I flinch away from the gentle touch under my chin, but he ignores it. Taking a deep breath, I tilt my head back, my gaze slowly moving over the perfectly tailored suit clinging to a broad frame. His shirt is open at the collar, revealing a network of tattoos that creep up his neck as if the ink were trying to strangle him. When I meet his dark eyes, the hairs on the back of my neck rise and my pulse picks up. The suit, the cold mask of ruthless indifference on his face; everything about him makes me feel like prey. It’s as though he’s physically holding me, squeezing me under his sheer presence until my chest constricts. My foggy mind swims through whatever drug they gave me. But even through my muted senses, fear beats away with every staggered breath until I’m drowning in it. I don’t know who this man is, but I can tell he’s someone important, and in Mexico, that’s never a good thing. I’ve seen too much. I know too much. They’re going to kill me.

Tears slip down my cheeks, and I want to be strong, I do, but this isn’t some Hollywood film. This is the cartel, and there are no second chances for a disobedient whore. The thought angers me just as much as it scares me.

They’re going to send me right back to the Sinaloa, and at this point, I know death would be a kindness. I’d almost forgotten what fear felt like. I thought I was numb to such things, but the prospect of death will break even the broken. It’s all I can do not to scream at whatever god-awful twist of fate brought me to this very moment. I clench my jaw and stare right at him. His eyebrows pinch together, and full lips press into a tight line.

“Bring her,” he barks, turning his back on me. The man who walked in with him approaches me, and I try to back away from him. He’s covered in gang tattoos. I can’t clearly make out his face beneath the shadow of his baseball cap with his hood pulled over it. Three tears are inked just below his right eye, and a scar mars his left eyebrow.

At his raised hand, I squeeze my eyes shut, flinching away instinctively. His fingers brush my cheek before he grabs the edge of the tape and yanks it away, taking a layer of skin with it.

“Move,” he says.

Warily, I push to my feet, and pain fires up my left leg as it threatens to give way. The guy in the suit is gone, and I’m not sure who I’d rather be with: him or the gangbanger. I limp to the door, clenching my jaw against the crippling pain. My heart is beating so hard, it’s like it’s going to burst from my chest. With every desperate squeeze, a warning echoes in my ear. Danger, danger, danger. Attempting to steady my breathing, I stumble through the packed bar. My gaze is fixed on the wooden floorboards beneath my feet when I collide with something, or rather, someone. My hands come up in front of me, landing on the soft, expensive fabric of a suit jacket. Broad muscles roll and contract under my palms, and I snatch them away quickly. The music quiets, and the atmosphere in the room becomes instantly tense. The suit in front of me grabs my wrist firmly, yanking me tight behind him until I’m pressed flush against his back. I’m unable to get away, unable to see anything but him.

“Psycho,” he says. A hush falls over the bar, and I can feel the tension like a palpable force.

“Rafael. I’m going to need that one,” a voice says in an arrogant drawl.

Rafael laughs, the sound reverberating through his chest. Then the laughter cuts off, and it’s like that stifling pressure before a storm. The quiet. The suspense. “Get the fuck out of my way.”

“She’s seen too much.”

With a sigh, Rafael steps to the side, leaving me exposed and now standing in front of a man who looks like every nightmare I could possibly muster. A monster. A killer. His face is completely tattooed to look like a skull—his eyes surrounded by black ink. Dead. Bottomless. He takes a step toward me before Rafael grabs my arm and spins me, pulling me against his front. Strong arms wrap around my body until my face is pressed against the soft material of his shirt. The scent of his cologne invades my senses, completely drowning out the smell of stale beer and smoke lingering in the bar.

Bang!

I flinch, inadvertently pressing myself closer to the suited stranger. I barely even hear Psycho’s body hit the floor before we’re moving again. Rafael pushes me away from him and walks off, leaving me standing in the middle of the dirty bar with a dead man’s blood pooling around my bare feet.

“Move!” The other guy tucks his gun back into the waist of his jeans and shoves me forward.

By the time we make it outside, the music has restarted. Men in leather jackets all lean on the railing of the porch, watching us approach a car. The gangbanger opens the back door and shoves me toward the vehicle, forcing me to slide inside after Rafael because what choice do I have? The guy gets in behind me until I’m pressed up against Rafael, trapped between the two of them. Another man sits in the passenger seat, and the driver starts the car. None of them look at me as we pull away, and I say nothing. These men will either take me right back to the Sinaloa compound or keep me for themselves. Maybe they’ll just fuck me and use me. Is that better than death? I have no choice either way. I am a whore in the cartel, and this will always be my fate.

For the briefest moment, I thought I was free. I thought I’d made it out. For a second, I had hope, and hope is so very dangerous for someone like me. It makes the fall into despair that much harder.

“I am Rafael D’Cruze,” the man in the suit finally says, his voice weighted with authority. “Boss of the Juarez cartel.”

