She slowed her steps, arranged her features into a detached visage, and pivoted to face him. “What do you mean?”
“Leave us.” He swept a hand at the guards without looking at them.
The two armed men retreated to the stairs and closed the door, leaving her alone in the dark hall with Tiago.
The guns at her back suddenly felt heavy and threatening, like foreboding shadows looming behind her. There wasn’t a single time in eleven years when she was permitted to keep her weapons in Tiago’s presence without his guards. If this was a test, she was guaranteed to fail.
“Come here.” He snapped a finger at the space before him.
Heart hammering, she held her arms at her sides and closed the distance. When she reached him, he slid his hands around her waist and rested his fingers on the grips of her guns.
She closed her eyes as everything inside her froze. This was it. He was going to shoot her with the guns she’d earned in his employ.
“I know why you petitioned me to use your method of torture,” he said at her ear.
Oh. A ragged breath fled her lungs.
When she was initiated into this job, her role had been to hold the camera as Tiago exacted ungodly pain from the skin of his victims. She’d been weaker then, her stomach unbearably sensitive to the sight of blood and sounds of anguish.
She’d also been naive enough to believe rape was a mercy over the flesh-cutting cruelty Tiago inflicted.
The victims only needed to look distressed for the video, mistreated just enough to convince a family member to send money without hesitation. Rape had been her solution.
And that was the flaw in her logic. When was rape ever a solution?
But in her idiocy, she’d persuaded Tiago to use her vile approach instead of his. Not only had he agreed, he’d designated her as the resident torturer of the male victims.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she’d been wrong, that her way wasn’t as effective. But could she really go back to watching him carve up the bodies of innocent men? Men. He never tortured women in that way. She didn’t think it was out of chivalry. Quite the opposite. He’d told her once that his art of mutilation was a man’s rite of passage.
“You’re trying to make a difference in the kidnapping world.” His mouth hovered over hers, his breaths warming her lips. “And you’re doing it with sex.”
“Rape.” She ground her molars.
“Whatever you want to call it, Lucia. You could’ve begged me to abandon my ruthless line of work.”
“You would’ve killed me.”
“That’s right, and you can’t make a difference if you’re dead, yeah? So instead, you suggested what you believed was a gentler method of torture. A suggestion that didn’t make you appear weak to me or my men.”
Her method was psychological and emasculating. His was physical, gruesome, and barbarous. Whether one was better than the other was debatable.
“I feel nothing in particular for the victims.” He squeezed the grips of her guns, pressing them against the rise of her backside. “Except maybe pity. It’s their own stupidity that brings them into my kingdom. But that wasn’t the case with you. Taken from your home, left to die in a fatal crash… None of your choices led you to me. Do you know why I kept you imprisoned all those years? Why I didn’t just kill you then?”
She tried not to think about her first eight years in his compound—locked in a room on the upper floor, the unbearable isolation and fear, the news of her parents’ deaths, Camila already gone. In those darkest years of her life, she lost parts of herself she would never recover.
Her illness developed over that time. When she became too sick to go without daily injections, Tiago had a new way to cage and torment her.
“No.” She met his heartless eyes. “I don’t pretend to know why you do anything you do.”
“I hope you never give me a reason to kill you.” He slid the Berettas out of her waistband and glided the metal frames along the outsides of her arms. “No matter how ill you are or how intolerable I make your life, you manage to keep something in your possession, something I lost long ago.” Lifting one of the guns, he trailed the barrel across her cheek. “You still have compassion.”
Her throat tightened. It was the closest he’d ever come to saying anything sentimental without making it feel sexual.
It was also possible that he said shit like this just to fuck with her head.
“I live in an ugly world,” he went on, “and you’re… You’re a pretty little flicker of compassion, begging to be extinguished. Sometimes I’m tempted to do just that. But I like you like this. You remind me how weak and foolish it is to cling to humanity.”
Her nostrils flared.
“You can retrieve your guns from my guards.” Without a backward glance, he ambled toward the stairs with her weapons. “You’re free until dinner.”
Free.
She wished for nothing, prayed to no one, and had zilch to lose. If freedom was a state of mind, she was hopelessly liberated.
CHAPTER 14
“She’s leaving the compound.” Tate paced through the apartment, his pulse wound up and nerves shot to hell.
The tiny microphones on Lucia’s weapons broadcasted to a receiver on his phone. He’d listened to her activities all morning while burning through a pack of cigarettes and seething every shade of rage.
Without visual confirmation, it was difficult to understand exactly what was happening. But from the sounds and conversations, he knew she’d passed out, was separated from her weapons for a while, then used a stairwell to the lower levels of the compound. That was when he’d sent his fist through the wall.
“You’re gonna give yourself a coronary.” Van reclined on the couch, tracking his movements with a narrowed glare.
Van was notorious for his explosive temper, yet he’d remained chillingly calm when they’d listened to her rape a sobbing, pleading man. Maybe it was because Van had been in a similar situation and was the one person who could empathize with her.
Tate, on the other hand, had gone ballistic when she was in that basement chamber. His imagination had created all kinds of graphic images to fill in what he couldn’t see. It wasn’t until he’d heard the pain in her voice during her conversation with Badell that his vision cleared, and his head stopped pounding.
She was stuck in a living nightmare, and there was fuck all he could do about it when he couldn’t get to her.
But she was on the move now, stepping onto the street outside of the compound and turning…
“She’s not heading toward her apartment.” He strode toward the door, phone in hand and weapons concealed beneath his clothes.
Without a word, Van followed him out of the building and trailed a safe distance behind.
The tracking signal led Tate to a street market fifteen minutes away on foot. Although the tents were crowded with people, it didn’t take long to spot her raven-black hair amid the throng.
A thin shirt hung from her shoulders, the wide neckline clinging to the delicate peaks of her tits. Flat stomach and toned legs encased in denim, she had the body of a young girl, but she wore it like a woman. A woman who would fuck rigorously, unapologetically, in every position and manner he wanted.
And he wanted.
He wanted to feel her fall apart on his cock, hear her cry in relief, and see a glimmer of happiness on her face. But more than that, he wanted her safe and healthy and out of this city.
Her guards wouldn’t be far, so he kept his distance, marking her as she moved from stall to stall, touching the produce and staring at the meats. Jesus, she looked hungry, her gaze crawling over the food with ravenous longing, yet she didn’t buy anything.
Watching her poke through the market empty-handed produced a protective twinge in his chest. She was too thin, too alone, and given the dark circles around her eyes and the sag of her shoulders, too goddamn sad. Every bone in his body thrummed to take care of her.
As he slipped
deeper into the market area, the sweet smell of slow-cooked meat and fried dough saturated the air. He paused within a few paces of her and directed his eyes on the hanging rope of bananas she’d caressed.
She must’ve sensed him, because she turned at the edge of his vision, and that deep brown gaze warmed the side of his face.
Knowing her guards were watching, he held out some bills to purchase a few bananas and gave her no reaction.
With a casual twist of her neck, she scanned the perimeter, likely searching for his backup.
Van stood at his nine o’clock across the street, and the moment she spotted him, her chest hitched with a sigh. Then she continued to the next stall.
From there, they eased into a wordless interplay. She touched or glanced at the foods she liked, and he bought them—bread, pork, strawberries, coconut cookies. When she reached the last tent, she selected a paper bag of tea and handed it to the merchant.