10
SÃO PAULO
You really don’t know boredom until you’ve spent countless hours in a featureless ten-by-ten room in the dark, without so much as a fucking bed to sit on. Did I mention it stank like fish? Well, it did. It stank very, very badly of fish. It sure as shit wasn’t me stinking like that, because I keep my snatch clean. I mean, you can’t let a guy go down on you if you don’t keep your shit so fresh and so clean-clean.
But I digress.
I’M FUCKING BORED.
That was my mantra for so long I lost the capacity to think of anything else. There wasn’t room to pace, except for maybe a step in either direction. It was pitch black. It was cold. The boat didn’t toss me around too badly, but once in while the boat would angle up, sending me sliding backward, and then it would pitch down, sending me forward…over and over and over. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to brace myself with or against. I tried sitting in each of the four corners, but a pitch or a roll of the boat and I’d be sliding all over the place anyway.
I was hungry. Thirsty.
Tired.
And bored.
Did I mention bored?
I’m an active girl. I’m busy from six in the morning to past midnight most days—or I used to be. I’d worked two jobs and gone to school full time, plus I usually found time to swim for an hour every day between classes, and between shifts on the weekends. That was my dirty little secret, that hour of swimming every day. I scheduled my life around it, to be totally honest. I ate horribly, regularly pigging out on bacon cheeseburgers and milkshakes and pizza and boozing it up as often as I could. But, to keep myself from ballooning into a walrus, I swam. Hard. Every day for an hour, I’d do laps at the local pool, back and forth, as hard and fast as I could without stopping. I’d change my stroke every four laps: crawl, breast, back, butterfly. Fuck, those four butterfly laps were a bitch. But they kept me relatively fit. I mean, I’d never be a size four, much less a zero, but I had a pretty firm body for a woman with my build. Genetics did not bless me with anything approaching skinny, which is fine. I’m built like a brick shithouse, and an hour of swimming every day meant great muscle tone, low BMI, and provided a hell of a cardio workout. I just wasn’t skinny.
Again, I digress.
What was I thinking about?
Oh yeah, being busy. I never had down time. If I wasn’t working, or at school, I was studying, drinking, or fucking.
And yes, fucking counts as a workout too, especially if you do it right.
So to go from that to sitting around on Roth’s boat all day long, not doing dick? That was a hard adjustment. Fortunately, Roth made sure there was a killer gym on that Caribbean cruise liner he called a “yacht”, which I took regular advantage of. No pool, but plenty of exercise equipment, including a rowing machine. I avoid any exercise that involves excessive jostling: I just bounce too much. Running in particular is a special hell for me, so I avoid that. Stair steppers, treadmills, even exercise bikes are things I stay away from. I’ll lift weights, row, swim, anything with low or zero impact. No bouncing means no lower back problems from hauling the girls around. No bullshit.
God, I was so bored I was thinking about exercise? What the fuck?
Eventually the door scraped open, blinding me with sudden light. I cowered in the corner and hissed, shielding my eyes as a silhouetted figure leaned in, set a tray on the floor, and backed out, closing the door once again.
I smelled food.
My stomach went crazy, growling like crazy as I scrambled across the floor toward the tray. I smelled garlic, meat, onions…a gyro, maybe? I did my best blind-person impression, touching everything carefully in an attempt to figure out what was in front of me. Definitely a gyro, plus a bag of chips, and a can of something cold. Really? Was this a prison, or a shopping mall food court? Not that I was complaining. I cracked open the can and sipped at it, tasting cola of some kind. Diet; blech. I normally stayed away from diet soda because the stupid aspartame gave me headaches and diet cola was generally worse for you than regular soda. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I was very definitely in a beggar sort of scenario, so I drank the diet. The gyro, now…that shit was delicious. Roasted lamb cut thin, cucumber sauce, some crunchy red onions, tomatoes. I devoured that thing so fast I barely tasted it. The chips were kettle cooked, too.
A much better meal than I had been expecting as a kidnappee. I was honestly expecting to either not get anything at all, or moldy bread and smelly water. The fucking gyro basket tasted like it was from Athens Coney Island.
Turns out stuffing yourself that fast after not eating for who knows how long isn’t the greatest idea. Talk about sitting heavy in my stomach. It sat like a goddamned gut-bomb.
Also, I still had to pee.
