“Works for?” His head pounded as every assumption he’d made about her over the years unraveled. Armed guards. Iron gate. Main hideout. “Who the fuck is Tiago Badell?”

“One of the wealthiest crime lords in Venezuela.” Cole met his eyes. “His specialty is kidnapping.”

CHAPTER 3

A chill crept over Tate’s scalp. Aside from Cole, every person in the room had endured their own personal hell at the hands of a kidnapper. As unease vibrated between his friends, he wanted to shelter them from it.

He turned to Liv. “I can take this conversation elsewhere.”

“How does it work?” She asked Cole, ignoring Tate’s concern. “Are they trafficking humans?”

“No. Badell leads a gang that targets tourists, missionaries, Venezuelan middle class, anyone who is too ignorant to avoid Kidnap Alley and not wealthy enough to travel in armored vehicles. He grabs people off the street and gives their families three days to cough up the ransom. If payment isn’t received, the victim is murdered.”

Lucia was part of this? It didn’t make sense. How could she go from being abducted and sold into slavery to working for a man like Tiago Badell?

He was certain he wouldn’t like the answer, but he asked anyway. “What does she do for him?”

“You won’t believe me unless I show you.” Cole clicked on a video file and hovered the mouse over the play button. After a moment of hesitation, he leaned around Tate to speak to Kate. “It’s graphic.”

Tate twisted at the waist to see her face. She’d watched Josh kill her buyer and had spent weeks, bloody and broken, beneath a whip. She didn’t look it, but the girl was tough as hell.

She wrapped a tiny hand around Tate’s bicep, shoulders squared. “I can handle it.”

Cole pushed play.

On the screen, a naked man lay on his back on a concrete floor. Eyes swollen, nose busted, and chest heaving, he jerked against the ropes that restrained him. He was skinny, pale, and hard, his engorged dick pointing heavenward, and he didn’t look happy about it.

Whoever held the camera handed it off to someone else, changing the angle to show at least two other men in the windowless room. The footage stayed below the necks, capturing dust on black boots and blood stains on pants. Assault rifles hung across their torsos, their tattooed fingers resting on the trigger guards.

“Who are they?” Tate asked.

“Badell’s men. And that”—Cole pointed at the screen as a woman walked into view—”is Lucia.”

The camera lowered, keeping her head out of the frame. A tight miniskirt exposed the curves of her perfect figure, and a black bra bared her flat stomach. Her hair was either pulled up or cut short, putting all that satiny, bronze skin on display. Her shoulders, arms, chest…every inch of her was toned, smooth, flawless.

No, not flawless. He leaned closer to the image. “Is that—?”

“A scar.” Cole paused the video and zoomed in on her abdomen. “See how it zigzags like that?” He traced it on the screen, following the jagged white line from the bottom of her breastbone to her hip. “Blunt force trauma. It’s pretty faded. Old.”

“Eleven years old?” He inhaled sharply. “Is it from the crash in Peru?”

“Yes. She barely survived. Badell’s men pulled her out, and his personal doctors saved her. I know there were multiple surgeries because I’ve heard Badell discuss it with her. But the details are unknown. It’s strange, because his doctors keep meticulous medical records on every person they touch, yet there’s no record of her.”

Goosebumps blanketed Tate’s arms. “Why did his men save her?”

“From what I’ve gathered, they happened to be in the area and pillaged the crash site for survivors. Easy targets for ransom. They found her and patched her up just enough to keep her alive, only to discover—”

“She has no living family.” Tate’s chest tightened. “No one to pay his ransom and compensate him for his trouble.” His pulse sped up as everything clicked into place. “Instead of killing her, Badell made her work for him? Since he saved her life, does he think she owes him?”

“It’s more complicated than that.” Cole returned to the laptop. “Watch the video.”

When he un-paused it, Lucia strolled across the screen and straddled the naked man’s torso, facing his feet. The camera operator kept her face out of view, honing in on her hands as she wrapped them around the swollen erection.

A pained wailing sound came from the man, his body bucking beneath her. “No, please. I’m married. I don’t want this.”

She preceded to stroke him. No hesitation. No apparent prodding or force by the others in the room. It was as if she was orchestrating it.

The video panned to a black painted wall, where words had been scratched with chalk.

200,000 bolivars

72 hours

No money, he dies

“Ransom,” Tate breathed, his stomach filled with lead. “This is a kidnapping.”

Cole nodded. “The video was sent to the victim’s wife with a bank account linked to it.”

Tate was about to ask why Lucia was molesting the poor guy, but the camera angle returned to her. She stood over the man now, a pistol in her hand, aimed at his legs.

“No! No!” His high-pitched shouting crackled the speaker. “We’ll pay. Please—”

She squeezed the trigger, and his knee exploded in a splatter of red. The camera jostled, lowering the view to focus on the pooling blood and gruesome injury.

No faces. No voices. Just the man’s yowling screams. Then the video cut off.

“Christ.” Tate leaned back, sick to his stomach.

His friends didn’t move, their faces pale as they stared at the black screen.

“His wife wasn’t able to collect the money in time,” Cole said. “His body was dumped in an alley a mile away from the compound.”

“Did Lucia kill him?” Liv closed a hand around Josh’s bouncing knee, stilling him.

“No. She doesn’t do the kidnapping or the murdering. Her job is to inflict physical and emotional pain. Torture. Sometimes she rapes them. Sometimes she causes non-fatal injuries, like this.” He gestured at the screen. “When the victim is female, Lucia operates the camera while one of the men puts on the grisly show.”

“How did you get the footage?” Tate asked, his throat dry.

“I dropped a hack on her burner phone and—”

“Don’t you have to have physical access to the device to do that?”

“Juice jacking.” Cole’s eyes lit up. “I tampered with her charging port, turned it into a data connection. When she charged her phone, I copied everything she had on it, including this video.”

“Hang on.” His neck went taut. “You were in her apartment? Why didn’t you just take her?”

“Yes, I accessed her apartment.” Cole scowled at him. “I didn’t just take her, because I’m not in the business of kidnapping.”

“It’s not kidnapping if—”

“She’s not being held against her will, Tate. She makes no attempt to flee, and there are plenty of opportunities. She knows the city, knows how to evade the gangs. In eleven years, she would’ve succeeded in an escape.”

“Or died trying.” He knew that denying the truth didn’t make the facts go away, but maybe Cole had missed something. Something glaringly important. “The woman in the video… You’re certain that’s Lucia? There were dozens of women in that crash in Peru. What if you followed the wrong trail?”

Cole opened another photo on the laptop—a wide shot of a woman walking along an urban road in daylight. He maximized the view, bringing her face into beautiful clarity. Her hair hung like a shiny black curtain to her shoulders, emphasizing her delicate, ethereal features.

At first glance, she looked like Camila with short straight hair. Her huge brown eyes, warm complexion, stubborn chin—every familiar detail made his chest ache for the sister he’d spent the last six years with.

The woman in the pho

to had a narrower face and slimmer build. Too slim. Her bones jutted sharply, pressing against her skin. The smile he’d memorized from Lucia’s childhood photos was missing, yet her beauty remained. A dangerous kind of beauty, like if he got too close, he would become hypnotized. Infatuated. Totally fucked.

“Still have doubts?” Cole asked.

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