Prologue
She’s been through more Hell than you’ll ever know. But, that’s what gives her beauty an edge . . .”
~ Alfa
Flora
Two Years Ago . . .
A metal light hangs a few feet in front of me from the ceiling in the middle of the tool shed. Saws, sledgehammers, wrenches, paint cans, and other supplies are up against the walls. At least they’re up against the walls that don’t have cracks and holes with bits of lights shining through. A bee flies outside the only window we have in the shed and a throbbing sensation pulsates to the bottom of my jaw and shoots up to my temple.
“Flora . . . Flora, are you awake?” my cousin, Benita, asks me from the radiator she’s chained to. She’s kneeling on the floor, looking to me with pleading eyes.
We’ve been here for . . . for what feels like months but I know it must be weeks. It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks at least. I’m so tired, so exhausted being here in this position. “Flora?” Benita says my name again, sounding more terrified than the first time.
I try to nod but can’t. The slight movement causes pain to shoot from the middle of my neck over my shoulders. Looking down I see my normal walnut colored skin is covered with splotches of black, blue, purple, and even green. If I could turn my neck, I’m sure my back has the same color pattern spread across it.
“I’m awake,” my words come out crackly from how thirsty I am. I’m so thirsty that it’s become normal for me to feel every crevasse on the inside of my mouth. While Benita has been given food and water in front of me since we’ve been here, our captors only give me the minimum to keep me alive. They’re using me to send a message, to try and coax Benita into saying where her father might be hiding. He raised us like sisters even though we’re cousins, taking me under his wing and treating me as his own after my father died. The only downside? He works for a drug lord. One that he stole a kilo of cocaine from. Only, that isn’t the worst part. Instead of telling me or Benita what he did, or to flee the country, he left us to be picked up by his angry boss.
I’ve been tortured day and night, all in an attempt to get Benita to give her father up and she hasn’t yet. I don’t know if she ever will, but I’m growing so tired of trying to live. At this point I’d welcome death, because it would mean no more pain. No more agony.
“Are you okay?” Benita’s question is stupid. How could I be okay? I’ve been beaten with a metal pipe the last few times, and before that they were using a baseball bat, and before that they’d use their fists.
I’m sure I must look defeated, but I can’t even answer her. I simply inhale deeply while the mix of rusted tools and fertilizer blazes through my nostrils. But pain hits me in my upper back, proving that even breathing causes me some sort of torment.
“Flora?” Benita’s question is agonizing. I want to scream at her, to yell and plead, to tell her the reality is I’ll die here if she doesn’t give them what they want . . . but I don’t have the energy. Not anymore.
The door to the shed creaks and two men come filing in. One of them with dark hair, the son of the man who ordered us to be locked in here. I can tell he doesn’t like what his father’s ordered of him, but he has to respect it or he’ll be killed. In Latin America blood means next to nothing, especially if you betray your family. With a snap of a finger your death will be ordered, so people fall in line very quickly.
The man next to him though . . . he’s the one I’ve come to fear. My heart pumps ten times faster whenever I hear his heavy footsteps coming near, and I find it difficult to breathe, almost like I’m hyperventilating. My body knows he only brings pain, and thus I’m sure it’s my body’s last attempt to try and get me to run . . . but I can’t, even if I wanted to. Ropes dig into my limbs, wrapped tightly around my wrists and ankles, so tightly they burn with the slightest movement.
The pain bringer goes to the side of the shed and shuffles a couple of things in the darkness. When he comes back into view, he has a baseball bat with barbed wire wrapped around it. At least, I think it’s barbed wire. He drags it against the cement floor and the sound of the wire on the floor rings throughout the shed.
My eyes widen in terror and I look to my cousin, pleading with her silently, begging for her to say something, to give them anything. As much as I don’t want the pain, I don’t want to die, and I want to get out of this . . . but I know the only way either of us will be able to get out of this is if she gives them something—anything.
He picks the bat up, pulls it back, and slams it against my arm. My scream comes ripping out of me at the impact of the wire into my flesh. He jiggles it up a bit and pulls it free, causing me to lean my head and sob while heat spreads through my left arm.
“Stop this, please stop this!” Benita begs them both, yanking her chain against the radiator.
“You know I can’t do that, not until you tell him what his father wants to know,” the pain bringer tells her, circling me like a hungry shark in the water. He swings the bat back and brings it down on my stomach. Bits of wire catch not only my tummy, but my arms as well and I bring my head back even though my body screams at the slightest movement. I want to do anything to bring more space between myself and the pain bringer, but as I look back, I see the somber filled eyes of the son. The man whose name I don’t yet know.
The son takes a few steps toward me, places his hands on both sides of my face and looks down at me. “Flora, if you tell us what my father wants to know, I will get him to let you live. I promise you, I will get him to grant mercy on you both for your uncle’s transgressions against my family.”
“We’ll never tell you anything!” Benita spits out.
Not even a second later I’m being hit again by the pain bringer, but the shocking part is how the son of the drug lord wipes my tears away. A man who could make a difference . . . a man who could grant me my freedom if he wanted.
I’m hit again, but this time it’s with the metal pipe, against the side of my face the pain bringer has been focusing on the last few times. Pain shoots through my body quickly and specks float in my vision. Before I know it, the darkness is beginning to take me and the son is shaking his head in disappointment, yelling at Benita, but I can’t hear what he says.
If I make it out of here alive, I’m going to leave the country . . . and I’m going to get as far away from here as I fucking can.
Chapter One
Walk like a king or walk like you don’t care who the king is
~ Billionaires Mind
Needles
Present Day . . .
The sun beats down on my exposed skin as I toss lumber into the dumpster we have here at the clubhouse. We’ve been here for about eight months now and we’re finally nearing the end of the renovations. I wipe the back of my hand against my forehead to remove the beading sweat, really hoping we get done with this shit sooner rather than later. Even though most of us are shirtless and in shorts, it barely does us any good when it’s in the mid-nineties.
Mammoth and I ripped out the old subfloor in the small one room house where we’ll be having church. Gamble and Hart have already dubbed it our chapel, and so it is. Crazy how we started renovating this last. Luckily, some of the structures on the property didn’t need too much work, but some of them . . . fuck, I don’t even know how they were standing. Like the clubwhores cottage. It’s more like a small house, with three bedrooms in the basement and three bedrooms on the first floor . . . but the basement had black mold and we had to call in these specialists. What a fuckin’ headache that was.