Addict Audiobook

Prologue

Maikel had one chance.
Otherwise, I’d have to let Vicente know he had fucked up. It was either him or me. And Maikel had never been kind to messengers. Or merciful. So, uncle or not, I had no loyalty to the weak-ass bastard.
“Lafe! Son! I wasn’t expecting you!” Maikel walked toward me in the open gallery of his compound. I say gallery, but out of all the factions under the Institution, this one disgusted me the most.
Bright, pristine walls with twenty-foot ceilings enclosed the gallery. Opulence shone from every corner of the room. Then there were the windows. Behind each window was a woman who had been abducted from some highly sought-after part of the world with some requested physical features. Naked and dazed, they swayed to an unheard beat.
Anyone who was unfamiliar with the compound would think they were here of their own free will.
They weren’t.
These fucking unlucky women had been broken by Maikel’s handlers until they did exactly as they were told without a thought of complaint. Because the unruly ones paid a price much too high to keep their sanity. It was a brutal lesson and far too effective a reminder to all the other girls.
Maikel made a show of giving the unruly ones to the soldiers.
And the soldiers learned from Maikel.
Never kind. Never merciful.
Always sadistic.
It took a truly depraved man to run this part of the business. Maikel ran and reveled in it. Sampling the goods.
Not that there was anything I could do to change it. This was life, and it was either forget the morals of the mainstream world or execution. It didn’t matter who you were or what position you held, you were replaceable.
Expendable.
My hands shook in my pockets as I narrowed my eyes on his quickly approaching form. He knew exactly why I was here. I might not have any real power to stop him, but I could make his life damn hard.
Because out of all the sins my brothers and I had committed over the years, rape and human trafficking remained hard lines in the sand, even for men like us. We may not be able to stop it, but we would never hurt and abuse innocent women like this.
“Maikel,” I sneered as a ball of excitement formed in my stomach. Vicente might not want him dead, but he had no issue with him suffering. Not when his incompetencies fucked with the bottom line. At the end of the day, Vicente was a businessman.
“There’s plenty of time to chat before business,” he laughed and swiped a handkerchief over his sweating brow. He ended with a pained grimace lining his tan face that looked too much like Vicente’s. They were both elegant men with slightly graying hair—a pleasant façade to cover their misdeeds.
Oh yes, Maikel knew precisely what was about to happen.
“And what would we chat about?” I mused, pulling my hands out of my pockets. His gaze darted to my hands, but I couldn’t have stopped the trembling if I’d tried. It wasn’t important anyway.
“We have a fine new selection of girls. You could take one or two up to your suite of rooms at no charge. Family discount.” He tried to smile, but the beads of perspiration dotting his upper lip ruined the jovial effect.
That, and family, meant shit in this world.
“There’s no such thing as family discounts. And Vicente would be livid to know that you’re offering them.”
Maikel gulped.
“Let’s find a nice quiet corner and talk about the finances. You can’t really afford to give away favors, anyway, can you?” I despised Vicente and everything he stood for, but I always volunteered for these jobs. He used my brothers and me as something like police, and as much as I hated the institution, I loved raining pain down on these fuckers.
“Sure, sure. My office.” He turned and marched us to the end of the gallery, through a back hallway until we entered another gallery-sized room, but this one lacked any of the elegant décors. Instead sporting concrete floors, metal crates, and industrial fans.
This was where the new chattel came.
I kept my gaze on the back of Maikel’s head, dreaming of the satisfaction it would give me to bash it against the red-stained floor. But there was another reason why I trained my attention to Maikel.
Too many girls were being broken at this very moment around the room. The slaps and cries of terror were already making my stomach roil. And a different kind of skin slapping with animalistic grunts from the guards. If I let my gaze linger on any of the handlers with the girls, I’d lose my lunch.
I’d done that once. Let my stupidity get the better of me. It was years ago now, the first time I’d seen how they break the girls in. There had been so many, and the cacophony of their pained cries shredded what goodness I had left in my soul, if I’d ever had any.
I had frozen on one particular girl bent over a cage with the guard's hand smashing her face against the bars as he pounded against her.
Blood dripped through the bars where she cut her mouth while screaming, even though by the time I’d seen her, she barely had a voice at all. Blood coated her fingers where she gripped the cage so tight, like she could block it all out.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I can’t save them. It would be suicide to try, I kept repeating to myself. Not after the last time I failed. At least now I’d learned which drugs numb the guilt.
Then a damn near war cry caught my attention, and as if she were a magnet, my unwilling gaze fell on her.
A small black-haired beauty with ivory skin, just as naked as the rest, fought against a handler who was dragging her by the hair toward a back room. A shiver crept down my spine. Most times, women didn’t reemerge from the torture chamber. What came out wasn’t human.
Her eyes snapped open, twin glowing orbs of ice sawing through me as our gazes locked.
That woman wasn’t like the rest. She wasn’t caving as multiple women were being assaulted within a few feet of her. Their tactic to cow the masses didn’t faze her.
She was angry.
Savage in her kicks and bites and scratches.
Regret closed around my black heart. Women like her never lasted long.
Maikel let out a string of curses. “Tony fucked up when he grabbed her. She’s a beauty, but not fit for shit. Too much brain, not enough fear.”
“She’s going to the chamber for lack of fear?” I scoffed. Anytime his handlers were made out to seem like the pathetic pigs they were, Maikel’s pride took a hit. And when his pride was stung, he clumsily lashed out, which led to more punishment.
Punishment I would all too happily dole out this trip.
“Because she’s a martyr trying to save all the girls. Too stupid to live.” He shook his head as he left me in the center of the cages.
Any humor at his expense was wiped away.
A fury like I’d never felt raced through me, searing every inch of my skin. This woman, probably minutes away from her last breath—if she was lucky—was willing to throw her life away when she had to know there wasn’t a damn thing she could change?
Tearing my gaze away from the now-closed door, I almost fucking ran after Maikel, not willing to be in this hellhole for one more second.
What a stupid fucking woman. I didn’t even know her, yet I was livid with her. Hate hit me just as strongly as I tried to force thoughts of what was happening to her behind that door out of my head. I hated that she didn’t care enough about her own life to shut the hell up and follow directions.

Mostly, I hated her because, in just a few seconds, I could tell she was everything I wasn’t.