Dark Rapture_A Disturbing Psychological Thriller

by Logan Fox

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  Gia, Opal and Ivy prayed for better lives, but Fate was none too kind when it answered those prayers. It set them up with Tanner, Caden, and Owen, the billionaire owners of the Fox Pit, a gentleman's club created explicitly to cater for the depraved and hedonistic needs of its wealthy clientèle.

  Before accepting any of the girls, the owners evaluated each to ensure she would become a satisfactory employee. All three were found worthy. All three were recruited. These are their stories.

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  The Fox & The Wolf

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  Upcoming Release | Swan Dive

  Book One of The Protector Trilogy

  No matter how much fucking gilt you slathered on it, it was impossible to disguise a cage. Even one as tasteful as Swan Manor.

  The mansion was an architect’s wet dream. Or had been, before some the security company had gotten hold of it. The columns supporting the manor’s flowing roof had been carved with vines and roses. A woman’s face — surrounded with angel wings and a spread of flowers — crowned the manor’s double-story entrance. Immaculate gardens. Tinkling fountains. It even had the required circular driveway with pure white gravel which some low-wage employee had to rake every morning.

  But you couldn’t miss the three-foot electrical fence topping the manor’s perimeter walls. You didn’t have to be keenly observant to spot the cameras fitted to every eave or the electronic wall panels that only allowed cleared personnel to enter the manor.

  Finn’s newest client, Tony Swan, greeted him at Argos Defense Services’s truck as the vehicle pulled up outside the wide stone staircase leading toward the mansion’s ornate double-doors. Even though twilight was more than an hour away, lights glimmered from both inside and outside the manor.

  “Mr. Finn,” Swan said in a faint Mexican accent, holding out a hand.

  Finn shook it, and then waited as Swan introduced himself to the other members of his team. There were six Argos men in this contingent — another six setting up at the new safe house in Albuquerque. All ex-military, all as lethal as a man could be while remaining — to some extent — human.

  “Kindly follow me.” Swan gestured at Finn, and then waved at the rest of the men when they followed suit. “No, please. Just Mr. Finn.”

  Finn gave Bartez, the team leader, a quick look and the man frowned in return. But, just as they both instinctively knew Tony Swan wasn’t the soft target they’d been recruited to protect, they both knew Bartez would never be part of whatever conversation Swan wanted to have with Finn.

  He wasn’t even sure he wanted to be part of it.

  There was an aura about Swan. It reminded Finn of how it felt to move down an uncleared route in Iraq when he’d supplied cover to EOD forces. The knowledge that anywhere in a one-foot radius of where he stood, land mines could have been buried. That same anticipation of explosive violence wreathed Tony Swan. It became more apparent the deeper he entered Swan’s territory. It was in the way the resident guards stiffened when they caught sight of him. The way their eyes would follow Swan with barely a glance for Finn, as if they knew how to handle mercs, but not someone the likes of Tony Swan.

  Swan led him into the manor. The interior dazzled with marble floors and golden banisters. Fresh cut flowers in expensive arrangements filled the vast entrance room with their scent. A maid walked past in an adjoining room and gave Swan a small, rigid curtsy when they passed. Swan didn’t seem to notice. A pair of guards fell in behind Finn, keeping a distance of two yards as Swan led him up a flight of stairs and down a hallway.

  They entered a dimly lit study. The thick curtains were drawn, and the only light came from a jade-green lamp where it pooled yellow light on the oak desk’s polished surface.

  Swan gestured at a chair as he moved to sit behind his desk.

  Finn didn’t make a habit of sitting, but he sat for Swan. The man’s mere presence commanded it, and the soldier in him refused to disobey.

  Swan was tall but not a large man. Slender shoulders, narrow hips. He moved with caution, as if those long arms had often knocked over expensive trinkets in his youth, although it was impossible to imagine Swan as a child. He had steel gray wings at his temples and black, crow’s-feet eyes; both which hardened him like ageing wood. He poured himself a shot of something from a crystal decanter — whiskey, cognac, brandy; it could have been anything. He didn’t offer one to Finn. Perhaps he already knew Finn didn’t drink.

