the club as I made for my truck around back of the club. “Call me!” he hollered with a glare—he would want to know it all. Every bloody, sick, and gory detail.
Dasia had obviously stabbed him in the goddamn groin—and possibly heart. I expected there would be hell to pay for whoever else had dared to touch her.
****
Three hours later, Dasia slept in the spare bedroom on Pia’s old bed we’d made up in the guest room. Showered, hair brushed out, finally calm—and with a full belly she claimed to not have had in weeks—she passed the fuck out.
I laid on our bed, Pia facing me same as every night, our hands clasped in front of us. “Did she tell you what happened?”
“Not everything, but enough to know it’s going to cause trouble for you and your brothers.”
I raised an eyebrow and waited. Vigil had texted me once for details I hadn’t been able to supply. Devil had hit me up five times—and I’d finally told him to fuck off.
Obsessive fucker.
Pia exhaled a heavy breath. “She escaped a container down at the harbor. There were at least twenty other young girls with her.”
Trouble, indeed.
I swallowed the need to shed blood that itched across my skin. “Sex slaves.”
Pia nodded, studying my face. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Fuck.”
When Devil finds out… The sick fuck had a thing for tying women up, controlling them and their pleasure. If he had his heart set on Dasia, he had one hell of a fight ahead of him, and not just finding justice for her.
Pia tightened her hold on my hands. “Pr
omise me you’ll talk to the officers about this situation before taking off like a vigilante grim reaper. If you’re going to take action, do it with your brothers at your back.”
I had too much in my damn head to respond.
“Ryker McGrath, you’re going to be a father,” Pia said, her tone hardening, her eyes filling with piss and vinegar. “You have to think outside your own desires with this one. Put this kid first. Put me first.”
A slow and steady, intentional as fuck exhale emptied my lungs as I tugged her closer, so I could lose myself in the softness of her skin and let the thoughts of what needed to be done to bring justice for Dasia go. “I wouldn’t dream of anything else, little lamb.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure about that?”
“Yep. I’m a changed man.”
She snorted.
“The last thing I’m going to do is put myself in a place that might take me away from the two best things I’ve been lucky as fuck to find.”
“Language, my badass biker.”
“Kiss my bad ass, little lamb.”
Her smile dimpled her cheek and stole my breath, and at the soft touch of her lips to mine, I pushed aside all thoughts of vengeance.
It could wait.
THE END
I hope you enjoyed Callous Criminal. The series continues with Twisted Devil, Devil & Dasia’s story. Turn the page for a sneak peek!
TWISTED DEVIL, VICIOUS VIPERS 4
Chapter One
Dasia
I jolted awake with a gasp, the memory of rope around my wrists and ankles biting my tender flesh still lingering as I took in the dimly lit bedroom around me.
Soft mattress, I told myself as my heart thrummed with enough force to power the Infinity Gauntlet. Clean sheets that smell like a spring day.
A double guest bed with its pink fluffy comforter, a chest of drawers, and one bed stand stuffed into the small guest room along with me, and I was safe.
For now.
Sucking in oxygen, I forced myself to relax by focusing on filling my lungs and slowly emptying them. I had escaped my captors three days earlier and found refuge with my old case worker, Pia, and her badass biker boyfriend, Ryker.
At seventeen, I was still a ward of the state and should have been tossed back into another foster home, but Pia had promised me the night before she would do no such thing. I’d been in one shitty home after another for which she had always apologized for, begging me to hang in there until she could find me something better.
My final foster father had creeped me the hell out from day one, and he ended up being the thief of my innocence I’d been saving. I’d hoped to find that one man someday, my knight in shining armor fate had waiting for me.
Curling in on myself, arms around my knees, I fought against the despair that any good man would want someone broken by rape. My throat tightened, but I refused to allow that man to do more damage than he already had.
I’d run away even as the asshole had begged forgiveness for his demons. The sick fuck. Rather than run to my social worker, Miss Pia, I’d taken to the streets, dancing at some seedy joint in South Boston for fists full of dollars seven nights a week.
That’s where Ivan had found me. If that was even his real name.
Sexy Russian accent and super sweet, like a boy next door wanting nothing but my company, he knew how to weasel his way past my walls, using all those words a hurting soul needs to hear.
He’d turned out to be an asshole, too.
I closed my eyes against the morning sunlight peeking around the blinds with their lacey valances and let out a heavy exhale, trying to calm myself. Ridding my mind of what I’d been through in the previous few months would take some doing. And time. I held onto that hope like a piece of driftwood while bobbing up and down in the sea of life. A few weeks from becoming an adult in the state’s sight, and I floundered already.
Lost. Alone in my pain, my fears.
Miss Pia had asked dozens of questions before telling me to get some rest, but I hadn’t shared half of what had transpired since I’d last seen her weeks earlier. She felt guilty for my predicament, claiming if she’d taken me out of the Griffey’s home the first time I told her about his wandering hands…
I refused to hear it, though. Miss Pia had never been anything but kind, motherly in a way none of my foster mothers had ever been. The pain on her face while tucking me in had set a heaviness in my chest. I’d never been as cared for. Never felt so looked after.
