HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (75 page)

“Don’t tell me what to do,
chingona
,” Jimmy said, his eyes dulled by whatever he’d injected himself with.

“Somebody’s gotta,” I said, shaking my head at the sight of him. “You’re pathetic.”

I was quick enough to dodge the first punch, which he launched as he heaved himself up and off the couch. That was how messed up he was. But he was furious and persistent, snagging me by my dark hair and yanking me back to him as I tried to flee, wrapping his fingers around my throat.

“You’re not in charge, here, I am,” he said, his eyes lifeless as they stared into mine. Where was that sweet boy from the club? I couldn’t seem to find him anymore.

The edges of my world were fading. I clawed at his wrists, but Jimmy hung stubbornly on to my throat. Finally, out of all other options, I fumbled in my pocket and flicked open the switchblade.

I had to stab him twice—in the belly—until he realized that I was hurting him and backed off. I fell to my knees when he released me, gasping for breath, the room spinning. I couldn’t tell if the screaming was coming from the babies, Jimmy, or me. Maybe all of us.

But on the floor was where my sister found me. She held my face in her hands, examining it, turning my head from side to side and running her finger down both sides of my neck. I stayed silent, watching her face darken as she found what were probably finger-sized bruises on my throat. Watching her kick Jimmy in the stab wounds I’d given him was watching a movie. I was too disconnected to tell her to stop or to feel anything at all.

She picked up my switchblade and rinsed it off in the sink before jamming it back into my pocket.

Everything was happening too fast and too slow, all at once. It was probably the lack of air to my brain, my blood flow only just speeding up. Maybe it was simply the shock of what had happened. Jimmy groaned on the floor. The babies wailed. I was silent.

My sister pulled me to my feet, hustling us to the bedroom. She shoved some clothes into a tote bag and put it on my arm.

“You’re moving like you’re in a daze,” she said. “Hurry that ass,
hermana
.”

“What are we doing?” I asked, looking dully at the tote bag. The knife in my pocket seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

“You have to leave,” my sister said. “The thing that I told you was going to happen? It just did. You did a good job, remembering about that knife, or he probably would’ve killed you.”

Killed me? Jimmy? It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible, could it?

But the rasp in my voice, the ache of my throat told me different. It was more than possible. He’d nearly done the deed tonight.

“Is he going to die?” I asked.

“Do you want him to?” my sister asked, leveling a look at me that was frankly frightening.

I shook my head quickly.

“Then no,” she said, the look vanishing. “He’ll be all right. Maybe he’ll even take a little care the next time he goes wrapping his fists around a pretty girl’s throat. I hope he learns his lesson. Now, c’mon.”

“What are we doing?” I asked again, allowing myself to be dragged along by my sister, the force of nature.

“Remember that place I was telling you about?” she asked. “The one where you could work and live in the same place? That’s where you’ll go. It’ll be best. Jimmy won’t know where you are. I’ll tell him you went to Puerto Rico, remember?”

She pulled me past the kitchen and living room, where Jimmy was still sprawled on the carpet. There was dark blood coming through the front of his shirt, and it was more difficult to avoid looking at it than to stare in fascination. So I stared until my sister pushed me out the door.

We walked down the six flights of stairs, silent, until we reached the street. It was after dark already, and the neighborhood was just coming alive, rap music booming and people milling around. It all seemed unreal to me, even if I saw it with my own eyes every night. Nothing seemed real anymore except the phantom feeling of Jimmy’s fingers still locked around my neck.

“This is going to be good for you,” my sister was saying, and I realized she’d been talking this whole time. It was just that my ears had been experiencing a dull roar. I chalked it up to the trauma. It wasn’t every day that your boyfriend tried to strangle you while he was high.

“You’ll get a new start,” my sister continued. “And maybe you’ll go to college after all. We’ll all miss you,
sorpresita
.”

Miss me? There were too many people for me to be missed. Having kids hadn’t changed the rest of the female contingency and they were as loud and scandalous as ever.

“It was getting kind of crowded in the apartment,” I said shyly.