  Other men could have their inhibitions lowered; Finn preferred his as tall and concrete as possible.

  “Argos briefed you?” Swan asked, swilling his glass and choosing to look into the amber liquid instead of at him.

  Finn cleared his throat. Sometimes, it made it easier for strangers to understand him. “Yes.”

  Swan looked up at the word. Most people did a double take the first time he spoke. His voice was a rough, terrible thing. Damaged vocal chords did that to a person. Swan’s eyes flickered to Finn’s neck, but it would be impossible for the man to see the faint scars on his skin in such low light. Or maybe Swan had seen the scars outside and was recalling them now.

  Glass scraped on oak as Swan toyed with his drink before setting it down on the desk. “I requested that they omit something.”

  Finn doubted they would have; Argos was thorough. They had shit on everyone who’d ever worked — or even considered — working for them. Shit on every client who had ever approached them for their services. They used intel like currency and had amassed a veritable Fort Knox of the shit.

  Swan looked past him to the guards by the door and lifted his chin. There was the faint sound of boots on carpet, flesh against metal as their grips shifted on their assault rifles — AR-223 types and immaculate to boot — before Swan’s bodyguards stepped outside.

  Finn turned his head a little, catching the door closing from his periphery.

  The sigh of paper on oak, sliding toward him.

  Swan’s fingertips rested on a photograph, mostly obscured by the shadow falling on its glossy surface. The cardboard was soft; dog eared from years of being handled, held, obsessed over.

  Finn lifted it when Swan pulled his fingers away. He gave the man a long look, expecting an explanation before looking at it, but the man gave none. He tilted the photo to catch the light and let out a slow breath through his nose. A young girl, six, maybe seven years old — chain around her neck like a dog. Naked, but so curled in on herself all the photographer had been able to capture were knees and elbows and a dull, disheveled mop of black hair. Her skin was stained. It was a black and white photo, so whether with blood or dirt, it was impossible to tell. Judging from the state of her, he’d bet good money it was blood.

  Finn set the photo down again, pushed it back over the table.

  “Cora,” Swan said, and the name had a lilt to it. “She was six when they took her, Naomie — my wife — and her sister, Sofia.”

  They who? Argos hadn’t mentioned anything other than Swan was a rich businessman. Extra rich, hold the business. So what? Arms? Drugs? Women? He had to be trading one or a combination of all three to make enemies this vicious.

  “Rivals?” Finn asked.

  Swan nodded. “Plata o Plomo1.”

  A cartel. So drugs. But that didn’t rule out arms or women.

  Swan shrugged. “That was over a decade ago.”

  He took an envelope from his pocket. It was red, shiny-expensive, an odd size. This he slid to Finn before emptying his glass.

  Finn took
the envelope. It had been opened with a letter opener. Inside, a single sheet of paper. Thick, stationary grade. Satiny. Fragranced; faintly floral. Unbidden, his fingers traced the delicate emboss on the back of the envelope as he unfolded the letter. It took him a moment to read, and then he folded it and slid it back inside the envelope.

  A death threat. The author — signed, simply, ‘Z’ - had given GPS coordinates which would presumably draw an X through the middle of Swan manor.

  Unless the ‘archives’ were handed over to him, ‘Z’ would capture Cora and hang her from a bridge, after flaying her alive. Those were two of the seven atrocities he mentioned, with a hint there would be more, depending on how creative he felt once he’d gotten his hands on her. Because ‘Z’ was adamant that he would have Cora within the week.

  “It’s the same group making this threat?” He didn’t want to use the word cartel — sometimes, people who moved in those circles had an unexpected reaction to the word, especially if they thrived on the fringes of the legal and illegal.

