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  I let out a long breath, then steeled myself. Nothing mattered but staying alive. Harris is coming. Harris is coming. Harris IS coming. I just had to stay alive until he found me.

  I dropped the shirt, hooked my thumbs in the sides of my thong and wiggled out of it, all too aware of Vitaly watching every move. Turning on the spray, I adjusted the temperature, made sure there was shampoo and such in the shower, got a washcloth, and then stepped under the steaming spray of hot water.

  I took my time, trying to pretend Vitaly wasn't there. I even washed myself down below, trying to act normal, like I didn't have a pen stuck up where the sun don't shine. His eyes followed my every move, every jiggle and bounce and sway.

  When I was done, I shut off the water, wiped my face, and found Vitaly extending a towel to me, held open. I moved to take it from him, but he withdrew it, made a negative sound in his throat, and then held it out to me again.

  Shit.

  I stood still, dripping on the marble floor.

  His hands never came in direct contact with my skin as he gently and carefully wiped me dry with the towel, dabbing and scrubbing all over from my shoulders to feet, breast to calves, but nonetheless I felt...not violated, exactly, but aware of the consequences of disobedience, and disgusted with what I knew I would have to endure. I held my breath and tried not to flinch, tried not to fight him. It took every ounce of self-control I possessed, but I got through the entire process without protest, verbal or physical. My skin crawled, my stomach rebelled.

  I wanted to get back in the shower and scrub myself all over again.

  His eyes roamed my body, and once he even pressed his nose to my flesh at my hip and inhaled deeply, and then gazed up at me.

  He dried my breasts, lingeringly. Slowly. Lifting and caressing with the towel.

  Oh god. Oh god.

  I endured it silently. I kept my eyes open, expressionless, staring straight ahead.

  He dried my ass last, once again doing it slowly, leisurely, and once again I had to focus on breathing and keeping still.

  He neglected to thoroughly dry one small part of me, much to my good fortune.

  When he was finally finished, he lifted a thick white robe off the hook on the back of the door, settled it over my shoulders, waited for me to slide my arms into the sleeves, and then tied it around me. Loosely, so my breasts weren't quite covered. Of course.

  Vitaly stepped away, back into the bedroom. "You have an iron will, Miss Campari. You did not react at all."

  "I'm either going to get out of this alive, or I'm not. That's all that really matters."

  He stood in the center of the room, hands in his hip pockets. "You determine what happens, Miss Campari. I do not really have any issue with you, personally. I think you know with whom my anger lies."

  "Roth."

  Vitaly frowned. "Not really, no. It is your friend, Kyrie St. Claire. She killed my daughter. It is she who must suffer."

  I shivered at that. "So what do you want from me?"

  "Little enough. You are bait, nothing more, nothing less. She will come for you. She will send someone. That barbarian, Nicholas Harris, first, perhaps. Others, maybe. Eventually, she herself will stand in front of me. That is when the suffering will begin."

  I swallowed hard. "She was only acting in self-defense."

  He shrugged. "This I know. But it does not matter. She killed my daughter. I cannot excuse this, no matter the reason." He eyed me. "Until then, all I require from you is...cooperation. You are a diversion, no more."

  A diversion.

  Shit.

  I really didn't like the sound of that.

  11

  ROAD TRIP

  As the days passed, I played a game with myself.

  Vitaly was always present, always a gentleman to me. He never swore, never smoked, and never raised his voice. In fact, he never raised his voice at all, to anyone. He was always totally even-keeled, calm, smooth as a glassy lake. His household help seemed to respect him, but did not seem to fear him. The men, though--the foot soldiers or base level thugs or whatever you wanted to call them, now they were scared shitless of Vitaly. And with good reason. He killed them regularly, for the slightest infraction. A misstatement, a failed job, an ill-advised glance at me...and that switchblade would find their ribs. They never saw it coming. It was like a serpent striking, sudden, vicious, and final. He never missed, never hesitated. Right to the heart, and they just dropped dead.

