Unorthodox (Sick Love Book 1) Read online

Flying down to Culiacan wasn’t on my agenda, but when a man offering for one girl what you’d give your own fucking life for, you get on the plane.

  Turns out though, I didn’t meet him.

  I met his second, Elliot. I was given nauseating reminders of why this girl in front of me is nothing but property. Something to be bought and sold, in order to save someone that means more to me than anyone else ever could.

  If Addison’s future owner is anything like Elliot, she is truly fucked.

  I had to hold myself in check, meeting with him. I had to reign in my temper, force myself not to think about Ollie. About the things he could’ve endured the past eighteen years. About what Addison will endure in his stead.

  I hadn’t planned to tell her any of that. I hadn’t planned to worry her about things that are outside of both of our control. Instead, I’d planned to treat her well. Maybe even move her into my room until I fly her out to her new home.

  Her owner lives in Texas, but as Elliot told me, transferring ownership will be best done in Culiacan. No one will blink at a slave’s screams there.

  I had planned to shield her from that truth, and she’d learn nothing of it until I was on a flight back to the States with my brother in tow.

  But she’s lost herself the privilege of ignorance.

  As she stares at me, defying me all over again, I slip my hand into my pocket, squeeze the king of spades, the hearts replaced since I ripped it up.

  For a brief second, I think of those cards.

  I think of the system with my family.

  Of the way my nightmares would come in waves. Some nights, there’d be none. I’d sleep soundly, slipping into blackness every night.

  But some nights, I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing my father’s men.

  Feeling them.

  Without hearing my own screams. How it made them harder. How my father laughed. He watched.

  He fucking watched.

  “This is how bitches get treated, Maximus. Is that what you are?”

  In my dream, as it’d happened in reality, I could feel someone’s hand closing around my throat. Pain like I’ve never known since seemed to rip me apart from the inside out, even during sleep.

  “Are you a little bitch, Max?”

  And the dreams always ended the same. With my stomach churning, my entire body hot, I’d wake up in the gurney, my father looming over me: “You had to be stitched up. And for what, Maximus?” He leaned down close, his eyes alight with amusement. Before he’d told me about Ollie, he’d said, “You’re still a little bitch.”

  The next morning, after the nightmares that kept playing in my head even after I woke up started to fade, I’d be sitting up in the bed I shared with Ollie, staring into nothing. Saying nothing.

  I didn’t have the words.

  Just like Ollie.

  My mother cried for me when she found me catatonic. Pleaded with me. Screamed at me. Shook me. Slapped me. Then, after a few times of the same pattern repeating, she brought home a deck of cards.

  “If you don’t want to talk and want me to leave you alone, give me a face card.” She’d shown me the jack, queen, king. “If you want me to hold you, give me an ace.”

  I had gestured to the numbered cards, my eyes meeting her big blue ones in question.

  She had smiled, kissed my head as we sat side by side in my bed, the cards fanned out between us. “When you don’t know what you want, Max, give me a number, just so I know you’re still in there, okay, baby? Then, I’ll wait for you to decide.”

  Ollie had been watching.

  Sometimes, Ollie used the cards too.

  After she died and he went missing, the different cards lost their significance.

  Instead, they became a way to remind myself that I’m still in here.

  A way to remind myself that I’ll never let anyone take from me what my father and his men took from me.

  Not again.

  Not even for a girl like Addison. A stupidly brave girl, just like my mother. In the end, it didn’t work for either of them.

  I grit my teeth when she doesn’t move, then I lunge for her, grabbing her wrist and yanking her toward me, her trembling body flush against mine.

  I bring my arm around her, gun against her spine.

  She stiffens, pressing further into me as she stares up at me, her lips parted.

  “Don’t be scared, love,” I tell her, my fingers tangling in her hair, yanking her head back. “I’m only going to show you your future.”

  Dante sits against one wall, without his pants, in only his boxers. His wrists are on his knees as he stares straight ahead at the white wall.

  The one I stared at for too long the night after I failed to use a knife to put Max Bennett in the grave, where he belongs.

  Dante is unarmed, but I know if he wanted to, he could do some serious damage to Max. Considering we just got ourselves fucked up, now might be the time to do just that.

  But he doesn’t move.

  “Sit,” Max orders me, so close behind me that I jump. As tall as he is, I never seem to be able to hear him coming.

  I glance at the shackles along the wall adjacent mine, and wish he was only going to tie me up here again and walk out, leaving me alone. At least then, I’d know what to expect. A night cramped and uncomfortable, but with Max on the outside.

  Keeping a healthy distance between me and Dante—I’m still concerned about his legs and Max’s promise to break them—I sink to the cement floor, pulling my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around my calves.

  It’s only then I notice something black in the middle of the floor, a cylinder with buttons on top.

  A capsule projector.

  Danik had one of those, and sometimes, when things got really bad, I’d sneak into his room in the night and we’d watch conspiracy theory documentaries, one entire wall of his room lit with facts and figures of alien abductions, comical renderings of extraterrestrial beings based on witness accounts.

  Before that, with my father, the documentaries were an escape. Almost their own out-of-body experience, to stop me from feeling all the things my own dad did to me.