  Swan had his fingers against his mouth. They twitched. “Maybe. Maybe not. If not them, then one of the others. I know of no ‘Z’, but pseudonyms are easy to come by.” He washed his hands down his chest. “Antonio Luis Rivera becomes Tony Swan—” he snapped his fingers “—like this.” He gestured toward the photo of Cora, still on the desk between them. “Eleodora Rivera becomes Cora.”

  Finn gazed at Swan for a moment, mind scrambling. Rivera. One of the drug lords of the El Calacas Vivo2 cartel? He’d heard the man had died.

  There was a pregnant pause which Swan shattered when he got to his feet and took back the envelope and Cora’s photo. Swan hadn’t mentioned his wife, or Cora’s sister. Which meant they hadn’t survived the men who’d slung a rope around Cora’s neck.

  How long had she been tied up?

  He pushed the thought from his mind — it didn’t affect his mission here.

  Finn cleared his throat and got ready to stand. “Argos was a good choice,” he said, not knowing what else to say. When he’d woken up today, he hadn’t expected to be taking orders from a drug lord.

  “I know.” Swan had a hint of a smile on his wide mouth. “I’ve used them before with success.”

  Finn was halfway out of his chair when Swan set a hand on his shoulder. There was hardly any weight to the gesture, but it urged Finn into his chair as persistently as an anchor.

  “I will never let this happen to mi corazón3 again,” Swan murmured, flicking a fingernail against the photo before sliding it into his pocket along with the envelope. “I was betrayed, Mr. Finn. This letter, this threat…It was accompanied by a photo of Cora. Present day. Perhaps a few days old. ” He tapped two fingers on the oak table. He was close enough that Finn should have felt heat coming from his body. But he couldn’t. “Two people. One I know for certain, the other I merely suspect. After everything I’ve done to ensure her safety. This house—” an indolent wave took in Swan manor “—the guards, the restrictions. I’ve made sure that the very possibility of anyone finding us was so slim—” he cut off, his voice going tight. His hand slid away from Finn’s shoulder, and he walked over to one of the curtains, tugging it aside and peering through the window for a long moment before speaking again.

  Finn waited. Watched.

  Living in this manor with its impenetrable security. A girl who, from the age of six, would have been treated like a bird with a broken wing.

  What did that do to a person?

  “Things have changed,” Swan murmured, almost as if reassuring himself. “Cora’s not defenseless anymore. Neither am I. But I am stranded here in America. If we were still in Mexico—” he pronounced the ‘x’ as an ‘h’ “—your services would not have been necessary. Calacas would have provided a convoy. Fifteen, twenty vehicles. As many men as I need.”

  Twenty armored vehicles filled with Mexicans? No, that wouldn’t fly in Phoenix, Arizona. Border patrol would come by helicopter to take care of that.

  “We’re not so different, you and I, Mr. Finn. We have something in common. Violence has taken loved ones away from us. And there has been no price paid for those losses. No recompense.” Swan let out a sigh, and then swung to face him. “Your file never mentioned how old you and your sister were when your mother killed herself. I assume you were young. Ten, twelve?”

  Finn stopped breathing. Where his hands lay over the chair’s arms, his fingers tightened until his nails threatened to bite into the wood. There was a moment’s prickling silence between them before Finn said in a low rumble, “Eleven.”

  Swan nodded and lifted his black eyebrows in what could have sympathy, or merely a twisted kind of admiration. “Brutal, what they did to her. I am not surprised that she took her own life. Some women seem incapable of surviving the shame of such an assault.”

  Finn’s jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth creak.

  “And the perpetrators were never located,” Swan mused.

  Finn swallowed hard. “I sat with a sketch artist,” he said, barely recognizing his own voice. “But they—”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve come to understand about this country, Mr. Finn, it’s that money can buy you anything. Loyalty. Revenge.” Swan ambled closer. “Plata o Plomo have made it their creed. That’s how they stole my family in Sinaloa. By turning loyal men against me. Infiltrating my household. Those rateros4 ate dinner with me and then snatched my girls not an hour later.”