My sister guffawed. “Yeah, you’ll be doing us all a favor if you get the hell out of here,” she joked.

She gave me a big hug and put me in a taxi on the street, telling the driver an address that I struggled to remember.

“Do us proud,” she said, “and take care of yourself.” That was it. The taxi took me out of East Harlem. I pressed my face against the glass, saying goodbye to all of the sights I’d become so used to even if I could barely process their passing. It felt like a waking dream to be in the cab at all.

I didn’t recognize the part of town I was in, and it was already dark by the time we pulled up to the address my sister had given the driver. It was a big building, and there seemed to be quite a lot of people on the outside.

“This is it,” the driver said, taking my money and giving me change. “I’ve heard a lot of things about this nightclub.”

“Good things, or bad things?” I asked quietly.

“A lot of things,” he said. “Good luck.”

And that was the first indication that I was out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The bids kept climbing higher and higher, even though I could barely make out the numbers from the auctioneer’s lightning-quick speech.

Cream had stopped apologizing, finally, listening with wonder to the same thing I was hearing.

Our combined price was more than 80,000 dollars.

I remembered what Jason had said—that the bidding would be higher if Cream and I separated. I’d separated from too many people in my lifetime. I couldn’t lose Cream, too.

I wondered if Jason had anticipated the bidding spiraling this high. I peered toward the end of the platform, where I knew he’d still be standing, but it was too hard to make out any sort of expression on his face. The lights above us were blinding.

“One hundred thousand!” the auctioneer shouted. “Do I hear one-oh-five? One-oh-five?”

Cream and I stared at each other.

We were listening to men put a price on us—tell us what we were worth in dollars. It was strange, wrong, and degrading, but oddly uplifting.

We were apparently expensive creatures.

“Kiss!” someone roared from the crowd. They were all faceless figures in the crowd with their numbered paddles. I couldn’t pick which one had shouted even if I tried.

“Maybe we should do it,” Cream suggested softly. “Maybe it’d make the price go higher.”

Did we want to drive the price higher? Would we see a cent of that money? I doubted both things. If it was a higher price, would it be held over our heads later? Jason had said that we’d belong to someone. We’d belong to the highest bidder.

If there was a man in the crowd willing to put more than a hundred grand down to buy us, what else was he so willing to throw away? Dignity? Respect?

Cream closed her eyes and puckered up. I had no choice but to kiss her, but I kept my eyes open. All of the men whistled and clapped at the show, and I wanted to sink into the ground.

Had I kissed a girl before? Of course I had. I was no stranger to practically every sexual act in the book. But I’d never been forced to in front of an audience of this size. It was hard to pretend not to be bashful, to make myself pretend like I was always like this.

The auctioneer rattled off bigger and bigger numbers. I didn’t know whether to feel proud or sick. Was there any way out of this?

“Two-fifty,” he hollered. “I got a two-fifty. Can you gimme a two-fifty-five? Two-fifty-five? Two-fifty-five?”

The room seemed to hold its collective breath. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Is that what Cream and I were going to be sold for?

“Three hundred thousand.”

The cool voice came from the back of the room and cut through the air like a knife. The men sitting around the platform murmured and both Cream and I knelt down and shaded our eyes, trying to get a peek of the man who had just upped the bid by fifty thousand dollars.

He was standing apart from everyone and he didn’t have a paddle that I could see. His height was the only thing I could really make out. His face was fully shadowed, but I could feel his eyes on me. It made me flush and squirm as my skin crawled. I stood back up and looked at my feet.

The auctioneer cleared his throat loudly, and that broke the spell.

“Three, three, three,” he said. “I got a three. Do I have a three-oh-five? Three-oh-five? Three-oh-five?”

The murmurs continued, but the paddles stayed firmly still.

“Three,” the auctioneer called. “Three. Going once. Three. Going twice. Three. Going three times.”

I realized I was holding my breath, urging someone else to bid. It was a measly five thousand dollars more, I silently urged. Anybody. Three-oh-five. Please.