* * *
After banging on the door for what felt like an hour straight, it jerked open, revealing a very pissed off Yuri.
“What the fuck you want?” he growled.
“I have to pee.”
He gestured at the floor. “So pee.”
I scowled at him. “Really, Yuri? I know I’m a prisoner but come on. Let me use a toilet. We’re on a fucking boat, where the hell am I going to go?”
He stared at me in silence. “Fine.” He jerked his head and I followed him around the corner and along a low, narrow corridor to a tiny bathroom. “Door open.”
I shrugged, shucked my thong and lifted my shirt, staring at him as I pissed. “You want to watch, then watch. I don’t give a shit. I’m warning you, though, it’s gonna be a long one. Like, you might need a book.”
The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly, and he grunted in irritation. He didn’t want to like me, but he did. Hell, he couldn’t help it; I’m a funny gal. But he shut the door, so I decided to take care of some other business while I had the opportunity. Gut-bombs away!
And as a bonus, I saw a blue Papermate ballpoint pen on the floor in the corner under the sink, long forgotten. The pen is mightier than the sword, right? I mean, I’ve seen pens used as weapons on TV a bunch of times. Better than nothing.
Where to hide it, though?
It wasn’t exactly like I had any pockets, so you figure it out.
And, yes, I rinsed it off first.
You want to talk about uncomfortable? Jesus. I’ve now got mad respect for those crazy druggie bitches who smuggle bags of coke up their shit, that’s for sure.
I walked funny on the way back to my cell, but Yuri didn’t notice. Or if he did, he didn’t think anything of it.
The strangest part was, the length of the pen made me think about the various guys I’d been with, and how they measured up to my new boyfriend, Mr. Papermate. A few did not measure up so well. Others…well, that’s a different kind of walking funny. But then, as we all know, it’s not the size of the cock that’s important when it comes right down to it; it’s how well he uses it. Girth can be pretty important, but foreplay trumps everything.
Mr. Papermate didn’t really do it for me, but at least I now had a weapon.
Once I was returned to my cell my first instinct was to take it out, but then I got to thinking. I knew I was gonna need it at some point, but not when that would be. Probably not on the boat—that would be a waste. I’d probably need it when we got where we were going, wherever that was. Or maybe when Harris showed up I could help him effect my escape by stabbing some of these assholes in the throat with Mr. Papermate the Pussy Pen? That seemed like a more likely scenario.
So in it stayed. I really didn’t like the idea of having a foreign object up there for any longer than I had to because that was just begging for an infection, but I’d take the fiery agony of a vaginal infection over being raped and killed any day of the week. I mean, I’d really rather not have either, but no one was asking me what I wanted.
And the sensation also gave me something else to think about, and at that point in my boredom, something to think about was welcome, even if it was strange to have a ballpoint pen lodged up my cooter.
* * *
Eventually we stopped, but I had no clue as to how much time had passed. I had no way to measure that. Days? Weeks? I was fed on a regular schedule, but with no point of reference, it could have been once a day or three times a day…When you’re in a black hole, shit gets relative real fucking fast. And by relative, I mean you go batshit, arm-flapping, hoot-like-an-owl crazy. Or at least, I did.
When Yuri opened the door and gestured for me to come out, I literally crawled out on my hands and knees, blinking, hissing, and generally acting like a looney toon.
“Stand up, stupid.” He grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. “Crazy fucking American. You only been in there three days.”
I stood up and brushed my knees off, unconsciously keeping them pressed together. The pen wasn’t in danger of falling out, because let’s be honest, I keep my shit tighter than a drum. Kegels, bitches. Flex those PCs. I’m like a goddamn body builder, but for my pubococcygeus muscle. But still, one worries, in this situation. As one would.
He led me back up to the deck of the boat, which was now swarming with activity. Men were scrambling everywhere, shirtless, sweaty, and cursing as they hauled crate after crate out of the hold and onto a platform suspended from a crane-arm, which would then swing it across from the boat to a shipping container. Each crate had ‘VK’ emblazoned on the side in huge black-painted letters. They all looked heavy, since each one required two men to lift it, although there was one really huge motherfucker with arms the size of my waist hauling them around one in each hand like bags of groceries. As Yuri led me across the deck, all work stopped.
Eyes were fixed on me.
