My office door slams open without warning, and I look up, glaring at whoever the fuck would come in here without knocking.

A very naked Anna limps in, her eyes feral as they land on me. She’s clawing at her already reddened arms, her entire body shaking.

“Anna?” I push to my feet, moving towards her.

“I need…”

I tilt my head to the side, watching her trembling form. What happened to the emotionless little robot? She’s a mess.

“What do you need?”

“Just one line,” she begs. And so she comes to me, her icy façade shattering to cold powder before my eyes. “Please, Rafael. I’ll do anything.” She drops to her knees in front of me, and then her hands are on my belt. “This is what you want isn’t it?” she snarls, yanking at the leather.

“Fuck, Anna.” I grab her wrists in one hand, stilling her. She looks up at me, wide blue eyes so fucking innocent, full lips that look like they were made for sucking dick. I can picture her staring up at me just like that as I fuck her mouth. Shit. I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and swallow a groan as my cock rises to attention. God, this is screwed up, even by my standards. Disgust rises in my throat; at myself, at her, at the entire damn situation Nero has put me in.

I glance down at her and know that this is someone’s daughter, lover, sister. At some point, I know this was probably my sister, begging a faceless man to give her drugs in exchange for her last shred of dignity. I drop to a crouch in front of Anna, and she just breaks, buckling in my hold. I end up on the floor, my back pressed against the wall and sweet Anna clutched against my chest.

She keeps scratching over her already raw arms, and I grasp her wrists, pulling them tight over her body. “Please,” she begs.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“I need to forget.” She lightly thumps her forehead to my chest. “I can’t do this. One line,” she cries.

“No.” I take her chin and force her to look at me. Her eyes are distant and unfocused, filled with the kind of horror I will never know. “Look at me,” I order gently. She slowly focuses on my face. “Snap out of it. You have no choice but to do this.”

“I remember everything,” she whimpers, closing her eyes.

“Look at me,” I order again, trying to keep her here with me. Those bright blue eyes meet mine, and fuck, she slays me without ever even knowing it. “Choose whether you want to be a victim or a survivor.”

She shakes her head frantically, tears pooling in her eyes. I pull her closer, and she rests her cheek against my chest, spilling warm tears onto my shirt. I refuse to let her pull away for what feels like hours until I hear her breathing even out and she falls asleep against me. I glance down at her and catch sight of a tattoo on her hip and another on the inside of her wrist. Numbers. Slave numbers. She’s been through three different owners, which is rare for a girl as beautiful as her. The men who buy slaves like pretty possessions often do not like selling them to another because money is irrelevant, it’s the ownership. They’d rather kill them when they’re done than allow another to have them.

I hear footsteps coming down the hall before Carlos appears in the open doorway with a blanket in hand. He must have heard her. He hands it to me, and I wrap it around Anna, covering her naked body.

“Thanks.”

“You okay, boss?”

I sigh and lean my head back against the wall, stretching my legs out. “Yeah.”

“You sure?” His dark eyes search mine, seeing too much, knowing too much. We both know this isn’t the first time I’ve done this.

“She isn’t Violet, Carlos,” I say, agitation riding me hard.

“No.”

“I can’t very well send Nero his collateral, high on drugs and completely broken, can I?”

Carlos narrows his eyes. “Can’t you? That’s how you found her. You didn’t offer a rehab facility.”

“So you’d have me just dose her up and carry on?” I growl.

He smirks. “Didn’t say that. But…” he takes a deep breath. “She’s pretty fucked up. It’s not your job to save her.”

“You can go, Carlos.” He sighs and turns around, shaking his head as he walks away.

Anna’s soft breaths blow over my skin, the scent of her shampoo wrapping around me, and if I close my eyes, I can almost remember all the times that this was my sister Violet, clutched in my arms as though I could possibly save her. I couldn’t. Anna reminds me of her, beautiful, but so hopelessly fucking destroyed. It was as if the world was so dark in her eyes, an endless hell with no light, except perhaps in a heroin needle.

But Anna hasn’t fallen that far. She can be fixed. I have to believe that, perhaps I even need to believe it.

