“The ones Charlie’s been bringing in through the docklands. Girls. Girls in con…containers.”
I let Frankie go. Girls in containers? Charlie promised me two years ago that he didn’t deal in girls. Drugs and guns, yeah, but he swore no skin trade. “What’s he moving girls for?” I hold my hand to my shoulder, wincing past the pain. It’s growing now that I’m not inflicting it onto someone else.
“Why do you think?” Frankie rasps. “He gets twenty grand a pop if he can prove they’re still…still in….in tact.” He chokes on the blood welling in his mouth; it runs down his chin, dripping onto his ruined shirt.
“You’re lying.”
“I ain’t,” he says, and I believe him.
Fuck.
Charlie’s the one who’s been lying to me all this time. A part of me wants to believe this is a new development, but I know my boss. He’s got a degree, masters and a goddamned doctorate in lying. Especially when it concerns money. No way he would pass up twenty thousand bucks for a nobody kid he could have snatched off the street. My head spins, numbed and disoriented from the pain of the bullet lodged in my shoulder Through the mist slowing down my mind, I still think it, though. Did that mean I’d been right about the girl? Did that mean Charlie had taken the girl’s sister nearly three years ago?
The first time I’d seen her, she was working a night shift at the hospital. My sack of shit uncle had just been eighty-sixed—that hadn’t worked out so well. To be eighty-sixed you have to actually be buried the prerequisite eight feet down and six feet under instead of dumped out of a moving car on the side of the freeway—and it had been on me to identify the body. Well, what was left of it. Sloane was a broken bird, I could tell. Beautiful in an understated way, luminous brown eyes, wavy brown hair. It was the fight in her eyes that had captured me, though. Captured and enthralled me in the space of ten seconds flat. We’d stood face to face in the corridor as she waited for the elevator, and her eyes had met mine. I felt like I was being gutted stem to sternum, and all the while I knew she wasn’t seeing me at all. She was seeing some distant horror that I could only guess at. And I didn’t like guessing.
I’d made it my business to find out everything there was to know about her, which was when I’d discovered that her sister had gone missing. Just snatched off the side of the road, only eighteen years old. Sloane’s family were Christian to the core—promise rings, hymns every Sunday, no cursing, no drinking, the whole nine yards. Except when her sister had been kidnapped, Sloane had stopped going to church. Didn’t wear the cross I knew her mother had given her. She’d given up believing because it was just too hard to keep her faith alive when something so terrible had marred her life.
And then on top of everything else, and in keeping with the truly vile motherfucker that I am, I’d taken her virginity.
I’d found out Eli Harris was bribing her when he’d shown up to pay his dues to Charlie. He’d been bragging about the trade he’d made with her as he handed over the protection money he paid each month to ensure Sammy and the boys didn’t fuck up his business. The sick bastard thought it was hilarious that he was about to sell her ass to the highest bidder, a guy I knew from reputation alone. A guy who liked to beat his women black and blue while he screwed them. I’d paid big to take his place, double Eli’s month’s protection money, and then afterward I’d made Eli spill everything, everything he’d known about Alexis Romera’s disappearance. The pimp had said it was Charlie all along. I hadn’t believed him. I’d killed him for breathing the very words, and Charlie had been mortally offended when I’d confronted him about it.
You know me better than that, Son. I’m signed up for some questionable dealings but I’m not fucking interested in pussy. The karma on that shit is too raw; now get the hell outta my face.
I’d had my one night with Sloane and then severed all ties. Left her with no way of knowing what Eli was promising to tell her. It had been harsh, yeah, sure, since she’d carried out her end of the bargain and never gotten the lead she was after. But fuck, I’d at least made sure she’d enjoyed it. Made sure she wouldn’t have nightmares about my face every second she closed her eyes. I know I could have just walked away, left her in that hotel room still a virgin, unspoiled, but then again I couldn’t have. This is me we’re talking about. I had to have her. Besides, she’d kept that one little titbit a secret, anyway. Maybe if I’d known she was still riding on her V card, things would have gone differently.
Yeah, right.
“You’re sure about this?” I tighten my grip around Frankie’s neck and his eyes damn near bug out of his head.
“Yeah, man! Yeah, I’m sure!”