Unorthodox (Sick Love Book 1) Read online

He runs his fingers down my back, and I wonder if the marks from Ben’s whip are still there. He leans close to me, his body brushing mine. “Relax,” he says against my ear. “I’m not going to hurt you again in here. Stand still, and I’ll take care of you.”

  I don’t miss the warning in those words.

  He washes my hair, his fingers firm but gentle against my scalp, and despite my rigid posture, some part of me softens with that touch. When he runs conditioner through my ends, and the scent of coconut envelops us in the hot shower, I almost groan, my eyes closed as he runs his fingers through my hair, rinsing me. And when he washes me with his bare hands slipping between my thighs, just barely grazing me, I know I am well and truly fucked.

  Something is wrong with me, and I’ve known it for a long time.

  His hands just confirm what I already knew.

  Because I don’t fight him again. I don’t cry. I don’t scream.

  I just…enjoy it. When you’re given nothing but pain your entire life, you take the good parts where you can get them, even if they’re from the monsters.

  But that other part of my brain, the part that doesn’t want me to get hurt, that knows I’m all messed up, that part gently reminds me that, someone will come for me.

  Later in the evening, after the shower with Addison, Dante knocks three times on my office door. Sharp raps in quick succession.

  Even still, I reach for the gun on my desk and rise from my chair.

  I cast my eyes around my office. It’s a strange habit I have of checking my surroundings before another body enters the room, even if I am already in it. My black curtains are pulled closed on the floor-to-ceiling windows to my right, dark oak bookcase full of books to my left.

  Satisfied, I call out, “Ven aquí.” Come here.

  It’s my favorite phrase in any language. It’s also the only two words that Dante will actually open my office door to.

  The matte black knob turns, and I keep my grip on the gun, but don’t aim it at the door. It’s an instinct I’ve had to train myself not to do. Since I got my first weapon in my hands after my mother’s death and Oliver’s disappearance, it’s been a reflex to aim it at anyone entering any room I’m in.

  I’ve nearly shot Dante countless times since I first met him. I saved him from the middle of a shootout down in Tijuana.

  He was bloody and beaten, barely recognizable as a human being at all. Technically, he hardly was. He was a sex slave. An American boy whose American parents sold him for American drugs.

  If North Carolina wasn’t the best place to hide the worst crimes, I’d leave this country and never come back.

  But the money…it’s too good to pass up.

  I don’t remember why I dragged Dante out of the heap of bodies behind the warehouse packed full of explosives I’d stupidly marched off to in order to save my merchandise. He was seventeen at the time, five years ago, naked and caked with blood and grime.

  But in the pile of corpses, he was still moving.

  Maybe that drew my eye; his determination. He’d come with his owner, and his owner was a coward for bringing him to what would have been his death sentence.

  His owner died.

  I don’t feel much in the way of vindication, but I doubt anyone was much sorry for the death.

  I think of Oliver, for one brief second, wondering if he’s had a better life than Dante did. It’s just one moment in time I allow myself, as if holding his young face in my mind for any longer than that will break me down completely.

  It will.

  I don’t think about him anymore.

  Dante steps through the door and I force myself to relax my grip on my handgun. As always, Dante’s hazel eyes go briefly to the weapon, even though he’s the one with an AR slung around his chest.

  He nods once to me, then to whomever is waiting outside of my office door.

  Luca steps through, his dark eyes on me, ignoring the gun in my hand. Instead, he strides forward as if he’s used to being surrounded by deadly weapons in what should be mundane settings, like a home office.

  And he is.

  Luca Mendoza controls most of the movement of cocaine on the east coast, and he’s one of the people that got fucked with Christopher’s mishandling of my product. I already made amends with Luca—I have enough capital to do so, and I don’t like owing anyone anything.

  That’s not what Luca is here for.

  He’s here because, on some level, in the only way men like he and I can be, we’re friends.

