Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

MINA

I double and triple checked the address. Double and triple checked the layout of the building. Moved around it slowly, taking in everything.

The building looked old and tired, but it was a fa?ade. The security system was state-of-the-art. Unable to be disabled or hacked.

Unable, my ass. There was no such thing as a security system that couldn't be bypassed. You just had to know how.

Ignoring the fact it was Kurt who taught me, I pulled a small device out of my pocket and held it up to the touchscreen beside the door.

I pressed my fingers against the front of the device, letting it read my thumbprint. A screen on the front turned on, dark enough that it wouldn't alert anyone to me standing outside in the shadows.

A tap on the screen and it started to run through numbers and symbols. One by one, it deciphered the pass code. The keypad flashed green and the door unlocked with a faint click.

I shoved the device back in my pocket and opened the door wide enough to slip inside. Silently, I closed the door behind me.

The corridor in front of me was in darkness, but a room at the end was well lit.

I grimaced at the sound of groaning that came from it. It was loud enough that I could have stomped down the corridor and not be heard.

I shook my head and eased forward, stepping carefully across the polished concrete floor. I passed two closed doors and an open one. I glanced in, but saw nothing but darkness and the outline of a bed. No one was in there.

I stepped to the room at the end of the corridor.

A man sat on a couch in the middle of the room. His track pants were pushed down his thighs, his hand curled around his cock.

The groans came from a huge TV on the wall. On the screen, three or four guys were railing a woman who looked as though she was thinking about her shopping list, while they thrust in and out of her pussy, ass and mouth.

"Fuck yeah." He worked his cock harder, oblivious until I stepped behind him, leaned over the back of the couch and pressed a knife to his throat.

He stopped mid-beat, eyes wide. "The fuck?"

"Hi, Stefan. I see nothing has changed. It's just you and your hand." I pressed the blade in slightly. Not enough to make him bleed, but to let him know I meant business.

"Mina fucking DiMarco," he growled. "You scared the shit out of me." His hand was still tight around his cock, like he didn't dare to let go. Just in case I cut it off.

Fair call. I was tempted. Not that I wanted to touch his cock.

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear," I said.

He raised his spare hand. "I'm an open book."

"Where's Kurt?" I asked.

He lowered his hand, bringing it down over the other one for additional protection. "I have no idea."

"Mmm." I pressed the knife in a little more, barely breaking the skin. "Wrong answer."

"I can't give you what I don't have," he said. "I swear, I don't know where he is. But—" He exhaled reluctantly.

"But?" I prompted.

"But I have a number to contact him," Stefan said quickly. "Not directly. I send a message and someone passes the message on to him. It's on my phone." He nodded to the table in front of him.

"What happens then?" I asked.

"After a day or two, he sends a message back via, I dunno, whoever the fuck it is. The last I heard was to lay low and play it cool. Seems one of the big heavies is on his ass. Reuben Brantley or Samuel Bell. Kurt was fucking them both over, so I'm not surprised. Dickhead likes to live dangerously."

"You worked with him," I said.

"Indirectly," he argued. "I'm just a fence. People bring me their shit and I sell it for them. Get a nice tidy profit on top of it. Getting involved in things too deeply is above my pay grade. I'm what they call a petty criminal, but you know that."

"I think you're underselling yourself," I said. "Rumour has it you're Kurt's right-hand."

He laughed-grunted. "Not me. He didn't trust me enough for that."

"Who did he trust?" I asked.

"I don't—" Stefan started.

A bead of blood rose where I pushed the knife in a little more.

"Let's try this again. Who did he trust?" There was no doubt in my mind he knew.

That was why I was here tonight. Why I'd snuck out of the house again to deal with him. I had to take the chance he'd speak to me. We weren't friends, but he knew who I was. More or less.

He sat perfectly still, probably weighing his options. If he talked, he was dead. If he didn't talk, he was dead. If he told me everything, he might just have the chance to run and hide before shit hit the fan.

"There's a dude named Leon Graves, he's an old friend of Kurt. He ran a lot of Kurt's operations. If anyone knows where he is, it's him. If I had to guess, I'd say he was the one receiving and relaying the messages."

"There, that wasn't so difficult, was it?" I asked.

"If he finds out I said anything to you, I'm fucked," Stefan whined.

"I have no reason to tell him you said anything to me," I said. "And I know you won't."

"Of course not." He took the chance to raise his left hand, as if to promise he wouldn't say a word.

