Page 2 of Free

“I don’t know, Mask. I don’t have an answer for you about that.” He nods his head and runs his hand through his hair, exasperated, as my blood brother sits next to me. He looks at the pages the same way I do, but we’re different. We want girls for entirely different reasons. When Mask gets up and walks off, Jamie looks over at me.

“What’s his issue?”

“I don’t know. I guess he gets tired of me runnin’ girls through here,” I tell him.

“Then let’s branch out. We’ve talked about this before,” he says.

“I know, but I’m not into what you’re doin’, Jamie.”

“How’s it any different?” he asks me. I shake my head, scrubbing my hand over my face before looking back at him.

“You whore them out,” I tell him.

“While they’re on your drugs, man.”

“I didn’t give you the drugs, Jamie.”

“No, I buy them because I know what people like. And those girls love what they get in return,” he tells me. He’s not wrong. I know the girls could leave if they wanted to. In fact, we have done some business together in the past. I sold him a few of the girls I bought from traffickers when I was finished with them, and most of them willingly stayed because Jamie takes care of the girls.

“I don’t know. Full-time is a little too much for me. I can handle a few here and there because I know they have nothin’ to go back to.”

“Fine. Just think about it,” he says as we flip through the pictures. I see a girl I like, and Jamie points to her.

“She looks good.” He eyes her picture up and down.

“I want her,” I announce as he chuckles.

“I saw her first,” he taunts, making me laugh.

“We gonna fight over a girl who’s for sale?” I ask, looking over at him. He shrugs his shoulders before looking back down at the tablet. The right thing to do would be to turn them in to the authorities. The right thing to do would be to save those girls from whatever hell they’re living in, but I don’t. Why? Because I don’t know how to do the right thing. I never have.

I pick up my phone and make the call before he even gets the chance, and I listen to him chuckle as I make the arrangements for the girl. It doesn’t take me long to start transferring the money to them for her.

“That’s done,” I say as I sit back in the chair and watch as my brother keeps scrolling.

“They always get the same-looking girls. Wonder how hard it is to get something more exotic?” he asks more to himself than to me. I shrug, not knowing how their system works. I don’t know how they get the girls, just that they do, and they make a good amount of money for doing it too.

“Don’t know. She’s different. Maybe if shit plays out, I’ll sell her to you,” I offer. He nods before turning off the tablet and sitting back with his beer in hand.

“Yeah, she’d be workable.”

“If things play out. If not, she’ll be on the first flight out of here.” I don’t keep girls around who don’t play by my rules. If they can’t keep up with the demand, I find a new one. But most of them crave what I give them and do their jobs as instructed.

“You don’t have many on the first flight out of here,” he tells me.

“No, I don’t. That’s because I’m good at what I do, and they love it.”

“Most of them are drugged up before they get here,” he adds.

“Yeah which makes my job just a little easier.” He nods his head before finishing off his beer and setting the bottle back on the table.

“I need to get out of here. You comin’ by this week?”

“Yeah, I still wanna see what you’re workin’ with,” I reply.

“Then you’ll think about partnering with me?” He’s been on me about partnering with him for a long time now, and the thought has crossed my mind more than once. I’m just unsure how he operates, and that’s why I’m going to be taking a few trips over there to see how things work.

“I’ll think about it. Nothin’ is set in stone, yeah?”

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