Trey

by Shandi Boyes

  Sale?

  What fucking sale?

  Before I can voice my concern, Nikolai returns his eyes to me. “We will get K out, but if she’s responsible for hurting my Ahren…” His words trail off. He doesn’t need to say more. His eyes are very telling. K will be dead.

  I’d be worried for her if I could feel anything over the thud of my pulse in my ears.

  Twenty-Three

  Sales Docket Number 12574

  Achim Novak killed me. He strangled me until my lungs stop screaming for air, and my body went limp.

  Then he revived me.

  Now, I’m to be sold to the highest bidder.

  Passed on.

  Handed down.

  Dismissed like a worthless, broken toy.

  He’s made me pretty for my new owners. He polished my exterior so well none of my cracks can be seen. My hair was washed and blow-dried out until every curl represents a golden wave of perfection. I’m wearing lipstick for the first time. I even have on a pretty dress.

  If you didn’t know what I’ve been through, you could think I was worth a few pennies.

  Perhaps even a dime.

  I know I’m not worth that much.

  I’m broken.

  Abused.

  Incapable of escaping the dark.

  That’s why I’m clutching the tiny shard of glass from the mirror in the back of the brush Achim left in my room. It’s my mother’s brush, a family heirloom that has been passed down from generation to generation. Its sentimental value meant nothing to Achim when he used it to ensure I’d fetch top dollar at his auction later today. He taunted me with it. Reminded me that I’m an orphan who got everything she deserved for whoring myself out to an unknown, now-dead man.

  He snickered when he said his last comment, loving the faintest flicker of despair that darted through my eyes before I could shut it down. Then he gave credit to his remark I would have never believed without proof. Twenty-one teeny tiny lines of an obituary hurt me more than anything I’ve experienced the past six years. It siphoned the blood from my heart as effectively as my parents’ death, and saw me shattering the mirror on the back of my family heirloom against a set of drawers in my room.

  It’s time to end things. To take back who I once was.

  I’ll never be free until I free myself, and not even the dark can save me this time.

  With my head tilted high, and my mind shut down, I stab the end of the glass into the vein in my neck that hasn’t quit thudding out its own tune the past thirty seconds before I thrust down.

  Death usually means the end of a life, but that only counts for those who have truly lived.

  Twenty-Four

  Trey

  Ten minutes earlier…

  * * *

  This place reeks of death and discretion, a stark contradiction to the elaborate compound scoured into the foothills of a sleepy hamlet west of Prague. Champagne is flowing, bids have been placed, and caviar is being served to pompous pricks in priceless tuxedos and over-beaded ballgowns.

  None of the festivities have reached this far down, though.

  The women here are glammed to the nines, but no amount of polish can clear the skank smell of desperation. If Achim’s guests were to come down here, the bids of men and women seeking their own live-in sex slave would be significantly reduced.

  All the money in the world would never have you forgetting the smell. I scrubbed my skin raw in a shower five times a day for months when I was released from captivity. When soap failed to free me from the putrid scent, I took to my skin with a knife. Little nicks and a handful of well-hidden cuts stopped my stomach rebelling every time the slightest breeze rustled by, but within weeks, it was no longer enough.

  Confident the undeniable scent of determination would overtake the smell of desperation, I commenced working out. I lifted weights, ran for miles, and swam in a lake not too far from Clarks even in the middle of winter. My plan was working. The putrid smell I was swarmed by was slowly weakening. However, I had amassed more scars after I was freed than I had when I was imprisoned.

  I hated them. They weren’t just a reminder of what I had lost because I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants, they showed I had failed, that I’d been played for a fool.

  Nikolai didn’t suggest I use tattoos to cover the marks I loathed. He merely suggested for me to join him at his favorite tattoo haunt when he was getting a mottling of scars covered by a dragon’s head.

