The girl fucking cleaned up nice.

It was the first time I saw her showered and dressed. She emerged from the bedroom a few hours later, clean as could be and wearing a pair of short jean shorts and a long white T-shirt that dipped down low in the front.

She looked fucking gorgeous, even sexier than I had realized when she wasn’t wearing my sweatpants or staring at me with terror in her eyes.

The sun had set hours ago, and I was mentally preparing myself for the job. I had to leave soon, even though this was the last fucking thing I wanted to do.

She sat down on the couch with me. I knocked back a drink and held the bottle out to her. She accepted it wordlessly, sipping straight.

“I got a job tonight,” I said.

She nodded. “Okay. What kind of job?”

“Security. I’ll be late.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Sit around here. Keep looking as fucking sexy as you do right now.”

“I take it you don’t have any better idea how to help me yet?”

“Not yet,” I grunted, shaking my head.

She lapsed into another silence.

“But I will soon. You just have to sit tight.”

“Yeah. Sit tight and hope some stranger can magically save me.”

I stood up. “Pretty much.”

“You understand why this is hard for me to swallow, right?”

“I get it. Never said you didn’t have a right to be angry. You didn’t deserve this.”

She lapsed into another silence as I went into the kitchen and got my gun. I checked it, loaded it, and slipped it into my pants. I went into the bedroom and strapped on my bulletproof vest, pulling a shirt on over it.

Once I was done, I walked back out into the living room.

“Don’t use my phone again,” I said to her.

She stared up at me. “How’d you know?”

“You moved it.”

“I put it back where it was.”

I grinned at her. “I’m very observant.” I walked over to the door.

“Fine.”

“Do me a favor. Put those panties I like on.”

She shook her head. “Not like you’ll see them.”

I grinned at her. “Maybe, but I sure as fuck do like thinking about you in them.”

I turned the knob and left before she could respond.

Fuck she was driving me wild. I could barely keep my thoughts straight as I headed down the stairs. That was bad, because I needed to have a clear head for this job.

But the thought of Emma in nothing but a T-shirt and panties, like the night I first found her, made me fucking hard.

* * *

I met up with Dante and a few others back in the deli not long later. From there we took two large black SUVs out toward the edge of the city, out toward the old industrial park. We stopped outside a large abandoned warehouse.

Our footsteps echoed as we got out of the cars and walked inside. The place was full of men already, mostly muscle just standing around, smoking or checking their weapons.

I knew about half the guys in there, most of them hired goons. There weren’t any other hit men like me, which was surprising. I guessed Gian only specifically requested me for this, which meant I had to be on top of my game.

“Ready for this?” Dante asked me.

I turned and looked at him. He grinned at me, wearing his bulletproof vest. He had an oversized gun with a silver inlay handle tucked into his track pants, and he looked totally ridiculous. The man had probably never fired that toy gun in his life.

“Sure,” I grunted. “Ready as I can be. What’s the plan?”

“We meet the girls here soon. Then we transport them to the club. Easy.”

“If it’s so easy, why do you have so much muscle? I mean, shit, Dante, there’s like fifteen guys here.”

He laughed. “It’s overkill, but we lost a shipment last month, and the boss wasn’t happy about that.”

When he said “shipment,” the fucker meant a bunch of women escaped slavery. He said it like it was a bad thing.

To men like Dante, these women were nothing but money. They weren’t human at all. They were just the potential to make money. These girls came from mostly Eastern European counties and were incredibly poor. Sometimes their families sold them into slavery and sometimes they sold themselves. Sometimes they were simply stolen off the streets, though.

But once they were taken, there was nothing they could do about it. Nobody gave a fuck how they ended up in the slave trade, only that they shut their fucking mouths and did as they were told.

They were trained like fucking dogs from the moment they were captured. More often than not, they were also forced to get hooked on drugs just to have something else hanging over them. They were transported illegally into America on cargo ships in horrible conditions only to get shoved into some sex club, fucking hundreds of guys a week.

Needless to say, their lives were short and miserable. Very few of them ever earned their freedom, and the ones who did were so scarred and broken from their experiences that they ended up dead or arrested soon after.

I wasn’t a fucking saint. I killed and I killed often, and sometimes I fucking enjoyed killing. I liked putting a bullet in some dirtbag’s skull, and I even liked hunting down those dumb fools who decided to run or fight back.

But at least I had a code. I didn’t hurt women, and that was it. The fucking shitheads that worked in the brothels and in the flesh trade were heartless monsters, the sort of bottom-dwelling scum I despised the most.

Unfortunately, we worked for the same bosses. I didn’t like it, but I shut my fucking mouth and dealt with it like everyone else did. I wasn’t some hero, some dumbass cowboy who was going to ride off and save all the poor hookers who got caught up in this nasty business.

