Reign of a Billionaire : A Dark Mafia Enemies-to-Lovers Romance

Chapter 32Liana

“We were born to die,” I whispered, my breath fogging the air. I tried to be brave, but fear rattled my bones every time I stepped foot in this arena. Mother and Ivan called it a training center. It wasn’t. This was where death found its mark.

“Everyone’s born to die.” The dark timbre of his voice soothed the tremors slightly. “It’s just a matter of when.”

“I hate that you… That she makes you fight.”

This was the only spot where nobody ever found us. There was irony in finding safety where the horrors took place.

Clutching the pencil between my lead-stained fingers, I looked up to find his beautiful face. Only… the shadows hid it from me. Each time I shifted, they followed, shrouding him in darkness. How strange, I thought to myself. I clutched the pencil until it hurt, desperate to anchor myself to something that felt real.

I parted my lips to say his name, but the moment I did, the sickening crack of bones echoed through the air. Blood dripped… Drip… Drip… Drip… Until my fingers were soaked with blood.

His blood. My blood.

My heart twisted with agony as the same words repeated on a loop in my head. I can’t lose him, I can’t lose him, I can’t lose him.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, his words broken and disappearing into the air around us. Just like my fragile heart. “You’re not hurting me.”

Another crack of the bones. More blood gushed out.

“Nooooo!” My shriek pierced through my skull.

My eyes snapped open, and I bolted upright. My panting filled the space as I gasped for air. For a second, I was disoriented. I looked around, expecting to find blood. Instead, all I found was a group of women huddled together, and I remembered where I was.

I pushed a long breath out. This scenario wasn’t much better, but I’d take it over my dream. My fingers were still shaking, but I willed them to stop.

The innate need to lash out—at my captors, at destiny—struck me, but I knew I had to keep a cool head. I was so close to finding out what had happened to my sister.

Since I had been taken, it’d been one cage after another. One ship. Then another.

The security had been doubled after my first murder spree. No matter though, because the guards got the message: Stay the fuck away. There wouldn’t be any sampling while I was on this ship.

The last two weeks in this godforsaken cargo ship were maddening as fuck. Christmas had come and gone. So had New Year’s. I killed a solid number of guards only for them to be replaced with new ones, along with another unconscious, frail-looking young woman.

Reina Romero.

I felt a sort of kinship toward her, and stood guard over her while she lay unconscious in her drugged state. She’d murdered several guards, and I had thoroughly enjoyed the show. I decided right then and there that I liked the girl.

My eyes traveled over the sleeping girls.

Helpless. Vulnerable.

Their fathers, brothers, and husbands had either double-crossed or were indebted to Perez, and they were expected to pay the price. It disgusted me and frightened me at the same time. What would become of the captive girls?

In the past two weeks, I’d attempted to teach them some form of self-defense. Even if by some miracle they were all saved when we arrived at our destination, they’d need it eventually. It was only a matter of time. Some of the lessons stuck; a lot of them didn’t.

The howling sounds started, like a haunting lullaby, signaling another day had passed since we had arrived in this hellhole.

It’ll bring me closer to the truth, I reminded myself. Anger at being manipulated and lied to simmered, shooting the adrenaline I needed through my veins. For eight years the video of a woman’s body disintegrating into nothing tormented my mind and soul. Now, I wasn’t sure if it was my sister or someone else. Either way, my revenge wouldn’t stop now, regardless if the woman in the video was my sister or not. Meanwhile, I held on to this tiny flicker of hope. What if my twin was alive?

My mother must know the truth, and I hated her for leading me to believe whatever she needed me to believe. Maybe I’d been young and naive enough to trust it, but she wasn’t.

Soon I would face the evil that orchestrated my abduction and sold my sister. It was all going according to plan—as much as was possible anyway.

A cough pulled me from my thoughts, and I scooted over to Sienna, an eighteen-year-old girl who’d been here even longer than me. She had a horrible case of seasickness, and I didn’t envy her one bit. She’d been throwing up for weeks, barely able to keep anything down. I would have blamed it on the unappealing food, but the rest of us weren’t sick from it.

“I hate ships,” came her weak voice as she rolled over to face me, her eyes fluttering open. “My stepfather’s yacht never made me this sick.”

I gently pulled her up into a seated position.

“It doesn’t help that you’re not eating,” I said, handing her a piece of hard bread. She wrinkled up her button nose at the unappealing sight. “I know, it’s disgusting.”

I finally coaxed her into taking it, and she forced herself to swallow with a painful-sounding gulp.

“I’ve had better,” she muttered.

“Me too.” I’d also had worse, but there was no sense in bringing that up. “How did you end up here?”

“Fuck if I know.” She winced. “My mom would flip if she heard me cursing this way.” My lip twitched at that, and it gave me a glimpse of what she might be like if she weren’t despondent and shaking like a leaf, the strands of her honey-colored hair slithering across her shoulders. Lifting her head, her eyes met mine with stubborn defiance. “This only happened because of him,” she spat, accusation clear in her voice.

“Your stepfather?” I asked tentatively. Her gaze darted around at the sleeping girls before returning to me, eyes misting. “Who’s your stepfather?”

She waved her hand weakly. “Kristoff Baldwin.”

I tapped a finger to my chin. The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “What does he do?”

