She fights me until the last, which actually in a lot of ways makes it easier, the move comes on faster the more you fight it. Her body presses against mine as I carefully lower her to the ground, looking up at Larissa who looks both amused and disappointed. “What?”

“You didn't have to make it so quick,” she says in her normal unique sense of humor. “I barely had time to ask about a single bet.”

“Yeah well,” I reply, looking around quickly at Leon and the other members of The Sultan's men, “bring me that poncho, and some rope, quickly. She won't be out long, and I want her fully tied up before then.”

“No problem,” Larissa says, turning and barking some orders at The Sultan's men in Arabic, the other language that all of The Sultan's men know. Two of them jump to follow her orders while Larissa brings the poncho over and helps me wrap the woman in it. “Never seen you make such a quick purchase.”

“Didn't exactly have time to haggle over things,” I respond as I wrap the woman up like a burrito, pulling the hood tight over her beautiful face, leaving her just a small breathing hole. I can't afford for her to know where exactly I'm taking her, not yet. After using two of the corners of the poncho to tie it to itself, I tie her upper body in two more places, then once each around her knees and ankles. Not a perfect job, but I think it'll be good enough.

One of the The Sultan's men returns with some flat nylon webbing and I get it around her for a final binding just as the woman starts to stir. I don't have a choice, I put pressure on the side of her neck again until she passes out one more time, but I can't risk it again, it's not healthy. “Can you go get my truck?”

“You're going to owe me,” Larissa says with a chuckle as she takes my keys and leaves. I pick up the girl and heave her over my shoulder, perhaps not the most dignified of carries but effective as I grab her behind her knees and carry her towards the door, using the nylon webbing to help balance her better.

“I'm taking my purchase back to my villa,” I say to Leon, who follows me. “The Dryad will stay and supervise until I come back. If I hear of any of the other merchandise being mistreated while I'm gone... whoever it is will answer to me personally, regardless of if you work for The Sultan or not. Understand?”

Leon gives me a surly nod just as Larissa brings my truck around, grinning when she throws it into park. “Fun! I should get one of these!”

“I keep telling you that,” I comment as she opens the back of the crew cab. The girl on my shoulder starts to stir, her voice slurring. I quickly put her inside and stretch her out, buckling the lap belt on the middle seat around her waist.

“What... who? Fucker!” she starts to yell, and I put my hand on her shoulder, holding her down.

“Listen to me very carefully,” I say quietly, soothingly in her ear. There's a time for iron, and there's a time for velvet, something I know very well. “You're blindfolded for your safety. If these other men thought you knew where you are, they'd kill you regardless of how many asses I can kick, and even I can't handle ten on one odds. Now, I'm taking you to my place. If you stay quiet the whole trip, I'll make your new room more comfortable. If you don't, if you kick or damage my truck, you're going to be thrown in there as naked as you are right now. Your choice, but either way, you're leaving the slave pens as mine. Now, what's your name?”

The woman squirms a little, but stops after a second. “Jessica Prince.”

“Okay Jessica Prince, do you understand what I just told you?” I ask, leaning in close enough that I can smell her scent even over the moldy reek of the poncho. She smells like a real woman should even, rich and authentic. My cock stirs in my pants, and I tell it to shut the fuck up for a moment, I've got more important things to worry about. “Just a simple yes or no will be fine.”

“Yes,” Jessica says, and I pat her on the shoulder.

“Very good. Now, lift your head up, I'm going to close the door,” I say, nodding in approval as she does just that and I get to close my rear door without any issues. I go around to the driver's side, where Larissa is waiting for me. “I told Leon that you'd monitor until I get back?”

“Don't take too long, you wouldn't want Scoglitti or The Sultan thinking you're being slack,” Larissa says with a chuckle, looking in my back window. “She's beautiful. You're going to have a lot of fun with her.”

“I figured that too,” I lie, making Larissa laugh. “What?”

“Just remember, Rachmaninoff will want the money soon. A girl like that, what do you figure?” Larissa asks. “Priceless?”

It's my turn to laugh, Larissa reads me too easily which both scares me and amuses me. “Nothing in our world is priceless, Larissa. At least, not what we sell. But I figure Rachmaninoff is going to want between two and three hundred grand for this one. A fair price, most likely.”

I climb in and pull away, driving quickly. I intentionally bought my villa on the far side of Caccamo from The Farm, a country villa that was nearly totally wrecked when I bought it a year and a half ago. With four acres of total land, and a half acre main property that is ringed by a fifteen foot high wall, it's a beautiful house. From my second floor bedroom I can even look out and see Lago Rosamarina, the artificial lake that adds a majestic splendor to my morning view.

