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Devastate (Deliver Book 4) by Pam Godwin (2)

CHAPTER 1

 

Present day…

The electronic beats of Ke$ha’s “Take It Off” followed Tate through the dimly lit halls of The Velvet Den. The worn wallpaper, creaking wood floors, and faint scent of perfume evoked a tantalizing nostalgia for his old stomping grounds. But beneath the swell of sentimentality lay a prickle of unease. Not all his memories of this place were pleasurable.

Stepping out of the final corridor, he lingered at the entrance of the main room. Settees and lounge chairs surrounded an empty stage. The rich textures and dark decor was designed to make club members feel relaxed and safe, and the exceptional service catered to their upscale tastes. Then, of course, there were the girls. Scantily dressed and easy on the eyes, they served drinks and sex with alluring smiles.

Nestled in a suburban border town in southern Texas, the invite-only establishment was older than his twenty-five years. It hadn’t always been a swinger’s club, but as laws cracked down on prostitution, The Velvet Den evolved. Money still exchanged hands after a sweaty fuckfest in a private room, but no one spoke of those transactions. A narc would lose more than his membership.

The club owner didn’t just enforce the rules, authorize the contracts, and hire the well-vetted staff. She set the mood, simply through the elegance and grace of her presence.

As he scanned the room for her long blond hair and voluptuous body, her husky voice caressed his back.

“Your guest has arrived, darling.”

“Lela,” he breathed, turning to meet the sharp green eyes of his oldest friend. “It’s good to see you.”

“Is it?” Her plump, red-painted lips pouted her disapproval. “You never visit. I’m under the impression you don’t miss me at all.”

“You know that’s not true.” He wrapped his arms around her and smoothed a hand down the corset’s lacing along her spine. “I’ve missed you more than you know.”

Hard to believe she was in her forties. She didn’t look a day older than thirty. He could still picture her towering over him and pommeling his ass for the mischief he’d stirred up as a boy.

She framed his face and caressed her lips against his. The lingering kiss, the exotic aroma of her shampoo, and the press of her fingers against his jaw—all of it filled him with warm memories.

The Velvet Den was his home, and while Madame Lela Pearl wasn’t his mother, she was the closest thing he ever had to one.

“Thank you for letting me hold my meeting here.” He glanced over his shoulder, searching the crowd. “Where’s my guest?”

“I set him up in the Cognac Room.” She trailed a blood-red fingernail down the placket of buttons on his shirt. “Unless you prefer a room with more privacy.”

“It’s not that kind of meeting.”

“No?” Disappointment creased her pretty features. “I hoped you returned to work for me again.”

“Lela—”

“You’re even more handsome than you were as a boy. Stronger. More virile.” She petted his bicep. “The ladies would empty their purses to experience your dominant nature.”

His stomach buckled. The clientele tended to be older, with marriage, careers, and kids behind them. Too old for the downtown club scene, they came here with unique proclivities, looking to quench darker appetites.

It didn’t matter. Young or old, male or female, locals or out-of-towners, no one would be paying him for sex. Never again.

“I don’t need money.” He caught her arm and gently set her away. “There’s more to life than getting off.”

Her eyes bugged. “Shut your mouth. I raised you better than that.” She propped her fists on the flare of her hips. “Have you forgotten what it feels like to fuck without commitment or strings—?” She snapped her teeth together, eyes growing wider. “Oh shit. Are you in love?”

That was only part of it. She didn’t know what happened to him when he disappeared from The Velvet Den’s parking lot six years ago. He was nineteen when Van Quiso took him at gunpoint and raped him for ten weeks in a soundproof attic.

She assumed he ran away, and he let her hold onto that belief. The truth would wreck her.

“Yes, there is someone.” He averted his gaze, unable to hide the resentment in his expression.

“But?”

“She’s engaged.”

“So? Win her away from her fiancé.”

“They belong together, and I love her enough to let her have that. To let her go.”

It’d been four years since Matias approached him in that Austin bar. Four of the most miserable years of his life. After going along with Matias’ plan, watching Camila reunite with him, and losing her completely when she moved to Colombia, Tate no longer wanted to stay in the Austin house he’d shared with her.

Visiting her a few times in Colombia hadn’t helped his miserable jealousy.

So he came here.

Home.

But it wasn’t the same.

No, he wasn’t the same.

