KILLING SARAI(58)

I thrash around more violently, trying to roll over onto my back so that I can get up. Suddenly he’s lying fully on top of me, and his closeness, the warmth of his breath on the side of my neck, takes my breath away. My entire frame solidifies beneath him and then begins to relax, melting into his body as his voice dances along the shell of my ear.

“I will be gentle,” he whispers and my skin shivers from my ear down the full length of my spine.

He presses himself into me from behind, his hardness obvious behind the thin layer of his pants that separates us.

“I promise,” he says onto my ear. “But it has to come out. Do you understand? Do you trust me?” He presses his hips toward me again and I feel me moving against him involuntarily. I shut my eyes when the tingling sensation between my legs moves through my back and into my eyelids.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I trust you.”

“Good,” he says softly and slowly raises himself off of me.

I remain very still, thinking so much more about Victor and what he just did to me than the more imperative threat. A part of me doesn’t even care about what he’s going to do, that he’s about to cut into me with a knife, that it’s going to hurt like hell. And perhaps that’s the only reason he did what he did, knowing somehow that he could control my mood, my emotions, with the hope that he might touch me more than he already has. I feel like a toy and Victor knows every button on me which to push, to touch, in order to make me do whatever he wants, feel whatever he wants me to feel. And I don’t mind. I don’t know how he did it, but I don’t mind at all.

“Bite down on the pillow if you have to,” he says.

I reach up and grab the nearest pillow towards me, crushing it against my chest. I squeeze my eyes shut tight.

The blade goes in and I yell out in pain before burying my face within the pillow, my entire body hardening like a block of cement.

In seconds, the device is out and Victor stands at the foot of the bed looking down into the space between his bloody fingers at something as small as a grain of rice.

With his free hand, he reaches for the towel he used to dry off with after his shower, which had been lying on the floor nearby. He hands it to me. “Put pressure on it to stop the bleeding,” he says and walks across the room into his bathroom.

While I press the towel on the back of my hip, I hear the water running in the sink and then the sound of him rummaging through his medicine cabinet. With one hand holding the towel in place, I get up from the bed to find my shirt, letting the towel drop only long enough to slip it on.

Victor walks out of the bathroom with an orange pill bottle clasped in his fingers and walks right past me and to the door.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX





Victor





“Niklas,” I say coming out of the room, “does this look familiar to you?” I step right up to him and hold out the pill bottle with the tracking device inside.

He takes it into his fingers.

I hear soft footsteps behind me as Sarai emerges from my bedroom, but I keep my attention on Niklas.

He peers into the side of the bottle first but then twists the cap off and shuffles the device into the palm of his hand.

He looks up at me.

“Same type of device they use in the girls in Dubai,” he says. He glances at Sarai. “You found this in her?” Then he drops it back in the bottle and tightens the lid. “I hate to ask where.”

Niklas wipes his hand on his jacket.

“If it is one of theirs,” I say, “this means that Javier Ruiz has a much larger operation than any of us knew. I’ve never known of a drug lord like Ruiz to have access to this kind of technology.”

“They don’t care about technology,” Niklas says. “All they deal in are drugs, weapons and girls.”

“Had,” Sarai says and I turn around to see her. “That Javier had a much larger operation. He’s dead, remember?”

“Yes,” I say, “but that doesn’t mean his operation is. It means that it’ll be passed on to whoever else was in line to control it.”

“Well what does that have to do with us?” Sarai asks.

I feel the urge to tell her to put on some pants while in front of Niklas, but I stop myself.

“There is no us,” Niklas says.

Sarai glares at him and readjusts the bloody towel against her hip.

“Then what does it have to do with me?” she snaps. “Or, with either of you?”

“It has nothing to do with you,” I say. “Not anymore. You were Javier’s and if he had sold you or promised you to another buyer you wouldn’t have been in his possession for as long as you were. He had no intention in letting anyone else have you. Now that he’s dead you have nothing more to fear.” I pause. “As far as what it has to do with us—.” I stop right there, knowing better than to tell her any more than she already knows or I’ll only put her in further danger with the Order.

And judging by the look on Niklas’ face I’ve said too much already, in his opinion.

He slips the pill bottle into his jacket pocket.

“I’ll get rid of it,” he says, then without moving his head I see his eyes avert to Sarai for a split second. His hatred for her seethes beneath the calm and disciplined fa?ade he’s wearing. “So then what’s our next move? Will I be covering for you with Vonnegut, or are you going rogue?”