Chapter 39

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Charlotte Mitchell

“ S tep inside, Charlie. Find out who you are.” I can almost hear Nix say those words, but as I come to consciousness, I realize that he’s actually not here. They’re just a whisper in my thoughts.

The buzzing in my ears is all I can fully hear, and my heartbeat hammers in my neck. Then, as I try to roll my neck with difficulty, I come to one conclusion: I’m hanging upside down.

Slowly, I open my eyes. I blink a few painful times and find nothing but a pitch-black cloth that rubs against the bridge of my nose. A soft moan escapes me from the blood pooled in my throbbing head, for my ankles that are chained above me, and for my wrists that are secured at an odd angle below my body.

Find out who you are. Who I am got me here, and I can only imagine what’s coming next. No. Not imagine.

I know what’s coming next .

I try to keep my breathing calm as I dangle there. I try like hell not to hyperventilate even though every ounce of me wants to. The buzzing in my ears slowly subsides, and I can hear waves push against whatever building I’m in, which tells me one thing: I’m still at the boathouses. And since there’s no chill, I’m inside one.

I do a quick mental survey of my body. Based on how my skin feels, I’m wearing no clothes. Someone stripped me while I was unconscious. My head hurts from where I’d been hit by . . . The flash of hair comes to mind, the scent of the man who had hit me. I hope it’s not true; I pray it was just my mind playing tricks on me in the heat of the moment because what it thinks it knows has to be a lie. It can’t be possible for this person to harm me in such a way, to wish me ill that they’d suspend me from a chain and strip me naked.

While I replay this in my head, I hear soft murmurs coming from outside whatever room I’m forced to be in. I try to concentrate on them, but I can’t make out a word. There are definitely two people, however: one man and one woman.

And then hinges squeal as a door is opened, and two sets of footfalls quickly follow. I can tell that one of them is a pair of heels, and my mind reels. A woman? Doing this to another woman? What kind of sick, twisted bitch does that?

I turn my head in the direction of their approach, feel the air shift as someone bends in front of me, and then a woman’s all-too-familiar Russian accent says, “She’s awake.”

The bag is ripped off my head, snagging several strands of hair in the process. I cry out as they’re torn from my scalp and then blink a few times to focus on the face that’s looking directly into mine .

Anya.

“What the actual fuck,” I groan out because the fresh light causes more pain than I could imagine.

She sighs contentedly. “Sorry to disappoint, Charlie.”

“What the hell is going on, Anya? Why are you doing this to me?”

Dropping the bag near my head, she shrugs too simply for someone who should have at least an ounce of remorse. “You assumed that I was someone you needed to save. I’ve never been that woman. I just let you believe it. It was fun for a while, but now . . .”

I grit my teeth. “You bitch,” I hiss. “So what? Are you the boss of this?”

She laughs, and it’s the first time I’ve seen any kind of joy come across her features. “Oh, no. I just run the men and women over to America. I return home tomorrow, but I wanted to see what you were all about, how this would play out.” She touches my cheek, and I move my head away from her outstretched fingers. “I am not disappointed.”

“If you’re not the boss, then who is?” I demand because, if I’m going to die here like I think I am, I deserve to know the truth before my last breath.

Anya looks behind her, and it’s the first time I notice – remembered – that someone came in with her. I follow the shoes up to the legs before the man squats beside her. Shock makes me stiffen as this man looks at me with sympathy.

“Hey, Charlie,” he murmurs.

“Miles?” I breathe out. No. No, this has to be a hallucination. I look between the two and then demand, “What the hell is going on? Miles, get me down from this. Make her let me go. Arrest her! ”

“I can’t do that, Charlie.” He shakes his head in a sad sort of way and then balances his elbows on his knees.

“Oh my god,” I whisper as everything clicks together. “You’re part of this.”

“I have been for a long time.” Is that remorse in his voice? “I was just hoping it didn’t come to this, but you kept pushing, kept getting closer, and now? Now there’s nothing I can do to change your fate.”

I snarl at him. “Bullshit.”

“I truly am sorry.”

“If she’s the overseer of the trafficked victims, what does that make you?”

“I’m not the boss if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Then what are you?” I demand.

“I handle the drugs,” he says on an exhale. “I supply the workers, the business, with their addiction.”

I blink once. Then twice. And then everything clicks together like the last piece of a puzzle. “You have got to be kidding me. You… it was you?” He glances away in a bit of shame when he realizes that I now know. “You were the dealer supplying my dad – my mother – with drugs.”

“It didn’t end in a way that I could have predicted.” He looks back at me. “At the time, it was just about the money.”

“You got them killed!” I yell at him. “You ruined my life!”

“I’m sorry. I tried to step in, but –”

“Does Rochelle know about the scum that you are?”

He has the audacity to scowl. “She knows nothing.”

I laugh without any humor. “The protectiveness? The tracker? The cellphone? The warnings about staying away? The degrading? All the anger every time I’d get a step closer? Hell, even when you found out I was with Nix.” I narrow my gaze at him. “It was all because of this, wasn’t it? Keeping tabs on me?”

“Yes,” Anya says with joy.

“I was trying to get you to get out of it,” Miles says. “I was trying to protect you from this, but you just kept pushing. You got popular overnight. Do you know how many times I’ve fought to keep you out of someone’s bed? Do you know how many offers I’d beg to be dismissed? But this time, Charlie? This time I have orders, and that is where you’ve landed yourself today. You caught the attention of someone who has too much money for his own good, and it’s an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

I close my eyes as the fear of my fate settles in. “Tell me one thing, Miles. Did you kill Nathan?”

“Nathan?” I open my eyes at his shocked tone. His eyelids flutter, shocked, at me a few times, as if I thought so little of him. “No, of course not.”

“Then what happened to him? And don’t lie to me! I know you know what actually happened to him.” After all, Nathan had his hand in this business, even if it was for innocent reasons like being their accountant. He couldn’t have known who he was truly working for. Nathan was a good guy; he wouldn’t have done business with them had he known.

Miles looks at me long and hard before his gaze rises and he peers past my dangling body. A cold chill creeps down my body as Anya pats my cheek and says, “You really are too innocent.”

His gaze stays behind me. “Miles?” I call. “I demand to know. What happened to Nathan?”

He isn’t speaking to me when he says, “I don’t want her dying believing that I killed you.”