  And it was always a man named Gutierrez who cleaned up the body. Gutierrez was short, thin, balding, and always wore mirrored aviators, black cargo shorts, black crew-neck T-shirt, sports sandals. It was a uniform, it seemed. He was never armed that I could see. And he was scarily efficient at disposing of bodies. It was like a scene out of Scandal: he'd appear with a huge blue tarp, roll the body onto it, wrap the body in the tarp and seal it with duct tape, heave the wrapped corpse onto an appliance dolly, and wheel it away. Moments after that, Maria appeared with an armful of towels and disinfectant, and the blood stains were gone. The whole process took less than ten minutes.

  So, the game I played with myself was pretty simple, and rather morbid: I woke up each day and asked myself what I would be willing to do to stay alive. What horror would I willingly endure, if it meant my heart kept beating? What barbarity would I perpetrate if it meant another day closer to Harris rescuing me?

  I chanted my mantra like it was a "Hail Mary", over and over and over: Harris is coming, Harris is coming, Harris is coming.

  Thus far, four days into my captivity, I'd been very well treated, if scantily clad. Vitaly provided me with a new pair of underwear, a tiny red thong. No shirt, no bikini top, nothing. Apparently his claim that I would be properly attired was a lie. I lived in that thong, and forced myself to act as if I was fully dressed. I endured the eyes of his lackeys as they came and went with reports, the eyes of the maids and the chef as he brought meals, the bodyguards always lurking just around a corner. And Vitaly's eyes, always his eyes.

  A touch, now and then. A palm across my ass, a brief caress of my boob. A hand on my hip, an inhalation of my hair.

  I was forced to shower with Vitaly as my audience once a day, in the morning, after breakfast.

  Vitaly was a creature of habit, I discovered. He woke at six a.m., rolled out of bed and exercised for thirty minutes. Squats, lunges, two kinds of pushups, crunches, obliques, planks, five reps of twenty each. On the third day, he made me do it with him. Asshole. At six thirty he had breakfast, plain yogurt with fresh-cut strawberries, four eggs scrambled with cheese, four slices of toast lightly buttered, three cups of coffee, and a handful of vitamin supplements. Then he showered, shaved, dressed, and watched me shower. By eight he was ready to go, and usually left the penthouse via helicopter with two bodyguards in tow, and an older, weather-beaten man with salt-and-pepper hair at his side. The older man's name was Cut. At least, that's what Vitaly called him.

  Cut never so much as looked at me, but I felt his attention somehow, anyway. I didn't like his attention. It made my skin crawl, made my gut churn.

  And yes, the entire time I had my old buddy Mr. Papermate the Pussy Pen in place, ready when I needed him. Fucking uncomfortable. Definitely not meant to have something hard up there at all, much less for so long. It was starting to hurt like a bitch, and I was never able to forget about it. I was, for sure, gonna end up with a bitch of an infection.

  Super fucking fun.

  But I had no doubt in my mind that I'd end up needing Mr. Papermate at some point in this little adventure. Especially with Cut around.

  Cut scared me worse than Vitaly. Cut was an unknown quantity, whereas with Vitaly, at least I knew for a fact that he could and would kill without compunction. I knew he liked to look at me, liked to watch me shower, like to grope a bit. He made me sleep on the floor at the foot of his bed like a goddamn dog, which really pissed me off, but I dealt with it without complaint because I liked being alive, and it didn't mean anything in the long run. No
blanket, no pillow. Just the carpet, my naked ass hanging out, my arm under my head. Vitaly was toying with me, testing me, pushing me to my limits. Trying to elicit a reaction.

  Unfortunately for him, he was absolutely correct in his assessment of me: I had an iron will. If I decided to do something, no force on earth could sway me. Usually I just did what I wanted, whatever seemed fun or easy. But if I got something in my mind, there was no stopping me until I did it. That was how I managed to work two full-time jobs plus fifteen credit hours at Wayne State University. It was how I survived the shit I did, growing up. I survived the ghetto as an outsider, not black, not white, not Hispanic, but as a girl alone on the streets and in the schools, which were often as dangerous as the streets, if not more so. In school, they could trap you in the locker room or the bathroom. On the streets there was usually somewhere to run. I'd survived that--not necessarily unscathed, but I'd survived it. I didn't talk about that shit with anyone, though. Not anyone, not even Kyrie.