Lips curled up in lecherous grins. Wrists wiped at sweaty brows.
I focused on Yuri’s back, ignored the stares, and made sure I was walking as normally as possible. Under other circumstances, I’d have relished the amount of male attention I was getting. I’d probably have swayed my hips a bit, put some bounce in my step, maybe winked and flirted.
This wasn’t a typical situation, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t enjoy the kind of attention those particular men had in mind.
So I kept my eyes straight forward and hustled after Yuri. Of course, the shirt that was my only article of clothing was ripped open, leaving my back bare from neck to ass and, as I’ve mentioned, my choice in undergarments left my buttocks bare as the day I was born. So those big sweaty gorillas all got a free show anyway.
Good thing I worked hard to keep my ass nice and round and firm, huh?
Thank god this time there was a ramp leading from the deck down to the dock. I followed Yuri off the boat. Looking around, I realized we were in a very urban port, but I had no idea where. We walked past mammoth shipping containers stacked three and four high, forming a maze that blocked out the sun as we passed between them. The ground underfoot was damp industrial concrete, a rainbow sheen here and there from leaking oil. I heard a diesel rumble somewhere to my left, shouts, the beeping of a machine of some kind backing up, and then a container high above our heads slid away.
“Where are we?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Caracas,” Yuri grumbled.
“Ca-who-what?”
“Caracas. Venezuela.”
“What’s in the containers?”
“Business for big boss.” A shrug.
“Drugs, you mean?”
“Not only drugs. Guns also. Cars. People.”
I stumbled. “People?”
“Prostitutes. Brides. Slaves.”
“Where is it all going?” I felt dizzy, sick.
“Whole world. Miami, Hanoi, Vancouver, London…everywhere.”
“You’re okay with slavery?”
Yuri swiveled his head on his thick neck, and his small dark eyes fixed on me, hard as chunks of marble. “Not my job to like or not like. My job is only to get you to boss. I like, I don’t like, no one cares. I tell boss I don’t like, you know what he does? He shoots me dead, like I shoot stupid Nico. Easy. So, I don’t like be shoot dead, I keep my words to myself, and stay alive.”
“Oh.” What else was there to say? Subtext was, he didn’t like it, but couldn’t do anything about it.
“Am I going in one of those?” I pointed at a container.
Yuri shook his head. “Nyet. You are more valuable than them. You go in one of those, you end up in a shithole in Naypyidaw, fucked fifty times a day for a handful of coins you don’t get to keep, and you stay there until you die.”
“Napyih-what?”
He actually chuckled at that. “Naypyidaw. Capital city of Myanmar. Once used to be Burma.”
“Well that doesn’t sound fun.”
He had nothing to say to that other than a grunt. He led me along a path around and between stack after stack of containers so circuitous that I couldn’t have navigated it again even if I’d been paying closer attention. Eventually we emerged at the base of the kind of crane used to build skyscrapers, the machine itself dozens of stories tall with a boom arm hundreds of feet long, a box at the top only accessible via elevator. The boom arm was in motion far above us, swiveling over our heads with a shipper container in its grasp. I ducked involuntarily as it crossed over me, even though it swung easily a hundred feet over my head. Yuri laughed.
“If it falls you die, even if you duck.” He gestured at a waiting helicopter. “This is our ride. For a prisoner, you get nice ride.”
It was a small helicopter, big enough for maybe four people plus the pilot. The door was open, revealing plush leather seats, each one empty. Yuri climbed in and held out his hand to help me up, but I ignored him and stepped in on my own, and then sat down and buckled in.
I was seated so I could see the cockpit, and I watched avidly as the pilot manipulated the controls with deft hands, skillfully lifting the helicopter off the ground without so much as a wobble. It looked hard as hell, honestly, a lot more to control and not as intuitive as an airplane. I’d picked that up easily enough, but then that was a lot simpler; one yoke, push in to descend, pull back to lift up, turn it left to bank left, right to bank right, foot pedals to pivot horizontally in either direction. Keeping all the buttons, switches, and dials straight was trickier, but not exactly difficult. The helicopter controls, however, looked a lot more involved, as you had to manipulate the craft on several axes: pitch and yaw, as well as bank, plus ascent and descent vertically, all combined with velocity.
Maybe after Harris rescued me, he’d teach me to fly choppers as well as fixed-wing aircraft.