The whole drive, Jessica stays quiet except for a few whimpers of fear, and I can feel for her. She's terrified, and she barely understands how much better she is with me than what The Sultan had set aside for her. She gets jostled a little when I turn off of the paved Provincial Strada and down the dirt road that leads to my villa, but I've made sure the road is graded as smooth as possible considering that I still haven't finished all my renovations.

The gate opens on my remote command, one of my first big upgrades to the house and a useful security feature. I drive through, parking and shutting off the engine to my truck before I turn around. “We're here. I'm going to carry you, there's some sharp stones in the yard, and you don't have shoes. Don't fight me, or I'll drop you on your ass. Understand?”

“Yes,” Jessica's muffled voice says. “Can I see?”

“Inside,” I reply, heartened that she asked instead of demanding. “The blindfold's for my safety now as much as yours.”

I go around and pull her from the truck, carrying her over my shoulder again. I'd like to be more dignified, but that whole carrying a woman in your arms thing doesn't work when her entire upper body looks like a fucked up high school drama club version of a mummy. Still, I'm as careful as I can as I take her into my villa. I've gotten most of it renovated, and structurally it's more sound than it's been since about eighteen seventy.

But there's about a quarter of the first floor that, while strong, isn't finished off yet. It's one of these rooms I put Jessica in, a room that I was thinking of turning into a root cellar or maybe a walk in refrigerator, getting food out here is a bitch sometimes when I'm busy with work for Scoglitti. For now it's a secure storage closet, with just what I need for Jessica until she earns a better place, and until I can trust her more. I set her down and she squawks when her butt thumps off the dirt floor, indignant and surprised. I reach down to open the hole and pull the hood of her poncho off, careful to avoid her mouth in case she wants to bite. She blinks even though there's only a single dim twenty watt light bulb, looking around with a sarcastic fawning expression. “Nice.”

“You behaved on the ride, so hang on,” I retort before leaving, closing the door behind me. The room has a thick steel bolt closure with space for a lock on it, so I quickly run upstairs, grabbing what I need and hauling it down. I open the door to see that Jessica has at least wormed herself into a sitting position, her knees underneath her as I drag the thin mattress through the door and lay it down.

“It gets cold in here at night, and I don't have any clothes for you yet. Use this and this blanket, it'll help for now until I return.”

Jessica looks around, then at me, her eyes still so angry, but also there's fear in there. “So what am I, a dog now?”

“No,” I reply, squatting down and reaching for her ankles. “Here's the rules. They're pretty simple, and you seem smart, even for a Jersey girl.”

“How'd you know I'm from Jersey?” Jessica asks, and I chuckle.

“You've got the accent when you get angry. Now, the rules. You're going to stay in this room until I know I can trust you not to do something stupid. Don't try and get out, the wall behind you is a foot thick, same with the side walls. You behave, you learn to obey and do things right, you get rewarded. You don't, you'll be punished.”

“You mean raped,” Jessica says, and I can see the accusation in her eyes, she's scared of it more than anything else. The relief that washes over her face when I shake my head is clear.

“I don't rape, Jessica. I don't need to, and I don't find it fun or in any way manly. Those pussies at the slave pens are pathetic motherfuckers who aren't even men in my opinion. So no, no rape. You are mine however, and that means I will take care of you and properly train you. Now, just like before, if you promise to behave, I will untie you. If not, I'll drag your tied up ass to the mattress and drop the blanket over you to keep you warm, leaving you here for a while to think shit out. Will you behave?”

“Yes,” Jessica says, her eyebrow lifting when I don't move. “What, I said yes!”

“The proper answer is yes, Master,” I inform her quietly. “Understand?”

“Yes.......” Jessica says, struggling. I can see it in her face, using that word is going to be very difficult for her. It makes it even more delicious, so many women have thrown around that word without understanding just how much meaning it has to me. Not this one. “I guess you need to drag me to the mattress.”

I shake my head, undoing the hitch knot on her ankles before reaching for the knots on her upper body, undoing two of them and loosening the third, which is made up of the poncho itself. Finally, I undo the nylon packing strap, giving her a chance to get out. “You tried, you get something for that. If you wiggle carefully, you'll be able to free your hands and lower arms in about ten minutes. Now, if you want clothes, when I come back I expect to find the poncho folded neatly at the foot of your mattress, the rope that's around your knees on top of it.”

“And if I decide to hang myself?” Jessica asks, and I look up, her eyes following me.

“Going to be impossible to do that with no beams or anything to tie the rope off on,” I reply, standing up and looking her over. “Stay warm, behave, think about the rules that I've outlined, and I'll bring you some dinner when I return. If you behave.”

I leave quickly, making sure the door is closed and the bolt shot across before I jump back in my truck and head back towards The Farm. As I do, my mind ponders what the fuck I just did. First of all, I feel like shit for locking Jessica up. I know it's for her own safety, she's an American woman in Sicily. She's already been taken prisoner once, she's naked, and she's a victim waiting to happen. Still, I'm not in the habit of locking up beautiful young women like fine wine.