I put my head down and concentrated on keeping myself alert as we waited. Nobody was talking, and there was a strange, heady sense of anticipation hanging over the group, like everyone there knew something was going to happen.

Dante smoked cigarette after cigarette, staring off into the distance. I sat down on an empty barrel near him. “Anything else I should know about this?” I asked him.

“What? No. Why?”

“Just that everyone here seems on edge,” I said. “We have big numbers, so it’s a little curious.”

He sighed. “Fuck. Well, there’s one small detail. See, every time the Spiders attack, they don’t leave survivors.”

“What?”

“Yeah. They kill everyone, except for the girls. They steal the girls for themselves.”

“Shit man. No wonder everyone is on edge. They think there’s a chance we all might get slaughtered.”

“See? That’s why we need people like you.”

I shook my head, annoyed. “You should have told me sooner.”

“Why? Risk you not coming?”

“No, you dumb fuck. I would have brought a bigger gun.”

He laughed and stubbed out his cigarette. “Too late for that. Here they come.”

I followed his gaze and saw a semitruck pulling down along the road and angling toward us. The container on its back was big and white with no markings at all.

The other men all reacted. Some went to open up the doors of the trucks we had with us and some got their weapons out. A few were sent to scout out the perimeter, make sure nobody was out there watching.

This was a fucking death trap. The Spiders were slaughtering us and I was sent to be a part of it. I couldn’t decide if it was because they thought I could help or if they wanted me dead. But if Dante was here as well, it couldn’t be because they thought we’d all die. He was too important to waste on something like this.

No, if Gian requested me, he hoped that I’d be able to help.

So I kept my head on a swivel. While I didn’t know the guys around me, that didn’t meant they weren’t trustworthy. The mafia didn’t employ men for these sorts of things who weren’t good with a gun, and these men all looked hardened and like they knew what they were about.

No, it wasn’t going to be brute force that I brought to the table. It was going to have to be something else.

The truck slowly pulled up closer toward the warehouse. The outer fence was opened up and the truck drove straight toward us. The men made room as the truck drove straight in through the enormous steel doors and stopped right in the middle of the warehouse itself.

I stood off to the side as men opened the large back doors of the truck.

“Here we go,” Dante said. “The pussy train is coming.”

Ignoring him, I watched as, one by one, young girls began to climb out of the back of the truck.

There must have been thirty or forty of them, way too many for the trip to have been anything resembling comfortable. Those container trucks were hot and sticky, not to mention rough. I could imagine them huddled together, barely able to breathe the humid, stifling air.

They looked thin and hungry. Sunken eyes, dirty clothes, and the occasional track mark from needles getting shoved into their arms defined the group. Some of them were beautiful and some of them weren’t, but it didn’t really matter. There was some sick fuck out there for each and every one of them.

The men began to herd the women toward the trucks. I watched as they were piled in, and soon every one of the cars were full of these young, half-dead women.

“When do they usually come?” I asked Dante.

“Now,” he said. “They attacked just as the truck pulled in last time.”

The warehouse seemed silent. The men who were scouting had returned, and it seemed as though everything was going well.

Dante got up and clapped me on the back. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get moving before the pussy train pulls out without us.”

I grunted and followed him toward our car. We got in and fell in line in the caravan as the group of cars, the women in the middle, began to head back toward the city.

I couldn’t help but think about the girls shoved into those trucks. Young and stupid, they had no life ahead of them, not while they were slaves to the mafia. I didn’t love that my people did things like this, but I knew they had to if they were going to compete. Our operation was nothing compared with the Russians; they imported thousands of girls a month to our hundreds. The Latinos were pretty bad themselves, bringing girls up from South America, nice and addicted to Colombian heroin.

The club we were headed to was in the middle of a seedier neighborhood on the edge of downtown. The city flashed past the window of the truck as we moved, heading farther and farther into the city. I kept expecting the Spiders to hit at any second, but all was quiet.

The caravan eventually made it to the club. We pulled down an alleyway at the back of the club. It was a tight squeeze getting all of the cars in there, and there wasn’t much space to maneuver.

“Whose decision was this?” I asked Dante as we stopped and got out.

“What do you mean?”

“This alley is a fucking death trap.”

He gave me a look. “Shit,” he said.

The girls started to get out of the trucks up ahead. We had some room to move around, but not much. The trucks and cars were parked bumper to bumper, and there was no way to get out unless the cars on the ends moved first. Basically everyone was boxed in with nowhere to go.

The muscle got out and stood around, looking uncomfortable. I couldn’t tell if they were thinking the same thing, but this was bad. There were too many people jammed into this small space. Back when it was just three or four trucks bringing the girls in, this drop-off was probably fine, but now it was jammed with men standing around with weapons.

I wasn’t surprised at all when the gunfire started.

