Sicko

Wicked ignores me. “It lasted right up until I left. He made me train her, said that’s why I wasn’t to leave when you all did. Said if I tried to leave, he’d kill—” He pauses. “Poppy.” It was the first time I had heard her name since he first told me the story of his sister and how he ended up with Diamond.

Poppy was fourteen when she met Diamond.

She was fifteen when she died.

Wicked thought she died when she was fourteen, but that wasn’t the case at all. Poppy’s story and her last year alive was far more sinister than that. When Wicked found out she was still alive, she was fifteen years old. He tried to save her. With everything inside of him. He couldn’t.

“So I did what he wanted, and Jade seemed to go with it for the most part. I’m going to be honest with you always, Royce. I straight-up thought she was working with Diamond, and that’s why she was allowed in and out. Always looked nice. Well looked after. Wore the most expensive clothes and never took her mask off. Never spoke. We never spoke to each other, and I think we both preferred it that way.”

“What’d you do together…” I take the next turnoff, checking the brothers are still behind me.

“Everything.”

Squeeze.

“He let me go after he said I had completed her training and told me Poppy was already dead and that—” He pauses again and I know the next thing he’s going to say is going to hurt. Anger wraps itself around the next words that come out of his mouth. “Said she was our last meal.”

My blood turns cold, freezing my limbs. I pick up speed again and floor it forward, needing this to kick off. I need to smell blood in the air and the sound of flesh being pounded.

“Sorry, brother.”

“Today’s the fucking day,” he whispers, but I don’t look over at him, wanting to allow him his privacy.

“Today’s the day.”

“Royce,” Wicked says, just as we’re pulling down one of the back streets that leads into an apartment complex that’s situated on the corner of a crossroad intersection in the city.

I bring my eyes to his. This big motherfucker who had his heart taken from him the day his sister died and now walks around as the shell of the man he used to be. “Yeah?” I know I’d kill for him. Die for him. I know I can’t be mad at him for what happened between him and Jade, or that he fucked her at L’artisaniant. If anything, it brings a kind of peace. Could have been anyone fucking her in that Den with Diamond, would have rather it be Wicked. Even if it does make me want to kill the both of them. The two people I would die for make me want to kill them both.

It fucking bothers me that she obviously knew who Wicked was, though. If she’s been keeping that from me, fucking what else has she been hiding up that sleeve.

Wicked shakes his head. “Be careful with her. You don’t know how deep in she is.”

I squeeze the car door handle. “Yeah, I fucking know.”

A well-made lie will continue to burn the tip of your tongue well after you’ve been fed truth.

My fingers are twitching, my brain moving at speeds that a snail could lap. My tongue sticks to the top of my mouth like a sponge, desperate for water, or any fluid. An ice-cold Coke would satiate my thirst at levels not even water could reach right now.

“Jade?” Sloane croaks from the side, and I turn to face her. She’s lying down in a white dress, the opposite of my black but the same style. Her hair is straightened, falling down her back while mine is crinkled into waves, dropping above my butt. Red bottom heels are on my feet, pointed tips and shiny. Hers the same.

“You okay?” I ask, but the words fall out like a jumble of letters, unwilling to remain in a straight line.

She nods, sitting up from the made bed made with Egyptian cotton sheets and scattered rose pedals. “What’s happening? I feel drugged…”

“You are,” I whisper, already knowing the room I’m in. The apartment complex downtown. It’s owned by James, but instead of the usual tenants that most complexes have, his is occupied in levels. There are twelve, and at every level, someone dripping in evil occupies it. I have met evil in my life, and all those times it was right here, in the basement level of this complex. One a politician, another a software engineer, another I suspect working in some undercover legal area. When James hosts an event every month, he puts the buyers in a room. Some are reoccurring, some new. The human trafficking has worsened over the years, but what James offers is something that not many can grasp on to.