She shrugged, then winced and rubbed at her shoulder. She was weak, days of throwing up and sleeping on the cold, hard ground taking a toll on her body. “Real estate shit. Construction something or other.”

The name finally fell into place. “Baldwin Enterprise,” I blurted, my brow furrowing in confusion. “Your father owns Baldwin Enterprise?”

“Stepfather,” she corrected, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “My mom married him when I was a teenager. My sisters think of him as their dad. And then of course, he’s the twins’ real dad.” A hint of bitterness underlined her words. “I’m not jealous if that’s what you’re thinking. Besides, Kristoff certainly knows how to behave like an overbearing father.”

She was lucky in that regard; it was more than my sister and I had.

“What does he have to do with any of this?” As far as I knew, Kristoff Baldwin didn’t get involved with the likes of Cortes.

She swung her bruised eyes to me, her face ghostly pale. “And what is this?”

My stomach lurched. If her stepfather had no dealings with the underworld and they went after her anyway, it meant there was no rhyme or reason behind the girls being snatched. Nobody was safe.

“Nothing,” I muttered, handing her a dry piece of bread. “Try to nibble on this.”

She took it from me gingerly, tears flowing freely from her face now. She brought it to her lips but didn’t bite into it. Her hand hung in the air as she gulped once, twice.

“I fucked up,” she whispered, shaking her head. “It had to be that stupid program I wrote.”

“What program?” I asked, intrigued.

She sniffled. “I did it during one of my coding classes at college. I wanted to prove to Tyran Callahan that I—” Her voice broke and my blood ran cold. “I meddled with Perez Cortes’s bank accounts.”

My eyes blew wide. “Why would you do that?”

She swallowed hard. “Tyran kept saying I was too young for him.” I tried to recall how old Tyran Callahan was and failed. All I could remember was that he was a twin like me. “So he said when I could hack into Cortes’s personal files, he’d take me out.” She moved to stand, waving away my attempt to help her. “I’m starting to think that my roommate was right.”

“About?”

“Tyran might’ve just been trying to bait me,” she muttered, shame filling her expression. When I gave her a blank look, she explained. “As in ‘I’ll go out with you when pigs fly,’ but for some stupid reason, he went all specific.”

Poor girl took Callahan’s rejection as a challenge. She had yet to learn that men were idiots of the finest class.

But instead of saying all of that, I smiled. She didn’t need me pointing out the obvious; she was already beating herself up over it.

“You showed him, didn’t you?”

A sardonic breath left her. “I sure did. Look where it got me.” She was too young and too naive to be involved in this corruption. “Who is Perez Cortes anyway?”

“Put it this way, he’s not the best person to steal from,” I said softly.

“I’d never even heard of him.” Despair laced her voice. Of course she hadn’t, she hardly looked old enough to be a college student.

“He’s not a good guy.” And that was putting it mildly. There was one thing that my mother did right, and that was educate me on the who’s who in the underworld. It didn’t matter how big or small someone was, she drilled everyone’s names into me.

This girl clearly had no clue our world even existed. If I got out of this alive, I’d whoop Tyran Callahan’s ass for giving her hope where there was none.

“I’m going to need therapy when all this is said and done.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, wondering if therapy wouldn’t be such a bad thing for the women and men caught up in the underworld. “Until then, are you up to learning some self-defense?”

She still had the will to live, a burning fight in her eyes despite her weak state.

“Bring it on.” Her gaze darted from me to Reina’s sleeping form in the cage next to ours. “I want to become as nuts as that lady.”

“Alright, then, Sienna. Let’s kick some ass.”

Her lips curved into a soft smile despite the despair in her eyes. “Don’t cry to me when I puke all over you.”

“Don’t cry when I kick your ass.”

Reina Romero gripped my hand as we were pushed across the dock, up a flight of stone steps, and into a filthy courtyard. We were shuffled around like cattle, and all the while, I kept my eyes trained on the girls.

“Don’t make eye contact,” I warned Sienna and Reina in a soft whisper, shuffling them both deeper into the moving crowd. Both were shell-shocked, their faces white as a sheet. I tugged them along to the podium and led us onto the stage.

Sienna’s gasp captured my attention, and I found her staring at the rows of men. To my surprise, she was smiling, tears glistening in her eyes. I followed her eyeline but didn’t see anyone aside from the leering faces of those eager to witness our degradation and humiliation.

“What is it?”

“That’s my dad,” she whispered, her lip trembling. “My… stepdad.”

A pinch of relief hit me, knowing this girl would be okay. Her parents—unlike many others—had come to save her.

“Dim your happiness,” I murmured in a hushed tone. “Keep your expression stoic, and don’t let on that you know him.”

Her eyes found mine, confusion clear in them. “But⁠—”

I took her hand and squeezed it tightly. “Trust me. And stay away from that douchebag Tyran. I’ll take care of him for you.”

Something in her eyes flared, strength I sensed in her all along hitting me head-on. “Don’t. I’m gonna make him pay myself.”

I smiled proudly. “Good girl.”

A guard came behind her, pushing her forward, and I gave her a reassuring nod. I watched with bated breath as the bidding for Sienna Baldwin started. With each number thrown into the mix, the tension in me grew, and it wasn’t until she was escorted toward her father that I took a full breath.

Until it was my turn.