“My guest is waiting.” He kissed the top of Lela’s head. “I’ll stay a few days, maybe longer, okay? We’ll catch up.”

“Very well.” She fussed with the collar of his shirt. “I’ll have a room prepared for you. Stay as long as you want.”

“Thank you.”

He turned back down the hall, slipped into a stairwell, and exited one floor below. The same dark furnishings adorned the Cognac Room, but the pungent aroma of cigars deterred non-smokers from using this space.

A bald man reclined on a couch, his trousers unzipped beneath the bobbing head of a young woman. Nearby, several other couples engaged in various forms of fornication and sexual orientation. Across the room, a topless dancer writhed on a pole, grinding to the low volume of club music.

An attractive man sat alone at a table a few feet from her. He was the only man in the room who could’ve been Cole Hartman. Tate’s guest.

Black leather jacket, short brown hair, early thirties, he watched the dancer with a strange expression. It wasn’t curiosity. Definitely not desire. His furrowed brow and pinned lips hinted at displeasure.

Maybe it was shock. Especially if he’d never been in a place like this. And fair enough. Swingers were a peculiar breed. They paid outrageous fees for the convenience of ogling, sampling, or boning other people’s partners. There weren’t a lot of life experiences that prepared a person for a room full of naked, oversexed strangers.

Tate had deliberately withheld the nature of The Velvet Den when he suggested it as a location to meet. He wanted to hire Cole to help him find Camila’s sister. But if the big, leather-clad guy couldn’t handle an open display of sex, he wasn’t up for the task.

Since Cole didn’t appear to notice anyone but the dancer, Tate remained in the doorway, studying him, searching for anything that might’ve raised a red flag.

After four years and five private investigators, Tate had made zero progress on locating Lucia Dias. So he did the one thing he thought he’d never do.

He asked Van Quiso for help.

Liv and Camila had both been enslaved by Van, yet they’d found something redeemable in him. Something they trusted.

Van had connections with unsavory people—slavers, drug and weapon dealers, assassins, and bounty hunters. People with specialized skills in shady situations.

People like Cole Hartman.

Tate didn’t know how Van was connected to Cole or if that was even his real name. All he had was Van’s unwavering conviction: If Cole Hartman can’t locate Camila’s sister, no one can.

On the far side of the room, Cole shrugged off his jacket, tossed it in a nearby chair, and crooked a finger at Tate without removing his eyes from the dancer.

Evidently, he was more attuned to his surroundings than he let on. Good.

As Tate crossed the room, Cole lifted a beer from the table. Heavy ink tattooed his forearm, but the lighting was too low to make out the artwork.

He didn’t move or meet his eyes until Tate reached the table.

“You’re drinking Bud Light in the Cognac Room,” Tate said in greeting.

“Am I breaking a rule?”

“No. But the cognac’s free.”

“So is the beer.” Cole tipped the neck of the bottle in the direction of the dancer. “Tell her to leave.”

“You have a problem with dancers?” Tate pointedly looked at Cole’s tattoo.

From wrist to elbow was an inked silhouette of a woman swinging on a dance pole.

“I’ve seen better.” Cole brought the beer to his lips for a hardy swallow. “Much better.”

On the surface, Cole seemed relaxed. But with each rotation the dancer made on the pole, his jaw grew harder, the cords in his neck pulling tighter. For whatever reason, the dancing put him on edge, and it undoubtedly had something to do with the woman tattooed on his arm.

While Tate didn’t know the dancer, all of Lela’s employees knew him. His history at The Velvet Den gave him the authority to send her away, but how did Cole Hartman know that? Maybe he’d done his homework?

Approaching the dance pole, Tate touched the girl’s shoulder, his voice low. “Take a break, sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Mr. Vades.” With a small smile, she sashayed toward the exit.

Christ, she had a great ass. Big and round, it jiggled in her thong, sending provocative messages to his cock.

With an inward groan, he returned to the table, lowered into a chair, and caught Cole’s eyes. “How do you know Van Quiso?”

“Client confidentiality, pal. He’s your friend. Why don’t you ask him?”

Van wasn’t his friend and had been annoyingly cryptic on the subject of Cole Hartman.

“I requested this meeting because I need you to find someone.” Tate clasped his hands together on his lap. “A woman.”

“How long has she been missing?”

The answer tried to stick in his throat, but he forced it out. “Eleven years.”

