Page 56 of Midnight Torment

Then, I wandered out of the alley with my hands in my pocket as if I didn’t have a care in the world. My temper bubbled over when I discovered Megan wasn’t where I left her. I would fucking kill that asshole if a single golden hair on her head was injured.

I scanned the marketplace, hunting for them stall at a time. Fear burned inside my chest and my pulse spiked in my veins to hammer in my ears. Put an enemy in front of me and I would kill them in a heartbeat, but nothing in my adult life rivalled the pure panic that accosted my senses right now.

The man who bore the name Jordan Berkeley was cool and unflappable. Today, I went back in time to the three-year-old boy with his parents’ blood on his feet and terror in his soul. I suppressed the urge to start shooting until someone told me where Megan had been taken.

Just as that uncontrollable fear began to crest over me, I saw her walking through the crowds, smiling and talking to Johannes. The beast inside me settled itself and returned to its normal pacing inside my chest.

She turned in my direction and waved, and the pressure in my chest evaporated to allow me to breathe again. Everywhere she went, she spread joy and happiness, and I was the starving man who devoured it because my life had been devoid of any of those emotions since I was three.

“Johannes took me to this beautiful stall with different crystals in it. I bought you a present.” Her arm slid through mine and she stood of her tiptoes to press a kiss to my cheek. “Everything okay?”

“It is now,” I growled and threw the man I wanted to murder a look that conveyed my darkest desire.

He shrugged and grinned unrepentantly. “If you are going to the market, you should have a guide to take you to the best products. Come, this way.” He waved for us to follow him, and my back molars ground together while I debated shooting him in the ass.

“You should see the beautiful little figures,” Megan continued, oblivious to my earlier panic. “I’m going to put them along the window ledge where the light can hit them when we get home.”

Home.

She said the word so easily, and the truth was that shehadmade that house into a home. Megan had wandered in and eradicated the loneliness from it. Her damned cushions and colourful kitchen utensils invaded and turned my life from monochrome to technicolour.

“Johannes was telling me that he knows this lovely little restaurant with authentic dishes, since all the resorts cater to the tastes of tourists.” She nudged me as we followed the man who was annoying the hell out of me. “I told him that we’d love to visit it.”

Was there anywhere she went that she didn’t make friends? I swore she possessed some sort of voodoo magic that made men want to fuck her and women want to be her. Yeah, I’d been the envy of all the Doms in the Twilight Rooms when I inherited her to train. I lost count of the times one of them asked me if she was ready to be in the general rooms for their pleasure. So, like the dick I was, I locked her in our room far from the prying eyes of the world and kept her all to myself.

“Jay?” I glanced down at her. “Are you angry with me?”

That broke me out of my bad tempered reverie. “No, baby. I was just worried when I couldn’t find you.” I tucked an unruly piece of hair that had escaped back under the hat. “You know that I freak out when people disappear.”

Her head rested on my bicep. “You worry too much.”

I didn’t fucking worry enough since someone had spotted her and Johannes was already half in love with her.

Our new tour guide brought us to a residential area far from the noise of the market. “No one will be looking for you here. This is not an area that tourists visit, so we can go about our daily life without being constantly watched and photographed.”

“Why should I trust you?” I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head to glare at him.

“Because we are friends now. I told you that I would arrange for you to go to the mine and I will. But in the meantime, I need to organise transport since it is far from civilisation.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I hate the Council and everything they stand for. They are like any other men who put themselves in power and decide to control those around them. Evil festers and takes root, spreading through those men until they no longer see misjustice and pain, their humanity eroded by their quest for greater rewards.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I only took Grampa’s position because some asshole killed my parents. The best way to destroy them is to sit around their sacred table and watch them until they slip up.” A grin curved my lips. “Accidents happen, and murder can be made to look like just that.”

Johannes joined me in grinning. “Indeed it can, and since I now know who you are, I would well believe that you could bend the wills of fate. I could do with your advice about a pest problem.”

Which was how I found myself half an hour later in his house watching a video of a man he was searching for.

“People are taken as if their lives are of no consequence,” Johannes said. “We have been tracking the organisation and this man seems to be high ranking.”

“His name is Darius Ramirez and he currently lives in Cuba. His brother is in charge of the Ramirez cartel and hates him. His men are trying to convince Lucas Black that Alex died in a crash but that man has nine lives and my gut tells me he’s hiding while hunting Darius.”

Johannes’s brow furrowed and his almost black gaze rose to meet mine. “What are they doing to these people?”

The memory of that house in Cuba flickered through my head. “Some things are best not known.”

“They took my goddaughter. Seth had been trying to help me.” The expression on his face convinced me he was telling the truth.

“Darius Ramirez is involved in human trafficking and organ retrieval. Has she sought medical attention lately?”

He stiffened. “She had her appendix out last year.”

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