  “Plata o Plomo,” Finn said, trying desperately to rid himself of the vivid memory running rampant through his mind; his mother’s screams, the rip of clothing, the animalistic grunt of a man taking what hadn’t been given to him. Then another. Another. Three men, and he was a runty eleven-year-old who cowered in the shadow between a dumpster and a crumbling brick wall.

  “Silver or lead,” Swan translated quietly. “Accept a bribe or pay the ultimate price.”

  Finn got to his feet, more in the hopes it would force the memory to stop replaying than to leave. “Sir?”

  “There was surveillance footage in the grocer across the way from where your mother was attacked.”

  Ice water poured over his skin. Finn’s hands curled into fists, nails digging into the flesh of his palm. “How—The cops never—”

  “Like I said…” Swan came closer. They were of equal height, staring each other in the eyes; black to blue, night to winter ice. “Money can buy you nearly everything. For everything else, there’s violence.”

  Swan patted his pocket — not the one he’d slid the envelope into, but the other side. “I have their names, Mr. Finn. As coincidence may have it, they’re halcones5 for the Plata o Plomo cartel. It would please me greatly to see them taken care of.”

  Finn moved forward an inch before he could control his legs. His nostrils flared, catching a deep draft of Swan’s smell. Freshly ironed linen, pine, alcohol.

  No fear.

  No sweat.

  So Lars hadn’t been kidding when he’d said Tony Swan did his homework. Swan didn’t just hire people, he transacted loyalty.

  “What do you want?” Finn growled. Reading those black eyes was a task in futility — might as well try to read a moonless sky.

  “Protect her, my Cora. I don’t care how much others attempt to pay you, what other oaths you’ve sworn, who tries to sway you. You answer to me. You return her to me.” Swan tapped his breast pocket again. “Do this, and I’ll give you what you need.”

  Finn strode after Swan, his head thumping with a pseudo-headache. He was used to the sensation — it came whenever he thought back — eighteen years back. When his mother abandoned him, leaving behind nothing but a scared-shitless child and his confused sister.

  In that almost pain, something restless began stirring. A hunger — not for food, drink, sex. Something primal. Rage; suppressed for so long it had transformed like compressed carbon into a red, blood-stained diamond. It wreathed him in a sullen vapor, transforming Swan’s slim form into a dark smudge that shifted o
ver the gray landscape like a specter.

  The urge to take out his pistol, to hold it if only for its solidity and reassuring weight, was intense. But many men construed it as a threat if you drew a weapon for no reason.

  They left the manor, heading for a cluster of low buildings shrouded in near-twilight. A barn, or stables, perhaps. Swan turned, indicating a white-washed building off to the side.

  “Inside, there’s a negro man playing cards with a Mexican, if the staff are to be believed. He answers to Joshua.” Swan gave him an unreadable look over his shoulder. “Kill him.”

  Another man might have questioned the command. Might have wondered what unsuspecting, card-playing Joshua had done to deserve his life being snuffed out on such a glorious Tuesday afternoon.

  Finn didn’t.

  His beast — ravenous to the point of insanity — would happily gorge itself on such a delectable morsel.

  Swan Dive

  The Protector | Book One

  Finn

  I was hired to protect her, not to break her. To take her to a place of safety. Instead, we're running for our lives. My job ends when she's safe, and the daughter of the El Calacas Vivo drug cartel will never be safe. That suits me fine... because I never want to return her.

  Cora

  This was supposed to be a temporary thing. I should be in a new safe house already, my new gilded cage. But I'm still with him. He terrifies me. Electrifies me. But he's vowed to keep me safe, and I don't have a choice but to trust him with my life.

  Warning: This books is intended for mature audiences only as it contains graphic violence, explicit sexual scenes, drugs, and taboo topics.

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