Page 133 of Spark

She sniffled back some tears and wiped her nose. “No. He just brought me here to keep him company.”

“Brought you from where?”

“Las Vegas.”

I tried not to let my panic surface. Of course, Darren’s reaches extended to fucking Vegas. That must be where his youngest brother runs his end of the organization.

“Are there more of you?”

She nodded. “Many more of us. We work in the underground clubs.”

“Doing what?”

A single tear slipped down her cheek, and she quickly wiped it away with the tips of her fingers. “Whatever they tell us.”

I felt my teeth grate against each other. I knew exactly what that meant.

“If you were sold, how did you end up working in Vegas?”

She shrugged slightly. “I don’t know. I just went where they took me and did what I was told. I didn’t want to end up like the other girls.”

I lost the will to remain passive after that and looked directly at her. She was pretty. Long dark brown hair, slight traces of Asian facial features, and beautiful olive-toned skin.

“What happened to the other girls?”

“After they were beaten? I don’t know. Sometimes, we never saw them again.” She suddenly shook her head and sighed. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this.”

Right. Silence equaled obedience.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Miss Dalia,” Owen had said, obviously interrupting us and moving closer. “Please remove yourself from the table. Your conversation is over.”

Dalia gasped at the mention of her name and quickly shot up from her chair. “I’m so sorry,” she said without looking at me. “Excuse me.” She hurried away from the table and was gone within moments. I turned my head in annoyance only to connect with the dark gaze of the man responsible for the interruption. I glared at him something fierce, and all he did was shake his head in warning.

Anger rising in my gut, I couldn’t stop myself from slamming my hand down on the table and shooting off from my seat. Fully intending to engross myself in distraction, I found the band to be the only thing qualified. And it wasn’t fifteen minutes later, an even better distraction engaged me.

Thinking back to my encounter with Regina, she was lucky I hadn’t busted her already Botox injected lips. Her mouth was her most annoying feature, and I thought that maybe if her lips were a little bit more swollen than they already were, she’d be incapable of moving them. I had never met a more blissfully ignorant, vain as hell, bimbo bitch in my entire life. The urge to reach across the table and slap the stupid out of her was stronger than ever, but Darren’s influence over my self-control was somehow stronger at that moment. I could tell he found my distaste for her amusing.

When discussions of Darren’s unborn niece came up, I’d grown nervous, the pit of my stomach twisting away with too much anxiety to bear. I refused to look at Darren during those conversations, not wanting to give him the idea I was interested in becoming something I was not ready for.

I did NOT want to have kids with him. I wanted kids eventually, but my reproductive system was reserved for one man, and he was currently hiding away in Germany, protecting the only family I had left. I had never been more grateful that the birth control implant in my arm was still active. I hoped it remained there for a very long time. At least until I could figure a way out of my situation.

Aside from the rest of the painfully materialistic mafia bitches there, the only exception was Katherine. She was a serious mystery to me. Something didn’t sit right with her, and it had me on edge. She was quiet, meek, but the look in her eyes was something I could only describe as haunted, especially when she looked at Darren. I wanted to ask about her, but I didn’t want Darren to think I was snooping.

When he refused to elaborate on the fact that Katherine’s younger sister had been referred to in the past tense, it gave light to something that had obviously been kept in the dark; and it obviously brought misery for Katherine. Something awful had happened to her sister and giving her daughter her sister’s middle name in her honor was definitely something to note.

I had a new puzzle on the table before me, and eventually, I was going to put those damn pieces together and discover the picture hiding behind it all. For all I knew, it held the key to Darren’s destruction.

Besides Anchorage, the baby shower had been the only thing to interrupt my routine, so now I was back to being bored again except for when Darren was around. He had somehow finally become somewhat good company when he wasn’t an asshole. Camaro kept me company and made me smile, but I still longed for more. I tried engaging in conversation with Clive and Owen simply for the purpose of communicating with another human being, but they weren’t much for conversation. I still teased them as often as I could, but they never reacted. Bastards.

At least, I didn’t have to worry about them beyond the trees. Camaro loved going out in the woods. She’d chase after the squirrels, bark at the birds, and play in the stream when we went by it. She even loved the ocean but stayed out of the water since it was still too cold to go swimming. I’d found the old bo I had hidden by the tree so long ago and went back to practicing. Sometimes, I’d find a rock, and after several attempts, I’d be able to hit it with the bo like a baseball bat. It quickly became my precision exercise. I’d hit the rocks, and Camaro would run and fetch them. Eventually, the rocks would get smaller, and I’d made sure they went into the stream so Camaro wouldn’t accidentally swallow them. My bo skills were improving immensely, and I welcomed the distraction, but my life still felt like it was at a standstill.

While my ultimate goal was still to kill Darren, destroy his empire, and walk away to find my family, I had nothing else to motivate me to live. Most of my life was built on my education to get a great job and make something of myself, start a family, and enjoy the fruits of my labor, but now that was all shot to shit. I was nothing more than a trophy to Darren, and I felt my luster begin to dull. My days rolled by one after the other, sometimes never coming into contact with anyone besides Clive and Owen, and it made me feel like I was going nowhere. I was nothing but a hamster bored of her running wheel, constantly running but never gaining a fucking inch. Time was just passing me by with no regard for my wants or desires.

All I ever did was wait. Wait for the next bit of useful information, wait for the next domino to fall, wait for my moment to strike, wait for Darren to find and kill my family, wait for him to fuck me… Everything was done on Darren’s time, at his pace, his schedule, and I was just a passenger along for the ride. It was not what I was used to at all.

When I was with Jason, I did what I wanted, when I wanted, wherever I wanted, and he trusted me every step of the way. Darren sought to treat me like a child, and the longer I waited for him to trust me, the harder it was to wait. I was tired of waiting on him, waiting for him to make the next decision about my life, where I went, what I wore, what I ate, who I talked to. It had been nearly two months since I’d been back from the island, and I knew how hard it was going to be coming back here, living in a shadow darker than the last, but it was becoming increasingly difficult not to let it swallow me whole.

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