CHAPTER 4
Deafening screams of agony chased Lucia out of the basement, sharpening the cramps that plagued her insides. She yanked off the balaclava face mask and dropped it in the hall.
Though she’d done nothing more than operate the camera this morning, she stayed long after the recording ended, ensuring she was the last one to leave the chamber. Tiago’s stooges enjoyed forcing themselves on the female captives, but it was Lucia’s ass on the line if the victim was too broken or lifeless to exchange for ransom.
The click-click of her heels along the spiral stone stairwell conjured power and confidence. She tried hard to exude that perception, even when she was alone, but she couldn’t stop herself from gripping the handrail and using its support for the upward climb.
Fuck, it hurts.
It always started with a rush of saliva over her tongue. Nausea and excruciating stomach pain came next. Then the loss of coordination and the tingling sensation of impending paralysis, like now.
Her ankle twisted, and she righted it, dragging herself around the final bend on the stairs. The doorway to the main floor came into view, and standing just beyond it was Tiago.
She breathed a sigh of relief.
His authoritative stance, hard lines of his lean body, unflinching intensity of his gaze—all of it embodied strength. Strength she so badly needed to scale those last few steps.
Her pulse weakened, and her legs wobbled as she struggled to close the distance. Tiago didn’t move, didn’t stretch out a hand to help her. He simply watched her, his disarmingly handsome features void of emotion.
When she finally reached him, she handed over the burner phone with the video footage from this morning. He turned, passing it off to one of his lackeys.
The video would be sent to the victim’s father, who would watch a faceless man rape and kick his daughter repeatedly with steel-toed boots. The woman was an American college student, whose vacation was cut short when she stumbled into the wrong alley. If her father didn’t pay the demand, her pretty face would be blown away by a shotgun.
“You look pale.” Tiago brushed the backs of his fingers across Lucia’s cheek with aching tenderness.
If he didn’t have an armed guard standing beside him, she would’ve drawn one of the Berettas from her waistband and shot him in the face.
“I feel worse than usual today.”
“I thought you might.” He offered her a bent elbow and stroked the hand she curled around the crook of his arm. “I’ll take care of you. I always do, don’t I?”
“Yes.” She canted against him as her abdomen clenched through a wave of pain. “Thank you.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and led her through the dank halls toward his bedroom. Two armed guards flanked them. Others loitered in the doorways, lounge areas, and dining hall. All men.
Tiago kept women in the compound to entertain his gang, but the girls weren’t free to wander. Only she had that luxury. Because he knew she wouldn’t flee.
She leaned against his side and did her best to match his long-legged gait. Raised by Colombian parents, she could speak Spanish, but Tiago always reverted to English with her. He did so now as he told her about the new recruitments he hired, the shipment of high-velocity weapons he acquired—stole—and the recent intel he gathered. He knew most of the local private bodyguards, and when they felt they were underpaid, they gave him the information needed to kidnap their employers. In return, they received a cut of the ransom.
She stopped flinching at these conversations years ago. Violence and corruption was the way of life here. Embracing it was a means of survival.
Thankfully, her hard-earned position in his gang allowed her to live outside of the compound. Tiago gave her an apartment within walking distance. A room with four mildewed walls and intermittent electricity and running water. She couldn’t afford to furnish it or make it pretty, but it was a thousand times better than this crumbling dump.
Tiago’s hideout had once been a popular hotel in Caracas. Like the rest of the city, it was abandoned during the country’s economic crisis, and the squatters moved in. She didn’t know when Tiago had chased them out and made it his primary residence, didn’t know the locations of his other homes, but over the past eleven years, this was where he spent most of his time. And he’d done nothing to fix it up.
It smelled like smoke and death. Bullet holes riddled the concrete walls. Sheet metal covered every window. It was dark. So fucking dark and musty and packed with rotten, sweaty men. She didn’t trust any of them, and she didn’t think Tiago trusted them, either.
“With the new recruits,” she said as they rounded a turn in the corridor, “how many men do you have now?”
“Why do you ask?” He stared straight ahead, his expression empty, except for the twitch in his clean-shaved cheek.
Shit. She’d angered him. The man was suspicious of everyone and everything. Though he seemed to confide in her the most, she often wondered if he kept her the closest because he trusted her the least.
As for the size of his gang, it was a number he never confirmed. She estimated it exceeded two-hundred men, which was larger than the local police force. He was physically unstoppable. Not that anyone ever tried. As King of the City, he had lackeys and informants positioned in every nook and alley, including in the military and police.
They strolled down a long hall. Or rather, he strolled. She was lucky to line up one heeled shoe in front of the other without face-planting. By the time they reached his bedroom door, a sheen of perspiration blanketed her skin. Agony coiled her guts, and bile rose in her chest.
Two more guards waited on either side of the steel door. The old-fashioned dead bolt required an old-fashioned key, one that Tiago kept on his person at all times.
He didn’t move to unlock the door. She knew the drill. Clothes first.
The heels came off. Then she removed the handguns from her waistband, shimmied out of the jeans, the shirt, and unclasped the bra, setting everything on the wooden bench that existed only for this purpose. For her. As far as she knew, she was the only visitor he allowed in his room.