  My addiction switched from drugs to tattooing shortly after. Piercings closely followed them. Although I have as many piercings as I do tattoos, my visible scars still outnumber their combined total. Some I’ll never be able to conceal. They’re not on my body. They are on my heart, in my head, and burned into my soul.

  And my newest nick is compliments to her—K. I can’t see her face as she stares at nothing, but I know who she is, I can feel it in my bones, hear it thudding in my chest. She’s healthier than she was in the surveillance image Nikolai showed me. Her hair is glossy and hanging loosely down her back. A light blue floral printed dress hugs her svelte yet still enticing frame, and she’s wearing a pair of shoes no amount of heel could hide the foreignness of it. Her feet are too cracked, flat, and grubby underneath to pretend she wears footwear often.

  When K lifts an antique-looking brush into the air, I grab Eight by the scruff of his shirt and pin him to the rock wall beside me. The brush has a mirror on the back of it. It’s only small, but the angle of its reflection would give away our stake in an instant.

  Despite the screams of the voice inside me, I can’t move for K until I get word from Nikolai. He’s several floors above us attending the auction as if his face is too hideous for a woman to warm his sheets without handing over a bundle of cash. He gave me the option of taking down Achim myself or freeing K.

  I chose K.

  I should have always chosen K.

  A familiar thud, thud, thud booms into my ears when for the quickest second, my eyes collide with K’s in the mirror. Although she appears to be staring straight at me, she doesn’t blink, move, or gasp in a shocked breath. She does nothing but peer at me blankly.

  I can’t say I’m experiencing the same thing. The memories I lost crash back into me in an instant. K’s gallop down the stairs on the heels of a woman with oddly similar features. Her inability to light a match to send Vladimir to hell. Me burning her wounds when I slid into the jacuzzi with her on my lap. They all come flooding back in, and they maim me as much as the expression on K’s face a second before she lowers her mirrored brush to smash it against a set of drawers she’s seated in front of.

  “Oh fuck,” Eight mutters at the same time I say the exact words in my head.

  K is clutching a shard of glass in her hand. It’s only tiny, but it isn’t the size of her weapon I’m worried about. It is what she intends to do with it.

  “Give me an orange.” I yank down the backpack on Eight’s back before digging my hand inside for an orange. I ribbed him when he packed oranges, disgusted he’d even consider eating a snack during the middle of a raid.

  Now I get where he was going.

  Now I understand.

  “Come on, K,” I quietly beg when I roll the orange across the filthy floor, praying like fuck she spots it before any of the sorrow radiating out of her cell can transpire. “Look at the orange.”

  I realize my error when my prayers fall on deaf ears.

  K doesn’t trust anyone.

  Not even me.

  Ignoring the tightness of my jaw, I dig a second orange out of Eight’s backpack, rip out a big chunk of it with my teeth, swallow down the citrusy clump, then roll it toward K’s cell again. My heart launches into my throat when she peers down at the bitten orange within a second of it tapping her shoe. She gathers it up, almost trance-like before she swivels in her seat to face the direction the orange rolled from.

  Although she stares straight at me, she doesn’t see me. She’s completely fucking gone. Her eyes are lifeless and
blank, swallowed by her miserably bleak existence.

  “Go!” Eight roars when we get word from Nikolai it’s time for us to move. We don’t use listening devices to communicate. The healthy discharge of machine guns and the potent scent of death guides us through every raid.

  “Duchess,” I push out through a groan as I sprint for her cell, praying I’ll reach her before she can do any of the morbid things I see in her eyes.

  She wants to die, to be free.

  She most likely thinks she’s already dead.

  I’ll prove her wrong. I’ll show her how your heart doesn’t have to beat in your chest to prove you’re alive.

  Sometimes it thuds in your ears.

  After taking down three men charging at me from the other end of the dungeon, I punch in the five-digit code Hunter assured me would open the digital lock on K’s cell, then throw open the heavily-weighted door keeping her hostage. Having no time to remove the glass from her hand she’s intending to drag down a vein in her neck, my palm takes on the brunt of the glass’s jab. She pierces it into my hand deeply before yanking it down with a groan, proving she wasn’t playing.

