Page 28 of Unorthodox
“He doesn’t want her back,” Luca continues, shrugging, as if fathers pawning off their daughters’ bodies is no big deal. I suppose, in our line of work, it isn’t. “But he doesn’t want everyone to know thatyoutook her from him.” Luca flashes his white-toothed smile again. He has wrinkles around his mouth from smiling so much, and it gives him a good-natured appearance.
Appearances are very deceiving. Not just for criminals. For human beings. And for a man like Luca, that good nature couldn’t be further from the truth.
“His son is back in Alexandria, apparently trying to gather up enough in cash to buy her back.” Luca narrows his eyes at me, but there’s a playful glint in them. “How much are you holding out on her for?”
“More than he can give me.” I think about her in the shower today, after what happened with Ben. Dante arranged for that clean up, and by the time we were done washing off the brain matter from our bodies, Ben was long gone. Not another thought. Except for the fact I’ll now have to replace my best trainer, but I have others in Mexico that’ll get me by. None of that needs to be known to Luca.
We might be something like friends, but “something like” means any day, we could turn on each other. There’re no loyalties here. I’ve never had those.
“Are you planning to keep her for yourself?” Luca asks me, arching a dark brow. There’s surprise in his question.
Because I don’t keep slaves.
I sell them.
I spent enough time around them growing up that they’ve lost their appeal for my personal tastes.
For sex, I have Evora, who splits her time between here and one of her father’s properties. When I’m tired of her, she’ll go on to someone else. Someone… lesser. I didn’t buy Evora, but when she came and sat on my lap at a kink party—one Luca hosted—a year ago, I might as well have.
She was born into the life, and it turned out I knew her father.
He was happy to give her up. At twenty-four, showing no business sense and having no marriage prospects, being with me is probably the best thing she could’ve hoped for. There’s no chance of getting a job outside of our world. Not for men, and definitely not for women.
Surviving is the only thing she can hope to do.
“No,” I answer Luca, holding his gaze.
“Then why wait?”
For a moment, I think about telling him the whole truth. But Luca never knew Ollie. Never knew much about what my father did to us, either. Telling him would be a weakness, exposing that much of me.
Instead, I tell him a half-truth. “The buyer is caught up in a turf war. Could change at any time.” I shrug. “I might not have to wait long.” A few weeks is an estimate, but gang wars are volatile. They can end in a split second, for all the wrong reasons.
Thinking of Ollie in the midst of a war like that…well, I don’t.
I spent thirteen years trying to save him from pain.
I failed, fucking miserably, in the end.
I clench the playing card in my pocket and push it from my mind, holding Luca’s gaze as he studies me.
“The buyer. Who is it?”
I don’t react for a few seconds. The question is bold, even by Luca’s standards. He knows better than to ask shit that isn’t his business, but then again, I’ve never housed a girl like this before. It’s certainly not the first time someone has fucked me over, but it is the largest sum I’ve lost, including the men killed. Usually, I demand immediate payment, or I murder the fuck. But this time is different.
This time, I’m getting something that money can’t touch, which is the only reason Addison is still in my possession, and still living.
None of that is Luca’s fucking business.
“Don’t ask me that again,” I warn him when he doesn’t backtrack.
He holds up his hands in mock innocence, then drops them back in his lap, smiling once again. I know that smile doesn’t mean anything. He’d smile as he put a gun in your mouth and pulled the trigger.
“Just curious who has the kind of money your man has,” he says, correctly assuming it’s a man I’m selling her to.
Women take slaves, too, even female ones. But it’s not money I’m holding out for.
I don’t want Luca to know that. “He’s connected to Sinaloa,” I offer, because as the largest cartel in the western world, that could be any number of people.