Cole didn’t grimace or flinch like the other investigators Tate had hired. He simply nodded and sipped the beer.

“Aren’t you going to ask her name, age, last place she was seen, all the usual shit?”

“Nope.” Cole leveled him with an incisive look. “We’re going to discuss you, the reason you’re looking for her, and the price you’re willing to pay.”

“Money isn’t an issue.”

“I’m not talking about money.”

Tate rubbed his head, losing patience. “I don’t understand your meaning.”

“Why did you choose this place to meet?”

“If you were good at your job, you’d be able to tell me.”

“All right.” Cole leaned forward, keeping his voice soft. “Let’s start with your childhood.”

This should be interesting. Tate had never told anyone about his past, not even Camila. “Go on.”

“Tate Anthony Vades. Son of a prostitute. Father unknown. After your mother died from a drug overdose, you became a ward of the state, all before your second birthday. But her friend, Lela Pearl, took you in, kept you hidden and out of the system.” He took a swig of beer and lowered it without looking away. “You were raised by whores in a brothel, this brothel, until you were old enough to turn tricks and earn your keep.”

Jesus. Tate didn’t know whether to be pissed or freaked out that he’d dug up so many buried secrets. But Cole’s ability to elicit a vulnerable reaction was a good thing. If he could arouse fear in people, taunt them with personal information and provoke them to talk, maybe he really could make headway on Lucia’s case. Because somewhere, someone knew what happened to her.

“I’m impressed.” Tate tilted his chin down, measuring his words. “So I was raised among whores and earned a living as one for a while. What of it? You going to turn me in?”

“Rumor is, generations of sheriffs, judges, and mayors have kept this place in operation in exchange for VIP treatment.” He glanced around the room, watching topless women serve cigars and cognac. “To be honest, I’m waiting for the girls to break out in song, a la The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” A smirk stole across Cole’s face. “I work outside of the law, Tate. Your secrets are safe with me.”

“I appreciate that.” He narrowed his eyes. “Not sure how any of this helps you find the woman I’m searching for.”

“I’ll find her, but it won’t bring you any closer to the woman you want.”

He stopped breathing, and his heart flew against his ribcage. He didn’t care if Cole knew he lost his virginity to a man at age fourteen or that he’d sold his body to female clients for a few years. Hell, he didn’t even care if Cole had gleaned what happened to him in Van’s attic.

But Camila was off-limits. In her crusade against slavery, she committed the kind of felonies—kidnapping, torturing, and murdering criminals—that would earn her a death sentence if caught. He didn’t want Cole near her, asking about her, or investigating her in any way.

“This was a mistake.” Tate moved to stand.

“Camila Dias is safe.” Cole gripped his wrist, holding him in the chair with a cutting glare.

“She’s none of your concern.” He yanked his arm away and sat back.

“True, but she’s in your head, messing with your thoughts. Isolating you. That’s why you’re here. You came back to the beginning, to the one place that gave you a sense of belonging.”

“What are you? A fucking psychologist?”

“No.” Cole laughed, a hollow sound. “Nothing like that. I just know from experience that a broken heart is the worst kind of hell, a goddamn lonely path from which you can never recover.”

He touched a thin chain that hung around his neck, lifting it from beneath the t-shirt and letting it drop in full view. A tiny silver ring dangled at the end. A woman’s wedding band.

If he was married or engaged, he wasn’t any longer. Not with her ring in his possession and no ring on his finger.

Tate removed a pack of smokes from his pocket, lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply. “What happened to her?”

“I let her go.” Sadness whispered through Cole’s voice, but an admirable amount of fortitude sharpened his eyes.

“Let me guess. She’s with someone else?” At Cole’s nod, Tate repeated the same words he gave Lela upstairs. “They belong together?”

“Yeah.”

The air around them agitated before settling into a quiet hush. Cole did a good job tucking away his feelings. But Tate knew how deep that well could go and how hot and relentless the turmoil could burn within it.

“We’re in the same hell, then.”

“I don’t think we are.” Cole rubbed his whiskered jaw. “I watched you check out that dancer. You’ll have her on her back by the end of the night.”

Her or one of the other girls who worked here. Tate wasn’t picky, as long as she was restrained and trembling beneath him. “I’m a man, not a saint.”

“I’m a man, but there isn’t a woman out there who compares to the one I had.”

Given the tattooed silhouette on his arm, his ex-fiancé…wife…whatever must’ve been a dancer. That explained his displeasure with the dancer earlier.