  He nods toward me but doesn’t offer me his hand. He knows I won’t take it. Instead, he smooths down his charcoal suit jacket, adjusts the collar of his white dress shirt—contrasting sharply with his brown skin—and then sits in the black leather chair across from my desk.

  I nod again toward Dante. “Ensure she’s with Mamie.” He doesn’t need to ask what I’m talking about. After our misunderstanding in the shower, I knew I needed to give Addison something. I was aggressive and scared the fuck out of her, which ordinarily wouldn’t bother me. But her buyer needs more time, and I can’t have her trying to escape again and causing a scene, or I might kill her before I get what I’ve been promised.

  I gave her privileges to roam the house, as long as my housekeeper, Mamie, is with her at all times.

  Dante pulls the door closed, and I know he’ll take care of what I asked before he comes back to his primary duty of guarding me.

  Luca flashes me a white smile, glances at the silver watch on his wrist to check the time, and then places his palms on his knees.

  He has homes in Miami, Charleston, New York City, and Texas.

  I know which one he’s staying in this month, because in two weeks, it’s Luca’s favorite day.

  His birthday.

  He enjoys celebrating in South Carolina because he has the most “friends” here. Or maybe just less people who want to kill him. And the only thing Luca loves more than his birthday is his mother. Good to know, in the event I ever need something from him that he isn’t willing to give.

  I place my gun on the desk, barrel aiming toward the closed curtains, and sit down, resting my hands on the arms of my chair. The chandelier overhead is the only light in the room.

  “Heard you got the girl.” There’s a hint of a smile on his lips, and he scrubs a hand over his clean-shaven jaw.

  I’m not surprised he heard, but I still ask, “From whom?”

  “Christopher himself.” He rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “That fuck,” he mutters under his breath before his amber eyes meet mine again.

  I don’t say anything, but Luca knows my body language enough for me to not need to waste words. He’s known me for nearly two decades now.

  I met him after I came back from Pretoria. I was a teenage boy with more money than fucking sense, my father’s body an ocean away, buried in a shallow grave right by the shed he loved to torture me and Ollie in. Luca was the first person I did business with. One of the few willing to give a “kid” a chance.

  I didn’t fuck it up.

  Anger makes you grow up fast. And finding my mother dead, my brother missing—living with the knowledge that wherever he was, he might’ve wished he was dead—I never felt like a teenage boy ever again.

  The thought of where Ollie is still brings a physical pain to my chest. It’s a sharp ache that never goes away. What little solace I have in that is that I killed my fucking father, and no matter where Ollie is now, he’ll never have to see that piece of shit again.

  Having that much power, the ability to end a monster’s life with one pull of a trigger, it got me addicted to this world.

  When my mother stole Ollie and me away from my father, I intended to leave crime. I intended to go to college, become a psychologist, work with kids like my brother. I had a lot of good intentions then, despite my upbringing.

  Once more, my father shattered them by showing me the world for what it is—cruel.

  “He doesn’t want her back,” Luca continues, shrugging, as if
fathers pawning off their daughters’ bodies is no big deal. I suppose, in our line of work, it isn’t. “But he doesn’t want everyone to know that you took her from him.” Luca flashes his white-toothed smile again. He has wrinkles around his mouth from smiling so much, and it gives him a good-natured appearance.

  Appearances are very deceiving. Not just for criminals. For human beings. And for a man like Luca, that good nature couldn’t be further from the truth.

  “His son is back in Alexandria, apparently trying to gather up enough in cash to buy her back.” Luca narrows his eyes at me, but there’s a playful glint in them. “How much are you holding out on her for?”

  “More than he can give me.” I think about her in the shower today, after what happened with Ben. Dante arranged for that clean up, and by the time we were done washing off the brain matter from our bodies, Ben was long gone. Not another thought. Except for the fact I’ll now have to replace my best trainer, but I have others in Mexico that’ll get me by. None of that needs to be known to Luca.

