Chapter 16 Convict Emilia Marchant, twenty-four, granddaughter of Austin and Primrose Marchant, owners of quite the enterprise, according to my research. Mila worked for their business, a shipping and haulage company that operated out of major ports in Northern England and Scotland. She was all over their social media after graduating university then officially joining the company a year or two ago. Even before that, she was photographed at every award ceremony or company event. There she was-champagne in one hand, granny on the other. Definitely not the kind of woman who'd shack up with a skeleton-masked maniac in a bloodstained basement. Yet here we were. "Quite the golden child," I muttered to myself. Except all wasn't well in Marchant Haulage. Four weeks ago, Austin had died of a heart attack. Not a shocker for a man in his seventies with ruddy cheeks and the purple-veined nose of a heavy drinker, but the photographs of the funeral struck me in the chest. Pictures showed a devastated Mila, crumpled and alone at the graveside. I got why the photographer had snapped the shot-she was beautiful, even in tears-but to plaster that all over the local news was low. The story gave me a good dose of background to the lass. She was grieving for sure, and in that, had somehow been thrown into turmoil with the kind of men she should never have been around. Assholes like the one who'd locked her up. Which now included me. I checked the time and jumped up from the bed in the room where I'd hidden away. I had ten minutes until our maximum two hours of separation was up, and we needed supplies. Downstairs, I raided the wardrobe that I'd been dressing from then hit up the strip club's kitchen, scoring two hot chicken sandwiches. While I waited to be served, Tyler called. "Update for you. Target acquired. He's alive and well, also well-guarded. We'll wait and watch for an in." Relief battled an odd sense of jealousy in my gut. Nothing in my research on Mila had thrown up a sibling or a boyfriend. If this guy was someone she'd been dating, I'd toss him straight back into Salter's hands. I thanked Tyler. "I was thinking about what Mila said about whether they'd know or not if she'd succeeded. Unless they'd rented a bed in the warehouse during the game, they'd only be sure if they were waiting outside with the crowd to see the victors. I took Mila upstairs, and Jacobs slipped away unseen." He made a sound of agreement. "You're thinking like me. Beds are booked out months in advance, but I already asked Manny to go over the list. He confirmed there has been no swaps or last-minute add-ins." Those beds went for a premium. Old boys or groups of men booked their favourite sex workers and dicked down to the chase. Set that back over a month ago and it was too early for Mila's grandfather's death. I didn't know for sure, but that had to be the start of all her troubles. We said goodbye, and I dialled Shade, something else bothering me. "Did you speak to Mila to interview her for the game?" I asked without preamble. "Hello to ye, too. Yes and no. A lass dropped out a week ago, and I took the next on the list. Emilia Marchant. We had a phone chat, but I'm certain it wasnae the girl ye caught." I swore. "How do you know?" "I heard your Mila yell out during the game. Everything about her voice was different. She was set up, aye? That's why ye went in?" Of course she was. I hung up on him, fucking furious yet again, and determined to find out who'd put her up to the task. Mila woke on my entry to the room. "Where have you been?" "Miss me?" "No, asshole. You locked me up, again." I furrowed my brow. "I locked the door for your safety." She sat up and jingled the handcuffs still attached to the bedframe. "You might as well have tied me to the bed again." I huffed a laugh and set down the provisions. "That can be arranged. Here, I brought food and clothes. Also news. Tyler has seen your man." Her gaze clung to mine. "Alive?" I nodded, that jealousy twinging again at her sigh. "They're waiting for an opportunity. If they think he's at risk, they'll act, but as things stand, we're guessing it isn't clear who you paired off with, so Salter isn't taking retaliatory action." "Right. God. Thank you." I gestured for Mila to take up one of the sandwiches, and I took the other, resuming my position on the floor. "When did you sign up for Salter's auction?" Mila took a big bite of the food and moaned, the sound going straight to my dick. "I didn't realise how hungry I was. Um, I went to Esther about a week ago. She's the one who burst into the room as you were taking Annabelle away." I nodded, already halfway through my sandwich. "A week ago is the same time your name was given for the game and someone did a phone interview pretending to be you. Clearly not a coincidence." "You think it was Esther?" She swore and stared off into the middle distance. "I never thought she was a trustworthy person. So that means Salter immediately made a plan to use me after Esther gave him my name. Then he recruited her. I