Page 2 of Invincible
“It’s okay,” she said, squaring her shoulders in determination.“We just need a plan B.”
“Is this the last one?”Andreas asked as he watched his men drag what appeared to be a teenager into the cell.
“Yes, sir.This makes number twelve,” his man answered.He never moved more than twelve in a load.Perhaps it was his lucky number or maybe it was biblical, but whatever it was, twelve had seemed like the perfect number.
It wasn’t that Andreas had been born bad, he was simply never given any reason to be anything else.His dad had taken off when he was young and his mother didn’t have time, between extra shifts at work, to keep up with him.
At sixteen, he found himself a guest of the Orange Regional Juvenile Detention Center for boosting a car.At eighteen, he found himself bounced around various prison facilities courtesy of the fine state of Florida between bouts of freedom on the outside.
“Very good,” he answered, stepping inside the box in the front of the container.It already stank of sweat and human waste.He counted the heads inside to verify that he wasn’t being cheated.Satisfied, he started to back out when one of the girls stepped toward him.
Shaking his head, he watched her false bravado.There was always that one in every group who thought they could reason their way out of this in one way or the other.
Andreas did her the courtesy of listening to her plea before calling her the Spanish equivalent of a whore and shoving her onto the ground.She might as well get used to it now.Whoever bought her wouldn’t treat her with kid gloves.Hell, she would be lucky to last the first month.
She was a pretty little thing, with her golden skin and long black hair dipped green on the ends.He had a strict policy, though, of keeping his hands and every other part of his body off the merchandise.
“Do they have enough water and food to last?”he asked Reyes, his second-in-command in Washington, DC.He had brought Reyes up from his old neighborhood in Florida when he was finally put in charge of this operation.They had grown up fighting on the streets together and he was one of the few men Andreas trusted.He trusted him with this side of the business anyway, he trusted no one completely.
“Until delivery,” Reyes answered.
“I’ll expect it on the road tonight then.”With a nod, he strolled to his black Mercedes SUV.He slid into the back seat when his driver opened the door.Soon he would be at his spacious townhouse off of DuPont Circle.
Who would ever have thought that a kid from the wrong side of Orlando would now be a man of power?One who had quickly learned how much luxury dipping his toe into the world of human trafficking could bring him.
He smiled as the SUV pulled out of the container depot.He had run more than a hundred girls from DC to Houston alone, without even one incident.All he had to do was get the container loaded on the ship, then he was home free.There was no reason to think this time would be anything less than smooth sailing.
