The End of Games (14 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Web of Lies

His fingers gripped into my skin as he dragged me through the seedy alley. I had never been to Split before. I had heard of the dangers for foreigners in Croatia, and being a parent it had never been a big tourist destination for us, but Servario looked like he fit into the crowd quite well.

Dark eyes watched me from every corner. No one helped the obviously-foreign woman being dragged down the alley. No one asked him why I was beaten or sobbing.

He muttered, "Make it a good show. I don’t think I can hit you again. Coop and Jack are here. They're waiting for us to enter. So make this believable. It's more than just my neck on the line."

I ignored my heart, leaping at the thought that Coop was there and shoved him, "Let me go, you fucker."

He gripped my arm tighter, making me cry out. I could swear that on at least one face in the crowd, I saw a look of joy or satisfaction.

We walked in silence, except for the sound of him dialing his cell phone in his pocket. I pretended not to hear it, in case there were eyes on us.

He dragged me to a hotel at the end of an alley. It looked like the Romans had built it during the empire. A red, weather-beaten door creaked open as we neared it. A man with a semi-automatic gun gave me a sneer but nodded at Servario. As we entered the hotel, I instantly stopped breathing through my nose. The stench was overwhelming. There was a soft floral smell added to something else. Like if sin had a stink, that place was ripe with it.

A half-naked girl with long blonde hair and dark circles under her cloudy blue eyes gave me a dead look. I recognized her face from somewhere.

Her thin, pale arms were filled with pick sores and needles marks. There was one particularly-nasty pick sore that was like a dug channel going up her arm. Like she had scratched it repeatedly and it had healed over, and she had scraped it again.

Servario tossed me to the floor. The knife in my pocket stabbed into my thigh slightly.

The girl twirled her hair, giving me the blank stare. I could see some kind of life beyond her eyes if I searched for it past their milky coloring.

Her skin's pallor was chalky white, almost grey. She looked like a ghost where she sat on the torn burgundy couch in the corner of the large entryway. It was any lobby in any seedy hotel. Too thick curtains and too thin rugs. The couches were threadbare and the room had plastic flowers and an old front desk.

The high ceilings had fans that moved slowly. Nothing in the room seemed like it was in a hurry. It was like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, slow and blurred. A man in a cheesy suit with greasy dark hair came out of the door in the back. He opened his arms, smiling wide, "Mr. Servario, to what do we owe the pleasure?" His accent was actually quite lovely. His sleazy-salesman face ruined it.

Servario didn’t bat an eyelash, "He's expecting us."

The man jumped. Servario had an air about him I had not seen before. There was a wall around him, like he was royalty. The man moved like it might be true.

My hands didn’t move from the tile floor where I knelt, looking afraid. Really it was pain. The knife stabbing into my thigh was killing me. It at least helped me focus on the things I saw. The things around me.

The man went into the back and came back within seconds, "He's upstairs. He thought you would have gotten here earlier. So he took his lunch." His eyes darted to me, "He said to leave his supper in a room upstairs. He will talk business with you in a moment."

Servario snapped his fingers at me. I spat at him. He backhanded me, stabbing the knife farther into my thigh when I fell back.

"She needs to be broken and trained better than that, Mr. Servario. You always bring better merchandise than this."

My guts burned. He had seemed so against human trafficking in the shower. But in the brothel he seemed like he fit in nicely. The blonde even looked scared of him. I wanted to kick him in the balls. I even thought about doing it, but I knew the punishment would be severe. My mom always did say, ‘Was the juice worth the squeeze?’ This seemed like a giant no.

He snapped at the man, "I'll not discuss product with you." He grabbed my arm, dragging me to the elevator, "Besides, she will be more fun to break."

The man laughed nervously, "Of course, sir. I am sorry I spoke out of turn."

Servario carried me into the elevator. As the doors closed, he gripped harder on my arm, "I told you to behave." His accent was thick, almost fake.

I whimpered, "I am sorry." I looked down, assuming we were on film.

He leaned into my ear, "Look straight ahead at the door and make it a face of terror."

I nodded, quivering my lips slightly.

"Your friends should be here by now. I will leave you in the room upstairs, kill the man who comes in the room. I know you took the second knife from the other couch, use that. Make it silent."

I sniffled, "Please, don’t do this. Please. I won't tell anyone."

He spoke louder, "I won't speak of this again. I will just take you right here and right now. Do you want that? Do you want me to fuck you in a filthy elevator?"

I shook my head. Even my vagina was contemplating never opening back up for business. The fact it was a human-trafficking brothel was killing my severe attraction to bad guy Servario.

He shook me once, and as the elevator doors opened, he shoved me out into the hallway. He opened a door and pushed me inside. He closed the door slowly and leaned against it.

"Time to learn to deep throat." My eyes went wide but he nodded, "Hurry up."

I crawled over to where he was, catching a glimpse of the camera behind him. The rooms were taped.

He chuckled but I could hear the deceptive tone within the laugh, "Maybe if you're really lucky, you'll end up in one of the movies they make here. Hopefully not the darker stuff though."

I gagged and crawled to him. He undid his pants and leaned against the door. The camera above him didn’t look like it could catch us at the angle we were at, and he seemed to be a master of keeping his head down. I pulled his pants open all the way and fished in his underwear for his cock. I looked up at him, "Please, don’t make me do this."

He slapped my face lightly, "Think of it as a nice going away present."

I started to cry and grabbed hold of his cock. It was nearly inverted. I had never seen it so small. He was not turned on. He had done it to show me the cameras and the angle at which I had to do everything. I buried my face into his groin, savoring the scent of his musk and cologne. He was like an angel amongst the hellish place we were. If I closed my eyes, we were in a hotel room somewhere nice, and I was being punished for not doing something right, but it was a joke and I was letting him boss me around. I tried to get his cock near my mouth but he slapped me and shoved me off of him, "You stink and your swollen face makes me sick." He did his pants up and stormed from the room. I got up and looked around. It was a small room with a bed on the wall opposite the door. Optimum viewing area.

