Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
She stopped flinching at these conversations years ago. Violence and corruption was the way of life here. Embracing it was a means of survival.
Thankfully, her hard-earned position in his gang allowed her to live outside of the compound. Tiago gave her an apartment within walking distance. A room with four mildewed walls and intermittent electricity and running water. She couldn’t afford to furnish it or make it pretty, but it was a thousand times better than this crumbling dump.
Tiago’s hideout had once been a popular hotel in Caracas. Like the rest of the city, it was abandoned during the country’s economic crisis, and the squatters moved in. She didn’t know when Tiago had chased them out and made it his primary residence, didn’t know the locations of his other homes, but over the past eleven years, this was where he spent most of his time. And he’d done nothing to fix it up.
It smelled like smoke and death. Bullet holes riddled the concrete walls. Sheet metal covered every window. It was dark. So fucking dark and musty and packed with rotten, sweaty men. She didn’t trust any of them, and she didn’t think Tiago trusted them, either.
“With the new recruits,” she said as they rounded a turn in the corridor, “how many men do you have now?”
“Why do you ask?” He stared straight ahead, his expression empty, except for the twitch in his clean-shaved cheek.
Shit. She’d angered him. The man was suspicious of everyone and everything. Though he seemed to confide in her the most, she often wondered if he kept her the closest because he trusted her the least.
As for the size of his gang, it was a number he never confirmed. She estimated it exceeded two-hundred men, which was larger than the local police force. He was physically unstoppable. Not that anyone ever tried. As King of the City, he had lackeys and informants positioned in every nook and alley, including in the military and police.
They strolled down a long hall. Or rather, he strolled. She was lucky to line up one heeled shoe in front of the other without face-planting. By the time they reached his bedroom door, a sheen of perspiration blanketed her skin. Agony coiled her guts, and bile rose in her chest.
Two more guards waited on either side of the steel door. The old-fashioned dead bolt required an old-fashioned key, one that Tiago kept on his person at all times.
He didn’t move to unlock the door. She knew the drill. Clothes first.
The heels came off. Then she removed the handguns from her waistband, shimmied out of the jeans, the shirt, and unclasped the bra, setting everything on the wooden bench that existed only for this purpose. For her. As far as she knew, she was the only visitor he allowed in his room.
Clad in nothing but black panties, she rose to her full height, shoulders back, and waited for their inspection.
The two guards who had escorted them here remained at the entrance of the hall. The other two swept clinical hands over her butt and groin, digging fingers against the satin between her cheeks in search for weapons. She held still, muscles loose, and breathed.
Tiago watched with detachment until they finished. Then he stepped forward and combed his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp. It wasn’t out of affection. He was searching for weapons.
Knowing that didn’t thwart a deep ache from swelling inside her. An ache for companionship. Desire. Love.
Oh, the hopeless dreams of a silly girl. She didn’t know that girl anymore, but sometimes she entertained thoughts of her, imagined what life would be like if she hadn’t been abducted from her beloved home in the citrus grove.
Satisfied with his search, Tiago unlocked the bedroom door, guided her inside, and bolted them in.
His living space was as spartan and crude as the rest of the compound. Deteriorated sheetrock peeled away from old stone walls. A small unmade bed was shoved into the corner. Two mismatched chairs sat in front of a fireplace filled with ash and cobwebs. A bare bulb glowed in the ceiling—the room’s only source of light.
It was a sad space. Humble. But Tiago Badell’s presence made it feel enigmatic, ominous, cloaked in secrets. He was one of the wealthiest men in the country, yet here he slept on a tiny old mattress in an abandoned hotel. Alone.
She stood near the chairs, as expected, while he opened a medium-size safe in the closet. The depth of the alcove prevented her from seeing the combination lock. She’d followed him to that side of the room once, hoping for a peek at the safe. But the punishment for doing so had been so grave she never did it again.
“Have you vomited this morning?” He removed her precious lifeline from the safe and relocked it.