  But I survived. I'd push through fucking anything, no matter what. I'd made it this far, made it out of the ghetto on my own, I'd paid my way through school, damn near got myself a bachelor's degree, and a good set of skills. And I would be damned if some motherfucking Greek kingpin would end me. He wanted to watch me shower like a fucking nasty-ass creeper? Let him watch. He wanted to make me sleep on the floor like Fido? I'd sleep on the floor.

  He wanted to rape me?

  Wouldn't be the first time.

  Wanted to beat me into a bloody pulp?

  Wouldn't be the first time.

  I hadn't been tortured, but I'd survive that too.

  And besides, Harris was coming.

  So each morning as Vitaly's expressionless black eyes watched me shower, I'd envision a hellish new scenario, and figure out my best options.

  Turns out, one of them came true.

  *

  Vitaly was gone, leaving me alone in the penthouse. The elevator was locked, no call button, only a keyhole. All points of exit or entrance were either guarded or locked. I had a TV--in the local language, of course--and magazines, again all in the local language, and most of those were nudie mags anyway. Not my thing.

  BOREDOM SUCKS.

  I flipped through all the magazines, tried to figure out words and phrases, I watched TV I didn't understand. I did a lot of pacing, and a lot of staring out the window. A lot of watching people come and go far below me, wondering if one of them was Harris.

  And then it happened.

  The elevator opened, revealing Cut. He was bloody from head to toe, splattered, painted crimson. Unhurt, though, it seemed, which meant the blood was someone else's. He swaggered toward me, leaving bloody footprints on the marble, dripping gore from his fingertips. He even had blood on his face, his neck, on his ears.

  A grin curved across his features, splitting his scarlet-bathed face with white teeth. "Everyone is gone."

  I glanced at the doorway Maria usually came through. "Oh. Okay." I backed away.

  He stuck a hand in his pocket, casually, and stalked closer. "Just you and me."

  "Where is Vitaly?"

  "He was called to Brasilia. He won't return for many days."

  I swallowed hard. "Oh. Um. Okay."

  My skin crawled as Cut stepped close enough that I could smell the blood and the death on him. He touched the center of my chest, leaving a red streak on my skin as he dragged his fingertip down between my breasts. "Now you're mine."

  "I...I don't think that's a good idea, Cut." I forced myself to stay calm, to breathe. "He'll come back, and he'll know if you do anything to me."

  "He won't know."

  I lifted my chin. "I'll make sure he does." I faced him square, nose to nose. Put all my attitude into my eyes. All my contempt. "You want a piece of me, it won't come easy. Which means he'll know. And that won't go well for you. He killed Yuri just for not treating me well enough on the way here. What do you think he'll do if you hurt me?"

  Cut just leered. "I am his oldest friend. You think he would kill me like he does those piece of shit pissants?" He spat onto the marble. "He won't. I want a piece of you, I'll take it. And bitch, you make it hard, you will regret it. I promise you this."

  I backed away. "Fuck you."

  I never saw his fist move. Just BAM! I was on the floor, my cheek throbbing. And then he was leaning over me, rancid breath on my face. "Wrong answer." An open-palm slap to my cheek, and then again on the other side. Again and again, until I was dizzy from pain.

  I swallowed the pain, clenched my teeth, and kept breathing. When Cut finally stood up, my lip was split and my face pounded with fiery pain.

  I stared up at him, unblinking. "You hit like a pussy."

  "You want more?" Cut sneered.

  He smacked my tit, and Jesus, that hurt. Again, again, again. I gritted my teeth and endured it, eyes stinging and leaking, but I didn't so much as whimper. And then he pinched. And by "pinched" I mean clamped down and twisted so hard I thought he was trying to rip my damn nipple off. A shriek escaped, but I bit down on it.

  I had blood smeared on me from his hands and clothes, and I was writhing in agony when he finally let go. A moment to breathe, and then I scrambled away, realizing this was all just foreplay to him.

  "You going to cooperate now, bitch? Or you want me to start really hurting you?"

  I should just cooperate. Pretend it was a drunk fuck. He was bit old for my taste, and it wouldn't be pleasant, but if I cooperated, he'd be done in a few minutes and I'd still be alive.

  I thought about it. Shit yeah, I did.

  For about four seconds.

  "Fuck. You." I spat the words, and then spat on the floor near his feet.

