The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) (19 page)

He shot off, taking each turn, each street with a single minded determination. He didn’t slow until there was a full block between him and angry little Asian man.

How could he be so stupid? He should have realized something like that would happen eventually. Hadn’t the Syndicate been plotting the exact same thing only days before? He needed to be more careful. He needed to…

A sleek, black SUV swerved out of nowhere and clipped him. It was barely a tap and yet the world blurred as he flew four feet into the air and slammed down on unforgiving concrete. The blow jarred his teeth loose. They rattled in his mouth as the sickening crunch of his own bones echoed between his ears. There was a crunch and he knew his bike was finished even before he stopped rolling.

He gasped, the most he could do as all the air left him on impact. His vision distorted. He wasn’t fast enough blinking away the blur before the hands had him. They grabbed him brutally and heaved him to his feet. The mask was torn from his face and he was shoved into the back of the car. The door slammed shut behind him and he was trapped, trapped with the pale figure seated next to him on the smooth leather bench.

John Paul studied him from beneath the faint interior light. His features carved from the smoothest, coldest stone. He was dressed casual … for him, in slacks and a light sweater. Their dark tones made his complexion almost ethereal.

“You weren’t answering my calls,” he said evenly. “I thought I would come to you.”

Winded, aching all over, and furious, Dimitri glowered back at him. “So you run me over?”

John Paul never so much as batted an eyelash. “We clearly missed.”

Dimitri shook his head. He adjusted his torso, rolling his bruised shoulder and checking for broken bones. There weren’t any. He partially wondered what that snap had been. No doubt his goggles were finished.

Self-assessment complete, he faced the man again. “What?”

Chilling, brown eyes lifted and bore into Dimitri. “Where is Ava, Dimitri? Why haven’t I spoken to her in two days?”

He’d known that was what it was. Nothing brought out John Paul’s psychopath like the thought of something happening to Ava, and going two days without speaking to her was unacceptable. Dimitri understood. It was how he felt in that very moment, not knowing where Ava was, if she was all right, if he would ever find her. The idea of anything happening to her drove him half mad with rage and desperation. But he had nothing. He had found nothing. In two days, he was no closer to getting her back than he had been the day she went missing. It was enough to make him want to slam a fist into concrete.

“Where is she?” John Paul said again, louder, fiercer, with an authority laced in razor blades.

Dimitri dropped his chin, guilt, shame, and self-loathing devouring his insides. “I don’t have her.”

Nostrils flared in a barely repressed surge of fury that glimmered dark and feral in the other man’s otherwise calm demeanor.

“Where is she?”

A hand lifted, unsteady and damp to Dimitri’s face and scrubbed.  “I don’t know.”

There had never been a time in Dimitri’s life when he’d been scared of his father. Their paths had never crossed enough for anything beyond resentment, and the occasional disappointment. But Dimitri was terrified. And the longer the silence strained between them, the tighter the knots in his stomach became. A cold, slimy sensation formed in his throat. It clogged the path for any further explanation. Not that he had any.

“What happened?” The words were shredded through carefully stiff, unyielding lips.

It dawned on him in that moment that he’d been wrong that morning in Robby’s apartment. There was one person he could have called, one person who was as dedicated to Ava’s survival as he was. He should have realized that, just because John Paul couldn’t be bothered where Dimitri was concerned, didn’t mean he wouldn’t have dropped everything to find Ava.

“Someone took her.”

He told John Paul everything, oddly relieved to finally have someone who would understand the pure, raw hell he’d been living in the last two days. It was an eerie feeling. He was so used to keeping everything to himself, bottling it all up inside until he felt on the verge of exploding. Even when he’d been with Ava, he could never uncork his misery on her. He couldn’t bring his darkness into her world. He’d simply swallowed it all up and gone on.

He released it all now. Not everything, but everything from the moment he found Ava at the hotel bar. He described the shooting and being on the run with Ava, and Ava getting shot. He didn’t stop until he reached finding Robby unconscious in his apartment. Only then did he allow the words to die and the whisper of late night to fill the car. The air conditioner buzzed faintly, swallowing the low murmurs of the man outside on his phone, waiting for orders.

