Yours (5 page)

I looked down.

“I’m wearing a suit.”

The man scowled.

“A better suit,” Valentina explained. “He’ll set you up. And you need a haircut.”

“I had an appointment today,” I muttered, but I followed the guard into the house.

Immediately my wonder turned into something more like awe.

The inside of the mansion was expansive, a classic design. But what made my breath catch in my throat was who was there.

Dozens of beautiful women lounged in every part of the entryway that I could see. Two women sat on a marble bench just in front of us, and many more stood in casual poses down along the hallway. All of them were dressed in white gowns so sheer that I could make out the shape of their nipples. Some of them had leather collars around their necks.

The women in front of us stood up—they were definitely not wearing any panties under those dresses. I tried not to stare.

The guard waved the two women back and motioned for me to come. I looked to Valentina.

“I’ll see you later,” she purred. “Good luck. I hope you impress El Alfa with your… dedication.”

Then she was gone, and a cold fear crept into my chest. We had talked the whole plane ride about our cover story, but I was still worried. This wasn’t America, and I was all by myself in the mansion of a madman.

As I followed the guard down the hallway, the women turned to face me, standing in poses that showed off their figures. There were all kinds—dark haired Asian beauties, voluptuous redheads, platinum blondes so rail thin that I could see their shoulder blades. The guard seemed hardly to notice them, and I followed suit, as hard as it was. Were they all escorts?

The guard stopped in front of a door with dark iron bars on the front. He opened the door silently and gestured into the room, where two women sat on a large luxurious bed. They both had dark hair, and they were wearing those same gauzy white dresses. One looked a bit older, but the younger one couldn’t have been a whisper over eighteen. I wondered if it was a test.

“They will help you get ready,” the guard said.

I nodded and stepped through the door. Although it had opened silently, it closed behind me with a loud clang. I tried not to jump.

The women didn’t say anything to me as I walked in. I didn’t know if they spoke English or not. They took my hand and led me to the bathroom. Everything was white marble and adobe. One of them began to loosen my tie. I bit my lip and didn’t say anything as she stripped me down to just my underwear. Then the older one motioned for me to sit on a stool. She held up a pair of scissors.

“Oh, right,” I mumbled. “The haircut.”

I’d been going to the same barber in Los Angeles for years. That, stupidly enough, was all I could think about as this woman
snip snip snipped
all around my head. What kind of cut was she going to give me? I couldn’t look in the mirror until after she was done.

Wow. I brushed the loose hairs off of my shoulders and examined my head in the mirror. She’d given me a short haircut. It wasn’t buzzed, but shorter than I was used to. I ran my hand along my scalp, ruffling the spikes of hair. My hair always got lighter at the tips, and now it looked dark blond, like the new James Bond. Not bad.

They let me shower on my own, and when I came out of the bathroom there was a dark charcoal suit waiting for me on the bed, definitely nicer than the one I’d arrived in. The sun had set quickly outside, and the women had already left candles lit for me on the table to supplement the dim light of the lamps.

I realized, looking out of the dark window, that I didn’t know exactly where I was in the mansion. There had been a hallway with a stairwell that went down, another set of stairs going up past the main entrance, but I didn’t know where either of those stairs led.

More than that, I hadn’t seen any doors that looked like they led to the outside. And from the outside, there weren’t any doors leading in except the entrance. I didn’t have a backup exit strategy. That was dangerous. I promised myself to take a better look around later.

I pulled the suit on quickly, smoothing down the fabric as I looked at myself in the side mirror. It was a perfect fit, and the material was as high quality as any I’d ever seen. Fine knit wool and a satin lining.

“Do you like it?”

The booming voice echoed through the room. It was a deep voice, heavily accented.

I turned to see the man I had come here to kill.

El Alfa.
He stood in the doorway of the bedroom with his arms crossed, two guards in all black suits standing behind him. He had a thick black mustache and a gut that had probably been created one dinner at a time from too much tequila and lobster.

“It’s very nice,” I said. Every muscle of mine was on high alert. This was a dangerous man. A man who killed and got away with it. I had to be careful.

