Chapter
9

“Kyle has us clear of the cops, and there hasn’t been any noise for a week. I think we’re good.”

“Fine,” I told Sean.

“Gleeson wants to meet with you about the automatics you promised him. Our guy purchased them at just a hundred bucks retail. We’ll get triple the retail on each head, and we’ve got five cases, twelve rifles to a case.”

“You can handle the money, Sean.”

I stared at the sleeping girl on my video screen. She was a puzzle. A week of only one meal a day and barely enough water to satisfy a baby left her listless and sleeping most of the time, but the woman never cried, never called out for more or begged for better treatment. In fact, since I’d had Pretty Boy’s arm broken, she hadn’t done much of anything.

“Caesar, are you listening to me?”

My face twitched. I normally didn’t mind Sean calling me by my name. Hell, he was the only person who could, since I’d told Ash she couldn’t, but it rubbed me the wrong way. It reminded me of the past, when my sister had told me I could be as great as Julius Caesar if I put my mind to it. I’d hated the name as a kid and made sure all my friends called me C. A few moments of acting out in class and the teachers got with the program, too. But Yolanda ignored my wish. I’d always be Caesar to her—her Caesar. It morphed into only those closest to me could call me that. I didn’t examine why I wanted the girl on the camera to be one of those few. The timber of Sean’s voice grated on my nerves and did funny shit to my brain. I glared at Ash, wondering what the fuck she did to me.

“Do you know I haven’t come in over a week?” I asked Sean.

“Excuse me?”

I took a moment to flash my gaze his way before I looked back at my charge and chuckled. Any other situation and I’d have asked for a picture of his incredulous look.

“I said I haven’t come in over a week.”

“I heard you. What I don’t understand is why that is a topic for discussion.”

I shrugged, not quite sure. I’d had pets before, and they never were my only form of entertainment. More often than not, they were dessert rather than the main course. Typically, I only used my cabin when I first collected a pet. I worked big deals, and there were times when a bag of bones carried more weight than a bag of cash. I’d purchased and flipped a number of women, sampling each one of them as my convenience fee.

Ashlyn didn’t get the same treatment.

Instead of hightailing it back to the city to my fucking sweet-ass penthouse and fast lifestyle, I stayed here with her. I watched her on this fucking monitor and wondered why I had no desire to see the broken-ass slave in a cage and wished she’d throw her piss bucket, or shoot the finger at the door up the stairs. Anything but simply be in that cage.

I liked when she fought back.

“Caesar, we’ve got five deals on the table. Three of them would net you eight figures a bite, and the last two would open up favors into markets you’ve been waiting for. We need to get this done.”

Who was Tamara? Though dead, the ghost of the waif haunted Ashlyn, brought her into my clutches with only the mention of her name. Loyalty burned in Ash’s gaze anytime the girl was mentioned, and I couldn’t ignore the burn in my chest at the sight. Fucking stupid, but I wanted her loyalty, her craving. But as I watched her on the screen, I didn’t know what to give her, how to change who the hell I was. I shook my head. Maybe we were both trapped in the makings of our prisons, ones that didn’t have physical ties but kept us locked away.

“I like it when she calls me Caesar, but I hate it, too,” I commented.

Sean sighed and stalked around my desk until he stood at my side. “My area of expertise is not in human trafficking. I’ve never cared for fucking an unwilling partner, nor do I want to deal with the mess of hiding them.”

“That’s because you’re a pussy. Nothing wrong with a bit of scratching and biting when you’re fucking. Gets the blood flowing.”

“Perhaps,” he answered. “Then again, you picked up a particularly lively one, or so I thought. Seems she broke a bit too fast.”

“Doesn’t it?”

And that was the problem. The same crazy bitch who’d told me I was a lunatic with a mouth full of blood shouldn’t have given up that easy. It didn’t sit right. How had she broken so soon, and why did I hate the taste of that submission in my mouth?

“She’s playing with me. She has to be,” I said.