John Paul was a man carved from the very purest clump of marble. The world could have shattered in an explosion of fire and ice and still, he would have remained firmly frozen in his seat. Dimitri began to wonder if he’d died, if the news had been too much. He was beginning to think about calling the man outside when John Paul blinked.

He turned his head to the window and the view of a brick building on the other side. He stared at it, his jaw line a sharp point. He was breathing. Dimitri could just make out the steady rise and fall of his chest. But there was no other movement otherwise.

“I have men searching the underground,” Dimitri said, needing him to understand that he was doing something. “And the other territories—”

“She’s not here.” Said so softly, Dimitri almost didn’t hear it.

“What do you mean?”

His inhale was deeper this time when John Paul spoke. “They wouldn’t keep her here. They would know I would find them. They would have moved her.”

Something thumped in his chest, a patter of hope he hadn’t felt in … ever. “Where? Where would they take her?”

John Paul turned his head a notch and fixed Dimitri with solemn, angry eyes. “It’s a very big world. They could take her anywhere.”

That wasn’t the sort of assurance Dimitri had been hoping for.

“How do we find her then?”

John Paul went quiet again. He turned pensively back to the window.

A sharp rap against glass caused him to jump. His head jerked up just as John Paul lowered his arm. A second later, the man outside was slipping in behind the wheel. Door was slammed shut.

“Robby’s,” was all John Paul said.

Dimitri frowned. “I already talked to him. They caught him off guard. He was unconscious through most of it.”

John Paul never even glanced his way as the SUV started forward. “I don’t want to talk to him.” A muscle tightened in John Paul’s cheek. “This is why I wanted you to stay away from her. I knew you would be the reason I would lose her.” He sucked in a breath that flared his nostrils. “You should have came to me. You should have told me she was gone sooner!”

“I know.” Dimitri didn’t even attempt to justify his actions. He’d been an idiot. He’d been careless and reckless, and prideful. He’d allowed his own misery to cloud his better judgment. He had allowed Ava to get so far out of his reach that… “Just…” He trailed off with a vicious swipe of his fingers back through his hair. The dark strands had been released from the elastic he’d twisted them into and hung in locks around his bent face. “Please help me find her.”

John Paul remained impervious to his plea. His eyes narrowed before he looked away.

“Of course I will find her,” he mumbled. “I will tear this world apart if I have to, but I will find her, and when I do…” He glowered at Dimitri with a hatred birthed from the very brimstones of hell. “You will never come near her again, is that understood?”

Dimitri nodded. He would have accepted any punishment, any brand of torture, anything if it meant getting Ava back.

No one said another word as they crossed the city. No one even mentioned the bike they left abandoned. Not even Dimitri. He didn’t care. All he could do was cling to the possibility that this was it. That John Paul would get answers. They would find Ava. They would bring her back.

The SUV pulled up at Robby’s apartment. Doors began to pop open only to be stopped by John Paul.

“You won’t be needed for this, Jarvis,” he told his driver calmly as he opened his own door and slid out.

The driver inclined his head, but remained behind the wheel.

Dimitri followed his father out into the street. It was deserted, the block of apartments dark as their occupants slept. No one took any notice as the pair crossed into gray stoned building. Dimitri picked the locks on the main foyer doors and let them in. They took the elevator up in silence.

At Robby’s front door, they paused and stared at the gold three eighteen bolted into the wood. Dimitri noticed John Paul studying the knob and the area around it for forced entry.

“He let them in,” he said. “They knocked.”

John Paul said nothing. He raised a hand and knocked. Then knocked louder. When no one answered the second time, Dimitri pulled out his kit and went to work on the lock.

The tumblers gave too easily. The door swung inward and John Paul swept in as if he owned the place.

Dimitri was slower. The foul stench that claimed the air with a vicious obsession stilled him on the threshold. His eyes burned. His lungs ached, desperate not to draw that air in. His palms dampened. He knew, even before John Paul paused at the sofa, Dimitri knew Ava would never forgive him for this
.

Clothes were the only things Ava had in common with her mother. Not to the point where they discussed it or went shopping together, but a silent, mutual appreciation. It was actually Charlotte who convinced Ava to get a job at a magazine. Not directly. It was during one of her snide, cruel moods and she’d said it as a jab rather than a suggestion, but it had stuck with Ava.