  The sight of the projector is almost comforting.

  Until I remember what Max said. “I’m only going to show you your future.”

  I hug my knees a little tighter to my chest.

  Max closes the door to the room and locks it, and we’re shrouded in darkness. It was like this when he left me before. No light enters from under the door and there are no windows.

  Just darkness, and for a moment, silence, save for the sound of my pulse beating in my ears.

  Then I see a soft glow, and realize Max is holding his phone as he stands by the door. The light illuminates his face, and he looks almost demonic, alone in the corner of the room, his eyes fixed to the screen.

  I watch a wicked smile curve his lips and feel my limbs lock up as he starts to speak.

  “Most sex slaves in the States come from poverty,” he says coldly, and I see his eyes shift from his phone, to me.

  My blood runs cold, and I dig my fingers into my shins to stop them from shaking.

  “Dante here, he came from Mexico. The slave of a boss in the cartel, but the big cartels often stick to drugs and guns.” Max laughs, and it’s unsettling. The little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “It’s the U.S. you really have to watch out for.” He pauses, still staring at me, phone still glowing in his hand. “But even still, you, Addison,” he sighs, “you were never in the usual targets. And that makes you worth so much more.” His smile widens. “A spoiled little rich girl, who wouldn’t want to put you in your place?”

  I don’t need to tell him how wrong he is about me. I wasn’t spoiled. My father might have been wealthy, but those riches never brought me anything but misery.

  He must know that, if only because of how women in our world are always treated. Daughters, especially.

  But I don’t speak.

  Dante hasn’t moved. I t
hink about what Max just said about him. A slave. Just like what I might be, if my father doesn’t care enough about his reputation to free me. No wonder Dante was so willing to fuck me.

  “Ben gave you a taste of what’s to come.” My throat feels constricted with the mention of Ben’s name from Max’s mouth. “But I think it’s best if you really see what you’re getting yourself into.”

  The projector sparks to life, glowing white against the entire wall opposite Dante and me.

  For a moment, there’s nothing but that as the little capsule starts up, humming quietly.

  Then an image fills the wall.

  I blink, trying to take in exactly what I’m seeing. It’s a room, I realize, empty. Almost like this one in that it has no windows, but there’s carpet instead of cement, and a light overhead, flicked on.

  The door is closed.

  The walls are painted a sickly sort of pastel pink.

  A sense of foreboding washes over me even though there is nothing particularly wrong with this image.

  But then the door opens, and I realize it’s not an image at all as someone crawls into the room, on her hands and knees.

  A girl.

  Black hair pulled back in a ponytail, something around her neck.

  A collar.

  My chest feels tight, and it’s hard to take a breath.

  As she crawls into the room, her head down, I see she’s completely naked, save for the collar.

  There’s a leash attached to that collar, and then a man appears.

  Neither of them has said a word.

  The man closes the door, leash in hand. He’s dressed in jeans and a white shirt. White, with blonde hair, a square jaw. Maybe in his forties.

  I don’t look at him for long.

  My eyes go back to the girl. I can’t see her face, so I have no idea how old she is, but she’s thin. I can make out her spinal column, even see her ribs.

  She shifts on the floor, sitting back on her heels in the position Ben taught me, her hands on her thighs, head still down.

  I clamp one hand over my mouth, try to stifle my gasp.

  Her chest is covered in angry red marks.

  Whips.

  She’s been whipped. But not on her back.

  The man stares at her a moment, from behind her. He slowly walks around to her side, and she doesn’t move.

  Then he kicks her in the ribs.

  I cover my eyes with my hands as I hear her soft grunt.

  “Oh no,” Max’s cold voice says from by the door, “open your eyes, love.”

  I don’t. I press my fingers so hard against my sockets it hurts, but I refuse to open my eyes, especially as I hear the girl moan again.

  Then the man speaks for the first time. A British accent as he says, “You ungrateful fucking bitch.” Anger laced in his words.

  This time, the girl cries out.

  I know he must have hurt her again.

  I refuse to look.

  I feel like I’m going to be sick.

  “Addison,” Max says softly. “Open your eyes.”

  I shake my head, bury my face against my knees so I can clamp my hands over my ears. I don’t want to hear it or see it. I don’t want to be here.

  I want to run.

  When I hear the girl cry out again, I can’t help it.

  I start to scream.

  In seconds, hands wrap around my wrists, pulling them from over my head. I keep screaming, even as someone grabs my face, forcing it up, away from my knees.

  Max.

  My eyes lock on Max’s, and the scream dies in my throat.

  The projector is still on, but it’s a white screen again.

  The girl is gone. The man is gone.

  I notice, out of the corner of my eye, Dante is staring straight ahead.

  Max’s blue and grey eyes are focused on mine. “Do you know that’s going to be your life?” He has my wrists in his hands, but I kick out at him, my foot colliding with his chest.

  He swallows, but that’s his only reaction that he was affected at all.

  Still, just as I try to kick him again, he grabs my shoulders, pins me to the cement floor, hands over my head as he straddles me, his knees preventing me from moving my legs.