  She truly wants to die.

  As the undeniable scent of blood seeps into the air, K collapses. I catch her just before she hits the grubby ground with a thud, my nostrils naturally flaring to suck in her intoxicating scent.

  With K held in close to my chest with one hand, and the other gripped on my gun, I gingerly make my way out of her room. I’d rather place her down and make sure the route is safe first, but there are too many objects she could hurt herself with if she were to come around while I was gone.

  I also refuse to leave her alone.

  I made that mistake three and a half months ago, and look what happened. The last of the light in her eyes has been stolen. I don’t know if she’ll ever get it back.

  Partway down the almost black corridor, Eight raises his hand in the air. He fires into the dark two times, silencing the faintest conversation of two men talking in a foreign language before he gestures for me to keep moving.

  The itch for a bloodbath treks through my veins when we race across a body-studded field. Nikolai’s crew went in quiet and heavy as planned. There are more bodies littering the grounds than there were when I was freed from captivity three years ago. I wouldn’t hold back my desires if K wasn’t my main priority. This isn’t a turf war. It’s an extraction.

  Nikolai’s crew is once again saving one of their own.

  After sliding into the back seat of the SUV door Eight is holding open for me, I instruct the driver to go. Once the tail lights are at a safe distance, Nikolai will command for his men to pull back. Then he’ll meet us at the airport that has a private jet idling on the tarmac.

  As the sound of a helicopter hovers over my head, I peel K off my chest to check her for injuries. Her neck is marked up and bruised, and she’s far too skinny, but those are the least of her problems. Her eyes are open, but just like the pair that stared back at me only minutes ago, they’re lifeless and blank.

  “You’ll be alright, K. I’ll take care of you.”

  When I unscrew the cap on a bottle of water, Mikhail slides down the privacy partition separating the front half of the SUV from the back. I originally wanted Roman to fill in the spot of evacuation driver, forgetting Nikolai couldn’t leave Justine without an army of her own men. Roman is the perfect leader for that group. “Don’t force-feed her water. If she shuts down, the water could end up in her lungs. You’ll drown her thousands of miles from the nearest ocean.”

  Although I’m still pissed at him, I jerk up my chin before placing the water back in its holder. I want to help K, not hurt her more.

  Seemingly hearing my private thoughts, Mikhail says, “We’re two miles out from the airstrip. Dok is waiting in the hangar. He’ll give you more of an idea on how you can help her.”

  He waits for me to lift my chin for the second time before he returns the privacy partition to its original spot, freeing up some privacy. I use the time well. I drink in K’s perfectly straight nose, her plump lips, and eyes as calm as an ocean.

  She stares at me just as intently, however, her eyes don’t blink or move. They don’t even gloss over. They just stare and stare, even more so when I track my thumb over her lips to remove her ruby red lipstick.

  “You don’t need all those gimmicks, do you, Duchess? You’re regal even with your crown missing unnecessary jewels.”

  I stop staring at my reflection in K’s pupils when Mikhail pulls up beside one of the Popovs’ many private jets. I wasn’t staring at myself because I’m a pompous prick who thinks he’s pretty, I was striving to work out how a man I’ve never met before was staring back at me in K’s eyes.

  I’m a monster, a cheat, a thief, and a liar. The man staring at me from K’s eyes was none of those things. He was a stranger, but a man I’ve always hoped to become.

  Dok dips his chin when I nudge my head to the stairs of the private jet. Our mode of transportation is heavily guarded to ensure nothing will come between Nikolai and his Ahren at the end of our raid, however, I don’t want Dok examining K with a heap of witnesses.

  While I place K down in the middle of the double bed at the back of the jet, Dok digs a stethoscope and a thermometer from his medical bag before pivoting around to face me. “Can you give us a minute? I don’t work well under pressure.”

