 by Marie James.jpg)
Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
That’s true… mostly.
From where I stand, I don’t see it as a bad thing.
Getting paid to do the dirty work, to take the jobs saner people refuse is my bread and butter.
I love the danger, the thrill, the warmth that attempts to spark something in my cold, black heart.
Why shouldn’t I get paid for that?
Does it really matter if I’m indifferent about who I step on to succeed? The job always gets done, and I never look back.
The same went for Lauren Vos, an undercover FBI agent working in some of the most dangerous trafficking circles known to man.
Our paths crossed on a job years ago, and somehow fate has thrown us together once again.
Only this time around she isn’t interested in letting me forget.
The problem for her is that I’m not the same man she thought she left for dead.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
Angel
The sunlight streaming in feels out of place.
Days like today are meant to be shrouded in darkness.
Bad things only happen in the black of night.
That’s how things are supposed to be.
The limited amount of cartoons I’ve watched tells me so.
My experience has been different.
Time of day doesn’t factor into the traumas I’ve endured.
The cartoons lie.
Unlike the bird that gets up and runs away after being hit in the head with an anvil, Momma doesn’t move.
My eyes dart from the pool of red spreading across the floor to the hammer.
Maybe that’s the difference.
Daddy didn’t have an anvil like the coyote had.
Wetness drips down my cheeks, and I swipe at it repeatedly. If Daddy sees, he’ll be angry.
Making Daddy angry is never a good thing.
He’s always angry, though.
At me.
At the world.
But mostly Momma.
Women will never learn.
She had it coming.
If she’d just done what she was told…
Correcting her is the only way she’ll learn.
But Momma never learns.
As her skin turns ashen before my eyes, I know her lessons end today.
“What a fucking waste,” Daddy says with a chuckle, his foot lashing out and hitting Momma’s side.
She doesn’t move like she normally does. She doesn’t cry out in pain. She doesn’t beg him to stop.
The silence is as strange as the sunlight coming in through the curtains.
It doesn’t belong.
“See her?” Daddy snaps. “See how useless women are?”
I nod. I’ve known women are useless for as long as I can remember.
Good for only one thing, Daddy always says.
I don’t know what that one thing is.
Momma wasn’t good at cooking, nor cleaning, nor raising me the way he saw fit.
As the red continues to grow, I still don’t know what Momma was good for.
“Fuck!”
My eyes snap to Daddy, watching as he runs rough, irritated hands over the top of his head.
Wild eyes dart around the room, but this is nothing new. Daddy always looks a little frenzied, a little out of control.
“I have to go,” he snaps. “I’m calling Poppa. He’ll come get you.”
I tremble with the news. His father, Poppa, is worse than Daddy.
Daddy only taught lessons to Momma.
Poppa likes to teach me lessons.
But when I learn, the lessons change. I can never get it right.
Silence swims around me, the soft swish of the ceiling fan the only thing I hear.
The sun rises further, casting shadows over Momma.
The red pooled around her turns black before I’m yanked up from the floor by rough, calloused hands.
“I fucked up with your daddy,” Poppa says, his dark eyes wilder than I’ve ever seen. “I won’t make the same mistake with you.”
I was born Benito Corea.
That person died the day my mother did.
The man I became later is much worse.
Chapter 1
Angel
Numbness.
Most people feel it at some point in their lives.
They try to chase it away.
They medicate.
They seek happiness.
They seek pain.
Anything to just… feel.
I live in a constant state of emptiness.
It’s the only way I feel at home.
Silence.
Solitude.
Seclusion.
Only the constant itch of needing more pulls me from isolation.
More pain.
More violence.
More lessons.
This is what I fill up on.
This is what I devour.
All things I learned from birth.
My father taught me lessons.
My grandfather taught me lessons.
It’s my turn to teach, to punish.
William Varon is my latest pupil, and the sight of his ostentatious home makes my skin crawl.
The landscaping, the welcome mat, the flimsy curtains that are always pulled back in invitation. It’s all smoke and mirrors. What lies behind the walls would make any normal person sick to their stomach.
It’s a good thing I’m not normal.
From the outside, the man looks like a model citizen.
He smiles and laughs at all the right times and greets people by name when he sees them on the sidewalk.
He donates to charity, buys girl scout cookies, and drops money in the iconic red kettles during the holidays.
He’s normal, a successful businessman, a philanthropist.
That’s what others see.
That’s what he wants them to see.
People can’t see past the gleaming smile to the darkness inside of him.
They don’t know what happens in the dark, what he’s capable of behind the fancy double doors of his home.
They don’t have a clue that he’s a third-generation abuser, a sex trafficker.
They would be surprised to discover he has a woman enslaved inside, that he’s purchased a little girl meant for unmentionable things.
They would probably be appalled, disgusted, downright sickened by the lessons he’s taught to those he has owned over the years.
If she had just done what I said.
Women will never learn.
As those thoughts invade, my heart kicks up a notch.
It’s not that he’s teaching them that bothers me.
It’s that they aren’t his to teach.
The woman’s husband hired me, contracted me for my skills.
I need my wife back, he’d said to me after I found his plea online.
I don’t care that he sold her in the first place because he was disgusted with her. It’s not my business.
Women will never learn.
Sometimes you have to cut your losses. Trade up. Replace.