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"To that fucking auction?" I asked him, crossing my arms over my chest. "No way. What the hell do you want with a place like that?"
"I’m going to get down there and get all those girls out," he replied. I rolled my eyes skyward. This was his problem; he never knew when to keep his shit to himself. I knew he wanted to help, and I understood why, but I didn’t need that shit right now.
"You know we can’t do that."
"Why the fuck not?" Maxim replied as he pulled on his coat. "We pay for them, we can do what we want with them, right?"
"We don’t get involved in anyone else’s business," I reminded him. "Keep our heads down and focus on what we’re doing, right?"
"This is different," he replied, and his eyes darkened. I knew this was personal to him. After what had happened to his mother, the thought of any woman in any kind of danger wasn’t something he could just sit back and allow to happen.
"Why?" I replied.
"Because we can pay, get them out of there, and forget about it," he shot back. "Easy. Doesn’t have to turn into anything bigger."
"It will, though," I reminded him. "If we let them out, they’ll just get picked up and sold again. You know how this works."
"It’s going to be different with me," he replied. I could see that look in his eyes, the one that told me he wasn’t going to just let this go. I gritted my teeth. I appreciated his urge to do the right thing, I did, but there was no way we weren’t going to make an issue out of this if he tried to go down there and free all those girls. Besides, if we were seen at that kind of auction, it could change the way people looked at us—they might think we were open to actually being involved in that kind of work, when I knew neither of us would have entertained it.
"I’m going," he told me bluntly, staring up at me, as though challenging me to stop him. "And you can come, or you can’t. But it’s not going to change my mind."
I glared down at him for a moment, then let out a low growl of irritation. Shit. I knew he wasn’t going to let up on this. No, he had an idea in his head, and he was going to stick by it, no matter what. And I wasn’t going to let my brother walk into that kind of shithole himself.
"Fine," I muttered. "But if any shit goes down, that’s on you, alright?"
"I take full responsibility," he replied, lifting his hands up and grinning at me. "Come on, let’s get out of here. You heard Tony; it’s already started. We don’t have any time to waste."
Chapter Four – Mina
I stared at myself in the mirror. I felt like I was going to throw up.
The girl looking back at me, I had no idea who she was. I could see, somewhere underneath the hair and the makeup, the woman that I had seen in that reflection in the kitchen window—same blonde hair, same green eyes, same freckles, hidden under what felt like a full pound of foundation.
But this girl? This girl was different. She was dressed up to the nines, teased and plucked and preened to perfection. And ready to be sent out on stage and auctioned off to the highest bidder to pay off the last of her father’s debts.
I still couldn’t believe this was happening. When those men had kicked in the door and snatched me, right from my own house, I had no idea what to think—did they expect my father to pay a ransom or something? Expect him to come up with the cash they wanted? I tried to explain to them that he had no money, there was no way he would have been able to afford anything they were asking from him, but one of them landed a sharp slap on my cheek and told me to be quiet.
It wasn’t until I was dragged out of the van at a new location that it all started to sink in. I had been taken to a club—the kind of sleek, chic place that would never have opened its doors to anyone who didn’t have the cash for it. I was shoved in through a dingy back entrance, forced into a dressing room alongside a handful of other women, all of whom looked as shaken as I did.
"What’s going on?" I pleaded with one of my kidnappers. "Can you just tell me? I don’t understand."
"Shut the fuck up," he’d spat back at me. I was so confused. I didn’t understand anything. I felt like I was going to pass out from the terror of it all, but I knew I had to keep my wits about me. One wrong move, and all of this would be even worse than it already was …
Eventually, I was dragged into a back office by one of the men who had taken me, and he looked me up and down as though I was some cow ready for market.
"I don’t understand why you’re doing this," I begged him. "I just want to know why this is happening. My father is going to be so—"
"Your father?” he shot back, cutting me off before I could go any further. "Your father knows exactly where you are. He’s the one who sold you to us."
My stomach dropped.
"What are you talking about?" I gasped. No way—no way could they be telling me the truth. My father might have made some mistakes in his life, but he would never have condemned me to something like this …
"He didn’t tell you?" he sneered at me, his voice laced with a cruel callousness. "You’re paying his debts for him. He owed us far too much to afford it with anything else but … well. You."
"What do you mean, I’m paying his debts?" I asked, my voice trembling helplessly. He shrugged.
"You’ll see," he replied. "Talk to the other girls. They’ll tell you."