  I want to tell him to go to hell, I want to smash his teeth in, but instead of doing either of those things, I grip the lapels of his jacket and drag him to within an inch of my face. “Make it quick.”

  I’m not bowing under pressure, I am taking a breather before I do something I’ll regret. K hasn’t budged an inch in over ten minutes, hasn’t murmured a peep. I can’t even hear her breathe. It’s as if I was too late, and the mirror ripped through the vein in her neck instead of my hand, and don’t get me started on what the sick fucks did to her to have her so desperate to die.

  She’s been a sex slave for six years.

  What could be worse than that?

  I’m pacing the floorboards of Nikolai’s private jet when he arrives off the battlefield. His grubby face reveals he got in the nitty-gritty, much less his smirk. He loves killing fuckfaces as much as me. “How is she?”

  I wait for his eyes to stray from the closed bedroom door to me before shrugging. “Dok is with her. She’s… ah…”

  “Quiet?” Nikolai fills in when I fail to find the right word. When I jerk up my chin, he scrubs a hand across his before he plops into a cream reclining chair like his pants aren’t covered with blood. “I was worried about Justine’s mental stability after our raid of Vladimir’s compound too.” He undoes the laces on his boots before raising his eyes to mine. “Little did I know, my panic hurt her more. They’re stronger than we think, Trey. They have to be if they want to be queens.”

  After three years of working under him, it should seem foreign that he continues talking about me as if I’m his equal, but since it’s coming from Nikolai, it doesn’t. He knows I don’t have to work for him if I don’t want to. I do it because I’d rather work beside him than across from him. That would have never been the case if my father’s raid of Prague had been successful.

  The world works in mysterious ways, and my friendship with Nikolai is proof of this.

  Recalling Nikolai’s earlier offer for us to return to Prague one day to restore my family’s name, I ask, “Achim?”

  I could say more, but I don’t need to. The first syllable of Achim’s name had only just left my mouth when Nikolai’s jaw tightened to the point of cracking. I assume it’s a bad tightening until he opens the bag Nero entered the jet with. Achim’s head is inside of it. The fact his eyes are still open reveals his death was quick, but the expression on his face exposes it was also painful.

  That appeases my annoyance for now.

  My eyes drop to Nikolai’s when he says, “His wife wasn’t at the auction. That’s why it took me so long to give the word to strik
e. I’m wary she somehow got word about our raid.”

  “By whom?” It’s clear from the information Nikolai shared during our eighteen-hour flight to Czechia that India is well-aware of Achim’s kinks. That’s one of the reasons she agreed to marry him. With his family money, the Dvořáks became untouchable.

  Well, so they thought. If the number of bodies I trekked past during my sprint for the evacuation vehicle are anything to go by, they just lost several key members of her crew.

  I’ll take care of the rest once K is stable.

  It may be six weeks, it may be six years, but India Dvořák should enjoy her last breaths because they’re limited.

  Nikolai’s chest rises and falls three times before he mutters, “I don’t know, but I intend to find out. When I do—”

  “That fucker is dead.”

  Nikolai loses the chance to reply when the creak of a door sounds through our ears. The whiteness on Dok’s face is nothing out of the ordinary, he has super pasty skin, but the concerned pinch of his brows frustrates me. “How is she?”

  He half-heartedly shrugs. “Physically, she’s stable. She gained a little weight the past three months, and her vitamin D deficiency doesn’t seem as bad.”

  I swish my tongue around my mouth, praying it will help with my next set of words. When I stumble them out like a teen sucking on his first tit, I realize it was a waste of time. “Was she… did they…”

  I stop blubbering like an idiot when I spot Dok’s headshake. “There are no bruises or tearing associated with… that. She has old injuries, but from what I could tell, she hasn’t been penetrated the past ten to fourteen weeks.”

  Although appreciative she wasn’t raped during my watch, something still feels off. “What aren’t you telling me, Dok?”