“Sold!” the auctioneer shouted.

The room erupted in applause. When I ducked down to look for the man again, he was gone.

Jason was by us in an instant, taking both of us by the elbows and leading us off the platform. He was shaking, visibly excited.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” he said. “This is amazing. I can’t fucking believe it.”

“And what now, Jason?” Cream asked coolly. I was glad she’d found her head again instead of losing it permanently during the bidding.

“Now I make a delivery,” he said. “And a collection. Let’s go.”

“Just like that?” Cream asked, putting her hand on her hip. “You sell us like we’re cattle. I thought we had something, Jason. I thought I could trust you.”

“Trust me now,” he said, leaning close to her. “You are cattle. You deserve to be sold. The something that you have now is with the man who just decided you were worth three hundred thousand dollars. If he has that much money to spend on you without knowing what he’s getting, think of how much he’ll continue to spend if you impress him.”

That shut Cream up and made me start thinking. The only visions I’d had during the bidding was of us chained up in some dungeon somewhere. Was what Jason was saying true? Would the mystery bidder continue spending money on us if he liked us well enough?

Would he take care of us?

We went out a different door than we entered, putting us in an alleyway. A car was waiting there, the exhaust making clouds in the cool night.

“Your chariot awaits,” Jason said, his voice sarcastic as he held out his arm before Cream. I felt bad for her. Jason had been her customer, her contact, and she’d believed he’d help us. We’d both gotten screwed over in the process, but I felt worse for her than me. She’d trusted the man from the beginning.

Cream didn’t rise to the bait, ignoring him and walking to the car. The driver hopped out and opened the back door, offering Cream a hand in. He offered his hand to me, and I hesitated for a moment. I don’t know what I was thinking. We were in it, now. Somebody owned me. They’d paid good money for me. What was I going to do—run away?

Would they even let me try?

I got into the car, sitting close to Cream, and followed her stare. In the seat opposite ours sat the man who’d bid on us. His face was still in shadow, and I discovered that I was afraid to see just what he looked like. What if he was monstrous? Would anything less than a monster buy human beings?

I was tongue-tied. What was I supposed to say to a person who’d just dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on us?

“I’m Cream,” she said, holding out her hand. “And this is Pumpkin.”

The man took her hand, shook it, and released it. He held it out to me.

“Andrew Irons,” he said, and I took it. His handshake was extremely firm, almost to the point of pain, but he released my hand before it could get there. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintances.”

Did he mean that he was pleased to own us, now? I couldn’t help but detect that in his voice, no matter how polite his words were. I looked out of the door just before the driver closed it, seeing him give Jason a briefcase. I could only assume that was the price of us. It seemed so small, now, that it was simply contained in a box. Surely life was worth more.

“Did Jason tell you how this worked?” Andrew asked. The car started moving, but the passing street lights only flashed briefly over his face. The windows were limo tinted, making it hard to see anything. I was afraid to look at the man across from us.

“He said that the highest bidder owned us,” Cream said. “That’s all we know.”

Andrew’s laughter startled me. “That’s not much to go by, is it?” he asked. “How terrible. What you must think of me.”

“What is this, then?” Cream asked slowly.

“Well, as crude as it sounds, Jason was, more or less, right,” Andrew said, making me shiver. “I am the highest bidder. And I’m taking you to my home.”

“And what happens once we get there, Mr. Irons?” she asked.

“Please, it’s just Andrew,” he said, his smile gleaming in the dimness. “People call me Mr. Irons all day long. I’d like to be Andrew with you. With both of you.”

His gaze fell on me, the glint of his eyes making me press back into the seat.

“You talk, don’t you, Pumpkin?” he asked. “Don’t tell me I bought a mute—though, let’s be honest, sometimes women are better seen, not heard. Maybe it’ll be a good investment.”

His was the only chuckle that filled the car. I swallowed and wet my lips with my tongue.

“I’m not mute,” I said.

“She’s just shy,” Cream put in quickly. “Always has been, ever since I first met her.”

“Is that so?” Andrew asked, his voice soft. “That will be very interesting.”