  I twist my head away from him, my lower lip trembling as tears spring behind my eyes.

  “That’s going to be your life soon, love,” he says again as I stare at the wall, trying not to think. Trying not to feel his body on mine. “And if you keep trying to fuck my men, it’ll be your life here, too.”

  “I fucking hate you.” It’s a whisper, and I don’t even know if he heard me, so I say it again, just in case. “I fucking hate you.”

  His grip around my wrists tighten and he leans down close to me, his chest brushing mine, his mouth over my ear. “It’s nothing personal, baby girl.” His nose traces the line of my jaw and I want to kill him. “It’s just business.”

  Max takes me back to my bedroom. Leaves me there and locks the door from the outside.

  I huddle under the sheets of my bed, replaying the video in my head, over and over and over. The woman’s groans, the marks along the front of her body.

  Max’s words, “Do you know that’s going to be your life?”

  I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him what me and Dante did, because for now, Dante is alive. Maybe when he takes me away from here, maybe when he’s planning to give me up, maybe then I’ll ruin it for him, with Dante safe from his grasp.

  And I can’t tell him it wasn’t Dante that was first. I can’t make myself that disposable. Not yet.

  I toss and turn, stuff a pillow over my head.

  I think of all the nightmares that have already been my life. Cade, Danik, my father, his men.

  Max.

  I think of the night my father threw knives at me as I stood against the wall in our kitchen, wearing nothing but a slip that I’d thrown on, hoping to get Fernando into my room again. Hoping to get someone on my side. Hoping to feel something but fucking misery after a particularly long and torturous rape from my father.

  One of the knives had grazed my ear.

  Whenever I tried to move, my father had his men hold me, risking their own bodies in the process.

  The third knife he threw sliced the satin material of my slip, cut the skin of my hip.

  “Do you know that’s going to be your life?”

  I sit up, reaching for the lamp on my nightstand, and I hurl it across the room, straight at the television.

  The bulb shatters and the TV falls from the wall with a thud.

  I fling my covers off, get out of bed and grab the base of the lamp, ripping the shade off. I head into my bathroom, banging the door against the wall, my heart pounding hard in my chest.

  Flicking on the light, I stare at my angry reflection. I’m in black shorts, a black tank, and my eyes are bleary and red. The tank top cuts down low enough to see the burns on my chest, small circles in the shape of a cigarette, courtesy of my father.

  I hold the base of the lamp like a bat and swing it as hard as I can into the mirror.

  It splinters, the sound almost startling as shards of glass fall into the sink. My reflection is warped. Twisted. I swing at the mirror again, a guttural roar coming past my lips. It doesn’t even sound like me.

  I like it.

  I swing at the mirror again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Glass is everywhere, shards skittering off the plain white sink down to the floor, at my bare feet.

  I hit it again.

  My arms ache on each impact, but I keep hitting it, over and over and over until I see the bare wall behind it. Panting, I lower the lamp, stare at what’s left of the mirror over the sink.

  I can’t see my face anymore, the cracks and shattered edges distorting far too much to show a true reflection.

  Or maybe that is my reflection now.

  Ruination.

  I raise my arms to swing again, but something stops me, pulling aga
inst the base of the lamp, prying it from my hands.

  I spin around, my breath catching in my throat as I stare up at Max.

  “Give that back.” I step toward him, not even thinking, just reacting. “Give that back now.” I reach for the black, slender base, but Max steps out of reach, holds it behind his back.

  “Stop,” he says, impatience lined in that word, like I’m a child throwing a tantrum. He’s dressed in black joggers, a plain white T-shirt, stretched across his chest.

  The sight is jarring, seeing him out of his usual button down and tailored pants. I wonder if he’s gone fucking running again.

  I shake my head, pissed at myself for giving a shit what he’s wearing.

  “Give that back, Max,” I tell him, stepping toward him again, over the glass.

  He takes another step back and we’re out of the bathroom, the carnage behind me.

  “Get on the bed,” he says, his jaw tight as he jerks his head toward the unmade bed. I notice he has circles under his eyes, deep purple that bring out the blue of his irises.

  Maybe that should be a warning.

  As it is, I don’t care much for warnings. And I don’t care much for Max.

  I step into his space, anger welling up tight in my chest. “Fuck you.” I lunge for him, grabbing his arm, trying to pull it forward, to get the lamp back.

  But I should’ve known that wouldn’t work out how I wanted it to.

  He drops the base behind him where it clatters to the floor, and then his hands come to my throat as he shoves me against the wall, beside the bathroom.

  His fingers dig into my skin and mine come to his forearms, scratching at him. He leans his weight against me, pressing me further into the wall, making it impossible to draw breath.

  “Stop fighting me, Addison.”

  I dig my nails deeper into his skin.

  His eyes narrow. “Addison.” But his voice doesn’t have its usual bite. Instead, it’s almost…pleading. “Stop.”

  I let go of him.

  I don’t know why, but at his plea, I do.

  He steps back, dropping his hands from my throat, looking at the floor for a second.

  Then he’s back on me.

  He presses his body back into mine as he kisses me. His lips are bruising. He bites me, pulling out my lower lip, running his hands through my hair.