“That would be my guess,” Sean agreed. “She will play her part as long as you have the boy in your possession. Leave her with nothing but a chance to get out …”

And I’d have the fighter back. It made sense but flowed into territory I didn’t want to be in. She didn’t have any fucking choice but to be mine. Broken bones, ripped skin, and blood were all foreplay for our sort of fun. Bitch-ass boyfriend, or whatever the fuck he was, didn’t matter.

“I’ll keep him on a leash for a while. But we need to change tactics with her. For now, get the Gleeson deal ready. I’ve got his supply.”

“I’ll let him know. And the other deals?”

“Lay them out and I’ll look them over.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sean moved to do as I asked, but my gaze was still on the silent image of Ashlyn. I sat back in my swivel chair. She was saying something, so I zoomed in to read her lips. Jason. In her sleep, she still called to that prick, and it set my blood boiling. Why? What had he done so bad that she dreamed of him instead of me? I leaned forward and traced her lips with my finger, figuring out how I should start over with her. I wouldn’t change how I treated her; it wasn’t in my fucking DNA to be romance and sweetness. Besides, that shit tasted foul. But I wanted something from her. Even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

One facet, though, I could handle.

“Sean?”

“Yeah?”

“Find Jason the Bitch. I want to know exactly what he’s done to her.”

“The priority?”

“One. You work on the deals, but I want Jason here tonight. The sooner I know what the fucker did, the quicker I can erase it. Nothing irritates me more than an idiot man with prime meat he doesn’t know what to do with.”

“I’ll get him here.”

Sean went about my instructions as I got up and left my office. No, I didn’t like the broken soul in that cage. Yeah, alright, trapped in a cage wasn’t the best way to live, but that was only a state of mind.

I clipped to the master suite and my bathroom. Here, I hadn’t skimped on the finer things. A large whirlpool bath took up the rear right corner and across from it a free-falling standing shower with eight showerheads stationed from waist-height to overhead. The his-and-her sinks had gold trim and were made of veined marble. A separate room off to the side housed my toilet and foot warmer.

I stalked to the porcelain whirlpool bath and started it, making sure the water was nice and hot until steam curled up and started to fog up the mirrors. There was a ritual to getting clean before I did anything dirty. Just like the world that had cast me out as some punk kid, I needed to rid myself of any humanity or remorse. Not that I had much humanity left, but when I took anyone to the point they didn’t care for their pride to escape the pain, I really didn’t want to give a shit. And I had no intention of letting Jason get out of this house alive.

Once the tub was full, I stripped off my shirt and tossed it to the side before I toed off my shoes. Now, for the centerpiece. I left my bedroom and headed down the hall. As I got to the stairs to the main floor, I heard my front door open, Sean’s whistle alerting me it was him. I’d trained the bastard good.

“I got Franco on it. He enjoys capture and release,” Sean said as I passed him to head downstairs once more to the basement.

“Get the warehouse ready. I need a chair, chains, my knuckles, and make sure the meat hook is suspended,” I ordered.

“How messy is this going to get?”

“As messy as it takes, Sean. As messy as it takes.”

The basement was quiet, and all I smelled were sweat and piss. Something about that irritated me. Not the scent, but the fact Ashlyn was down there. That the woman I wanted to call me Caesar was trapped, surrounded in filth. She messed with me in ways I couldn’t quite comprehend. A week of watching her and I still didn’t understand what the fuck she did to me.

Like, why should I give a fuck about some bastard who made her love it rough? Not that I saw any of that when I had her under me, but that was the point. What came before she belonged to me shouldn’t have fucking mattered, but it did. Something triggered with him. She rolled over as I approached her cage, her eyes lifeless and her moves sluggish. In silence, I entered her cage and lifted her into my arms.

“Say goodbye to the cage, pet.”

“Goodbye,” she whispered without preamble.

Oh, tonight was going to get bloody as shit. Because if I didn’t get her the fuck back after this, she’d be buried with him.

Damn, I think I just lied to myself.