That thought sobered me: I was operating on the assumption that Harris was coming for me—I didn’t doubt that part. I knew he’d be looking. But how could he find me? These guys had vanished me very effectively. I’d gone from a little Zodiac speedboat to a fishing boat, and from there to a helicopter. No witnesses, no records. From the helicopter I figured they’d probably take me somewhere even further afield, maybe on a private jet to the Mediterranean, or somewhere deep in the heart of South America. Either way, how could Harris hope to find me?
I’m not a crier. Never have been, never will be. But the thought of what awaited me had me choking up with fearful tears. So far I’d been left alone, but something told me that was just because I was meant for “the boss”, one Vitaly Karahalios, international crime kingpin extraordinaire. I had no doubt that whatever he had in mind wouldn’t be at all pleasant. Rape, torture, and murder had all been suggested as possibilities for what awaited me.
I had to hold on to hope that Harris would, somehow, find me and rescue me. Preferably before anything too fucked up was done to me.
I made a new mantra: Harris is coming. Harris is coming. Harris is coming.
The helicopter angled inland, and after maybe twenty minutes flight time, we landed in an empty grass field beside an old twin-engine prop plane. The grassy field, I realized, was a makeshift airstrip, meaning Caracas, Venezuela still wasn’t my final destination. The fixed-wing airplane’s engines were spinning, and as I was hustled off the helicopter, the airplane’s rudder and flaps wiggled as the pilot prepared for takeoff. I tried to distract myself from my ever-present fear with mental images of flying, checking dials and flipping switches and going through the checklist—all the boring shit you have to do to get to the good stuff: soaring through the air, free, high above it all, a bird’s-eye view of the world and all its attendant troubles. I was shoved—none too gently, and with a lingering touch on my ass—up the stairs and onto the plane. There were a few metal chairs bolted to the floor up front near the door to the cockpit, but the rest of the fuselage was empty. It had clearly once been a passenger plane, but had long since been retrofitted to serve as a cargo plane, with tie-downs bolted to the walls and floors.
Yuri buckled me in, took a chair beside me, and then called out in his language. The plane rotated in place, and then I heard and felt the engines ramp up, felt the ground bumping under the wheels, and then the lurch as we left the earth, angling aggressively upward.
And then…?
More boredom. Hours and hours of absolutely nothing, not even anything to see, as the tiny round windows were too far away to show me anything except the blue sky and the occasional scrap of cloud. Hours and hours of flight, Yuri snoring beside me. I could have unbuckled and jumped out, but I didn’t have a parachute, didn’t know how to use one, and didn’t fancy my chances of surviving a fall from an airplane. And his weapon was tucked in against his body, which meant if I tried to take it, he’d wake up and I’d be in trouble. Nothing to do but wait, it seemed.
So I endured the boredom as best I could.
We landed, eventually, and Yuri woke with a start when we hit the ground. As soon as the plane was stopped, he hauled me off the airplane and into yet another fucking aircraft, this one another helicopter pretty much identical to the first.
I groaned out loud. “Jesus, really? More flying? This has got to be the most tedious kidnapping in the history of kidnapping.”
Yuri shot me a glance. “You would like it to be more exciting, then? I can think of ways.”
“Well, when you put it that way, maybe boring is good.”
“In your place, boring is good.”
The helicopter lifted off and we headed south over lush greenery. No one said a word. I contemplated jumping out and taking my chances in the jungle, but Yuri’s gaze flicked over to me regularly, as if to assess my inclination for just such a move. He was close enough that he’d probably be able to grab me before I even got myself unbuckled.
“Where are we going?” I asked, after an hour or so had passed.
“São Paulo,” Yuri muttered. “No more questions. Nearly there.”
Harris is coming. Harris is coming. Harris is coming.
A city came into view, vast and sprawling, the jungle giving way very suddenly to an urban landscape ensconced a few miles inland from the sea. God, the urban sprawl. It was dizzying. The helicopter zipped in low, only a few hundred yards above the tallest buildings, making a beeline across the city. I heard the pilot speaking—Brazilian? Portuguese? I was pretty sure they spoke Portuguese in Brazil, and São Paulo was in Brazil. Right? God, I was so ignorant of world geography. Anyway, I heard him speaking, and then the aircraft slowed as we approached a specific building, our destination. A hotel, by the looks of it, a big, fancy one, the kind that had helicopter landing pads on the roof.