I held myself and started rocking back and forth on the bed. The camera remained in my peripheral the entire time. The room was beyond shabby, it was more of a cell. The bed was dirty and soft, and the shabby blue bedspread looked like it had either never been washed or overly washed and was threadbare.

I waited for it to happen, for the man to come into the room. Would he be the leader of MI6 or would he just be some pervert who broke in the new girls? Either way, he was dead as soon as he got the door open.

I sat, staring and rocking for so long that I started to get tired. My adrenaline was gone.

I started making designs in the carpet and plotting my escape for when no one came. The man didn’t want to break me in, he wasn’t interested in a dirty, used up woman. He liked fresh and young things.

The doorknob rattled as I was blinking and letting my eyes stay shut for five seconds at a time. The turning of the knob had me wide-awake instantly.

I braced myself for what I would do.

A slight man with a dark suit and smooth grey hair pulled back into a ponytail entered the room. He had a grey mustache but kept his gaze low. I leapt at him, begging on my knees and preparing to stab when I saw something I hadn’t been prepared for.

I looked into the eyes of my mother and stammered, "P-p-p-please, sir. Don’t make me do this. Please."

She winked and opened the door, backing out but looking both ways down the hall. I crawled out, following her steps exactly.

I didn’t feel relief seeing her. I felt fear like I never had. Where were my kids?

The fear only lasted a second. A man came up the stairs, not paying much attention. Mom lifted her hand and down he went. I didn’t even see the weapon. She ran from room to room, moving as if it were a dance. I assumed she was avoiding the cameras. She moved like a ninja, light and agile. She held double swords in her hands, very thin and shiny blades. She kept them tucked up into her arms with her wrists at an odd angle, until it was time to strike. Only then could you see the lightening speed with which she could kill.

In each room she went into, men dropped to their knees, and then face-planted into the nasty carpet. Girls shouted, covering themselves. Other men died on their bellies with girls screaming below them, pressed into the mattress by a dead man. Mom never gave thought to the girls. She was a true assassin.

I followed her down the stairs, holding my little knife and realizing how amazing she really was and how lame I actually was.

She killed two men on the stairs, dodging a bullet from a man below in the lobby and throwing one sword. It pierced a man's chest.

It was like watching Kill Bill. My mom was badass.

She grabbed the sword, pointing it at the sleazy man at the front desk when we got into the lobby, "You were warned."

His eyes were wide, like he was face to face with the devil himself. He shook his head, "I had no choice. You know I had no choice."

She lunged once, slicing him from throat to groin. I gagged as he spilled out onto the carpet and slumped over.

I turned to see the blonde smiling at Mom. She winked at me, "’Bout time, Evie."

She had a British accent and a sheen to her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

Mom nodded, "Get your shit, Elise." She turned to me, pulling the mustache off of her upper lip, "Are you okay?"

I nodded, "Mom?" Tears filled my eyes, "You came."

She smiled, "Darling, of course I came. I've been here all along. The minute you and Jack phoned my cell phone, I knew what Servario was going after. I knew he would risk you to get it." I could see the heartbreak on her face, "He is the best of the best, my dear girl, but I don’t give a flying fuck about the rest of the world. I won't have you risked."

"Where are the kids?"

She nodded upwards, "With Fitz, where else would they be?"

I shook my head, "I don’t know. They're safe?"

She laughed, "Safer than you. Now move your ass and act like you have a brain. Grab the guns from behind the counter. Servario is in a meeting room on the second floor. You go there and Elise and I will get the party started down here. Don’t fire the first shot until you hear the blasts."

I didn’t know what that meant but she snapped her fingers, "GO!"

I jumped and ran around the desk to the stash of guns. I grabbed two SIGs, an MP7, and the magazines. I stuffed my pockets and waistbands. I walked back up the stairs. My heart was racing but my body was ready.

I held the two SIGs in my hands, ready to start the fireworks. The second floor was empty of guest rooms. There was a dining room that looked like it hadn’t been used in years, decades even. I assumed it was the epicenter of the smell of the wretchedness in the hotel. It had a dank and nasty feel to it.

I crossed the large room, past the old tables and chairs. A rat crossed my path. I almost shot it but decided to just walk faster. The shot wouldn’t help me out. I shuddered as I made it into the next area. It was like a boardroom maybe. I could see a large table and other chairs but no one was in there. I crossed through into a new hallway. A man was standing guard at a door, similar to the one I had just passed. He gave me a sideways look, "Who are you?"

I nodded, "Your relief."

He almost nodded but he stopped himself. He lifted his gun, also an MP7, "Wait."

I sighed, "There is some shit storm downstairs. Some guy came—they said it would be better if you helped them and I came up here."

He looked ready to shoot me but the first blast shook the hotel. I took the moment he was looking around, trying to steady himself from the earthquake feeling, to fire my shot. I was back to sharp-shooter Evie. I almost felt proud, but I didn’t have time. The door at the end of the hallway opened. I smiled instantly as I saw Coop running down the hall. He nodded at me as I pointed at the door next to me. Before we could speak, the door opened and a huge man came rushing out, "What was that?"

I shook my head, "Earthquake, I think."

He frowned, "Who are you?" I never heard the shot, but the man dropped and suddenly I could see Coop again. He nodded at the door. We slipped inside to find a suite of sorts. It was massive, still shitty and old. It smelled like food and sex. I almost gagged but my heart was in my throat.