Being an editor hadn’t been Ava’s original plan when she’d gone to college. Journalism didn’t interest her. She had no dedication to trudge through war wasted cities in search of a story. But she had always loved fashion and writing. Designing clothes had come to mind when she’d been deciding on an elective, but she had zero flair with a needle and thread, never mind the talent to actually draw. The only thing she’d known at that point was that she wanted to do something with clothes or something with writing.

Writing a column about clothes was practically a dream come true.

But that was gone now. Her position was probably filled by Trina or Sam, one of the other two editors at Chaud. Her things were probably boxed up and tucked away in some closet for her to go get, or already tossed out. Melanie wouldn’t have had the patience to wait longer than a week for Ava to show up. Brian, Ava’s assistant, would have tried to call her, had probably gone to her apartment. He would have told Melanie that Ava was unreachable. That would have been the end of that. Melanie would have ordered Brian to clear out Ava’s desk and get all her files to Trina, or Sam.

Without a job, it probably meant no more paychecks. Her rent cheques would have bounced. Ed, her landlord, would have already let himself in to see if her carcass wasn’t decomposing somewhere. He probably already had people clearing out her things and getting the place ready for new renters, renters that didn’t just up and vanish in the dead of night.

Or, maybe they’d all seen the news about her being held hostage and wanted by the police.

Whatever the case, whatever was happening in the world beyond the dipping and swaying ship, Ava no longer belonged to it. Her world had become the four metal walls and the scuffle of those trapped there with her.

In the time she’d spent with the cold metal biting through clothes to singe skin, she’d learned that her fellow prisoners were from all over the world. Some of them didn’t even speak English. Some had been captive for months, others for only days, like her. She learned that not all of them were homeless. Some had been taken from bars and nightclubs. Others had been scooped up off the street while walking home. None of them knew when they would ever see daylight. None of them had any hopes of going home.

There were fifty girls in total. Ava had counted them multiple times. The majority of them were teens, barely legal. They were the ones that cried at night. The older ones were resigned. They sat silent and motionless. Ava tried not to let their submission bring her down. She tried to remember that John Paul and Dimitri would never stop looking for her. She tried to be brave, to never cry when anyone was looking. But the tears were the one thing she couldn’t stop. They came whenever they pleased and left just as quickly.

There were eight men who periodically entered the room. They arrived in sets of two, always the same two, and they did it in shifts. They were mixed in races. Three were white. One black. One Asian. And three darker skinned, middle eastern or Hispanic. She couldn’t tell. They arrived with the same baskets of bread and the bucket of water. Ava was beginning to suspect those were days passed. At least, that was how she started counting them.

They never spoke, but their faces when they walked in said plenty. These were not men with an ounce of mercy in their bones. They felt no shame over what they were doing. They thrived on the fear and pain they caused. It was clear every time they walked into the room that this was the moment they’d waited for all day. The whimpers, the scuffle as girls tried to get away but couldn’t, aroused them. It made them feel strong and in control.

Ava hated them as she had never hated anything in her life. It was a violent, blood thirsty kind of heat that reared up from the very pit of her stomach. It was the kind of rage that made her want to sink her teeth into their throats. It was vile and bitter and maddening. She could literally feel herself going crazy every time they left and she did nothing. She wanted to scream and kick at the walls. But she didn’t. She didn’t move.

“How far do you think we are?” Ilsa asked in her soft little voice, distracting Ava from her thoughts.

Ava shrugged. “Back before ships had engines, it would take months to get anywhere. With an engine, we could be literally anywhere.”

“We’re probably going somewhere in Europe,” said the tiny Hispanic girl a few feet away.

Ava blinked, more surprised by the input of conversation than the comment itself. “Why do you think that?”

The girl shrugged “It’s always Europe.”

“Bangladesh,” said the blonde next to her. “I did a paper on it in school. They’re like the leading human trafficking country in the world.”

“I always wanted to travel the world,” the dark haired girl muttered. “Never thought it would be like this.”

“Hey,” Ava jumped in quickly when Ilsa whimpered and pressed her face harder against her raised knees. “We’re going to get out of this, okay?”

“What are they going to do to us?” The girl wept fat tears that cut clean paths down her dirty cheeks.

No one answered. Not the blonde. Not the dark haired girl. Not Ava. But they were all thinking the same thing.