* * *

I haven’t seen Anna all day, not since I woke up with her in my office and watched as she practically ran away from me. I slept on the damn floor with the girl, and it’s making me fucking pissed. When I took her in, I didn’t sign up for this shit. I shouldn’t care, but I can’t seem to help myself. She hits far too close to home for me, right at my weakest point. It’s a problem.

Carlos pauses in whatever he was saying and glances up at me. “Are you listening to shit I’m saying?” He smirks, readjusting his hood over his ball cap.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Yeah. Carry on.”

He says nothing for a moment and then clears his throat. “You could always tell the Italian, no,” he says quietly.

I lower my hand and glare at him. “And why the fuck would I do that?”

He sighs and rolls his eyes. “You know why. It’s all very well staying out of other people’s business when it comes to dealing girls, but that girl has you on the ropes, man.” He holds his hands up as I glare. “I’m just saying. If she’s fucking with your head, best to get rid.”

“She is not fucking with my head,” I growl. “She’s one girl, and she’s not my damn problem.”

He shakes his head, a small smile touching his lips. “Ah, Rafe. She is so your problem.” He laughs and pushes up from his chair.

As soon as he’s gone, I groan and leave my office, walking towards the back of the house. When I step outside, the cool evening air helps clear my mind. This is the problem with girls like Anna Vasiliev. They force my conscience in a way that nothing else does. I thrive on corruption. I’ve built this business on it and made a life on the back of it. I can’t afford to develop a strong moral compass in anything and, so far, I’ve managed by being selective and simply avoiding the things that I know trigger it. Morality is failure in this life.

I find myself walking towards the pond like a damn homing beacon is calling me there. The sun has dropped below the horizon, streaking the sky in deep blues and hues of gold. Long shadows reach across the carpet of grass in front of me as I approach the circular hedge that encloses the water. I step past the hedge line and pause, lingering in the shadows as I watch her—because I knew she’d be here. She’s staring at the surface of that water as though all of life’s answers are hidden in its black depths. Her long white dress pools on the ground at her feet, making her look innocent and angelic.

“Anna.” She jumps at the sound of her name, her eyes darting around until they land on me. Her brows pull together for a moment before she quickly looks away. “You’ve been out here all day,” I say, noting the slightly red tinge to her skin. “Running away?” I smirk, taking a cigar from my pocket. She snaps her gaze to me and glares. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about last night?” I’m not letting her just hide out here in the garden.

I’m sure she’s not going to say anything when she finally speaks. “The nightmares…” She runs her fingers over the surface of the pond.

That weight settles into my gut uncomfortably. Pity. I can’t help but ask the question that’s burning on the edge of my tongue. “How long were you there?”

She slowly turns her face towards me, and a frown pulls at her features as she blinks slowly. “I don’t know.”

“How old are you?”

She says nothing for a moment, just stares at the water. “I don’t know,” she finally says, so quietly that I barely hear her. She’s like a bleeding fucking heart. Shit. I can’t do this with her. I can’t care about her crappy life. Drugs, guns, whores, they’re all parts of a multibillion-dollar business. She is just one girl, a single cog in a monster machine. Irrelevant.

“What you tried to do last night, don’t do it again. You’re not a slave here.”

“I’m owned. I am a slave.”

“Right here, right now, you are whatever I say you are,” I snap through clenched teeth.

“Why are you doing this?” She glares at me. “If you are trying to break me— ”

“I don’t need to break you,” I say coolly. She’s already so irrevocably shattered.

She stands and moves in front of me, her shoulders rigid. I stare into her eyes, and through that self-imposed wall of ice she’s built around herself, I see all the pain and despair, the burning hatred and raw defiance. It’s buried, but it’s there, an ember just waiting for oxygen. I lift a brow, waiting to see what she’ll do. “Whatever it is that you want to do, just do it!”

“And what do I want to do?”

“Just fuck me. Beat me. Pick your poison, but get it over with!” Her voice rises to a guttural snarl. She reaches for the straps of her dress, shoving them down her shoulders until the material falls, exposing her breasts. I grab her wrists and pin them together against my chest, repositioning her dress with my free hand and sliding the straps back over her shoulders. She’s shaking, her breathing ragged and her eyes wild. I can feel her pulse thrumming at her wrist, a primordial drumbeat against my fingertips.