Besides, that doesn't explain everything. Why'd I even buy her? Interrupting Kahled is one thing, he's a jackass who would have scarred her for life if not flat out fucked up and maimed her. But buying her? I've never done that before, I've never even thought about it. At least though she's got a much better future with me than she would have had. I've met some of The Sultan's 'elite customers' when they've come to The Farm on 'shopping tours,' they'd have had Jessica beaten severely already. To them, losing a couple hundred thousand euro because they've beaten a girl to death is about as much of a problem as a normal person breaking a coffee mug. Sure, you might get pissed off, sure you might even curse a little, but it's no big thing.

Jessica though... that body, those eyes, that spirit... maybe that's just what it is. She speaks to the other side of me. The side of me that thrills at the thought of her calling me Master, the side of me that wants to see those amazing legs trembling and her breath catching as she explores all the sensations that a human body can provide, that side of me sees her as worth the risk. The side of me that says this woman could be priceless.

Which means I need to be very, very careful.

* * *

“That's the last one,” Leon says as he closes the door on the back of the truck. To anyone who doesn't know the truth, they'd think The Farm was just making a delivery to Termini Imerese, and the paperwork the driver has says that it's a shipment of agricultural products bound for Lebanon.

“Good,” I reply, watching the rest of The Sultan's men pile into their vehicles to go back to their ship. “Anything else?”

“The Sultan will not be happy about Kahled,” Leon says, bringing the subject up again. “You know that, right?”

“I know that if Kahled wants to be a bitch about it, I'll be more than happy to deal with it,” I shoot back. Leon's a passive aggressive type, a wheedler and a whiner. I have no fucking clue how he got so high in The Sultan's operation. “If The Sultan wants to be compensated for his medical care, then he can speak with me personally about it.”

Leon blanches at the threat in my voice, and he nods, getting in the last of The Sultan's vehicles and driving away. I watch them go, feeling bad about what's going to happen to the girls I didn't save. But nearly two dozen girls... I can't. Even if the rest of their lives are going to be most likely nasty, brutal, and short, I can't do anything about it.

In some ways, I wish Larissa were here right now to talk. Yes, she's a seductress and a killer. Yes, one of her favorite things to do is to fuck her targets and then kill them just after they come. Yes, she likes to playfully flirt with me, mainly because she knows I'm fully aware that she's a black widow, and that I'll never let her get close enough to slip a blade into my brain even as I come deep inside her body. But she does have a moral code, and I find comfort from listening to her point of view. And besides, she's one of the people in The Network I actually enjoy spending time with outside of work. Not that I'd ever let my guard down with her.

In any case, I've got other things to do. I leave The Farm and drive back through Caccamo, stopping on the main road at a small women's clothing shop. Caccamo is a city that thrives on two things, The Network and tourism, and most of the modern shopping is further away at Termini. But there's a few stores, like this one, that cater to locals who either can't or won't make the twenty kilometer drive to the oceanside port.

“Bonnanote!” the owner says as I come in, something that I do like about living in Italy. These old school shop owners, they'll yell, they'll haggle, they'll harass you... just like they do with their best friends or family members any time they come into the shop as well.

“Where's your casual things?” I ask in Italian, my accent not quite Sicilian but still clear and sounding almost native. In fact, in Rome nobody asks me if I'm a foreigner at all. In Caccamo they know better than to ask.

“Over here,” the shopkeeper says, showing me the small selection. This is a small shop, this isn't like shopping at a mega discount store. Still, she has what I need, light sweatpants and sweatshirt along with a t-shirt. I wouldn't get Jessica underthings here, and besides, she hasn't earned them yet. “Ah, very good! Your lady will enjoy these!”

“I hope so,” I answer, not letting on exactly who or why I'm buying them. “How much?”

“Forty euro,” the shopkeeper says, smiling when I hand over a fifty and wave off the change. I do my best to make sure the town gets a little bit more of the profits from our activities than what the townspeople might report on their income taxes. It's the Sicilian way. “Thank you, kind sir.”

“Ciao,” I greet as I leave, getting back in my truck. Before I start up my engine I reach into my pocket and take out my cell phone, typing out a quick message to an unlisted number.

Shipment leaving Imerese tonight. Heading for Lebanon, bound for Mideast. Sultan is transporting.

I hit send, waiting for the phone to say that the message was sent. I know I won't get a reply, I almost never do. I just get a deposit in my other bank account, and the moral quandary that'll have me visiting Father Giacamo at confession in another day or two, ready to unburden my soul as much as I safely can.

In Caccamo, even the confessional isn't always sacrosanct. And keeping secrets is very important, if I want to stay alive.