The landing was gentle as a feather wafting on a breeze, the touchdown barely registering. The rotors didn’t stop or slow as Yuri unbuckled himself, threw open the door, and leapt out past me. I had myself unbuckled but he refused to let me get down on my own, grabbing me by the waist and lifting me down. The wash from the helicopter forced me to bend almost double, making a tangled nest of my already gnarled hair. Yuri grabbed my wrist and dragged me across the roof at nearly a run, through a door and into an elevator, inserting a key and twisting it.
We descended briefly, and then the doors opened.
“Ah. Miss Campari.” The voice was accented, deep as a canyon, smooth as silk. Quiet, like a predator. “Welcome.”
I saw the man who owned the voice. Only a few inches taller than me, but broad and powerfully built, he had thick wavy black hair, piercing dark eyes, weathered olive skin, and a square, granite jaw. He exuded threat and power. He wore tailored black slacks, and a dove-gray polo shirt left untucked. Barefoot. Clean-shaven.
Something in his eyes as he assessed me made me shiver. This man was…terrifying.
I wanted to hide behind Yuri, but he was already backing into the elevator, twisting the key, and then the doors were sliding between us, leaving me alone. I stood alone, facing Vitaly Karahalios. All but naked, and completely terrified.
He stalked over to me, flicked a loose curling tendril of hair with a fingertip, circling around me like a cat toying with a mouse. His fingertip traced down my spine where the shirt gaped open. I shivered and fought the urge to shy away. Another brief touch, this time to my shoulder. Nudging the shirt off my shoulder; the cotton slipped down to my bicep on one side, and then he nudged at the shirt on the other side, and it fell even more.
He circled back in front of me, hooked his finger in the collar and tugged. I let him remove the shirt, standing before him in nothing but my thong. I kept my back straight, my knees locked, my chin high.
Defiant.
Don’t show fear—I knew his kind all too well.
“They brought you here like this?” he asked. “I will have to scold them. You are a guest.”
“I don’t feel like a guest,” I ventured.
“Perhaps not. Nonetheless, you should have been treated better. How was your trip here?”
I stared at him. “They threw me in a tiny room on a ship that had no windows and stank of fish. The airplane and helicopters were okay, though.”
“Not in a proper room?” he demanded, seeming genuinely puzzled.
I shook my head. “It was worse than a prison cell.”
“Idiots.” He withdrew a cell phone from his trouser pocket, touched a speed dial number, and put the phone to his ear. He spoke briefly in a foreign language, his voice sharp but quiet. After replacing the phone in his pocket, he bent and retrieved my shirt, handing it to me. “I will arrange proper clothing for you in a moment, after we’ve had time to acquaint ourselves. But first, I must have a word with Yuri.”
As if on cue, Yuri emerged from the elevator. If I was any judge of his facial expressions, he was shitting bricks. He glanced at me as if in question, and I just shrugged.
“Yuri,” Vitaly said, his voice barely above a whisper. “This is not what I was expecting. I am not pleased with you, I’m afraid.”
“I brought her here, boss,” Yuri mumbled. “Not hurt. No one messed with her. Nico, he tried, and I shot him. He was gonna stop the boat and—you know. But I stopped him.”
“Where are her clothes?”
“This is what she was wearing when we take her. Swear.”
Vitaly was quiet a moment. “And why is her shirt cut open?”
“Nico. I told you, boss, he—he was gonna rape her.”
“And why did you not give her your shirt? Or find her something else to wear?” He stepped closer to Yuri, staring at him. “And why was she put in a cell? She should have had the captain’s quarters. I told you, Yuri. She was not to be mistreated.”
“I’m sorry, boss, I didn’t think—”
“No,” Vitaly murmured. “No, you did not think.”
Perhaps I only thought I saw the movement. It was so fast, so neatly and easily done. Snick, a blade shot out of a handle that had appeared in Vitaly’s palm, and then with a sudden flash of his wrist, the blade was snugged between Yuri’s ribs on his left side, angled upward. Vitaly stepped back after a moment, withdrawing the blade. Yuri stood for a moment, blinking, confused, and then he toppled to the floor, slightly sideways and backward at the same time. Blood darkened his shirt, trickled slowly to the floor and began pooling, dark red on the white marble floor.