I slowly look at him, blinking through the foggy haze still trying to cling to my mind. He’s staring at me, assessing every possible detail. I don’t like it. For the first time in years, I look at someone. Really look. Years of slavery has made me hate men like him with every fiber of my being, and perhaps just men in general. They all disgust me, and yet, I can’t help but notice Rafael’s cold form of beauty. His face could have been carved by a master sculptor—every line flawless. I frown at my train of thought. “This is where you tell me your name,” he says impatiently. I search his almost-black eyes. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anyone. Wordlessly, I lift my hand and pull my hair away from my neck, showing him the tattoo just below my ear. A snake coiled around itself, the number 624 etched into its scales. “I didn’t ask for your slave number.”

“I have no name,” I say, years of ‘training’ kicking in. You have no name. You are no one. He narrows his eyes at me before a small smile touches his lips. He says nothing, and his silence makes me uncomfortable because it’s so much more threatening than anything he might say.

“Your name is Anna Vasiliev,” he says casually as though it’s nothing. I can’t remember the last time I heard my own name or even thought it. I find it strangely without meaning—just the name of a girl long gone.

“It was once,” I say.

He grabs my chin and forces me to look right at him. His eyes are so dark, bottomless, and unreadable, yet flashing a warning as if he were pointing a gun in my face. Everything about him should evoke fear, I know this, and yet the emotion itself is absent, the same way it always is. “How do you know Nero Verdi?” he growls.

“I don’t know who that is.”

He searches my face before his lips press into a tight line and he frowns. “You don’t know.”

The way he looks at me—as if I’m offensive to him in some way, pisses me off, and anger spikes hard and fast through my bloodstream. “Should I?” I snap.

A small smile touches his lips, and I swear I see a trace of amusement in his eyes. “Careful, avecita.” His thumb strokes over the side of my jaw, and he tilts his head to the side.

I close my eyes, swallowing back the bitter anger. In a matter of seconds, I force all my emotions down into the dark place they usually live, shutting the door on them. There is no room for rage or bitterness here. Acceptance. I’m a whore. Nothing more.

When I open my eyes again, he’s staring right back at me. His brows pinch slightly as he searches my expression for…I don’t know. And I allow myself to just drift away from this place, this moment…from existence. His hand drops away from my face, and he turns to look out of the window, dismissing me.

Eventually, the car pulls up to a solid metal gate, so tall that I can see nothing beyond it in the beam of the headlights. Armed men step aside, and the gates slowly glide open, revealing an enormous mansion beyond. The front of the house is illuminated by spotlights, reflecting off the bright white paint. The car stops right at the front door, and I’m dragged out.

Pillars sit either side of the overhanging porch in front of me. Row after row of tall windows line the front of the house and beneath each window are flowerbeds bursting with color. The smell of night Jasmine wraps around me, and I take a deep breath. It’s been a long time since I smelt anything other than cheap cologne and desperation. Everything about this house screams money and power, and it makes me uneasy. A ten-foot-high fence surrounds the property for as far as I can see, which means even if I were brave enough to try and escape, I wouldn’t get far.

Rafael gets out of the car, and I follow, limping behind him. A middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform throws open the door and greets him, smiling as she takes his jacket. He smiles back, and the coldness in his features instantly dissipates as he kisses the older woman’s cheek before saying something quietly. They both turn and look at me, and I see the pity cross her features as she takes in my disheveled state. Walking over to me, she takes my arm, pulling me towards the door. When I limp forward, she stops, glancing down at my leg. The next thing I know, I’m being picked up by a burly man. My entire body goes tense in his hold, and I have to swallow back the bile that rises in my throat when his hands touch my skin, even as innocently as they are. I’m too aware, too wired. It’s playing havoc with my ability to switch off from…this.

The man carries me into the house, and the maid talks at me, but I don’t listen. Despite my best efforts to stay calm, all I can hear is my pulse racing in my ears as anticipation crawls over my skin. We move up a grand staircase and along a hallway until we reach a set of double doors. Opening one of them, she ushers the man inside where he puts me on the bed. I recoil away from him, but he just turns and leaves without a word. It takes me a moment to notice my surroundings. Thick crème carpets and lavish furniture fill the room. Beneath me, the soft brush of satin sheets has me skating my fingers across the material. On the far side of the room are a set of open French doors. Warm night air blows through them, catching the long, gauze curtains. But now I am scared because I’ve been in a house similar to this before; every bit as luxurious and seemingly nice. Whores aren’t kept in nice places,—they’re kept in brothels and dirty basements. This isn’t right.

The maid bustles away through a door, and I hear the sound of running water.

She comes back, stopping in front of me, a frown painted on her face. “My name is Maria.” I say nothing, and she sighs, her frown deepening. “You are safe here.” I inwardly laugh. There’s no such thing as safe, and if there were, I certainly wouldn’t feel it in this house with those men. “Rafael is not a bad man.” I ignore her, and she soon goes back into the bathroom. The water cuts off. “Wash the grime off. There are clothes in the closet. I’ll take these clothes and get rid of them.” She stands there waiting. I slowly pull the shirt over my head and then slip out of the denim shorts, handing them to her. Her eyes trace my body, full of horror and pity. “I’ll send some food up,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. I know what she sees: a skinny girl covered in a lifetime of scars, something broken. “You need a doctor as well.”

She ushers me towards the bathroom, grasping my elbow tightly to help me before she shuts the door. The enormous tub sits in the middle of the huge bathroom, the water steaming. Of course, they’d want me clean before they fuck me.