by Lake, Keri
“Where are the photos?”
“I loaded them onto my computer and …”
“And?”
As juicy a story as that would’ve been for Craig, I'd refused to turn them over. Warhawk’d beaten the hell out of a known scumbag—a neighborhood nuisance known for being a misogynistic asshole. So what, if they’d taken guns from him? It was like taking the punch out of school bullies. “They’re gone. You have nothing to worry about. I promise I didn’t turn them over.”
His lip peeled back into an intimidating snarl. “I’ve nothing to worry about?” He pushed away from me. “My whole fucking family is gone, and you’re telling me I have nothing to worry about?”
My chest tightened as my brows knitted together. “What?” His family? I had no idea he had a family. Like kids and a wife?
Nostrils flared, he breathed heavy, as though trying to calm himself down.
“Look, I promise you. I didn’t turn over any photos. I didn’t say anything to this … Tesarik. And Viktor is nobody. He has the tattoo, but I have no idea what status he has with them. He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just the asshole owner of Sphinx. Please, let me go. No one will know you’re here. I won’t say a word to anyone about where you’re staying.”
His brow kicked up, and my stomach twisted when I realized what I’d just done.
I’d pointed out the very reason he needed to keep me.
“You’re dating Viktor. You’re not dating Viktor. You know about the club. You don’t know about the club. You’re full of bullshit, and I don’t have patience for bullshit. Arms up.”
12
Jase
Having left the woman strapped to the bed, I drove along Gratiot, slipping into the outskirts of the city. Most cities in the world had two layers. The surface, which consisted of all the normal people—bankers, lawyers, nurses, doctors, politicians. Relatively happy folks, who drank their soda pop lifestyle while watching reality TV to avoid their realities.
And the underground scene—gangs, mafia, prostitutes, drug dealers. The ones who typically scared the shit out of normal people and kept their egos in check. As one gang died out, another took its place, keeping a constant stream of pluses and minuses. A balance, so to speak, of good and bad, though the rise in gangs over the last couple of years had begun to throw it out of whack.
Detroit had three layers.
Below the crime-lords, and all the shit people heard on TV, was a world that existed only in nightmares. A place where rules didn’t exist and the people who thrived there were faceless names who ruled themselves in anarchy.
There, the most horrific crimes were bartered for and traded like a Sunday afternoon at Eastern Market. Not just hits and kidnappings, but the kind of shit that only made the news when it happened to bubble to the surface like a bloated dead body. Snuff. Pedophilia. Trafficking. Imprisonment. Torture. The kind of shit that made suburban mothers tuck themselves into their false senses of security, certain that law enforcement knew where to find the criminals.
Except, what couldn’t be seen couldn't be caught.
And I'd been branded with the shit and was diving headfirst, into a world that turned my stomach more than the bastards I’d done time alongside, who’d stolen, murdered and maimed. At least they had a reason behind their crimes—whether for retribution, loyalty, or plain survival. The shit found on the darknet was done out of pure sadistic enjoyment, the thrill of watching and inflicting human suffering.
I turned into the parking lot adjacent to a stretch of old buildings that stood lined together, where Smoking Guns Tattoo parlor was sandwiched between a fire-gutted sub shop and Fired Up Smoke Shop.
I’d spent a number of days getting high with Dax, Reed, and Rhys, the owner of the tattoo shop, while selling pills in the back. Damn, I hadn’t seen Dax in months. Probably wasn’t the best idea to go strolling in, as late as it was, but I needed to find out more about Viktor, who, according to the girl, had the same tattoo I'd gained. As a street fighter in the underground scene, Dax had a lot of connections to the city’s shady bastards. It was through those connections that we’d learned about the guns we’d stolen from Tesarik.
I twisted around in the seat, checking to make sure the back door of the parlor was still open, and caught a glimpse of the camera still sitting on the floor. The girl had said earlier that Peepshow had been after something on it, so I picked it up, and scrolled through the images.
Looked to be the Slaughterhouse basement, from what I could tell. I’d been there myself a few times. She’d taken some pretty cool shots—nice balance in composition, and she'd made good use of the flash.