thought it was strange how there was that delay in the holding cell. He kept me there overnight, maybe to make sure I didn't get cold feet and ruin his plans." "Why not just use Esther to get to Jacobs? She could've gone into the game." She took another bite and chewed for a minute, thinking. "When I went to her, I said I wanted to see Jacobs specifically, and it took some hours before I got an answer. When she called me, she said I'd only meet the organiser on the night the auction took place, and Salter would handle the preliminaries. She then made a comment that stuck in my head. She said I was exactly the clean type they wanted. When contestants apply to your game, are there specific criteria?" "There are, including medical." "Salter's people took my blood. I figured it was to do with the auction, but it must've been for your people. Maybe Esther wouldn't have passed that test." A wave of protectiveness came over me. She'd been manipulated like a chess piece. Salter had sniffed out an opportunity, which meant he'd wanted Jacobs for something as well. "Why exactly do you need Rhys Jacobs?" I asked. "I take it he's into some shady shit if the auctions were his idea but now Salter is running them." She didn't give an answer right away, finishing her food then drinking from the water bottle beside my bed. When she was done, she offered it to me. I took it and drank, liking the little spark of intimacy at our sharing. If she agreed to be with me, this would be my world for the next month. Sharing everything with her. Having someone of my own. If she turned me down, I'd have nothing. Then Mila spoke, and my world faded to her. "I first heard of Rhys Jacobs when I was fourteen. He'd gone to the same school as me but was older and had already left. The girls whispered rumours that he could hook them up with rich businessmen who would pay a lot of money for sex. No one used the term 'virginity auction' then, but that's what it was. Esther is a couple of years older than me, and she put herself into it and made a bundle. She never spoke about the experience, but I know she recruited other girls. I didn't stay at the school so lost touch with her, but she was easy to find again when I needed a last resort to get to Jacobs." "Suggesting you exhausted all other avenues." I mapped that to the man I'd seen in the interview. "He's running scared of something. I met him, and his interest was in the skeleton crew's protection, which is probably why you couldn't reach him." She pursed her lips, her food finished along with her sharing. I took the wrappers and binned them, resuming my sprawl. We were in a strange kind of holding pattern. I was already obeying the rules. I wouldn't leave her again. At the same point, I had to resist the urge to go to her and curl around her on the bed. The same instincts that had battered me earlier returned in force, and my body warmed. Mila gazed at me. "Why were you watching the auction place?" "Tyler suspected Salter of being a trafficker. Jury's still out on that." She tilted her head. "Help me out with this. Are you the good guys or the bad guys? Would a rival trafficker be taking business from you?" "Fuck, no. We stop people like that." I spread out my arms to gesture to the warehouse around us. "A lot of women work in this building on their backs. None of them are made to do it, and no one takes a cut of their pay. Arran set up this place to protect women. His mother was forced into the trade." I blinked at the explanation that had so easily popped into my mind. I knew my friend's history better than I did my own. Mila's eyebrows rose, her pretty expression registering her surprise. "Good guys after all. Except when you chain me up." My focus slid down the shirt she still wore. It was open enough to expose her collarbone, and that glimpse was one of the sexiest things I'd ever seen. "I'm not all that good." "You say that, but aside from a few shifty things, you've done nothing but good for me. I was thinking about it when you were gone. You didn't need to go into the game to pull me out. I reacted badly, but without you, I'd be in the hands of some stranger. Someone who probably wouldn't want to help. Or that I found...interesting." Lust shot through me in a powerful wave. Of two things, I was certain. Mila wanted me. I'd caught her attention, either with my climbing in her window, my honesty in how I reacted to her, or with the darker side of chasing her down in the basement. If I could shake her out of her reserve, she might take what she needed. My second surety was that if she agreed to the rules, Mila wouldn't stay with me after the thirty days were up. If I was lucky, she'd be mine for a month but then she'd walk away. Which meant we couldn't miss a minute. Jumping to my feet, I locked the door then approached her on the bed. She sat up in alarm, but I caught the flash of something hot in her eyes. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FindNøvᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. Game on, little gangster.