InnocenceForSale.com/ Bree Read online

  With that he was gone. I struggled to a slightly more dignified position, if any position sitting on the floor against a wall could be described as such, as an engine started outside, then receded down the driveway. The vision out of my eye was watery and quickly closing, but I could still see my mom sitting on the couch.

  “You gave up everything we had for this,” I said quietly.

  “We were on a sinking ship, Bree. It was only a matter of time before it went down. This is our lot for now, but Antonio’s got something big planned. We’ll be fine again.”

  Mom stood up, but didn’t come in my direction. Instead, she headed to the kitchen muttering something about needing a “pick me up.” With the light now on, I saw her collapse into a chair and start scraping something together on the kitchen table.

  Something snapped. It wasn’t entirely inside me, it was between the two of us. I didn’t know what was sadder, the fact that it happened or the fact that it didn’t hurt. Not as much as the death of my engineering dreams, anyway.

  I struggled to my feet and went to the bathroom. By the time I’d travelled that short distance, my eye was swollen almost completely shut.

  It was hard to believe the reflection staring back at me in the dirty mirror. I looked like I’d gone twelve rounds with the champ instead of one round with a fucking loser. He’s got big plans? What big plans? Had somebody invented a hallucinogen you could shove up your ass in addition to what he was putting up his nose and in his veins?

  I gently touched my eye and almost screamed, it hurt even more than the initial punch had. A cold sweat broke on my brow and I leaned both hands on the sink, breathing deeply as the wave of pain passed, leaving me shivering.

  There had to be a way out of this. I had to get out of this, or I was as dead as my dreams.

  I returned to my room, carefully stepping over my line of poison, and shut the door behind me. I wiggled my finger across the touchpad of my laptop, bringing the screen back to life and started searching.

  The pictures of the beautiful beaches of the world I’d put up on my walls almost mocked me. Those were the places I could have gone with the money I earned, maybe even in a plane I helped design if that was where the path of my career had gone. Now, they might as well be in another galaxy.

  I focused on the screen. I needed to find a way to get enough money, and fast, that I could disappear and never have to resurface again.

  The witness protection program was supposed to help people disappear. What was I supposed to do when I wanted to disappear from the program? Damn those two for dragging me into this, for turning the one man I loved into an enemy.

  Andrew

  “We got three men dead in Beamstown. The Rigolottis obviously don’t think it’s outside their territory,” said Chris.

  “Well, it fuckin’ is. It’s mine. We still got their guy who shot up the girls in Theo’s place?”

  “Oh yeah, we’re barely started on him. What did you have in mind?”

  I leaned back in my chair and tented my fingers. That freaky little motherfucker had mouthed off at everybody until the cavalry arrived. Standing there over the corpse of the girl he shot because she wouldn’t suck him off immediately after he fucked her in the ass.

  Why the fuck did they always have to ask if we knew who they were? It was always the same: they were made-men and thought they were untouchable. Well, not in my backyard they weren’t.

  His declarations of being with the Rigolotti crime family got a lot louder after he was shot in the kneecap, but lost all the smugness. Oh no, the bravado was gone, leaving behind only desperation.

  I knew he wasn’t here fucking Theo’s girls on official Rigolotti business, so I had been content on shaking him down for cash to pay the girl’s family. Using him as a general example to anybody who wanted to make trouble on any of my business fronts was a welcome bonus on the side.

  Now, though? I could use him to send a message back to the Rigolottis.

  “I think we need to make a little home video. I heard that Bernardo Rigolotti doesn’t believe you can take twelve hours to close an Iron Maiden with a person inside it,” I said.

  “Where’d you hear that, boss?”

  “I think he tweeted it,” I joked. “So get a replica of the original in warehouse…” I paused to think. “Fifteen, and the hydraulic press, and get it organized. The Iron Maiden will make a sturdy package to send the fucker home in, along with the recording. No time-lapse, send the whole thing. We don’t want Bernardo to claim we used any Hollywood trickery.”

  Chris’ cheeks puffed out as he wrote down a few notes. “That’s some brutal shit, boss.”

  Say what you wanted about the old days, paint a rosy picture if you wanted, but they had a penchant for violence that was a lost art in this world of guns and long-range missiles. When they fuckin’ hated somebody, they were in your face with fists, cold metal and maybe a little bit of horse power when they wanted to watch you get torn apart.

  I’d always been fascinated by the history of crime, war and the tools mankind had come up with to enforce their will on others. The last hundred years or so of Mafia history in America was closer to home, but nothing was as engrossing as that medieval shit.

  Coming up through the ranks in the Trevisano family, I made a name for myself by bringing back some of these old-fashioned methods of interrogation and intimidation. If Andrew “Old School” Everett came knocking on your door, you knew you fucked up.

  Raffaello Trevisano’s family was wiped out in an ambush just before he was looking to pass the torch on to his son. By the time he got his revenge, with my help, we were close enough that he asked me to take over and grow his empire.

  That’s what I did. I never stopped growing it. If you’re not growing, you’re shrinking, but that inevitably leads to these border disputes, which were beginning to happen more frequently as our area of influence increased.