Still scrolling quickly, I stopped at a video and pressed play. Tilting my head, I tried to make sense of the angle, hooded by dark shadows at the top of the screen. Perhaps the photographer hid beneath something. The camera wobbled a little, and harsh breathing overrode the deep voices of men. Objects off in the distance fell into a large pit of some sort, maybe a drain, each a pallid shade with distinguishing bends that suggested a torso? An arm? A head.
Body parts. She’d watched them dump a body.
Well, no fucking shit they were after her. The girl must’ve had balls of steel to sit and record it all. The Slaughterhouse was disturbing as it was, but add a dead body and a few psychopaths, and it must’ve been a house of horrors for her.
Leaning forward, I popped open the glove compartment, where I’d stuffed the SD card from the storage unit, and shoved it into the camera, pressing play when a video popped up. Onscreen, Reed sat in a chair in front of the camera, pupils dilated, probably high as shit. An ache struck my chest on seeing him. He leaned back, as though adjusting himself on the seat, before the camera panned down to his exposed dick in his palm, and I stopped the video.
“What the fuck, man? Did you mean for me to find this shit?” I mumbled, switching to the next video.
Again, it showed Reed in front of the camera, but that time, he seemed to be at the peak of orgasm—or pain, I couldn’t tell. Head kicked back, and naked from the top down to where the camera view ended at his abs, he cried out a strangled sound, after which his body shuddered. Sweat glistened across his neck and chest, and his hair lay plastered to his forehead. He lifted a bloodied, trembling hand in the air, twisting it around for the camera.
My stomach turned at the sight, and again, I flipped it off, moving on to the third video.
I knew he’d always been into weird stuff, but I'd had no idea he filmed the shit.
The scene appeared to be looking in on a basement, where cinderblock walls carried rusted water stains, and a single light bulb hung down from the low ceiling, illuminating the otherwise dim room. Propped against the wall was a mirror, like it’d been disassembled from a dresser and stored in the basement. Large and wide, it gave a view of a man standing somewhere off in a corner, cupping himself between his thighs, his black slacks crumpled at his ankles. I couldn’t make out his face, only the gray hair that put him around late fifties. On a table, a girl’s naked body writhed, and she tugged at the chains strapping her down. A blond man held a camera, filming her as he rounded the table, and stopped to slap her small breasts. The girl’s body disappeared behind the naked ass of a large man climbing on top of her. Muffled screams beat through the glass that separated whoever was filming from the angle I watched. In the mirror’s reflection, the man in the corner masturbated as he watched the guy fuck her on the table.
I switched it off. “Jesus Christ, Reed.” Popping the SD card out of the camera, I shook my head and slid it back into the glove compartment. “That’s messed up,” I muttered, as I set the camera down.
My thoughts drifted back to the conversation with Roman, wondering if I’d just gotten a peek at one of the videos he’d downloaded from the site. If I had, it sure as hell didn’t give any indication of who was behind it. Like watching through the eyes of a voyeur.
Exiting the car, I glanced around the parking lot, mostly empty, save for Rhys’s Harley and Dax’s r
ed Hemi ‘Cuda sitting off at the back of the lot, as I strode up to the back door of the shop. After knocking twice, I listened.
Rhys’s thunderous voice bled through the steel door, and laughter followed. Throwing back the unlocked door, I stepped inside and looked around. No one in the backroom. I kept on to the middle section of the building that’d once served as a barber shop. On each side, three chairs were sectioned off by low walls, each with its own station of tattoo instruments.
Only Dax and Rhys sat in the chairs across from one another, sipping beers and vaping.
As I stepped out of the shadows of the hallway, their laughter died.
My lip kicked up to a half grin, as Rhys caught sight of me first and sat up straight. His tattooed fingers curled around the arms of the chair, and he seemed hesitatant to push to a stand. “Mother … fucker.”
Dax spun around in his chair, brows drawn, mouth gaping. “Hawkins? 'The fuck?”
I had a feeling my visit would come as a surprise. Hands splayed to the side, I tipped my head. “Kiss?”
Both men shot up from their chairs, and Dax barreled straight for my midsection.