  CRACK! His fist split my lip open and loosened a tooth. Knocked me to the floor. Hurt, but I'd been jumped and had the shit kicked out me more than once, even badly enough to need hospitalization on one occasion, so this wasn't exactly new territory for me. Of course, he was a big guy who'd been pummeling people for longer than I'd been alive, so he could hit significantly harder than the teenaged dickweed gangbangers who'd jumped me when I was in high school.

  He hit me twice more, and I felt the pain building enough to feel like maybe it was time to stop taunting him.

  But then I heard rustling, and peeked through swollen eyes to see him unzipping his pants.

  Fuck that. Fuck him. Not without a fight, douchebag.

  Under the guise of rolling around and moaning in pain--which I didn't exactly have to fake, mind you--I twisted onto my side, away from him, and withdrew Mr. Papermate the Pussy Pen, slipped it out of myself as swiftly and surreptitiously as I could.

  Jesus, it stank.

  I curled into a ball, hiding it from him. Pried the cap off the point, blinked hard to clear my vision, held it in my fist, point down--yeah, it was a little...slippery. Eew. Just...eew. This would serve his ass right, though.

  I waited. Curled up in a ball, fighting the urge to whimper in pain. I wasn't gonna cry. Fuck no. Bitches like him wouldn't make me cry. Nothing could. No one could.

  His foot crashed into my back, sending me rolling across the floor. I nearly dropped the pen, but managed to hang onto it. I groaned, curled into a ball again, and waited.

  This time, he grabbed my arm and rolled me to my back, straddling my prone body with a leg on either side of me. Still standing, he bent over me.

  Dumbass.

  I silently thanked Brad the MMA fighter and our six months of hot monkey sex-slash-Brazilian jiu-jitsu practice.

  I almost laughed at the irony: I was about to use Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and I was in Brazil. Heh-heh-heh.

  Let's break some shit.

  I stuck the pen in my teeth--yuck--and grabbed his palm with both hands, then twisted until it wouldn't twist anymore, hooking my leg around his arm so the back of my knee braced the cap of his elbow. Grinning up into his surprised face, I then pulled back with both hands while rocking my body in the opposite direction. SNAP. His elbow now bent in two di
rections.

  The entire move took less than three seconds.

  He screamed, I screamed, it was glorious.

  Cut fell to the floor, writhing and grabbing at his ruined arm. I rolled over him, hooked my leg around his throat and got him into a good strong leg-lock; look at the little bitch turn blue.

  I wasn't done.

  Rape me? Fucker, I don't think so.

  I took the pen in my fist, spat into his face. Steeled myself, jaw clenched, squeamishness locked down tight. He saw it coming. I made sure he did. I held the pen up high, palm of one hand cupping the back of my pen-wielding fist, slammed it down as hard as I could into his eye socket, putting all my weight, all my strength into the move. It pierced his eye like...well, like an ink pen through Jell-O. I hit resistance, and the pen stuck. He was thrashing, gurgling, twitching. I smelled shit. I put my palm to the end of the pen where it protruded from his skull, slammed my fist down onto the back of my hand like a hammer, driving the pen deeper into his brain.

  He went still.

  I puked until I had nothing left but bile.

  I released my leg-hold on him, kicked his inert bulk off me. I stood up shakily, staring down at him, and retched again.

  The elevator stood open, key still in the hole. That was my chance out of here. I made quick work of Cut's blood-soaked shirt, unbuttoning it, peeling it off his torso, and then slipped it on, shuddering at the warm wet stickiness of it. God, so fucking gross. But I was covered. I untied his boots, pried them off, stuffed my feet into them, tied them as tight as they'd go, and then patted him down for a weapon. I found a black folding knife in his pocket, the blade clean while the handle was tacky and bloody. Clearly, this was the weapon used to create all the blood covering him, and now me.

  No matter, I was covered, shod, and armed.

  Time to go.

  I ran at a stumble, lurching into the elevator, his huge boots flopping and clopping like clown shoes. I looked ridiculous, but that was no concern. I mean, it was, because the thought crossed my mind while in the middle of a life-and-death scenario that I looked utterly ridiculous, wearing a man's blood-soaked white shirt, the edge hanging to mid-thigh, and a pair of men's huge, smelly work boots, ten sizes too big. But I wasn't naked, and wasn't running barefoot through Sao Paulo, so there was that in my favor.