“Maria!” Vitaly said, his voice raised just a bit.
A woman appeared. “Senhor?”
“Get Gutierrez in here, tell him he has a mess to clean up.”
“Imediatamente.” The woman vanished without so much as a glance at me or the dead body.
Vitaly knelt, wiped the blade clean on Yuri’s shirt, and then stood. He turned to face me. “My apologies for the unpleasantness. Sometimes these men I hire, they do not do as they should. Now, where were we?” He eyed me, as I held the shirt up to my chest. “Ah, yes. Follow me, please.”
He pivoted sharply on his heel, and led me to a short hallway that ended at a set of wide French doors. He pushed them open, revealing an extravagant bedroom overlooking São Paulo. He ignored the bed—thank god—and gestured at the door leading to the bathroom.
“A shower, I think, might be welcome?”
“That would be great,” I said. “Thank you.”
He nodded as I entered the bathroom, and then followed me. I waited a moment, and then two. Vitaly did not grin, or smile, or make a lecherous comment, but when he leaned a hip against the counter edge and folded his arms over his chest, I realized he had no intention of leaving.
I let out a long breath, then steeled myself. Nothing mattered but staying alive. Harris is coming. Harris is coming. Harris IS coming. I just had to stay alive until he found me.
I dropped the shirt, hooked my thumbs in the sides of my thong and wiggled out of it, all too aware of Vitaly watching every move. Turning on the spray, I adjusted the temperature, made sure there was shampoo and such in the shower, got a washcloth, and then stepped under the steaming spray of hot water.
I took my time, trying to pretend Vitaly wasn’t there. I even washed myself down below, trying to act normal, like I didn’t have a pen stuck up where the sun don’t shine. His eyes followed my every move, every jiggle and bounce and sway.
When I was done, I shut off the water, wiped my face, and found Vitaly extending a towel to me, held open. I moved to take it from him, but he withdrew it, made a negative sound in his throat, and then held it out to me again.
Shit.
I stood still, dripping on the marble floor.
His hands never came in direct contact with my skin as he gently and carefully wiped me dry with the towel, dabbing and scrubbing all over from my shoulders to feet, breast to calves, but nonetheless I felt…not violated, exactly, but aware of the consequences of disobedience, and disgusted with what I knew I would have to endure. I held my breath and tried not to flinch, tried not to fight him. It took every ounce of self-control I possessed, but I got through the entire process without protest, verbal or physical. My skin crawled, my stomach rebelled.
I wanted to get back in the shower and scrub myself all over again.
His eyes roamed my body, and once he even pressed his nose to my flesh at my hip and inhaled deeply, and then gazed up at me.
He dried my breasts, lingeringly. Slowly. Lifting and caressing with the towel.
Oh god. Oh god.
I endured it silently. I kept my eyes open, expressionless, staring straight ahead.
He dried my ass last, once again doing it slowly, leisurely, and once again I had to focus on breathing and keeping still.
He neglected to thoroughly dry one small part of me, much to my good fortune.
When he was finally finished, he lifted a thick white robe off the hook on the back of the door, settled it over my shoulders, waited for me to slide my arms into the sleeves, and then tied it around me. Loosely, so my breasts weren’t quite covered. Of course.
Vitaly stepped away, back into the bedroom. “You have an iron will, Miss Campari. You did not react at all.”
“I’m either going to get out of this alive, or I’m not. That’s all that really matters.”
He stood in the center of the room, hands in his hip pockets. “You determine what happens, Miss Campari. I do not really have any issue with you, personally. I think you know with whom my anger lies.”
“Roth.”
Vitaly frowned. “Not really, no. It is your friend, Kyrie St. Claire. She killed my daughter. It is she who must suffer.”
I shivered at that. “So what do you want from me?”
“Little enough. You are bait, nothing more, nothing less. She will come for you. She will send someone. That barbarian, Nicholas Harris, first, perhaps. Others, maybe. Eventually, she herself will stand in front of me. That is when the suffering will begin.”
I swallowed hard. “She was only acting in self-defense.”
He shrugged. “This I know. But it does not matter. She killed my daughter. I cannot excuse this, no matter the reason.” He eyed me. “Until then, all I require from you is…cooperation. You are a diversion, no more.”
A diversion.
Shit.
I really didn’t like the sound of that.