Page 135 of Full Throttle

She snapped out of it and looked straight ahead to where multiple men were standing around chatting, drinking, doing drugs, or smoking cigarettes. There were women walking around, but I could tell they were workers—prostitutes. Not everyone here was a part of the flesh trade. Some came down here looking for money or something to help escape their own lives.

“Alright,” Leon said from behind all of us. “No one seems to give a fuck that we’re here. So what’s our play?” I turned around, herding everyone back into the tunnel, out of the light.

“Walk in, take down last two of Kavi’s shoulders, and then walk out,” Dontell said in the dark from my right.

“You forget to say kill anyone who gets in our way,” Mina muttered on my left.

“Figured that was a given, Jazzy,” he said to her.

“We can’t all just bust up in there,” Nik said, her voice small. “Someone needs to go inside and make sure he’s actually in there.”

“She’s right,” Collin said in our ears. “You don’t know who the other players are.”

“You in here yet?” I asked.

He didn’t respond, and something about his silence put me on edge. Collin Stevens was a dangerous man, but this place could break even him.

“Send Nikki in,” James suggested.

“No,” I clipped.

“But he won’t be expecting me,” Nik urged. I looked at her, holding her eyes for a moment.

We didn’t have time to argue about this. We had less than three minutes. I turned her to me and began fixing her appearance. I tucked her braid behind her, into her jacket and pulled her hood up.

When that was done, I put my hands on her shoulders. “You keep your fucking head down until you get inside, you hear me?”

She nodded.

“There’s going to be a bar to your left. Go straight there and plant yourself. You lay eyes on Kavi, say the code word, and we’ll be right in. Got that?”

She nodded again. “Yes,” she whispered.

“My brave girl,” I praised before I turned her, giving her a gentle shove. “Go.”

As I watched her walk away, I felt my family surround me. I knew they would do whatever it took to protect her, but one question shot to the forefront of my mind.

Where the fuck was my brother?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Nikki

I kept my head down as I walked through tunnel and into the wider space where the structure was. The closer I got, the more nervous I became, and when a low, thumping musical beat filled my ears, for the thousandth time today, my stomach dropped.

I just killed a man thirty minutes ago.

A man who came down here looking to buy a woman he could use for the night.

He had his hands on me, his eyes looking me up and down as he thought of all the twisted things he was going to do to me. I could see his blackened soul behind his dead eyes, and until Cain threw that blade into one of them, I was afraid. The last time I’d been that afraid, Cain’s mother was pointing a fucking gun in my face.

That seemed like a lifetime ago.

Now, I was here, about to walk into the center of hell.

I was fucking terrified.

Once I was to the thin door, I reached out, grabbed the rope handle, and pulled. It came open easy and the smell of alcohol, weed, sex, and death filled my nostrils.

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