  We might be something like friends, but “something like” means any day, we could turn on each other. There’re no loyalties here. I’ve never had those.

  “Are you planning to keep her for yourself?” Luca asks me, arching a dark brow. There’s surprise in his question.

  Because I don’t keep slaves.

  I sell them.

  I spent enough time around them growing up that they’ve lost their appeal for my personal tastes.

  For sex, I have Evora, who splits her time between here and one of her father’s properties. When I’m tired of her, she’ll go on to someone else. Someone… lesser. I didn’t buy Evora, but when she came and sat on my lap at a kink party—one Luca hosted—a year ago, I might as well have.

  She was born into the life, and it turned out I knew her father.

  He was happy to give her up. At twenty-four, showing no business sense and having no marriage prospects, being with me is probably the best thing she could’ve hoped for. There’s no chance of getting a job outside of our world. Not for men, and definitely not for women.

  Surviving is the only thing she can hope to do.

  “No,” I answer Luca, holding his gaze.

  “Then why wait?”

  For a moment, I think about telling him the whole truth. But Luca never knew Ollie. Never knew much about what my father did to us, either. Telling him would be a weakness, exposing that much of me.

  Instead, I tell him a half-truth. “The buyer is caught up in a turf war. Could change at any time.” I shrug. “I might not have to wait long.” A few weeks is an estimate, but gang wars are volatile. They can end in a split second, for all the wrong reasons.

  Thinking of Ollie in the midst of a war like that…well, I don’t.

  I spent thirteen years trying to save him from pain.

  I failed, fucking miserably, in the end.

  I clench the playing card in my pocket and push it from my mind, holding Luca’s gaze as he studies me.

  “The buyer. Who is it?”

  I don’t react for a few seconds. The question is bold, even by Luca’s standards. He knows better than to ask shit that isn’t his business, but then again, I’ve never housed a girl like this before. It’s certainly not the first time someone has fucked me over, but it is the largest sum I’ve lost, including the men killed. Usually, I demand immediate payment, or I murder the fuck. But this time is different.

  This time, I’m getting something that money can’t touch, which is the only reason Addison is still in my possession, and still living.

  None of that is Luca’s fucking business.

  “Don’t ask me that again,” I warn him when he doesn’t backtrack.

  He holds up his hands in mock innocence, then drops them back in his lap, smiling once again. I know that smile doesn’t mean anything. He’d smile as he put a gun in your mouth and pulled the trigger.

  “Just curious who has the kind of money your man has,” he says, correctly assuming it’s a man I’m selling her to.

  Women take slaves, too, even female ones. But it’s not money I’m holding out for.

  I don’t want Luca to know that. “He’s connected to Sinaloa,” I offer, because as the largest cartel in the western world, that could be any number of people.

  Still, Luca’s eyes widen. “Really?” he asks, his Mexican accent sharp with that word. Kind of like my own accent, it’s faint most of the time, but certain phrases and emotions bring it out. A lot of people ask if I’m fucking British. I suppose I am, by blood. My parents were both born in London. But that’s a place I’ve never been.

  “Yes, really.”

  Luca frowns for the first time since he’s been in my office, leans back in his chair, running his palms over his thighs, then asks, “Is it the amount of money they’re giving you for her that’s made you choose them already, or…coercion?” His eyes meet mine with the last word.

  I know what he’s asking. Luca and I work with many organized crime syndicates around the world, but we operate our own businesses. We don’t answer to anyone, and aside from our own men, gangs don’t answer to us. We work alongside one another, not above or underneath.

  But the Sinaloa Cartel has a lot of influence.

  Persuasion.

  Saying no to the wrong person in that hierarchy could end your life.

  “The price,” I answer him honestly. “The coercion could’ve come, but I didn’t need to be coerced. The payment is enough, and considering I’ve agreed to wait until they’re free for drop off,” I shrug, “it works for all parties involved. Makes good business sense.”

  Luca purses his lips, nodding as if he’s impressed.

