Page 70 of Axel (Belles & Bratva Beasts #2)

You know the saying, “Give the devil his due.”

It’s to acknowledge the good qualities of an evil person.

Why, thank you.

I appreciate it.

Because I am the devil looking at this angel.

“Girls, turn around. Full circle. Show them the goods,” the seller barks, and all of the girls jump, crying, shaking, and obeying, except this one.

And she’s no girl.

“Yeah,” I call out. “This one’s mine.”

She’s a young woman. Pert breasts. Rouge nipples. A dark mound I can see through her white silk slip.

No, I can’t tell her maturity by her body.

Because some of the underage girls in here have mature-looking bodies, too. Though their eyes are innocent, and their hearts are young. Way too young for the hell they’re being sold into.

Okay, being trafficked and sold is hell at any age.

But I can tell this one is wiser beyond her years because her eyes don’t shake in terror. Her half-naked body doesn’t tremble. Her tawny cheeks are dry.

She’s the only one not crying.

She looks straight ahead, and if looks could kill, every man in this room would be dead.

These girls and young women are being sold, and I’m buying them.

Don’t worry.

Settle down.

I won’t lay a hand on them, and neither will my brothers, posing as other buyers in the room. They’re making us sit in a circle of chairs around the girls.

This fucker, the seller, a hedge fund manager by day, rented a swanky house in Palm Beach and has us sitting like we’re getting ready to dine.

Like we’re being served more than drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

The Lord wants me to use the gun strapped to my ankle and hidden under my jeans to kill him.

The sloppy pat-down I got at the door missed my gun.

Amateurs.

But the Devil in me knows if I kill this fucker now, we won’t bust his entire network and that’s what we want.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” Some sick fuck addicted to self-tanner reaches for the youngest girl, and I growl, “No, she’s mine, too.”

“You can’t have them all,” he whines.

“Like you can stop me, mother fucker?”

I’m not dressed like a forty-something pastor, I’m dressed like a twenty-something dealer. I guess I look like one, too. Ink on my face. Neck. Hands. My entire body. These people can’t see past my menacing exterior to my tortured soul inside, and fuck yes, that’s how I want it .

“No.” My brother Axel glares at me. “I’m taking three of them.”

“Fuck you.” Grant, my other brother, acts along. “I’m not going home empty-handed. I want two.”

“I’m taking the blondes.” Nash, who’s like our brother, fights his rage. He’s a father to a daughter and this shit is eating him alive but he plays along. “Three of them.”

That leaves the youngest and this one.

The iron angel for me.

“You know the price, gentlemen.” The seller enters the circle. “The bidding starts at a million each.”

“You said a hundred K each.” The old orange man whines.

They go back and forth, and it doesn’t matter. My brothers and I came to get these girls. To get them the fuck out of here and the help they need.

My brother Jace and my mom are waiting in a van five miles away. They’ll take these girls and get them somewhere safe.

This is what we do, and we don’t play.

In fifteen minutes, we’ve bought them all, and they’re starting to leave. My brothers won’t blow their cover.

But this last one? The iron angel?

“I’ve grown quite fond of her.” The seller caresses her long raven waves. “She’s special. Such a rare bird. Right, Wren?” He cups her breast covered in white silk, and I clench my jaw. “She’ll fight back, and that only makes it better.”

He yanks her long hair, throwing her down on the hardwood floor. She crashes on her backside, muffling her yelp of pain.

And it’s this moment when I notice her tattoos.

Stigmata tattoos.

Two blood red marks on the inside of her wrists. Two on the tops of her feet. They’re meant to look like the nail wounds of Jesus Christ on the cross .

A year from now, I’ll look back and realize Wren’s tattoos were my greatest temptation and salvation.

Right now?

I get in his face. “Don’t fucking touch my property.”

“She’s not yours yet. Maybe I should have her first. We’ve been saving them all. Ten little virgins, but this one? I want to break her before you buy her.”

I clench my teeth. “Two million.”

And he tilts his head.

Fuck, that was too much.

He’s suspicious.

“If she’s worth so much to you…” He raises a brow, pulling a knife from the back pocket of his khaki pants. “How about a pound of flesh, too?”

The youngest girl. God, she looks fourteen. The same age as my mother when she was kidnapped and trafficked to my father.

The youngest girl is crying, burying her face in her shaking hands, so the iron angel drags herself up and reaches for her, protecting her like a big sister.

Dear Lord, she’s brave.

“What do you want?” I make my face, staring down the seller, as cold as my soul can be sometimes—the way I was raised.

“How about I take a pound of flesh from her,” he points his knife at the youngest girl, “and the flower from her.” He reaches for the iron angel, and something in me snaps.

I did this for my brother. I sacrificed myself.

And I’ll do this for her. A complete stranger.

From as young as I can remember, a spirit has moved through me. I can’t describe it.

And I don’t need to.

It speaks and I listen.

The problem is .

Is it God?

Or the Devil?

“Take a piece of my flesh.” My spirit speaks, using my mouth. “Take a piece of me and give me these girls.”

“Why?”

Yeah, he’s suspicious.