“Good,” El Alfa said, stepping forward. We shook hands, and he looked me directly in the eyes. I met his gaze, not flinching as his hand squeezed mine.

He was looking for uncertainty, I knew. He was looking for fear. I wasn’t going to give him either.

“They said you have a job for me,” I said. I wanted to seem a little less experienced than I was, a little more eager. Someone who was willing to do anything.

Was I willing to do anything? I didn’t know yet. Ten hadn’t told me much, and Valentina had told me even less. Now it was time to find out what kind of man El Alfa really was.

“Yes,” El Alfa said. He smiled, a toothy white smile, and a chill dripped down the back of my spine. “Come with me.”

Chapter Eight

Jessica

I spun around, my hair flying back into the air, to see who had tapped me on the shoulder. A tipsy dizziness hit me as my eyes refocused on the face in front of me. He had a thinly clipped beard and dark Mexican eyes that looked me over sensually.

He was young and more than kinda cute, and I looked back over my shoulder to see if Mimi approved. But she had already disappeared with her new dance partner into the crowd. I guessed that meant she had approved, and was going to leave me to
make my own happiness
. Whatever the hell that meant.

“Can I buy you a drink?” the guy asked, his voice only slightly accented.

“Sure!” I said, with a bright smile. He motioned towards the bar and I followed him through the crowd. My heart thumped. What was I doing? Was I actually letting some random guy buy me a drink? Yes, yes, I was, I told myself. This was the new Jessica.

I watched as he ordered for us, careful to make sure he didn’t put anything in my drink. Years of reading horror stories about date rape had me on edge. But he came back with two bottles of beer, lime wedges tucked into the necks.

“Thank you!” I said.

“What?”

“Thank you!” I yelled.

I sipped at my beer as we danced. I didn’t really like beer, but the margaritas had already taken the edge off, and the lime made it taste almost like Sprite. I thought that after we finished our drinks, we could maybe go outside and talk, get to know each other better. I didn’t know how to pick guys up at a club.

Miguel—that was his name, Miguel—didn’t seem to want to talk, though. He asked me a few questions about myself, and I answered dutifully, but all he wanted to do was dance. He pulled me into his arms and led me in a weird, salsa-style of dancing. I tried to follow as best as I could, but I was tipsy and he wasn’t very good at dancing. Still, it was fun. I was starting to let myself let loose a little bit. When they played a song I knew, I threw my arms up in excitement.

“I love this song!” I cried out. Miguel laughed and danced along with me. I spun around, shaking my ass in time to the music. My dress slipped down, showing a lot more boob than I was normally comfortable with. Oh, well. That was Mimi’s fault. Either way, I didn’t want a repeat of the bouncer incident. If I tried to fix my dress, I would just end up mooning my new potential pickup.

“You look beautiful!” Miguel yelled, leaning close to my ear. In his accent, it sounded like
Bee-yoo-tee-fool
.

“Thank you!” I yelled back.

His hand was on my waist. How had it gotten there? I didn’t know. I swayed to the beat, the air hot on my face. Maybe Mimi was right. Maybe I should try to hook up with someone. Just make out for a bit outside, maybe. Miguel was pretty darn cute. I grinned stupidly at him and leaned even closer.

“You look handsome too!” I said.

Miguel nodded, but then his eye caught something past my shoulder. The smile faded from his face.

“Very handsome!” I said, but he wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. His hand fell away from my waist.

“What is it?” I asked, frowning. He shook his head. His eyes were still locked upward. I turned around. Was there another girl he was interested in? But there weren’t any girls up on the balcony where he was looking. All I saw was a fat Mexican guy in a suit. Next to him was a taller man with close-cropped dark blond hair, and behind them were a few other men dressed all in black.

“Are those your friends?”

I turned around, but Miguel was already backing away from me. There was fear on his face.

“Goodbye,” he said. “I—I have to go.”

“Wait,
what
?”