  “You didn’t come here for her. What do you want?” I finally ask him, cutting through the shit. As a general rule, I don’t love people. Or socializing. It should be enough I’m going to Luca’s party in two weeks, and only because he promised there’d be women to play with. Evora will sit that one out in her room opposite the hall from mine, or at the house her father pays for.

  Addison and Evora have never met each other, and with people following them both and no real reason to leave their respective rooms, I plan to keep it that way.

  Soon, though, after the time I’ve had with Addison and the news about Ollie, I need to…unwind. Luca’s party will be perfect for that.

  Luca laughs, clapping his hands together once. “I had a pick-up nearby, and I came to extend an invitation, for my fortieth.” He waggles his brows. “To your new toy.” Shrugging, he slings his arm over the back of the chair and studies me. “I want to see her in action.”

  “She’s not my property. There won’t be any action.” Bringing a slave to a party isn’t unheard of. In fact, there will be others there. But I remind myself, that’s not what Addison is just yet. In order to respect the agreement with her buyer and her father, I can’t parade around merchandise that isn’t rightfully mine. And I’m not going to fuck this up. The stakes are far too high for that.

  Luca tips his head back and laughs as if I’ve told a joke. Finally, when his laughter is grating on my nerves, he dips his chin, eyes connecting with mine. “No one will touch her, brother. But I’ve seen her photos.” He smiles. “She’s hot.”

  Yeah. She is. I don’t say anything to that.

  He stands, slips his hands into his pockets, and my eyes go to my gun, but I don’t touch it. Instead, I fist the playing card in my own pocket.

  “Up to you, Max. But she’s more than welcome.” He winks at me with those last words, and then waits for me to dismiss him.

  I nod once, giving him leave, and he turns his back on me and walks to the door. Dante opens it, because Dante is always listening, and Luca walks out. Dante’s eyes connect with mine for a second, then he pulls the door closed. I know he’ll escort Luca out, so I reach for the button under my desk that locks my door automatically.

  Then I bury my head in my hands, closing my eyes.

  I haven’t been sleeping we
ll lately. Not since the offer came through.

  Although, truthfully, I never sleep well. But between crawling into bed with Addison, then Evora, monitoring Christopher London and whatever possible revenge he might stupidly try to exact, not to mention mending things in Miami with the police and the cartels, things have been hectic lately.

  And thinking about Ollie has consumed my mind in the night. Waking and sleeping.

  My nightmares have come back since I’ve tried to wean off the sleeping pills, trying to make myself ready for every possible outcome this precarious agreement could bring. No one can know about that habit, which is just another secret I add to the rest. I’ve got so many fucking skeletons in my closet it probably won’t be long before they bury me alive.

  The idea of playing with Addison has never sounded more appealing. A distraction. A way to stop my brother from infecting my mind.

  But it’s not smart to bring her to the party. I have no idea who will be there, but I know her buyer won’t. He’s handling this war in Texas, and he seems overeager to get her in his hands. I know he’ll be in touch as soon as he’s ready for her.

  Even still, it’s not a good idea.

  But seeing her wide green eyes on me as I touched her in the shower, the way she didn’t cry, the way she tried to fight back…the girl is brave.

  I’m not used to brave girls.

  Or brave men, for that matter.

  I put a gun in her mouth, and she didn’t react how most people would in a situation like that.

  Fuck.

  I rake my hands through my hair—something I’d only ever do when I’m alone—and then I stand.

  Fuck it. In two weeks, if she’s still here, I’ll go to the party, and I’ll drag her with me.

  It’s good to have an outlet every once in a while.

  Dante is watching me.

  I’m sprinting on the treadmill, sweat dripping down my back, over my brow, into my eyes. I wipe the back of my hand over my face, keep running even though my lungs feel like they might collapse.

  Ben’s head, the gunshot, Max.

  It all plays like a twisted movie in my head, and I run faster.