  The Rigolottis wouldn’t stop me though. Nothing had ever been more than a hiccup in the march forward. Nothing except…

  “Any word on Julia and Antonio?” I asked.

  “Nothing. It must be nine months since we managed to get even a vague rumor. Don’t worry, I never stop telling them that these are people of interest and the reward is still set aside for information on them. If they’re still in the country, we’ll get them.”

  Motherfuckers. They thought they had enough dirt on me to put me away for the rest of my life so I might not miss that fifty million dollars Antonio never bothered to mention to his bosses at the FBI. They were wrong.

  And if they thought I’d ever give up looking for them, they’d be wrong again. The money could be replaced, had been replaced many times over since it was stolen, but nothing but pure revenge could ever make up for the insult.

  It was the most personal insult I had ever been forced to endure. My own wife, fuckin’ running off with an FBI agent who was investigating me. You wouldn’t read about it.

  I’d come home one day and she was gone, took her daughter with her, and I didn’t see Julia again until she testified against me in court. Bitch. She’d been a queen in my world, and that’s how she repaid me.

  Every time I thought about it, which was every fucking day, my fists bunched up and my blood boiled. The things I’d do to former agent Antonio Sewell, or Buddy as he’d been known as in my crew…

  I took a deep breath and let my fists unfurl, pulling out my checkbook and a pen. “Before I forget, give this to Edward.”

  “A million bucks? What’s this for?”

  Chris was my right-hand man in all things that the public were better off not knowing, but Edward oversaw all my legitimate business fronts, the organizations that kept people from wondering too hard about how I funded my lifestyle and how I cleaned the dirty money.

  They were both the very best men I could find, and fiercely loyal, which was the only reason I didn’t bat an eyelid at Chris’s question. Anybody else and questioning me might not have turned out very well for them.

  “We’re funding a dig in England, a huge siege site around the remains of Dunedin Castle. Should be interesting, and a lot of the finds will end up in a museum here, rather than over there.”

  Chris shrugged and pocketed the check. He didn’t share my interest in that period. “Anything else, boss?”

  “That’s it for tonight, you can go.”

  Chris stood and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair he’d been sitting in. “Night, see you tomorrow.”

  “Night. Give my best to Maggie.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Chris’s wife was a smart lady, she always hated Julia. If only I’d had her sense. Chris closed the door behind him and I stayed in my seat for a few minutes before rising and moving to the chair behind my desk.

  I swiveled around to stare out the window at my estate. There wasn’t a lot to see on the other side of the bulletproof glass, beyond the lights of the grounds. All quiet on the western front.

  As was so often the case when that phrase came to mind, it was too quiet.

  We should have had our meeting at one of the clubs, bring in a few people and make a night of it. If we had, then there’d be no shortage of, for want of a better word, Mafia-groupies, desperate to suck my cock. One or more of them would have been back here by the end of the night, and you could be damned sure it wouldn’t be quiet.

  Ever since Julia screwed me over, I’d taken it out on these girls. Every fuck I had was a revenge fuck on some level. Some of them must have wondered what the hell they did to deserve getting fucked that hard.

  I was insatiable. Hearing them scream my name was the only thing that quenched the fucking rage that built up over that betrayal.

  Oh fuck, the things they’d squeal when I was grinding them good and hard. They’d pledge their pussies, their lives, everything they were, if I would just keep on doing what I was doing.

  They always wanted more, but fucking them a second time never gave me that satisfying feeling of payback. I had to find a new girl for that, and there was no shortage.

  Except for tonight, right fucking now. Oh well. I’d survive the night and take it out of the next girl I saw. I swung back to face my desk and moved the mouse to turn on the computer screen.

  I hadn’t browsed Ada’s selection of Innocence For Sale girls in a long time now. I’d been apprehensive about using her services before, but after fucking the virginity out of an A-list Hollywood starlet, I was a convert.

  It did my heart good to see Cara Olson’s latest blockbuster and to know I had a home video of her choking on my cock almost to the point of passing out. Not to mention the moment I took her virginity, of course.

  The groupies were fine for my day-to-day needs, but, if my first experience was anything to go by, if I wanted something special, I couldn’t go past an IFS girl. I only drummed my fingers on my desk for a few seconds before deciding to see if Ada had any auctions running at the moment.

  I entered my login details and browsed to the live auction section, clicking on the picture of a girl before I’d even read anything about her. On the auction page her profile picture was enlarged and, for a second, I thought I was hallucinating.

  Looking away from the screen, I blinked hard, then looked back. The picture was the same. My heart started racing and I stood up, my hands held out in disbelief. I collapsed back into my chair and glanced at the name. Bree. It was Bree.

  Holy fucking shit. My former step-daughter, Julia’s daughter, who had disappeared with her mother, Antonio, and fifty million of my hard-earned dollars, was auctioning her virginity on InnocenceForSale.com.

  Her auction was ending in a few hours. I leaned back in my chair and laughed like a maniac. This was… so fucking poetic. This was perfect. Triumph surged through me, and no small measure of renewed anger as I imagined Julia’s face when I found her.