She yanks against my hold, a growl working up her throat. A cold smile inches over my lips. “You’d like that wouldn’t you?” She stills. “For me to be exactly what you expect.” I lean into her, bringing my lips to her ear. “I think you want to be a slave, Anna. I think you want to be treated like a fuck doll. You’d rather be a whore than deal with the unknown. At least that way, you know what men want from you, right? You’d know what I want from you.”

She tugs on her wrists again, trying to break away from me, but I won’t let her. “No! I want…”

“What do you want?”

“I want to be free,” she whispers.

I step closer to her, crushing her arms between our bodies as I place a finger beneath her chin. “No, you don’t. You say you want it, but I offer it to you, and you’re scared to take it. You’re so busy being so goddamn angry that you haven’t realized you’re standing in a cage and the door is open.”

She tugs her face away from me. “I’m not angry.”

I laugh, sweeping a tendril of hair behind her ear. “Oh, avecita, you’re the angriest person I’ve ever met.” I see it in her, the rage. And her anger in itself is a volatile thing because just as she has been imprisoned, so has it. She’s locked it down so tightly that it’s fighting to break free.

“And I’m not free,” she snaps, ignoring me.

“Right now, you can’t even function without being told what to eat, do, or wear. Walk out of the cage, little bird.”

“Why?” she snaps. “Why ask me to leave the cage when you know I don’t belong to you? If someone is only going to put me right back in it, I’d rather not taste freedom. You can’t miss what you’ve never known.”

I swipe my thumb over her cheek, catching a stray tear that slips over her porcelain skin. What could she be if I unleashed all that anger inside her? What would Anna Vasiliev become with her freedom? She doesn’t deserve to live this life. I want to make her promises, and they’re right there on the tip of my tongue, but I stop myself. She’s just business, but she gets under my skin.

“You won’t be a slave again,” I say because it’s the only promise I can make, but it is one I’ll keep. Nero can deal with it, or deal with me.

She blinks, and those big blue eyes lock with mine. “You don’t know that. You don’t own me.”

“No, but I’m Rafael D’Cruze,” I tell her. It’s all the explanation I’m going to give her.

“The cartel boss,” she sneers. “Why would I trust you? I loathe everything that you stand for.”

My jaw clenches, and I release a steady breath as I grasp her chin, tracing my thumb over the soft skin of her jaw. “And what is that, avecita?”

Those innocent fucking eyes of hers flash open, and I watch that anger bubble to the surface. She snatches away from me as though waking from a dream and takes a step back. “I’ve known men like you my whole life.” She looks at me as though I’m worse than dirt at her feet. “Don’t pretend to help me when we both know, if it weren’t for your ‘friend’, you’d happily put me to work to line your pockets. You’re all the same.”

My temper snaps tight like a rubber band, and I storm the distance between us. She whips around as though to run, but I catch her, slamming my hand around her throat and wrenching her close. “Do not presume to fucking know me,” I growl. Ragged breaths slip from her lips, and I can feel her heart pounding against my chest. I have to force myself to release my bruising grip on her and step away. “You know nothing.”

In a heartbeat, her anger dissipates, replaced by that cool, untouchable mask she seems to wear so well. “Can I go now?” she asks robotically. Her lips press together, and her breaths remain shallow.

I grip her jaw and pull her face to mine. “Look at me,” I demand. She stares right at me, those blue eyes blank. “If I wanted to hurt you, I would. And if I wanted to fuck you, you’d know about it.”

I release her, and she steps around me, limping back into the darkness on her crutches. I watch her go, her hair catching the moonlight.

“Fuck!” I don’t have much of a heart, but if I did, she might very well break it. She’s like a bird with a damaged wing, but I can’t be the fool to try and fix her. As pretty as she is, the little Russian is never going to fly right again. Some people can’t be helped. I of all people know that. She’s Nero’s problem, not mine.

And yet I know I can’t just ignore her, as clearly as I know the sun will rise tomorrow.