It happened fast. As the first group of girls got out of their truck and moved toward the back door, bullets started raining down on the trucks. Men scattered and started yelling orders as I found cover behind our truck.

“Fuck!” Dante yelled. “The roof!”

I looked up, and sure enough there were men up there in black masks firing down at us. The girls were screaming and scattering all over the place.

“The girls!” Dante yelled.

I watched as a group of thugs tried to round the girls up, but they were gunned down as soon as they moved.

“We have to move the trucks,” I told Dante. “Come on!”

“Fuck that,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

That fucking coward. I moved fast, heading toward the last car in the caravan. I felt bullets smashing all around me as I moved, but I kept my head down and stayed close to the cars. Soon I was pressed up against the last car.

I flung the door open. The driver was dead, a bullet in his skull. I dragged his body out and got in, starting the engine. Bullets instantly exploded all around me, but I threw the car into reverse, flying out of the alleyway.

I stopped and dove out, running low back into the alley. More bullets, but this time the other men on my side figured out what I was doing. They began to return fire, causing the men on the roof to back off as I got into the next car and pulled it out.

The next two cars drove out as well, clearing space in the alley. I dove back in, keeping close to the walls, picking my way up toward Dante.

“We have to get the girls in the cars,” I yelled.

“No way. We’re pinned down!”

I could see fear in his eyes, and I realized he was useless.

I moved away, heading toward the front of the line. The girls were mostly huddled together still in their trucks.

That was when I saw them.

Spiders, their masks on, walking into the alley from the other end. They had heavy weapons out and were walking casually, like it was no big deal. Their dark clothes and heavy armor made them look like demons from another world.

“Line up and fucking fire!” one of the goons on our side yelled. The men began shooting at the Spiders, but they just kept coming, unleashing hell into the alleyway.

I dove into a truck full of girls toward the front of the line. There were two cars still ahead of me, but I didn’t care.

“What are you doing?” one of the girls screamed in my ear. The rest were speaking a language I couldn’t understand.

“Tell them to hold on,” I yelled over the gunfire. Then I floored the car.

The sound of twisting metal filled my ears as the car smashed into the one ahead of it. That car smashed forward, hitting the next one, and I kept the motor revving, the tires spinning. Burnt rubber replaced the smell of blood.

Slowly the truck pushed the two cars forward. We were moving, slowly but surely, up and out of the alley. Bullets rained down on the truck, but they were being careful, too careful.

It hit me instantly. They were trying not to hit the girls. I kept going forward, my confidence swelling. The other mafia thugs were firing back at the Spiders, but they were still coming. The thugs were dropping one by one, though some emulated me and got back into the trucks.

Five feet, three feet, and suddenly the two cars were pushed out into the street at the other end of the alley. My wheels were spinning as I turned the wheel, heading away.

And then two loud bursts made the car swerve.

“Fuck!” I yelled, and the girls screamed as our truck went out of control, slamming into the side of the club.

Bodies were rocked all over the place, limbs twisted with limbs. Girls were screaming and complaining, but we hadn’t been going too fast and nobody seemed hurt. Coughing from the smoke and the steam, I stumbled out of the car. I went around front and threw open the back door, looking at the girl who spoke English.

“You!” I yelled. “Get these girls out of here.”

“What? Where do we go?” she asked.

She had big brown eyes and long blond hair. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a week.

“Run,” I told her. “Run as fast and as far as you can. Go to the police if you have to, but get the fuck away from here.”

“Why?”

“Those men will take you and you’ll all be slaves.”

The girls stepped out of the car and were looking around. Gunfire still screamed in the alley and more trucks were coming out, plus bloodied, angry men.

“Fuck, go!” I yelled, pushing the woman.

She looked at me strangely and then spoke to the other girls. She looked back at me. “What’s your name?”

“Brooks! What are you waiting for?” I yelled. The Spiders came around the corner next. “You have to go!”

“Thank you,” the girl said, and then she yelled something else. The girls scattered, running as fast as they could away from the violence.

I pressed myself up against the car, firing my gun at the Spiders as they came. I knew I wasn’t going to stop them, but at least I could slow them down.

The Spiders were coming, and I was trapped. Trucks were peeling out and driving away, and the goons were scattered, either running away or returning fire. The Spiders just kept coming, unceasing and unflinching.

I finished my clip and released it. I tucked my gun away and then moved to dart away, trying to put distance between me and the Spiders.

That was when I felt something like a hammer strike me in the chest. Pain lanced down my spine and ribs, white hot and terrible. Another hammer blow took me lower down in the stomach.

I stumbled back and then fell face-first onto the concrete.

Pain rocked my whole body, bloody and searing.

The last thing I remembered was seeing the girls disappear around the corner up ahead as the world turned to darkness.