Escape From Paradise (5 page)

Master
? Appalled, I nodded.

“Answer me with words.”

“I understand…Sir,” I rasped.

“Good girl. I have things to take care of. Try to rest. I will have Perla bring you food soon.”

He left and I heard the door click when it locked from the outside.

I scrambled up to my knees, as high as I could to see out the window, but I couldn’t reach it.

Water. We were definitely out at sea.
Fuck!
Where were we going? Cuba? I started breathing hard. Okay. Time for a plan. When we stopped, I would cause a scene and get rescued. It could be my only chance. Who knew where we’d end up next?

The headboard was sturdy, but I gave it a hard yank and shake anyway. I pulled, grunting as I tried to squeeze my hand through the cuff. My wrists were thin, so he’d closed it as tight as it would go. My fingers started turning purple from the effort and I pushed my hand back down, panting and crying with frustration.

I was dealing with rich, foreign, hardened criminals here. Powerful people. I didn’t think Marco wanted to hurt me, but his earlier talk about slaves, fucking, and patrons made it all too clear. I’d seen a special on television about sex slavery. I’d felt sad and horrified for those victims, but also distanced from them. Those girls and boys had mostly been from Europe, Asia, or South America—people who were sold or stolen out of already rough life scenarios that I couldn’t fully relate to except in compassion. It was terrible and wrong, but so far from my life.

This was not happening to me.

I couldn’t understand. I was a good girl. Mostly. Not perfect, but I worked hard at everything I did, and I looked forward to my future. We weren’t filthy rich by our nation’s standards, but my family did well. This was not how my life was going to end up. There was just no way. My parents would find me. They were probably on their way to Mexico right now, ready to raise hell, just like Marco said. They knew people in high places. They were resourceful. This boat could be tracked and they’d meet us in Cuba and save me!

My parents. My stomach clenched and I trembled. They would find out I’d lied. Oh, no. I was so sorry. So ashamed. They didn’t deserved to be lied to, and then to have their worst fears come true—the very reason they’d refused to let me go to Cancun in the first place. Why hadn’t I listened? Why did I give in to my friends, and why had I been willing to sneak off with a guy I didn’t know?

People were right about Karma—she was a bitch, because only a bitch would be this cruel. My punishment far outweighed my crime. So much so, that I could barely wrap my mind around it. This couldn’t be my reality. I was meant to be on a plane flying home right now!

Sobbing cries racked my body at the thought of the pain and disappointment and terror my mom and dad were probably feeling. And what about my friends? Were they feeling guilty, like it was their fault for leaving me with Fernando? Had they panicked and searched for me? I didn’t want them to feel bad. I wanted to tell them it wasn’t their fault. We’d all been fooled.

The door opened, and I screamed. The young, Latina woman standing in the doorway with a tray jumped slightly, and her dark brown eyes widened. She came in and set the tray on the nightstand next to me. She wore spike heels and a minuscule strapless black dress with her black hair down around her. And a small black, leather collar.

“I am Perla. You are Angel?” she asked. She said it like Marco did: Ahn-hel. It was pretty, but it wasn’t my name.

“Angela.”

“Ah…” She seemed to be searching for the words in English. “Forgive me. If Master say you Angel, I call you Angel. Sí?”

Master. She really called him that.

“Are you, like, an employee of his?” I asked.

She seemed to toy with the word “employee” in her mind before answering, “No. I am his slave. Same as you. But he treat you well, y you be polite, y you work hard.”

My heart rate tripled when she called me a slave. I needed her to confirm or deny my worst suspicions, even though the thought of her answer terrified me to the core.

“What do you have to do as his slave? Just…clean and cook and stuff?”

She seemed too calm and wise as she regarded me.

“I do whatever he say.”

“Like what, though?” I pushed. I needed to hear it.

“I pleasing to him. I pleasing to his patrons. I sometimes help to clean, but no much.”

My heart had not slowed. “How do you please him? And his patrons?”

“In many way. Men have many need. You will learn.” She smiled, as if to encourage me.

No.
Please, no.
I stared at her, appalled. Her calm expression melted into one of pity.

“I feed you now.” She lifted the silver lid off the plate, revealing eggs and chorizo sausage with bread. It looked good, and I cursed my stomach for wanting to be fed at a time like this.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You need food.” She took a forkful and raised it toward me, but I slunk back on the bed and shook my head.

I couldn’t imagine being fed like this. Like a baby or an invalid. “Please. Can’t you unlock these so I can just feed myself? It’s not like I can go anywhere.”

“No, Angel. Only I feed you.”

I wasn’t allowed to hold a fork? I shook my head again and whispered, “I don’t want any.”

She gave me the sad expression again.

Perla took a piece of bread and placed it in my free hand. I took it, because she was offering me the civility of feeding my own self. Then she left me, locking the door again.

I couldn’t look at the bread in my hand. All I could do was cry big, ugly, wailing tears as my life capsized, forcing me into unknown waters where sharks and other nefarious creatures were surely waiting to eat me alive.

Colin Douglas was no longer recognizable as the rich youth he’d once been. Gone were his posh wardrobe and stylish hair. He kept his head shaved and a touch of scruff on his face. His clothing was dark and durable, and underneath them were scars from fights and tattoos. Colin’s Scottish accent had been tamped down by time spent traveling other parts of the UK, primarily London. His steely gray-blue eyes gave away nothing about his past.

As soon as he’d been brought to live with foster parents in the city of Glasgow, he’d begun the double life once again. He eventually became a university student, studying art, while in his free time he made his company with the less savory undercurrent of the city.

