Chapter 5

West

“Slave Vicolette.”

My head dipped the slightest amount with respect for her master, but stopped short at the new bruising covering her face. She hadn’t been that bad off when Bram and I had seen her sleeping earlier.

“She’s not a Vicolette anymore. She’s slave twenty-four-six-ninety now.”

I went to speak, but stayed silent as I stared between her and Bram. He held to her roughly, tugging at her arm as he led them toward his bedroom door.

“Pull up the footage on their apartment. Have it ready for me. I want to see what the fuck happened after we left.”

“Footage? You have cameras in—” The soft voice was drowned out by Bram’s growl.

“No questions, slave. I wasn’t talking to you. You hear nothing. You are no one.”

They disappeared through his room and I walked over to his desk. The shower started and I couldn’t help but let my eyes drift up to the threshold of where they’d gone. The moment I had the apartment pulled up, I turned to the bar, pouring myself a drink. And again, I looked ahead.

“You got it?”

Bram swept through and I glanced over, nodding with my head. “All ready to go.” The pressure of the water changed and I tried to ignore the fact that she was in the shower. His shower. Here, within the same walls as me. We were so close.

Bram took a seat behind his desk, clicking the play button. We were walking away from Mr. Vicolette. The master’s expression was still furious from our argument. He meant to acquire a new slave at the coming auction.

Another girl of barely ten he’d witnessed on his stroll through The Cradle.

Bram wasn’t having it. The outrageous sum was meant to deter the old man, but he was consistent with his bargaining.

Since Bram had taken over, things had changed. The Cradle housed all those under the legal age. Where once they were given to anyone who could pay the price, now they were off-limits to the perversion that once reigned supreme. The masters were allowed visitation to their slaves but only supervised, and never for anything sexual until they were of a certain age. Master Vicolette didn’t like the new rules and argued over the old ways. He’d lost in the end. He couldn’t afford the price, not that anyone would have been able to. Even I was shocked at the sum. But Bram’s dislike of the man was evident. And I knew why.

Back and forth the old man paced. When his head jerked toward the door, the screen went black.

“What the fuck?” Bram clicked buttons, spinning to pin me with a stare so full of blame that my hands rose.

“Don’t look at me. I haven’t touched anything. I did as you said and pulled it up.”

“Only a select few could have erased the video. If it wasn’t you, then who? We separated after we left that apartment. Where did you go before coming here?”

He asked the question, but turned back to the screen, typing something in I couldn’t see. When the bedroom came into view and slave Vicolette lay there sleeping, I stepped forward. It wasn’t seconds later that the living room reappeared on the monitor. And with it, a masked man stabbing away.

“I went to get some coffee. Then I came here.”

“You enquired about the girl, West. You asked Mr. Vicolette what he meant to do with her if he got himself a new slave. How do I know that’s not you?”

The blade thrust into the old man’s eye and the darkly dressed figure stood from his body, heading straight for the door.

“Pull up the other cameras. You’ll see I went straight to the dining hall and returned here. That’s not me.”

Bram switched the view to the hallway, following the stranger through the labyrinth of tunnels until he was slipping through a secret door. It was so far down in the fortress that it could have led anywhere underground.

“Where did he go?” I whispered. “Do we not have cameras down there?”

“No. There’s another underground road that leads here. It hasn’t been used in quite some time, but I’m guessing that’s what he took to get in. How he knew about it and was able to slip past the guards is what I want to know.”

Bram re-winded the footage, going back to slave Vicolette’s bedroom while the murder was being committed. It wasn’t until seconds after the door closed that she stirred from sleep. The expression she held was one of sleepy confusion. She knew something wasn’t right, even in her slightly drugged state. And I knew she was drugged. Mr. Vicolette told us as much as Bram inquired about her well-being. Her beaten self was my guess as to why he put the sum so high.

“She was telling the truth.” Bram’s low voice turned angry toward the end as he shut off the recording of her rape and stood. I couldn’t help but follow him as he headed more into the living room.

“Will she go to Slave Row?” I paused, unable to stop the next question from coming. “Will she be put on auction?”

Blue eyes pierced mine as his lids narrowed. “You know that’s how it works, but that’s the last thing on my mind right now. I want to know who that motherfucker was that got inside my walls.” He took a step toward me. “You have been my best friend since grade school. You’re my business partner. We grew up in this place. Never once in all these years have you showed interest in buying a slave. Yet here you are, asking about her again, when we obviously have bigger problems. Are you implying you want to bid on her? That you want to become a part of this world more than what you already are now?”

My stare went to the bedroom door. The water was off. Was she dressing? Eavesdropping on our conversation?