“Because I like blood.” I’m not lying. “I like mine. I like theirs. I like cutting and breeding, and let’s start the fun now.”

I hold out my left hand. I quote scripture, “I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying of my hands.”

The seller scoffs, appalled, “What the fuck?”

But the iron angel?

Her eyes widen like she doesn’t know what she’s seeing when she’s staring at me. But she knows scripture, and she wonders, Why is it spewing from the Devil’s mouth?

“I’m not fucking cutting your hand off, man.” The seller gestures to the opulent house. “I don’t need a mess and the heat on me.”

It doesn’t matter.

Tomorrow, Nash will drain this evil fuck’s accounts of the money we pay for the girls and then me and Axel will kill him, and the hired guns behind him. There are only four. It won’t be hard.

It’ll be fun.

“You want flesh or not?”

“Theirs.” He points to the girls.

“Nah, they’re my toys and I don’t share. So take my fucking pinky and let’s roll.”

I slam my hand down on the glass end table, strewn with tumblers of whisky.

But the seller keeps eyeing my angel.

“Come on, man.” I keep my voice flat. “Three million and my pinkie, and we have a deal, and I get to take my girls home to play. I have a dungeon waiting for them.”

He likes the sound of that way too much. In three steps, he has the blade poised over my splayed digits.

“No!” The iron angel cries out. “Don’t hurt him.”

“It’s alright.” I wink at her. “I won’t feel a thing.”

But goddamn, I do.

At first, I feel the shock, even though I expect it. I’m staring down at him doing it. Then it’s a decent amount of blood that he wipes up with a towel, one of the gunmen throws at him.

Then it’s a throbbing pain from my severed bone to my stomach, to every nerve in my body, and my brain registering the unnatural trauma—the permanent loss.

But I hide it.

I don’t want to scare the girl and the angel any more than we need to get the fuck out of here.

“Done.” I make myself breathe, grabbing the bloody towel while the seller lifts half of my pinky, holding it to the light like a goddamn diamond.

“Careful,” he warns. “If you keep having an appetite for torturing young virgin pussy, you’re going to run out of fingers.”

No, dumbass, you’re running out of time.

In twenty-four hours, you’re dead.

With a towel wrapped around my left hand, I signal to my angel, and shockingly, she follows me without resistance. She gets the girl to come, too.

I guess she believes I’m the lesser of the evils in the room.

Maybe she’s wrong.

When we get to my rented Hummer parked in the driveway, I clock Axel in his rental, acting like he’s on his phone, but really, he’s waiting for me.

“Get in,” I tell the girls and yank the back door open .

The youngest one starts to sob, and I drop my voice to as soft and true as I can make it sound.

“I will not hurt you. I’m taking you both to a woman who helps girls like you. I promise.”

The angel urges the youngest one to climb into the car. “Come on,” she soothes. “It’ll be okay. We’re safe now.”

She holds her in the back seat again, protecting her like a sister, while she glares at me through the rear-view mirror.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“A fallen angel.”

“Don’t bullshit me. Who are you, and where are you taking us?”

Fuck it. Might as well tell the truth.

My mom will find a safe place for these girls and get them all the resources they need, and I can go back to trying to redeem my cursed soul.

“I’m a pastor at a church that helps trafficking victims like you. I’m taking you to a woman, an angel funder, who spends all of her money helping girls and women get safe.”

She glares at my eyes in the mirror’s reflection.

“You can trust her.”

“Can I trust you?”

“No.” I don’t lie.

“Why not?”

“You have the stigmata tattoos. You know what a fallen angel is.”

“An angel who rebelled against God, and was cast out of heaven, and now waits in darkness until judgement day.”

“Nice to meet you.”

She gets the idea, and I take the next interstate exit.

“What did you do?” she asks. “What’s your sin?”

I glance in the mirror again, and the youngest girl looks asleep. Or passed out in shock.

Fuck, I need to get her to my mom soon .

“Tell me,” the angel insists. “You gave a pound of flesh for me, and I want to know.”

Fine.

I’ll never see her again.

And I need to confess to someone.

“I lay with men. I lay with women. I have some very dark needs when I do, and while I help everyone else, I don’t help myself. I sold my brother to the devil, and I’ll be paying for it for the rest of my life.” I pause. “Amen.”

She studies me before she shares, “My name is Wren.”

“It’s not nice to meet me, Wren.”

“What’s your name?”

“It’s best you don’t know.”

For a long moment, she’s silent, like she trusts my honesty about being evil before she warns, “Lay a hand on this girl and I will kill you.”

“You should.”

I see the passenger van parked up the road in the hotel parking lot. My brother Jace is waiting beside it. My mom, as well. My brothers, in their rental cars with their victims, have arrived, too. They’ll take the girls from here, and I’ll never see them again.

I put on my turn signal, then pull in to park beside them.

Of course, the angel fears what’s about to happen. She trusts that she shouldn’t trust me, and she starts to warn again, “And if you lay a hand on me?—”

“Yeah, you’ll kill me, too.”

No,” she answers. “I’ll fall in love.”