“You cheatin’ death son of a bitch! What the fuck, man? What the fuck? I thought you were dead!” Dax wrapped his arms around me and pounded his fist into my back, as he gave me a hug. Backing up, he rubbed his hand across his jaw and slid me a handshake. “No shit. I’m fuckin seeing dead people, and shit.” A burst of laughter flew from his mouth.
Rhys stepped up behind him and locked fists with mine, pulling me in for a hug. “Thought we’d seen the last of you, motherfucker.” He ushered me to a chair, flipped open the cooler on the floor, and handed me a beer.
Shaking my head, I raised a hand to decline, but accepted when he offered up a Red Bull instead.
“Where the fuck you been hiding out?” Dax stood to the side of me, both hands on his hips. Where Rhys was blond, tattooed, and looked like a Swedish Viking with his large build, grown out beard and blue eyes, Dax was dark haired, with a short-cropped beard, brown eyes and gauges in his ear. He’d spent years, street fighting for cash, before we got into the car stripping gig, and he carried the scars on his face and knuckles. He shook his head. “Fuck, man, I’m sorry about Reed. You know, he was like a brother to me.”
I nodded and took a sip of the drink. “Yeah. He got roughed up pretty good. Knuckledusters.”
Dax flinched and shook his head again. “Any idea who did it?”
“I’m working on it.”
“What happened to you, Jase?” Falling into the chair beside me, Dax rubbed his skull with his free hand. “Where you been?”
“Got shipped off to Tesarik.” I didn’t care to elaborate, or relive eleven months of hell, torture and darkness, working down in those mines.
“He let you go?” An air of disbelief clung to Dax’s words.
“Yeah. You could say.”
“You’re fuckin’ lucky to be alive, Brother.” Rhys took a drag off his vape pen, filled with weed, going by the heavy droop of his eyelids. “No one walks from Tesarik. You gotta be the first.”
“I made a deal. I need to track down a guy who goes by the name Pasák. You know him?”
Both men shook their heads. “Nah, man.” Dax said. “What’s that? Russian, or some shit?”
“Slovak.” Crossing my arms, I leaned into the wall beside me. “He runs some underground porn site. Picking up young girls, and shit.”
As I'd expected, Dax’s eyes narrowed on me, and I knew exactly why he’d taken a sudden interest. When his sister Livvie was found dumped in an abandoned building, mutilated with signs of assault, he’d gone on a manhunt for whoever was responsible and came up with nothing. “What’d you say?”
“It’s called Seventh Circle. Rhys, you ever tattoo anything like this?” I lifted my sleeve, showing him the tattoo on my forearm. “It’s their symbol. Tesarik’s men tattooed it on me.”
“Yeah. Your brother. Thought that was some Seven Mile bullshit he got caught up in.”
My gaze slid to Dax, whose mind must’ve been spinning like a hamster wheel. Since Reed had only been broken up with Livvie just a few short weeks before she'd ended up dead, he'd made the ideal suspect. Dax had never accused Reed, but the thought must’ve surfaced at Rhys’s comment.
“This website,” Dax kept on, “how’s it work?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I plan to find out. You know anyone by the name of Viktor?”
“Viktor? Yeah.” Curls of smoke drifted up past his face, as Dax puffed his vape pen. “Owns Sphinx?”
“What do you know about him?”
“He’s from The Ladder. One of the older kids. Only saw him a few times. Always on Kelley’s shitlist.”
Dax had grown up in the foster system after his mom committed suicide, and had been bounced around from house to house before he finally landed the same home as Livvie. The Ladder’s director, David Kelley, happened to be a bigwig councilman for the city of Detroit, so he was able to get support for a lot of treatment programs that other communities struggled to get approved. He’d gotten Reed straightened out, off the heroin, and tried to get him a decent job. Reed just hadn't taken to the normal world.
“On his shitlist for what?” I asked.
Dax threw an arm over his chair and swigged his beer. “Reed had his problems, no doubt about that, but Viktor made him look like a posterchild for mental wellbeing.”
“Reed never mentioned him. They know each other?”