Clad in nothing but black panties, she rose to her full height, shoulders back, and waited for their inspection.
The two guards who had escorted them here remained at the entrance of the hall. The other two swept clinical hands over her butt and groin, digging fingers against the satin between her cheeks in search for weapons. She held still, muscles loose, and breathed.
Tiago watched with detachment until they finished. Then he stepped forward and combed his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp. It wasn’t out of affection. He was searching for weapons.
Knowing that didn’t thwart a deep ache from swelling inside her. An ache for companionship. Desire. Love.
Oh, the hopeless dreams of a silly girl. She didn’t know that girl anymore, but sometimes she entertained thoughts of her, imagined what life would be like if she hadn’t been abducted from her beloved home in the citrus grove.
Satisfied with his search, Tiago unlocked the bedroom door, guided her inside, and bolted them in.
His living space was as spartan and crude as the rest of the compound. Deteriorated sheetrock peeled away from old stone walls. A small unmade bed was shoved into the corner. Two mismatched chairs sat in front of a fireplace filled with ash and cobwebs. A bare bulb glowed in the ceiling—the room’s only source of light.
It was a sad space. Humble. But Tiago Badell’s presence made it feel enigmatic, ominous, cloaked in secrets. He was one of the wealthiest men in the country, yet here he slept on a tiny old mattress in an abandoned hotel. Alone.
She stood near the chairs, as expected, while he opened a medium-size safe in the closet. The depth of the alcove prevented her from seeing the combination lock. She’d followed him to that side of the room once, hoping for a peek at the safe. But the punishment for doing so had been so grave she never did it again.
“Have you vomited this morning?” He removed her precious lifeline from the safe and relocked it.
“No. Just nauseous.” She remained as immobile as possible beside the chair, refusing to give him any reason to send her away.
“Coughing blood?” Rolling up his sleeves, he approached her slowly, like a lazy lion with all the power and strength in the world.
“No blood since last time.” Her attention fixated on the syringe cradled in his fingers. Please hurry.
He took his time walking toward her, knowing full well he held her life in his hands.
When he finally lowered in the chair and patted his thigh, she didn’t hesitate to sit on his lap and recline back against his hard chest.
Her leg moved on its own, hooking over the armrest and bringing her thigh within his reach. A tremble shook through her and her hands flexed, joints cracking and tendons straining—the anticipation all-consuming.
He cleaned the injection area with the supplies on the side table and plunged the needle into the middle of her thigh. It was just a prick, nothing compared to the aches that endlessly tormented her.
“Shhh.” He caressed her quivering abs, tracing the serrated scar from her breastbone to her hip. “It’ll feel better soon.”
“Thank you.” She relaxed against him and waited for the relief to come.
It would take fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to saturate her system. In the meantime, he would hold her in this position, as he did every morning, and use his hands to fuck with her head.
When he set the syringe aside, he trailed fingertips around her breasts, ribs, hips, and the crotch of her panties.
“You’re beautiful, Lucia.” He found the seam of her pussy and slid his touch along the slit, up and down, keeping that small scrap of satin between his finger and her flesh. “You love to fuck, even though you pretend otherwise.”
For as long as she could remember, she’d been a highly-sexual person. She gave her virginity to a Texan boy when she was fifteen and explored her sexuality with countless guys in high-school.
Then she was abducted, and all her choices were taken from her.
With her back against his chest and his hands roaming her body with distracting affection, it was easy to forget how cruel he was. When they were alone, he coddled her, cared for her, and whispered seductive compliments in her ear. But when they left the privacy of his room, his ruthlessness took center stage.
A numbing sensation trickled through her abdomen, and she inhaled deeply, relishing the initial effects of the injection. “Why do you make me fuck other men?”
His cock swelled against her backside, and he nuzzled his nose in her neck, his breaths growing heavier, faster. “It pleases me.”
So vague. So damn mysterious. She knew nothing of his background or the thoughts that churned his mind. He had no family to speak of. No close friends. No wife or mistress. Yet the artwork that covered his arms meant something. It told a story. His story.
She lifted a hand and stroked the raised welts on his wrist. Scarification, he called it. She assumed he’d cut the images into his skin himself, only because she’d seen him do it to others. It was his preferred method of torture and the most barbaric thing she’d ever witnessed.
Suppressing a shudder, she traced the scarred outlines of animals and landscapes that marred his forearm. “Is this tribal-inspired?”
“You must be feeling better.” Lifting her off his lap, he set her on her feet. “Leave.”
A bout of dizziness made her sway, but the cramps in her stomach had faded to a dull ache.
With the flick of a finger at the door, he propped a foot on his knee and stared at the unused fireplace.
She lingered for a moment, willing him to look at her, to reveal something of himself. A twitch. A word. An emotion. Anything that might clue her in on what he was thinking. If he was angry, she wanted him to lash out, hit her if he had to. Then she would know.
Knowing was better than walking out of his room, wondering if a gun was trained on her back. Because he had no moral code. When he killed, his victims rarely saw him coming.
As she stepped toward the door, the space between her shoulders blades tingled and chilled. She didn’t breathe until she entered the hall, grabbed her guns and clothes, and heard him turn the lock behind her.