“Okay, well just get your ass back here as soon as you can. I need to tell you about what happened at the MGM Grand.” I don’t mention names. The girl sitting on my couch is staring quietly at a seam in the leather armrest, pretending not to be listening, but of course she is. She’d be fucking mad not to.
“Got it.” Cade hangs up and I walk around my couch, staring at the girl. This is weird. If I fuck a girl, I do it at the clubhouse. I’ve never had anyone in here before. I’m not sure I like how normal it feels. It should feel like the place is on fucking fire and I have to get the hell out of dodge.
I sit down on top of my coffee table, still staring at her.
She blinks at me, digging her fingernails into the skin on her right leg. “What?”
“It’s time for you to tell me your name.” She arches an eyebrow at me. I can just imagine her getting them waxed in some fancy fucking boutique beauty parlor in Seattle, run by Asian hipsters with shaved undercuts and thick glasses. She seems like the type. “Why do you want to know?” she asks, cockiness filling her voice—she’s asked me something personal and that’s what I said to her. Now she’s throwing it back at me. It’s fucking adorable.
“I’m asking because I need something to call you. And if you don’t tell me your name, I’m going to be forced to call you One Eighty-One. And I’m guessing you won’t like being called one eighty-one.”
“Why would you call me that?”
“Because that’s the reference Hector Ramirez gave you when he uploaded your picture onto his skin site. Hector tags his girls chronologically. The first girl he sold was number one. The fifty-third girl he sold was tagged fifty-three. Using that logic, guess how many girls he sold before he tagged you one eighty-one?”
“So one hundred and eighty other women came before me?” She looks like she’s going to throw up.
“Exactly. And he hasn’t been caught. The police haven’t raided his place out there in the desert. No one has reported his website. No one came to rescue the one hundred and eighty other girls who came before you, and no one is coming for you, either. So if you want reminding of that every single time I call you one eight—”
“Sophia!” She screws her eyes shut, clenching her jaw. “My name is fucking Sophia, motherfucker.” She spits out the words like they’re poison. When she looks at me again, I can see the fury burning in the depths of her dark brown eyes. She comes alive when she’s angry. A thrill of adrenalin stabs through me, sending mixed signals to my cock; provoking such a violent reaction from her is provoking an entirely different reaction from me. For the first time, I see her. Fucking Sophia. I don’t see her as a means to an end—a potential way to take down the bastard who killed my uncle. I see her. I see her as a woman, and she is beautiful.
“All right, Sophia. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I wish I could say the same.” She’s flushed, her irritation making itself known on her cheeks as well as in her eyes. Her body language is speaking volumes, too. She’s locked up tight, shoulders angled away from me. Her hands are balled together now, interlocking fingers white at each joint, showing how hard she’s squeezing.
My father was a fucking asshole—hated me from the moment I was born. He judged me as he saw fit, and I’ve made sure to prove him wrong at every available fucking turn. But he was right about one thing. He always said I had a stone-cold, manipulative side to me when I wanted to. And I do. That part of me, usually kept under lock and key for civility’s sake, pipes up, now, as I look at her. How hard would it be to make her change her mind about me? How hard would it be to alter that body language? It would be a mildly interesting game to play.
Her head snaps up—she stares at me as though she can hear my thoughts and she’s daring me to even try it. I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face, slow as sin. “Cade says you need me to do something for you,” she snaps. “He says you’re gonna let me go if I do it.”
“And do you believe him?”
She fixes her gaze on mine, staring me right in the eye. There are few people who have the balls to do that. My coloring’s always been a little confronting to some people. Unsettling, even. My eyes are a piercing ice blue. They’re not the kind of eyes you’d forget in a hurry. It’s not vain of me to admit that. I just know how other people work, how they think, and I also know how I affect them. Sophia doesn’t look away. She’s nowhere near as fragile as I assumed she would be. My interest is now well and truly piqued. “I don’t know. I believe Cade believes you’ll let me go. But you? I haven’t worked you out yet.”
I almost burst into laughter. Well, isn’t this interesting? I was just thinking the exact same thing about you. “Oh, I’m not a complicated man, Sophia. I do the things I say I’m going to do. I keep the promises I make. If I say something, you can take it to the bank.” But I’m lying to her. I am a complicated man. I make it my business to be as fucking complicated as I possibly can. If I were simple, I would be easy to pre-empt, and that’s not how you survive in the world that I live in. I can’t tell from looking at her whether Sophia believes me, but I’m enjoying the way she’s sliding her legs up and down against the other. In this case I’m sure it’s signifying discomfort, but it can mean other things, too. Sexual excitement for one. I suddenly realize that I want that—to sexually excite her.
“So what do you want me to do?” she asks. The question could not have come at a more appropriate time. A number of things are flooding through my head as I answer her. I manage to keep them to myself, though.
“I need you to testify what you witnessed in that alleyway in Seattle for me, Sophia. I need you to take the stand in a courtroom and tell a judge and jury how you saw a man murdered in cold blood.”
Her face goes pale, the angry flush that was still present a moment ago vanishing entirely. “You want me to go up against those men that took me? You want me to go testify against Raphael?”
“I do.”
She shakes her head, each shake becoming more and more violent. “No. No, I can’t do that.”
I didn’t think she was going to be happy about it, but in the same vein I didn’t think she was going to be this aggressively against the idea. Hector’s men did kidnap her, after all. “The guy they murdered was a judge. He was a good man. And you won’t do this, because?”
She takes a stuttering breath, pushing back into the chair, as though the more space she puts between me and her distances herself from the very idea of testifying. “Because I can’t. I…I have a family to protect. Raphael threatened them. He said he was going to kill them all. I can’t allow that to happen. I’m sorry for the guy that died, but that’s it. He’s already dead, now. Taking the stand won’t help him any. If I do what you’re asking of me, they’ll find my family. They’ll kill my parents. They’ll kill my sister, too, but they’ll rape her first.” She shakes her head again, fear written all over her face. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I won’t do it.”