He’d long since lost hope that authorities would find Graham. He knew the task would fall on his own shoulders, and he took up the responsibility with quiet zeal. In his years without money he’d earned respect the old way—inciting fear. In order to infiltrate the crime world, he’d had to become a criminal.

Colin’s paintings began to garner attention with their passion and edge. As he sold them in his early twenties, making a name for himself among elite artistic circles, he used the funds to quell his taste for high-end drugs. Women of all classes flocked to him, sensing the dangerous undertones in his unsmiling eyes—the man whose hands could bring a canvas to life, taking one’s breath away with a perfectly placed streak of color. And he was happy to show them what else his hands could do.

Colin worked out his extra aggression in the weight room. His physique was lean, not allowing him to put on massive amounts of muscle; however, the muscle he did have was well-defined and allowed him to move quickly in a fight.

By the time Colin was twenty-two, his ruthless temperament had earned him the respect of seasoned thugs. He’d worked his way through the worlds of crime, beginning with drug rings, and moving to the more serious circles of human trafficking. He was smart, unlike many of the uneducated idiots on the streets. He kept under the radar of the authorities, and knew how to use polite properness at necessary times. With his estate money now available, Colin’s power was complete.

Within a year of gathering his inheritance, Colin’s manipulation of his criminal counterparts came full circle. He rented out nightclubs and took people on spontaneous flights to the Caymens. They believed he’d earned his money through illegal activities, which worked in his favor. Colin learned names of the most elusive kidnappers in UK crime rings, and he heard rumored places where captives were held.

At twenty-three Colin ventured to London on a lead. He hadn’t the slightest clue if his brother was dead or alive—could find no information about him at all, but he refused to give up. The house in London made Colin feel diseased just walking through it. He was brought in as a potential buyer and taken to see the slaves.

A strung out seventeen-year-old boy sat against the wall, sunken McCray eyes looking up at him through a mess of tangled curls—a shell of the brother Colin had once known, and it made him unable to breathe. The sight of Graham struck Colin with immense relief and shock. He was alive, and would soon be safe.

Graham registered no response to his older brother. Colin knew that he himself had changed greatly in the past seven years, but it killed him that Graham didn’t recognize him at all. He knew better than to expect a happy reunion, but he’d never imagined his brother would be so lifeless.

Hiding his fury of emotions, Colin paid cash to the fuck-faces and they seemed glad to be getting rid of Graham, even smug, as if they’d pulled one over on Colin. He memorized their faces so he could kill them in the future, but at that moment all he could think about was getting his brother the fuck away from there.

On the private jet, flying back to Scotland, Colin couldn’t get Graham to speak. His brother cowered in a seat by the window with his arms around his stomach, eyes dead, unresponsive.

Colin couldn’t take Graham’s catatonic state anymore. He went to him, grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted, “For fuck’s sake, Graham, wake up!”

The boy skittered out of Colin’s hands with a whimper and fell to his knees on the cabin floor, fumbling to undo the belt at Colin’s waist.

“What are you…? Oh, shit.” He grabbed Graham’s hands and wrenched them away. His own brother was trying to give him a blowjob. The realization of his diminished mental state made Colin want to cry for the first time since he was sixteen. Those fuckers had stolen his little brother’s life—his childhood and innocence, and who knew if he’d ever be able to live a normal life now?

Colin fell to his knees and took Graham’s face, forcing him look at him. “It’s
me
, Graham. Your brother, Conall.”

Graham’s eyes glazed and he began trembling. With each passing second of witnessing Graham’s agony, Colin’s hatred and vengeance grew, morphing into a strong beast inside his chest. He spoke through gritted teeth, trying not to scare his brother with his angry passion.

“You’re free now, and I swear to God I’ll kill them if they come near you again.”

Colin had no idea if Graham comprehended what he’d told him. All he knew was that the boy needed serious help. He watched in horror as his brother began to cry and shake, curling up and rocking, pulling his hair like he was going mad.

That’s when Colin knew saving his brother from captivity was not enough. They’d ruined the boy’s life, maybe permanently. He would bring the fuckers down, and spend the rest of his days finding people like them, and making them pay. Somehow.

His opportunity soon came in a different form than he’d expected...a
legal
form.

One thing Colin and the authorities agreed on was not to make Graham McCray’s rescue public, especially since he’d been found by Colin and not the government.

Colin was grilled for information, and the local police brought in MI-6 agents, personnel of the Secret Intelligence Service. They wanted to know every step of his process, starting from the moment he’d been put into foster care, but Colin was no fool.

“I need a legal statement that you won’t hold this information against me. Informant protection. And I want protection and help for Graham.”

The agents pawed through his record, no doubt seeing his plethora of misdemeanors, fighting and drugs, nothing to earn himself prison time. They agreed to his terms and he told them everything, hoping they’d fucking learn something from it.

He saw their eyes lighting up, and their hands speed-writing information as he gave years’ worth of illegal knowledge. The agents often shared knowing glances and nods, as if Colin’s information were confirming certain suspicions.

“We tried last year to take down this group in Dublin, but they’d moved by the time we got there.”

“That’s the problem with government shite,” Colin said. “You spend too much time talking, and mucking about waiting for permissions. You give them time to catch wind and escape.”

“Our success rates are actually quite high,” one of the agents told him.

“You didn’t find my brother in the seven years he was missing, so fuck your success rates.”

The room of officers and agents stilled as they watched his gunpowder eyes, and not one of them had a retort.

The door swung open and a man with a serious, lined face walked in. His dark hair and the scruffy partial beard on his face were graying. The others stood, which signaled to Colin that this was a high-ranking official. The man cocked his head toward the door and said, “I’ll take over from here.”