We weren’t driving for long when the car pulled off the street and in front of a very nice building. The driver opened the door for Andrew and he helped us out of the car, his hand lingering on mine. It made me shudder.

“It is cold out tonight, isn’t it?” he said, draping his arm over my shoulders. “I’ll have to find something to warm you up with, won’t I?”

“That would be nice,” Cream said.

I looked up at the tall building as we walked in the entrance. It was one of the ones that Cream and I had admired from the taxi with Jason, I thought. It was only too fitting that the elevator attendant pressed the very top floor once we were across the lobby and inside.

I’d wanted to live at the very top of one of these, didn’t I? That seemed to be exactly what I was going to get—for better or for worse.

I kept my eyes carefully averted from Andrew’s face until we got inside his home. Then, he put his finger beneath my chin and forced me to look at him. His eyes were dark—darker than mine, even—and he was clean-shaven, even with how late it was. He probably shaved two or three times a day to keep his face free from stubble, I thought inanely. His face was unlined—no frown or smile wrinkles—and his haircut probably cost more than my life. He was incredibly handsome, not monstrous, as I’d feared in the car.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” he said, smiling at me. Every single tooth was white and perfectly aligned. “It’s okay to be a little bit timid, Pumpkin, but we’ll work through it soon. Soon we’ll know everything about each other.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure of how to respond.

He let me go and I got my first look at his home as he flicked on the light. It was breathtaking, the most sumptuous materials possible present in every inch of the place. The floors were black marble, polished to an almost mirror-like sheen. Every piece of furniture looked like a museum exhibit—velvet, gold, spiraling curves—instead of things you could actually sit on. The walls were painted somewhere between red and maroon, gold-framed black and white abstract photographs dotting the expanses.

“Your home is beautiful,” Cream said, breathless.

Beautiful, true, but somehow soulless. I thought back on the apartment I’d shared with my sisters and
las primas
, how there was always clutter no matter how much time we devoted to cleaning and organizing. That clutter was part of its charm. It showed that we lived there, that we made it our home. My sister’s make up scattered over the bathroom countertop,
la prima
’s dress from last night thrown over the back of the couch, my other sister’s spike stilettos left beside the crooked mat at the door, the other
prima
’s fashion magazines in the seat of the chair—that was all us.

Even living in Mama’s nightclub, my roommate, Daisy, and I decorated our room with anything we could find to brighten it. She loved animals, so we always cut out puppies, kittens, and whatever else we could find to tape on our door. It was how we put our stamp on our surroundings, how we belonged to a place and also made it belong to us.

There wasn’t a single sheet of paper, magazine, or ephemera that could be considered clutter on the gleaming metallic tables that dotted the space, their shine reflected on the marble floor.

“I’ve worked hard for this place,” Andrew was saying. “Every penny I have, I earned. And I’d like to think that that means I’ve earned the pleasure of you ladies’ presence.”

I looked at the man who’d bought us and resisted the urge to shiver. Andrew Irons looked just as cold as his home, his dark red hair and black suit matching the place perfectly. I wondered if he realized it. He seemed like a meticulous man, even down to his clean, even fingernails.

Andrew caught me staring at him and I blushed heavily, lowering my eyes to the polished floor. I realized with another furious flush that he could easily see beneath my tiny skirt with the mirrored finish of the marble, and that my panties were on display. I squeezed my legs together.

“Sweet Pumpkin,” Andrew said, chuckling. “There’s no need to be afraid. This is your home, now.”

I tried to summon up some courage, to show some spunk, to pretend like I was back at Mama’s nightclub and I was trying to flirt with customers. But I was failing miserably.

“Thank you,” I said. “This is just very sudden…and very new.”

“Pumpkin will warm up,” Cream put in. “You just need to get to know her.”

Cream gave me a quick, wide-eyed glance that told me she wanted me to shape up immediately. I was trying. She didn’t understand. I was trying so hard not to run out the door. Every muscle in my body was tense, and I clasped my hands together. It was an effort to grind out my next words.