“Probably. You climb The Ladder long enough, you know the shitheads to avoid.” Dax shook his head. “That kid must've somehow pulled success out of his ass, because he was most likely to wind up in a fucking gutter when I was in that program.”
I took another sip. “I’ll pop into Sphinx. Pay him a visit.”
“Good luck with that,” Rhys chimed in, kicking his boots up onto the divider that separated the tattoo stations.
“Why?” I asked.
“Asshole’s never around. Has some blond running the place while he’s gone.”
“Conall?” I sat forward in my seat, polishing off the last of my drink.
Rhys shrugged. “Not sure of his name.”
Giving a nod, I set the can on the ledge beside me. “I’ll check into it.”
“Got a party coming up.” Smoke drifted up from Dax’s mouth as he vaped. “Old Hotel Savarine. This Friday. You should stop in.”
“I’m out of that scene, Brother.”
“Some of the strippers from Sphinx will be there. Might know more about Viktor.”
“We’ll see,” I told him.
Perhaps they’d have more information than the one already tied to my bed.
13
Lucy
I must’ve sawed at the plastic for hours. My hands so raw from rubbing against the metal, I couldn’t take anymore.
Voices and laughter outside the apartment had me stilling in the bed. I listened carefully, catching the distinct baritone voice of my captor and what sounded like two other men.
No way. No, no, no. He’d probably brought them home for a gangbang, or something, and I’d rather die than let a bunch of sick and twisted assholes have their way with me.
Okay, truthfully, I’d fantasized of a gang-bang once. Had even watched it on Pornhub, as the girl in the skit had been taken by a bunch of bikers and forced to have sex with all of them. I’d watched it to the end, where the woman was finally interviewed, and the men were sitting around her as she laughed and talked about how fun it had been to roleplay. I’d liked that I could shut it off and go back to my relatively normal little world afterward, taking with me no more than a pair of wet panties and a whole lot of guilt.
There happened to be a vast difference between roleplay and reality, though.
I went back to sawing double-time, sheer panic washing over me, when the door clicked and the voices arrived in sharp clarity.
Footsteps thumped across the carpet, like troops marching in to battle, and I froz
e on the bed, closing my eyes as if asleep.
“Jase, man. Her body is fine as fuck.” The man’s voice was as deep as my captor’s, and I cracked my lid just enough to see an equally tall man with dark hair, wearing a pair of camo pants and a T-shirt beneath a black jacket. “What I wouldn’t give to have her tied to the cross.”
Through the hazy slit in my eye, I could see the second man standing off to the side, blond, stocky, and covered in tattoos. His square jaw, scruffy beard, and build had me imagining him on a warship somewhere, coated in armor, like something out of the movie 300. He stepped forward, a vape pen hanging out of his mouth, and tipped his head, his squinted eyes aimed down at me. “How’d you bag this one?”
I focused on their pants, to keep my lids from flinching with the thoughts running through my head, which inevitably had me staring at three bulging crotches.
“I think she’s the one who ratted us out,” the voice of my captor said.
Oh, God. Oh, my fucking God.
“I thought you two could get her to talk. All I seem to get out of her is bullshit.”
At that, my lids flipped open, and I kicked back on the bed, pulling my legs in as tight as I could. “You fucking touch me, and I swear to God I’ll—”
“What, princess? Scream? Kick? Curse our names?” My captor stood leaning against the wall and sipped his beer.
The dark-haired one laughed, pulling his jacket off his shoulders, revealing long cords of muscle and tattoos beneath the shirt he wore. He planted both fists at the bottom of the mattress, watching me like a lion ready to pounce. His features and olive skin tone reminded me of a Greek God gone goth, and the angry scowl on his face had my skin hot.
“I told you! I don’t know anything. I don’t know about the tattoos! I don’t know about the club! And I didn’t sell you out!”
“But somebody did, sweetheart.” The blonde one sat beside me. His fingertip drifted down my arm, and as I drew back my leg to kick him, he swiped my ankle. Gripping tight with his warm, calloused hands, he swept his tongue across his lips. “Feisty. I love a feisty woman.”
