Page 26 of Vice
CHAPTER EIGHT
A WORD TO THE WISE
I lock my bedroom door when I return to my room. A locked door isn’t going to do much good if Harrison or any of Fernando’s other men decide they want to come pay me another visit, but at least the sound of them kicking the damned door down will wake me up this time. I shower again, feeling dirty after watching the wolves gorge themselves, and then I climb into bed, staring at the ceiling. I already know I’m not going to be able to sleep for hours. I don’t intend on resting, anyway. I just need to wait here long enough to allow everyone else to go to sleep, and then I’m going on a hunt of my own. I need to find out if my sister’s here, and to do that I need to do some snooping.
I should have asked Plato where his room was. It’s likely that Fernando keeps all of his workers together, in the same area of the house. That’s how most of these sick fuckers keep the people they buy and sell like stocks and shares, anyway. I should have asked Plato a lot of things. That guy back in the party room said he’d been here for three years. If anyone knows anything about Laura, it’ll be him. The opportunity to quiz him didn’t arise earlier, when I was watching him fuck that huge blond guy in the ass, though. Nor when I was shooting someone in the chest, and he was dragging me out of that terrible fucking place. I also have no idea if he’s loyal to Fernando, even if his loyalty is only out of fear. There’s every chance he’ll go running to the old man and sound the alarm if I start blabbing about a missing blonde woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to me. I need to figure out whether his bravery today when he helped me was a flash in the pan, or if he actually does want to get the fuck out of here.
I lie in bed for three hours. When I get up and creep out into the hallway, I already know I’ve been seen. Not by any of Fernando’s guards, or by any of his guests. No, the house is deathly silent. Not a soul stirs anywhere in the building as far as I can tell, but that can’t be said for the small white lenses Fernando has mounted all over the walls. Technology never sleeps, after all. I’m positive I’ve already been captured on camera as I make my way down the hallway; it’ll only be a matter of Fernando’s security detail informing him that I was up and about in the night, and that will be it. He’ll know I was sticking my nose in places it doesn’t belong, and I had better have a good excuse when he confronts me or there will be hell to pay.
Good thing I have some time to think on that. As it stands I don’t have an excuse at all, let alone a good one.
Down hallways and down staircases I go, clutching my balisong in my hand, ready to plunge it deep into the chest of any man who might stand in my way. There are so many bedrooms, so many narrow corridors and so many fucking dark corners that I begin to doubt my plan. How the hell am I going to search this place without waking anyone up? It’s like hunting for a needle in a haystack.
I head downstairs, following my gut. If I were Fernando… Wow. That’s a horrifying thought. If I were Fernando, I hopefully wouldn’t be hosting such fucked up sex parties, and I hopefully wouldn’t be kidnapping men and women and forcing them to do unspeakable things to each other for other people’s entertainment. If I were, though, if I were the most deplorable kind of person imaginable, I suspect I’d be keeping my captives under the house, as opposed to in any of the luxurious, comfortable rooms on the top floor. The basement, if there is one in this giant, soulless building, won’t have any windows, which means less chance of escape. And basements are nearly always easy to soundproof, so no faint, desperate cries for help would be heard anywhere else in the house. Seems prudent to me.
I’m on the ground floor, when I hear a muffled scraping sound behind me. At first I think it’s my imagination, heightened by the stress of the situation, but then I hear the sound of quiet, even breathing and I know I’m being watched. Harrison? Maybe Ocho? God knows how many people Fernando has in his employ; it could be any one of those fuckers. I duck to the right, slipping into a shadowed doorway. I have no idea where the door leads, and I don’t find out. I press my back against the wall, opening and closing the door loudly enough that whoever is hanging back in the hallway will think I have walked through, and then I wait.
One, two, three, four, five…
A slender shadow stretches up along the other side of the doorframe, and then suddenly a figure is standing there, dressed all in black, with a huge, menacing knife in their hand. Scratch that—it’s not a knife. It’s a motherfucking machete, and it’s about to come down on my head. I react, blocking the blow, sending the blade clattering from my attacker’s hand.
“Shit,” he swears under his breath. I grab hold of him by the throat, slamming him into the wall, lifting him a clear foot off the ground as I pin him to the wall.
“Shit’s right, motherfucker. You’re in it up to your neck now.” I pull back my arm, ready to hammer the point of my own flick knife into his throat, when I see freckles, a fuck load of them, and I squint a little closer into the darkness.
“Natalia?”
“Let me…go!”She kicks and scratches, using her fingernails, digging them into my skin. I barely feel a thing, but in the same vein I know she’s leaving a mark on me.
“Quit it,” I snap. “Damn it, Natalia. Be fucking quiet!” That’s a stupid thing to demand of her, I’m sure—she’s going to be yelling for her father the moment I set her down—but I demand it anyway. Then again…I’m not squeezing her throat hard enough to prevent her from screaming, and she hasn’t done it yet. What does that mean? Why isn’t she making more noise than she is right now? I clamp a hand over her mouth, pressing my body against hers so my chest is pinning her to the wall and not my hand wrapped around her throat.
I can feel her tits crushed up against my chest, and it’s almost enough to make my dick hard, especially since she’s still clawing and scratching at me like a hellcat. “Let me go, cabron! I need…I need to fucking talk to you.”
“About what?”
“My father.”
“So talk. You can do that just fine right here. Is he planning on killing me?”
“Yes. But then he’s planning on killing everyone here at some point or another, so…don’t take it personally.”
“That might be difficult. I like being alive.”
“Then you should leave here. Right now. And don’t come back. Forget about the drugs. Forget about Plato. Get on your bike and go. Don’t look back.”
That’s probably very sound advice, but I’ve been on this road for so long now. I have no idea how to turn away from it. I haven’t got the faintest clue where I would go if I walked away from this lead. “I can’t do that, Natalia. I have to see this thing through.”
She huffs, pulling at the hand I have wrapped around her neck, trying to force me to release my hold. I have more strength in my little finger than she does in both arms, though, so she doesn’t get very far. She gives up, allowing her arms to fall slack. “You’re not as smart as you think you are,” she tells me. “You think I don’t know why you’re really here?”
I scan her face, looking for some sign that she’s grasping at straws, simply trying to get me to back off, but all I find is wildfire burning in her eyes. She’s defiant and angry. If looks could kill, I’d already be six feet under. “What do you mean, why I’m really here?” I demand.
“I knew as soon as I laid eyes on you, Cade. She told me you’d come for her one day, and I didn’t believe her. I didn’t believe for one second anybody would ever be so stupid.”
It feels like an invisible hand is clenching hold of my heart. I narrow my eyes, trying to steady my breathing, but I feel like I’m about to fucking lose it. “Who? Who told you I’d come for them?”
Natalia grits her teeth together, scowling at me. “Who do you think? Your sister. Laura told me that you’d come. Now get your fucking hands off me so we can talk.”
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