Page 6 of Truth or Dare

“My father arranged for me to be given a slave? To keep? To marry?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t want it.” I shot up to my feet. The conversation I’d had with him about the mail-order bride came over me then. No fuckin’ way. I knew that he knew people who profited from human trafficking. I knew nothing about a resort, knew he did a little business linked with that trade, but did not know he was a partner.

To order a slave for me when I’d joked about wanting a mail-order bride? My father had been getting increasingly irrational in the months before he died. How in a million years could he think I’d be cool with this?

“I’m afraid it’s not as simple as declining the gift.”

“I don’t fuckin’ want it.” I started to pace.

“Dare,” he said, like he knew me well enough to call me that.

I shook my head. “I’ll need you to facilitate the sale of his shares of that business. Sell them Pop’s shares back and put the money in an offshore account. In fact, detail all of what Pop had goin’ with you so I can arrange for you to follow suit with everything else. I have a lot of shit to sort out locally and don’t have time for overseas businesses to take up my time. I–”

Stan silenced me by taking an orange envelope out of his briefcase and putting it on my coffee table.

When I paused, he said, “It’s a complex situation and I think it’s one you need to handle delicately. Not accepting her, in fact not letting the partners think you were well aware of this transaction from the start… it would raise some serious red flags to your father’s partners.” He motioned to the envelope. “This is a tablet and it contains her details. You’ll have an hour to look it over once you turn it on and then all details will be wiped. You turn it on with your fingerprint. Have a look and then sleep on this and call me in the morning. I’m staying at the Renaissance hotel down the road–”

Now it was my turn to cut him off. “How in the fuck is this programmed with my fingerprint?”

Stan let out a slow breath and looked at me with careful intensity. “Your father prepared everything, supplied the fingerprint.”

“Fuck, Stan. I need to think.” I walked to the door.

“There is a lot at stake. Your father always spoke highly of your business savvy, Dario. I know you’re in shock.”

“Yeah, I need to think,” I told him. “Like, now.”

He picked up his briefcase and headed for the door. “I’ll leave you to it then. I don’t normally get this involved. I know this goes on but I don’t partake. Don’t ask; don’t tell. But your father asked me to handle this transaction personally for him and I firmly believe that if you decline and if you hastily attempt to exit this business, you’ll raise some serious red flags with them. These are major players, powerful people, son. Sleep on this.”

I didn’t like the condescension of the “son” but he was not wrong.

“I’ll text you my local cell number. Call me tomorrow after you’ve thought on this. I fly back out the day after tomorrow. We have other business to discuss as well. I hope we’ll continue to have a business relationship. Your father and I made each other a lot of money. I’m sure we can carry on that way with myself and you and Tommy.”

I shut the door, barely acknowledging him. I loosened my tie, paced a minute, running my fingers through my hair. He was right. I had to play things out careful-like.

I should’ve been more guarded with him, but what a fucking shock. My pop’s business partners would see me as a threat if I didn’t play things carefully and in that kind of business they would deal with any perceived threat accordingly. Fuck. I needed this added complication as much as I needed a hole in the head.

I’d talked things over with my brother and we agreed I needed to handle this in person. I’d have to play things cool with these partners, do a meet and then figure out the right exit strategy. In addition to buying me a slave for my birthday, Pop had essentially bequeathed us a piece of a human trafficking ring and that was absolutely fucked. It’d make our exit strategy even more complicated than it already was.

The best thing we figured we could do would be to pick this girl up and help her reintegrate into society. We’d probably have to fake her death and help her move on with her life somewhere fresh.

Tommy told me he knew of the place. He remembered Pop telling him about a trip to Thailand a few years ago where he was staying at a resort with sex slaves. Pop hadn’t said much back then but Tommy knew of that place as well as a similar place in Mexico. He said Pop occasionally did business with stakeholders in those businesses, but Tommy hadn’t known he was an actual partner.

Before going to sleep I’d opened the envelope and lifted out a small tablet. Immediately after giving it my print, which I fuckin’ hated, I was greeted by a slideshow of photos of a gorgeous girl. Long, sleek hair almost to her waist. Her specs read 5,5”, 115 pounds, 34C, 27” waist. It said she had a pink treble clef tattoo on her left hip and a white bass clef on her right hip, pink music note on her inner thigh. Her ears, eyebrow, nose, upper lip, tongue, and belly button were all pierced but it said in brackets she now only wore earrings in her ears and navel. She had never been pregnant and had healed in the last two years from a broken wrist and a fractured ankle, two different occasions.

She was O positive blood type, redheaded, blue-eyed. She had an IUD and as of the transaction close date she’d been taken off the rotation and had since been off limits sexually to anyone in preparation for her transition to me. By the looks of things, Pop had finished the transaction and she’d been taken off rotation just a few days before he got shot by Jesse Romero’s crew.

The boudoir style photos I flicked through were black and white except for one, her Alaska driver’s license. In that color picture her hair was wavy and wild. It looked auburn with highlights the color of copper or maybe copper with auburn highlights. It was both. She had the piercings in, she had a look of mischief, like she wanted to give the camera the finger, a smile on her face. She barely resembled the straight-haired, expressionless girl in the boudoir photos.

They called her “Felicia Sapphire”, the quotes telling me it wasn’t her real name. It didn’t list details about her true identity and the license had identifying details blacked out. At the end of the slideshow was a note stating that if I wanted nude photos, they would be made available. There was an additional screen that said “report” but there was no information on that page, just a blank spreadsheet that said ‘error’ in the first cell.

Before I crashed for the night, I texted Stan and told him to be at my apartment at seven in the morning for a conversation, and told him there was a missing report from the tablet.

Once that hour was up and I’d seen that the info wasn’t accessible any longer, I hoofed the tablet with a pair of boots on and then chucked it down my building’s garbage chute.

Three days later, I was on a flight to Bangkok. I’d done some juggling and delegating at the office with my staff, a consulting firm I’d hired to help me prep the subsidiaries we wanted to unload in order to put them up for sale, and asked a few of my key guys to be my eyes and ears with everything else.

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