“Get up,” I say firmly. She gets to her feet unsteadily, looking much like a baby giraffe walking for the first time.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I say. Her brow puckers and she frowns.
“Sir—”
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
She stutters over the question. “Cherry.”
I shake my head. “Is that your real name or stage name?”
She rolls her lips. “Real.”
Her parents are really fucking unoriginal. Like might as well have a second child and name her Strawberry or Watermelon.
Anyway, besides the point. “How would you feel about getting a fresh start in life, yeah?”
Her eyes widen, and it seems like the prospect of escaping this one has some of the drug-induced fog receding from her gaze. But then she turns wary, and then resigned. Tears line the edges of her lids, and the sight will forever haunt me.
She looks down, seeming to collect herself. “I know what that means. I-I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize I was leaning that far down.”
“I’m not going to hurt or kill you, Cherry,” I cut in. “I’m going to help you, but I need you to listen to exactly what I say.”
She shifts on her feet, peering up at me through her lashes and bobbing her head frantically. I slip out the Bluetooth earpiece I had hidden deep in my inner suit pocket. All of my jackets have a special lead lining in them that deflects radiation. Meaning I can walk through any body scanner without the devices being detected.
I pop it in my ear, press the button that immediately calls out to Jay, and wait for him to answer.
When he does, I explain the situation. It takes fifteen minutes before he has a car ready to pick her up. In that time, Cherry tells me about her family. About her younger sister that has cancer and her poor single mother. She works this job to pay the medical bills, but she confesses that she doesn’t know if it’s worth it if she’s killed and the extra income stops.
She won’t ever have to worry about taking care of them again. Or being killed because of a broken glass.
Jay watches the camera feed and directs me towards a back door exit without detection.
I grab her wrist before she walks out of the door. The nondescript black sedan is waiting ten feet away, and the door already open for her.
“I know,” she says softly. “I don’t know your face. I’ve never seen you before,” she guesses.
I shake my head. “Cherry, you’re not going to a place where you’ll ever be questioned about something like that. You and your family will be taken care of and safe. I promise. All I ask is that you do something meaningful with your life. That’s all.”
A single tear slips from her eye. She hurriedly wipes it away and nods. Her brightened eyes shine with hope, and doing this shit, involving myself in the worst of humanity—it’s all worth it when I have a survivor look at me like that.
Not like I’m a hero, but like they can actually envision a future.
She stumbles off to the car, and I make my way back inside, making sure no one spots me.
“Jay, clear the cameras,” I say before taking the earpiece out and slipping it back in the hidden pocket.
The cameras will be spliced. If anyone reviews them, they’ll see me dragging a dejected Cherry into a room and us walking out separately.
It’s one of my specialties that I mastered and then trained Jay in. Taking parts of a camera feed and manipulating them to look exactly how you want them to, without even the best hackers being able to detect manipulation.
I crack my neck, and ready myself for a very long night of shooting the shit and becoming BFF’s with a fucking pedophile.
Chapter 21
The Manipulator
I
’m stewing.
Nana used to make this god-awful stew when I was young. It smelled like a dumpster fire and tasted even worse. My attitude is about as foul as that stew right now.
“I don’t even know his name,” I groan, my voice muffled by my hands. They’ve been glued to my face ever since Daya got here, and I confessed he broke in again.
I haven’t gotten around to what happened yet. There’s not an ounce of courage in my bones. She’s been patiently waiting, knowing that I’m holding something back. Something terrible and shameful. And something I can’t stop fucking thinking about.
“You fucked him, didn’t you?” she asks calmly.
My eyes bulge, and I unglue my hands from my face so I can pin her with a glare.
“No, I did not fuck him,” I snarl, as if she’s suggesting something insane and I didn’t come really damn close to it. I can feel the blood rising in my cheeks and my left eye twitches.
Fuck. Daya knows that’s my tell.
“You did!” she bursts, standing up from her chair and looking down at me with shock.
“I didn’t! I promise,” I rush out, grabbing her hand. “But… something did happen.”
She puffs out a breath and settles back down in her chair, scooting back into the island in my kitchen and grabbing her margarita. She sucks down two huge gulps, trepidation on her face.
“You sucked his dick?” she guesses, lifting a hand to fiddle with her nose ring.
The images those words just put in my head have my blood pressure rising to dangerous levels. I bite my lip and shake my head slowly, the guilty look still present on my face.
“He sucked you?”
When I just stare, the guilt in my eyes burning brighter, her mouth pops open and her eyes round.
“Bitch, what the fuck!” she shouts. She leans in closer, an unreadable emotion flaring in her eyes. “Was it consensual?”
And this is where I get tripped up. Because it wasn’t. But had he kept going, had he stripped his clothes from his body and fucked me—I can’t say with absolute certainty that I would’ve stopped him. Or that I would’ve wanted to.
Still, I shake my head no.
Fury flares in her sage eyes, and her lips twist into a snarl. I lean back, honestly a little afraid of her.
I put my hand on hers. “Daya… I-well, it wasn’t consensual… at first?” I say the last part like a question, embarrassed that I’m even admitting something like that.
She blinks. "At first," she echoes. "Meaning what? He was that good that he changed your mind?"
My hands cover my face, but she forces them away, nearly bumping her nose into mine as she intently waits for an answer.
“You have such pretty eyes,” I tell her.
She snarls at me. “Spill, slut.”
I close my eyes with a resigned sigh. “That man ate the soul out of my body, and I don’t think I’ve gotten it back yet.”
She jerks back, surprise in her pale green irises.
“I know, you can judge me. I’m judging me too,” I say pitifully. I slide her margarita over to me and finish it off. Mine’s been gone since I first told her he broke in.
“Baby girl, I am not judging you. But let me get this straight. You egged him on in a text because you felt like a bad bitch. And then he broke in to make good on his promise, tied your ass up, and you freaked out at first, but then ended up riding his face?” she summarizes slowly.
Several emotions swirl in her eyes. Confusion, shock, maybe even intrigue. But not judgment. And that’s only because I didn’t confess to her about the gun incident. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to talk about that one.