“What’s your point?” Tate asked.

“If you truly loved her, you wouldn’t be fucking every tight ass that crossed your path.”

He wanted to deny the accusation, but after Matias walked into that bar with a claim on Camila, he’d reverted to some old vices, such as smoking cigarettes and fucking anything in a skirt.

But that was beside the point.

“You did your research.” Tate tapped the cigarette in the ashtray. “Which means you knew my background and the reason I asked you here before you walked in the door.”

Cole nodded. “You’re looking for Lucia Dias, because you think you’re in love with her sister.”

He did love her, but the dickhead could believe whatever he wanted.

“What I haven’t figured out…” Cole studied him for a moment. “What is the price you’re willing to pay?”

Back to this again. “How about we start with your fee?”

“A hundred grand.”

His pulse raced. “A hundred—?”

“She’s been missing for eleven years. It’ll take time, but I’ll get you the location of her body—dead or alive. That’s the finder fee. It doesn’t include retrieval. If she lives and wants to be removed from her situation…” Cole folded his hands on the table and exhaled slowly. “You can’t afford it.”

“How much?”

“Depends on the level of risk, the location, and whether she’s being held against her will. Extraction jobs can last months, man, and the expenses add up—surveillance technology, specialized weapons, informant bribes, recruitment of resources, hush money, travel costs… The bill would run higher than the six-hundred thousand sitting in your bank account.”

Tate’s stomach bottomed out, and it wasn’t only from the outlandish price. Knowing Cole had hacked into his finances, the fucking pity etching his face—all of it made Tate want to slam a fist into the wall.

“Let’s just…slow down.” He took a drag on the cigarette and squashed it out. “We need to find her first. I doubt she’s even alive.”

“You believe that?”

Did he? With a deep inhale, he mentally probed his gut and found the hope he’d held onto for years. “I know she was abducted from her home. Her parents were tied in with cartel. Both were murdered after she disappeared. And justly so. They gave her up to spare their own lives.”

When Matias had learned they’d sold their daughters—both Lucia and Camila—he’d killed them. Camila had eventually escaped Van Quiso, but Lucia’s kidnapper died eleven years ago, taking her whereabouts to the grave.

“Her last known location,” Tate said, “was in a sex trafficking transport in Peru. It crashed. No survivors, but her body was never identified. I traveled to the crash site myself a few months ago. Talked to the locals in the village. No one knows anything, or so they claim.” He met Cole’s eyes. “To answer your question, I believe she survived that crash and is being held somewhere against her will.”

“What will you do when I confirm your suspicions? When I give you proof of her life? Since you can’t afford my retrieval fee, will you ask Matias Restrepo for help? We both know he has the power and resources to assist.”

Fucking hell. Since Cole was privy to Tate’s relationship with Camila, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he knew about the man she lived with. While the cartel capo could fund his own operation to find and extract Lucia, he’d already looked for her. And failed. Because he’d given up.

Tate wouldn’t be asking Matias for shit. He was doing this, in part, as a gift to Camila. He didn’t want Matias involved.

“No?” Cole’s gaze pressed against him, probing too close for comfort. “Okay, so what’s your plan? Will you try to retrieve her on your own and get yourself killed in the process? Or maybe you’ll ask your roommates to help you? Are you willing to risk their lives?”

What the hell was this guy’s problem? Tate just needed to know if Lucia lived. If she did, he’d figure it out from there.

“I don’t care what you do, man.” Cole leaned back, drummed his fingers on the table. “But before you go down this rabbit hole, you need to really think hard on why you’re doing it and the price you’re willing to pay. Right now, you can assume she’s dead and walk away. If you hire me, it’ll be too late to turn back.”

Cole was right. If he found her, if she was still alive, it didn’t matter how dangerous the situation, Tate would do whatever it took to reunite her with her sister. He ached to see the relief on Camila’s face. To know that he was the one who put it there. That he had given her something Matias couldn’t.

That was the fucked-up part, wasn’t it? His motivation was perverse, bordering on obsession, because dammit, he still wanted to win her heart. He wanted to be the one Camila belonged with.

So when Cole asked what price he was willing to pay, what he really wanted to know was how much Tate loved Camila. The answer was easy.

“I’ll send you everything I have on Lucia Dias.” Tate pushed away from the table. “Find her.”

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