48. Eastern European Countries

FORTY-EIGHT

#7 Albania

He looked a lot different from the jovial Eastern European Rat Pack member I'd served at Kyle's games two and a half months earlier. Right now, Lis Antoni could have been any other old man in the neighborhood in his faded white polo shirt tucked over a thick belly, elastic-banded track pants, a well-worn pair of New Balances, and thinning gray hair combed over a balding top. A thick gold watch and a matching chain kept the outfit from going completely senior citizen, but it was really the hardened eyes and gnarled hands that made him the kind of man you wouldn't ever think to ask for a sucker.

"See, I told you," Shawn said. "Good as new, and ready to go. Give her a quick shower, and she'll be ready to perform in a minute."

"Perform?"

I looked between the four men. Antoni was eyeing me like a buyer at a cattle market. The unnamed man behind him looked bored, Kyle wouldn't meet my eye at all, and Shawn seemed almost gleeful to be presenting me to his—what? Boss? Overlord? The guy he desperately wanted to peg him?

I almost made that joke, but decided I didn't want another backhand. The first one had hurt badly enough.

"You owe me a party, honey," Antoni said as he wagged a meaty finger in my direction. "My boys liked you. And that's before we find out what you were really capable of."

"What's he talking about?" I asked of Kyle, who still wouldn't look at me, then Shawn, who only grinned.

"Oh, I showed him a little precious footage," Shawn said. "We got a nice little business going on Only Fans, see. Only the best girls. Lis here helps me find the right locations, and then we put on a show for our subscribers. The paying ones, naturally." He looked me over. "Though I just might give a piece of you for free, Sunshine. You think you can take it on both ends?"

I wanted to vomit. I almost did. Even a very much not genius like me knew what he was getting at. The internet was rife with pornography, too much of it featuring women likely procured against their will and sold into some form of sexual slavery.

Not all sex work was like that. Not all.

But some.

Even a little was too much.

"Don't touch her," Mike growled. "You want her, you'll have to come through me."

"I'm fuckin' quaking in my shoes," Shawn retorted. "Can you even stand up after what Ares did to your knees?"

The look on Mike's face told me he probably couldn't.

Ares. That's what the other man's name was. The younger one who was currently studying Mike like he was one of those frogs we dissected in tenth-grade biology.

"Don't," I said, quickly moving my body between them and Mike. "Don't you hurt him. He doesn't deserve it."

"He stays," Antoni said shortly. "She comes."

Then he walked out, leaving the other three men with Mike and me, menace written across all their faces.

"Ares," croaked Mike. "Come on. You gotta let me out of here. I got kids, man. A family to take care of."

The younger man—Ares, apparently—pushed off the wall and approached us. He was the other I recognized from my table at the gaming party. His face vaguely resembled Antoni's, but much younger, probably closer to Mike's age. He had a still-lean body, brown eyes so dark they were almost black, and only a few hints of gray feathering the tempers of an otherwise full head of dark russet hair.

He squatted down to look at Mike as if he were looking at a strange new plant growing from the sidewalk. Then he looked from him to me and back again.

"What is it with you Zola women?" he wondered, his deep, Bronx-born voice tinged with something that almost sounded like admiration. Or maybe envy. "First your sister, now you. People say they're ride or die, but you Zola girls actually do it." He looked to Mike. "Is it just for you, Scarrone? I've seen it twice now."

"What is he talking about?" I asked Mike, who only shook his head.

Ares looked between us. "She doesn't know what her sister did for you? How she was in in a room just like this, put her life on the line just like her? For love, she said. She was willing to die for your sorry ass at only seventeen years old."

I gasped. Lea had done what?

"Eighteen," Mike corrected him. "And I tried to stop her then too."

"Yeah, I remember." As he rose to standing, Ares shook his head like he still couldn't believe it. "I don't know what you did to earn that kind of loyalty, Scarrone, but I admire you for it. Hope you didn't fuck around on that. She doesn't deserve it."

Mike's voice was steel. "I would never do that to my wife."

Behind him, Shawn just rolled his eyes, and Kyle looked less than convinced. Because, of course, they did. These were men who traded in others' sexual proclivities. They depended on marriages being shams and men succumbing to their basest instincts.

But Mike was good on his word. I'd always known that. It had just never occurred to me to ask how, exactly, Mike had come to be so damn devoted to my shrewish older sister. Or her to him.

Well, now I knew. Lea had, apparently, been right there when some of these exact men threatened Mike just like they were doing now. And she'd thrown herself in their way. Nathan wasn't in the room, but I knew without a doubt that if he were, I'd do the same.

I'd do it for anyone I considered my family.

"What is it?" I demanded. "What is it you want? I'll get you anything, I promise. Money? I can get you money. My brother, my sister—they're married to some of the richest people in the world, I swear it?—"

Ares turned to me like he was surprised I had a voice, despite the fact that he'd been addressing me earlier.

"You think this is about cash?" He made it sound like I'd suggested he accept Monopoly money instead of legitimate tender. "You think my father or I give a good goddamn about your money?" He snorted.

I flapped my hands at my sides. "I—well—isn't it?"

"It's about pride," Ares said gruffly. "It's about principle. It's about promises made and living up to your word."

"Whose promise?" I asked.

"The shop," Mike croaked. "He wants the shop. He's always wanted the shop and the cars to help him run shit across state lines."

"My father wants whatever suits him best at the time," Ares said. "That used to be your shop and your cars. Now it's your body. Nothing better then a watery grave to set an example for everyone else."

My jaw dropped. Mike was literally here to be made an example of. He was no better than an man on death row.