I smirked and sliced open his throat. "You might have misunderstood what I was saying." His blood squirted out onto my fingers, warm and sticky. Better his blood than his cum.

His hand dropped back down with a soft thud. He slumped back against the couch, his hand still wrapped around his cock.

"Sucks to be you," I said with no sympathy. I walked around the couch to pick up his phone. After a couple of attempts to guess the passcode, it opened.

"Sixty-nine, sixty-nine, sixty-nine." I rolled my eyes. "You shouldn't have been so predictable."

His glazed eyes stared back at me. He looked regretful, but I doubted it involved his pass code.

On the screen, one of the men grunted as he came, spilling cum all over the woman's face. I snatched up the remote and turned it off. I dropped the remote back on the table and scrolled through his phone.

His photos contained various candid shots of women. They all looked like they were taken through a window, or under the door of a public toilet. Their faces weren't visible in most of them, just a breast here, leg or pussy there.

"Looks like I did the world a favour," I said. "One less pervert." I tapped out of the photos and went in to read his messages. As I expected, there weren't many. One or two with a vague address or a thumbs up symbol. The rest were deleted, or he didn't get many.

His contacts were likewise sparse. The pizza place down the street, the number of a ride share, and a couple that might be Leon Graves, or another of Kurt's associates.

I pulled out my phone, copied the numbers and wiped down his phone with a cloth before placing it back on the table.

Leon would change his number if he knew someone took Stefan's phone. If I just had the number, I stood a chance of being able to use it.

"I'd like to say it's been fun, but I hope this was worthwhile," I told Stefan. "Don't worry, someone will find you in a couple of days. If you're lucky."

The man was a snake and always had been. He was also one of the men who carried me down into the basement. I recognised his voice as soon as he spoke. Was Leon Graves another of them? I'd met him a couple of times, and two of the men didn't say a word that night. All I had was vague memories of their faces in shadow, my mind muddled by whatever Kurt drugged me with.

From my phone, I sent a tipoff to one of Damon's contacts, giving them Stefan's name. They'd pass that on to Damon. He could come by and find him like this.

Reuben would be pissed off if he knew I wasn't telling them any of this directly, but I couldn't explain how I got into this building without telling him everything. He'd insist on knowing how I got past impenetrable security.

I wasn't ready to share that yet. Not even with him or Gianni. Not with Damon either, although I still had no idea where I stood with him. He seemed to want me as much as he disliked me.

I respected him, but I wouldn't push. There was no hurry to take things any further. Not yet. When this was over, maybe we'd find time to work things out.

I tucked my phone away and took a few minutes to search around the building. I found a locked room, but no sign of the key. I looked back at Stefan and grimaced.

His pants were down around his ankles. One side looked heavier than the other.

"Really?" I asked, not knowing if I directed the question to him or myself. Either way, I had no choice.

I had to crouch to feel around in his pockets. The heavier one contained a small ring of keys. One said Mercedes on the fob. The others looked like house keys, or keys that unlocked filing cabinets.

Stepping away from him and his now flaccid cock, I tried each of the keys until the door opened.

I half-expected to find a woman caged and chained, but the room was full of boxes.

Guns, gems, phones and cash. One contained what looked like bricks of cocaine. The street value of everything here would add up to several million, at least. This, Reuben would be happy to recover.

I left everything untouched and closed and locked the door behind me. Grimacing again, I replaced the keys in Stefan's pocket and went to rifle through his bedroom. I found nothing but the usual: clothes, shoes, an unopened box of condoms. I picked it up and checked the expiry date.

"Three months ago," I said with a smirk. "That tracks." Stefan was a slimy bastard. The women of the world wouldn't miss him. Neither would the men, for that matter.

I knelt down beside his bed and shone my phone light underneath.

"What do we have here?" I said to myself. I set my phone aside and pulled out the box. Metal and maybe thirty centimetres wide and just as long, it was fitted with a basic padlock. The kind quickly unpicked with the lock pick I kept in my pocket.

I eased open the lid and looked inside.

In the centre lay a phone. The battery was flat, but I decided I could spare a few moments to charge it until the screen turned on. The passcode was simple. There was nothing on the phone but a single app.

I pressed on the screen to open it.

My stomach turned. I felt as though my whole world was tipped upside down. My entire body started to tremble. In my mind, I was right back in the cage, the chain on my ankle.

I slammed the box, shoved it back under the bed and fled out into the night, right before I threw up my last meal.