Perhaps I didn’t have to be alone after all. Maybe she and her scary biker boyfriend would let me stay until my birthday.
Grasping desperately at that idea and breathing deeply, I noted the scents of cinnamon and bacon—and coffee.
I popped my eyelids open again as my stomach made its protest from the lack of food the previous week or so. Pia had fed me after I’d showered the night before, but the sandwich hadn’t begun to fill the void inside my stomach.
A soft knock sounded, jerking my focus toward the door.
I grasped the comforter beneath my chin. “Yeah?”
“It’s me, Dasia.”
A rush of air escaped me at Miss Pia’s voice. “Come on in.”
I relaxed my hold on the blanket as she came in, a steaming mug in her hand.
“Still like your coffee with extra cream and sugar?”
An ache spread up my throat at her remembering, and I nodded while sitting to prop against the headboard. “Thanks,” I managed to rasp as she handed the mug to me and sat on the bed’s edge. I hadn’t had my morning coffee for close to two weeks.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Like a rock—until a messed up early morning nightmare.” Frowning, I sipped the coffee, and my brow eased at the perfection of the sugary deliciousness burning its way straight to my stomach. “So good.”
“Want to talk about it?”
I sipped again, the scalding heat a welcome distraction from the images still flashing through my head. I’d told Miss Pia some of what had happened—more the what, not the details that were enough to churn my guts half to death. Did I want to talk about it?
“Not really,” I finally answered her, “but maybe spewing out all the shit of the last two weeks or so would be good, huh?” God knows I’d spent enough time with therapists over the years to know getting the words past tight lips helped out a bit.
“I think it would.” Her kind smile—and the good night’s rest—made spilling easier, and once I started from the point of the rape and running away, the story spewed from my lips without hesitation, fear she might be disgusted by my bad choices, without embarrassment those choices had led me to hell.
Ivan had talked me into going out for coffee one night after work—and he clocked me upside the head before we even pulled out of the parking lot. I’d woken, bound and gagged in a basement-like room with no windows.
Cold and alone. Scared shitless and hungry as hell.
My clothes had been askew when I came to—no panties beneath my skirt—but no sting, no blood, no throbbing ache between my thighs lingered like when my foster father had taken what didn’t belong to him.
Attacking Ivan, once let free of my restraints, that first day in my prison had only landed me on my ass, head ringing, and body bruised. Coldness had replaced his flirty, suave smile. A frigid demeanor ruled his face, and silenced his vocal cords. I’d asked—screamed—a thousand and one questions, begging for answers whenever he visited with a daily tray of food, but he refused to speak a word to me.
At least he’d provided a bucket and toilet paper. But after a few days, with nothing but a dirty floor to sleep on and no other amenities to speak of, my hopes of ever seeing the light of day faded.
What seemed like years later, even though I’d counted ten daily food trays, I once more found myself bound with biting ropes, a pillowcase over my head, and carried up a flight of stairs by Ivan and two men I’d never seen before that day. They grunted to each other in Russian, before tossing m
e into a vehicle, none-too gently. Ages had passed before the forward motion stopped. Cool air licked at my feverish skin as snot and tears dirtied my already filthy face beneath the pillow case taped tight around my neck.
I was a nobody, worthless even to whomever had spawned my ass, so I knew my kidnapping had nothing to do with a ransom.
My fears over a future I couldn’t control became known for sure when Ivan and his two buddies locked me up in a metal container, one where twenty other young women huddled together against the far end.
Sex slavery, I told Miss Pia. I’d had no doubt.
A life of submission and servitude—and probably physical abuse beyond the sexual I would be powerless to stop once sold. But we hadn’t been sold within that first hour or so, and I’d decided I would escape—or die trying.
For two days, we weren’t fed or let out to use a bathroom. Thirst set in to combat our mind’s obsession with fear, but I held onto my sanity as others whimpered and cried, their hope already gone before I’d even arrived.
I refused to accept my reality—and I talked all but two of the oldest women to go berserk once the door opened again. While I certainly wasn’t a born leader, someone had needed to step up to the plate if we wanted to fight for our future. Three strong men appeared in the light spilling through the door, but we out-numbered them by seventeen. Surely, a bunch of wild, eye-ball scratching, biting, and screaming women stood a chance.
“I’m not sure how many of us actually made it off the docks,” I whispered to Miss Pia, the girls’ screams still in my ears. “There were two other men beyond those three—and only a handful of other girls even made it outside the container.”
“Where were you?”
“Down near the harbor—I doubt I would even remember if I saw the place again. I was so freaked out, so desperate, I managed to focus on one hiding spot after another, once even jumping into the water to escape them.”
Face pale, Miss Pia studied me with a stare that had always rooted out my thoughts and feelings.
“Would you be able to pick Ivan out of a group of men?”
I nodded without hesitation. “Definitely.”
“And the others?”
I shrugged, tightening my grip on the empty mug still clasped in my hands. “Not sure—probably not.”