"Joni, get out of the way," Mike ordered, his voice rough with pain as he tried to push himself up to standing too.

Tried and utterly failed.

"No." I stuck my chin out at our three jailers. "Lis said he wanted me. Well, I'm here. Let him go." I glanced back at Mike, who was shaking his head, mouthing no. I turned back to our captors. "He's no good to you like this, and he has a family. Three kids, a wife who loves him, a shop to keep. So, just let him go, and I'll—I'll do whatever you want. I'll keep the promises for us both."

The immediate, evil grin that spread across Shawn's face told me I had no idea the depths of depravity I'd face with that particular proposition. But I stood up tall nonetheless. Chest out. Core in. Ready for the next performance, whatever that had to be.

But Ares just shook his head, almost looking regretful.

"Would that I could," he told me. "But there ain't nowhere for him to go. By now we're miles from New York. In the middle of the Long Island Sound."

"Just got one stop in Atlantic City to pick up the boys, and then it's international waters for us, baby doll," said Shawn as he rubbed his hands together gleefully.

So, we were on a boat. The bobbing wasn't just in my imagination.

Ares sprang around as if loaded in a slingshot, laying a ferocious backhand across Shawn's smug face that sent him flying into the concrete wall.

"And who the fuck asked you to run your mouth, Vamos?" he demanded, taking two steps toward Shawn.

That was enough to make the coward flatten himself against the blocks even more. "N-no one," Shawn said. "S-sorry."

I smirked. Now who was the one stuttering?

"Then stay the fuck out of it."

Ares's voice was low but somehow carried more of a threat than any shout I'd ever heard. If Shawn knew what was good for him, he'd listen.

Ares turned to the rest of us. "Kyle, take her down the hall to get ready with the rest of the girls." He turned to Mike. "Scarrone, I'll deal with you later."

"No," I whimpered. "Kyle, please, don't?—"

"Best just do what he says, kiddo," Kyle replied, though he didn't seem to be particularly thrilled to be pulling me off the couch.

"Joni," Mike rasped. "Remember what I said."

His eyes met mine with a silent plea.

Shakily, I nodded and allowed myself to be towed away.

Kyle, followed by Shawn and Ares, led me through a corridor that looked a lot nicer than the room I'd been in. I was right—it was a spare utility closet in what otherwise appeared to be an enormous yacht. Outside that miniature dungeon, everything was plush—wood floors, plaster walls, a fully staffed kitchen, and multiple bedrooms dressed in luxe fabrics and custom furniture.

At the end of the hall, Kyle opened a closed door and shoved me inside. There I found a number of other girls in varying states of undress.

"Twenty minutes until we pick up the party," he informed everyone. "Be ready."

He turned and left without looking my way. Shawn, however, gave me one more smile that made my body break out in goosebumps.

"Last show for me, Sunshine," he said as his gold tooth glinted like a star. "Better make it a good one. Otherwise, you don't know who you'll end up with."

The door shut, and we all listened to the sound of a lock turning. I turned around to find six other girls, many eyeing me with similar distrust. Most of them looked like they couldn't have even been fifteen, some even younger than that. Two sat on the bed, doing each other's hair. One was lolling on a pillow, eyes glazed, likely due to some sort of substance. A few others were seated at a table, doing their makeup. All of them were dressed—if you could call it that—in different bits of lingerie obviously designed less for support and more for spectators.

They were all different, too. Different ethnicities, speaking different languages. Some of them looked like they could have been from my neighborhood. It was more the hollowness in their eyes I recognized than any particular ethnic features. The type that came from growing up in a place where you weren't always sure someone would be able to take care of you. Too many kids from certain parts of the Bronx looked that way. Too many people struggling to make ends meet meant that too many children got left behind.

Sometimes I forgot how lucky I was that we Zolas had had a house to come back to. A soft place to land when our own parents screwed up.

Not everyone had that. I was willing to bet some of these girls fell into that category.

"Um, hi," I said, waving to them. "I'm Joni."

Two raised their hands and spoke in an unfamiliar language that sounded a bit like what I'd heard earlier from Antoni and his cronies. Another girl, who looked like she was probably the oldest aside from me, got up from the makeup table.

"You're the seventh?" she asked in Caribbean-accented English

"I guess," I said. "What—what exactly are we doing here?"

A few of the girls shared looks. Others appeared utterly desolate.

"I'm Femi," said the one who had approached. "They're getting us ready to serve up."

"Serve to…who?" I had to know even though I wasn't sure I wanted the answer.

"The big boys," she said dryly. "I hear them talking. A party. They bring us up. The men, they pay for us to use. Some, maybe they watch. Some, maybe they play." She looked me up and down. "You're a bit old for this game, but pretty. If you're smart, you make the big man like you. He don't hurt his girls. He keeps their faces clean, don't want the other men to touch what he wants."

"And who's that?" I asked. "Who's the ‘big man'?"

Femi tipped her head. "Lis, of course. But we all want him. So, you better get ready, girl." She dragged a hardened gaze up and down my body again. "Lis likes his girls clean. And you are dirty."

I swallowed back an argument. Part of me wanted to say fuck it. That if I was going to be sold into a prostitution ring, I wasn't going to do it on their terms. They could have me dirty and smelling like basement, after more than a day without a shower, unshaven and unmade up.

But Mike's words repeated in my ear. You're gonna do what he says. And then you're gonna run.

Twenty minutes, Kyle had said. The boat was stopping in twenty minutes.

And one way or another, I was getting off.

I straightened and turned to Femi. "Where's the shower?"