  Browsing through Bree’s pictures, I felt some guilty lust too. It couldn’t be denied. IFS had insane standards for their girls, and Bree had blossomed into the kind of young woman that could start and end wars.

  That body, that face, vaguely reminiscent of her mother, if her mother had been granted a magic wish to be the most beautiful woman in the world. That innocence. It was for sale, and would be worth any price, but nobody could get a better deal than me, because I wouldn’t simply be buying her virginity. I’d be investing in revenge and the recovery of my money.

  I smiled as Julia’s face crossed my mind again. Steal from me? Betray me? I’d hate-fuck her daughter, slaughter her dirty FBI agent boyfriend and get my money back.

  After two years, they might have put a dent in that fifty million. Well, with a body like that, Bree could make up the difference in the week I’d have her.

  I put in a bid of two million dollars, blowing the previous bid of around half a million out of the water. No fucking around.

  Bree was mine.

  Bree

  My jaw dropped when I logged in to the site to watch the last hours of the bidding and saw that somebody was going to pay two million dollars for me.

  Ada replied to my baffled text to confirm that she had spoken with the bidder directly and made sure it was a real offer. There were no other bids after that, but it didn’t really matter because Ada said that was a site record anyway.

  The length Ada went to in order to prepare me for my encounter with the winning bidder on my auction took me by surprise. When the time came, she flew me out to her headquarters and happily unloaded a ton of money on me, hiring beauticians and stylists to work me over from head to toe. She personally coached me on the kinds of things her customers might want to hear from their girl, right down to the sexiest way to moan.

  After walking on eggshells around Antonio for a couple of months, I managed to get out of the house without any recent injuries marring my face or body. Now, here I was, arriving in Hapford City Airport, ready to make myself a millionaire and then disappear to make what I could from a fresh start.

  If I read the situation right, most of the men on the plane had been desperate for me to help them join the mile-high club. I’d never felt so many eyes on me before, or felt so self-conscious.

  I was being paid for sex. Was I giving out some “vibe”? Or was this all a result of my makeover? Or was I just so nervous that I was overly sensitive right now?

  The fasten-seatbelt sign switched off and was followed by the clatter of people unbuckling themselves. I joined the queue in the aisles and slung my carry-on bag over my shoulder before smoothing down my dress.

  My fingers brushed against the bare skin of my legs. The hem was not too short, but not too long either. Ada was very specific about how much skin to show.

  There was a science to seduction, and an IFS girl walked the line perfectly. Apparently. Show enough to get them thinking, and cover enough to let their imagination drive them wild.

  Either way, it was crazy to think that the next fingers to touch my thighs would belong to a man and they might be pushing my legs apart for the first time. A hot flash hit me just as we all started shuffling forward and I felt a faint sheen of sweat cooling on my face almost straight away.

  By the time I’d exited the plane and was waiting in the baggage claim area, I was mostly in control of myself again. If I could tiptoe around a nuclear bomb like Antonio for a couple of years, I could survive this.

  Now, clear of the plane, I pulled out the GPS tracker and panic button disguised as a simple and elegant gold-and-diamond necklace while I waited for my luggage. I cast my eyes around, trying to tell the difference between which guys were checking me out and which ones were part of the security team that was supposed to already be discreetly tailing me.

  Sometimes, Andrew had employed inconspicuous bodyguards, so I had a little experience picking them out. It was easier then, of course, because sometimes I knew who they were ahead of time.

  I thought some of the bigger guys looked like probable candidates, especially the guy staring at an open newspaper as if it was a blank page, but there was no point in skipping over to them and asking.

  My luggage finally came around and I heaved it off the conveyor belt. With it rattling along behind me on its little wheels, I headed towards the arrivals gate.

  The nerves returned with a vengeance and I felt a little lightheaded. The sound of my heels clacking on the floor and the feel of my breath coming into my lungs before being exhaled almost seemed otherworldly, like my spirit was being dragged along by my body via some invisible cord.

  I was really going through with this. My consciousness reluctantly re-entered my body as I stepped through the sliding doors to be greeted by the faces of all the people waiting to pick up whoever they were there for.

  After a slight hesitation, I continued forward, scanning the signs that some people were holding up. I’d walked far enough along the walkway that the crowd of people were thinning out when I spotted a sign that said “IFS – Bree” in big bold letters.

  Thank goodness for three-letter acronyms.

  The guy was well-dressed, wearing a suit that any Wall Street high-flyer would be satisfied with, but with a hat that gave him away as a driver, rather than the boss of the operation. I walked up to him, glancing from side to side to see if anybody was standing with him, but he appeared to be picking me up alone.

  “Hi. That’s me.” I pointed to the sign.

  “Hi there, I’m Todd, I’ll be your driver today. Let me get those for you.” He relieved me of my bags.

  “Thanks.”

  “Follow me, the car is parked right in front.”

  “You can leave a car parked right in front?” I asked.

  “VIP parking, Ma’am. Mr. Smith arranged it all weeks ago.”

  “Mr. Smith, huh?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Todd led me to the car and opened the back door for me. I peeked inside apprehensively, but there was no mysterious Mr. Smith sitting back there ready to have his way with me on the ride home.