I looked down to see if my boobs had popped out of my dress. Nope, that wasn’t it. I turned back. The men up on the balcony were talking to each other, looking down at the dance floor.

The tall one, the one with dark blond hair, made eye contact with me. His eyes were a light blue, so piercing that his stare sent shivers down my back. The fat Mexican man noticed me looking, and turned away. All of the other men walked off into the shadows with him.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, standing suddenly alone in the middle of the dance floor.

Chapter Nine

Vale

We walked into one of El Alfa’s clubs, and I felt my chest tighten under the new suit. It was hot upstairs, and the floor under our feet vibrated with the heavy beat of the club music. I didn’t know what El Alfa wanted me to do, but I hoped that it didn’t involve anything too terrible. He’d been quiet the whole way over here, and it made me nervous with anticipation.

I mean, I’d killed men before, sure, but they’d been assignments. I knew that they were bad people when I killed them. Now, though, I didn’t know what El Alfa was planning, or who he was planning to do it to. If I had to torture an innocent person to gain his trust, could I do it? I’d told Ten that I could do anything, but even I had my limits.

I just didn’t know exactly what those limits were.

“What are we doing here?” I asked finally.

El Alfa patted me on the shoulder and motioned me through the back rooms of his club. In one room, a man was counting out piles of hundred dollar bills. In the other, two strippers were all over some businessman. He leaned forward and snorted a line of coke off one of the stripper’s thighs. Drugs? I could do that, if that’s what was needed to show I was trustworthy. But El Alfa led me past those rooms, all the way out to the main club.

“We are going to bring back some girls tonight,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “Someone for you to train.”

“Train?”

“You saw all of my lovely ladies in the house, yes?” he asked. I nodded. “Well, they are not always so obedient at first.”

It was then that everything clicked into place. Ten hadn’t been completely honest with me when he’d talked me into this assassination. Or maybe he was being honest with me, and he only suspected the dangerous truth.

El Alfa wasn’t just dealing drugs. He was dealing in something much more dangerous… sex slavery.

I’d heard about this kind of operation before. Some of the drug cartels were moving into the sex trade. They kidnapped women and beat them into submission. Or, as El Alfa put it, they
trained
them. Then they would sell the girls abroad to the highest bidder.

As I moved farther into the club with El Alfa, I thought over what I knew about sex slavery. Asia was a hot market. Lots of businessmen there with too much money and nowhere to spend it. It was risky to kidnap white girls and sell them, but the cartels who managed to do it commanded a high profit margin.

Sex slavery. The thought of
training
a kidnapped girl made me sick to my stomach.

“I understand,” I said, trying not to let my disgust show on my face. I set my mouth in a serious expression. I could control my face perfectly. I didn’t let a single muscle tic, not even when El Alfa licked his lips and looked out over the crowd.

“This is the fun part,” he said, breathing heavily. “You get to pick. What is your fancy?”

What a fucking bastard. I couldn’t wait to shoot him in the goddamn face. But I had to get him alone, somewhere where I had a clear escape path, or wait for the raid. So far, his guards had been breathing down my neck, even though I wasn’t armed at all.

We stood on the balcony overlooking the dance floor. There were dozens of hot women writhing to the beat. My eye caught one of them, a cute curvy brunette in a tight red dress. She turned to look at me, and her dark brown eyes took my breath away.

Christ
. She couldn’t have been more than college age. I turned away quickly, but El Alfa had already seen me looking at her.

“That one?”

I shrugged. My mouth was like paste. I couldn’t torture a young woman like that. Jesus.

“Maybe another one,” I said, but I said it too late.

“No, you are right,” El Alfa said. He leaned forward on the balcony, his finger scratching his thick mustache. “Good to train.”

“Really? Why?” I couldn’t look down, couldn’t meet her eyes again. I’d sentenced her to hell, and I didn’t even know her.

“She looks innocent, but she’s wearing a whore’s dress.”

I swallowed hard and looked again. She was talking to another girl on the dance floor. One hand tugged down on her dress. The innocence of the futile gesture made my heart clench.
I’m sorry.