Romance: Young Adult Romance: The Perfect Game (A Highschool Football Romance) (Bad Boy Nerd New Adult Romance) (17 page)

1

It was Saturday, and it was my first off day on a weekend in a
really
long time. I couldn’t remember having a Saturday off since I had started working for Mr. Black. That wasn’t his real
name,
of
course; I
was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone in Russia with the last name of Black, and my boss was as Russian as they got. His accent was so thick it was hard to understand him sometimes.

I was Russian in the sense that my great grandfather came over and built a life for himself. His name had been
Pitor
Anismov
. He did pretty well for himself, the old guy. My
own
grandfather told me a lot of stories about him. Grandpa was Alan
Anismov
. Alan was as American a name as old
Pitor
could come
up with
. He wanted his son to be American. He hated Russia. It was
cold; it
was hard living. America represented something to him. An opportunity.

Grandpa had two daughters. My
mom,
he named Rebecca, and her sister was Rose. Rose died when she was only
five; I
never met her. My mom married a guy named Mike Jones, and they got me, Peter Jones. Doesn’t sound very Russian, and it took me a while to convince Mr. Black that my family came from there. Having Russians, it was important to him.

I
was named
after
Pitor
, but with the American spelling. When he came
over,
he made money any way he could. I’ve taken that
up to
. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, and a lot of
things
which could land me in jail, but hey, a job is a job. I keep my head down, steer clear of cops, and make sure the guys I rough up
really
have it coming to them.

Mr. Black is a fair guy, believe it or not. He’s big and round, with a bald head and a fat stomach, but he calls
it like
he sees it, and he plays everyone straight. There’s something honorable about
that, really
. A criminal who tries to do right by his
own
ethics and moral code. I’m the same way. I won’t knock over some mom and pop shop unless they’re laundering money for another
guy
or something like that. My boss is the same way.

But he works us a lot. I do
this; I
do that. I’m on call
twenty-four
seven. That’s why I was looking so forward to that Saturday.

I slept in, having a weekend day off. I didn’t wake up until after noon. I lounged in bed for a bit, until my stomach was telling me I needed food, and then I got up. I was halfway through my second bowl of Frosted Flakes when my cell rang. I grabbed it and sighed. It was Mr. Black.

“Peter my boy,” the old man grumbled. “I need you.”

I knew better than to argue. “What can I do for
you,
Mr. Black?” I asked.

He gave me an
address
and told me I was working security at nine that evening. I hung up and finished my cereal.
Nine wasn’t so bad.
Of course, if Mr. Black told me nine, he expected me there by eight thirty.
I, at least,
had the day. I went back to bed.

By
six,
I climbed out of bed and slowly got ready after wolfing down a sandwich. By eight twenty I was parking across from the address I had
been given
. It was a place downtown, in a seedy looking neighborhood. The building was squat and wide, just one story, with no windows that I could see. All gray and closed off. The door was large and metal, and a man in a suit was loitering outside of it.

I locked my car and made my way across the street.
I realized I knew the man standing by the heavy door, and he nodded to me as I got closer.
His name was Marco, and he worked for David
Zinga
, a Mexican arms dealer that Mr. Black was
friendly with
.

“Marco,” I said, stopping
for a minute
to chat with the guy. He was smoking, and he took a long drag on the cigarette he held between two fingers before answering.

“How goes it, Peter?” He asked, his voice
low
, like a tiger’s growl. He was a big guy, muscles upon muscles, with a scar running down one cheek.

“All right. It was my day off,” I complained, and Marco laughed, but his eyes were sympathetic.

“What’s a day off?” He asked, and it was my turn to laugh. I slapped him on the back and stepped inside. I expected the building to be dark, but it was well lit. There was a small hallway right at the entrance, with a door propped open at the end, and beyond that a large open room. Lights hung from the ceiling, buzzing
softly
as I passed underneath them. At the far end of the
room
was a small stage of sorts, a raised section of flooring which came up to my waist. There was a door there, built into the wall on the rear of the stage. A friend of mine stood there, another guy who worked for my boss, someone I had pulled a few
jobs with
. His name was Vlad, and he was about ten years older than my twenty-five. His last name was Nikitin, and he was like Mr. Black, right from the mother country. His accent wasn’t as pronounced
however
, he had apparently moved to America with his family when he was only three. He was tall and angular, with a long crooked nose that had
been broken
more than once.

“Hey kid,” he said to me as I found the steps to the stage and moved up to greet my friend. He always called me
kid
.

“Hey Vlad,” I said. “Mr. Black coming?”

Vlad shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows,” he said. “I think a lot of big hitters will be
here,
though.”

“What is this?” I asked. “Arms deal?”

Vlad laughed and shook his head. “Not quite Kid,” he said. Then he nodded to the door which stood off to the side, leading from the stage. “
Go check
it out.”

I looked at him, wondering if he was trying to get me in trouble. I was just working security. Mr. Black, and the others like him, they didn’t like us small timers getting our noses where they didn’t belong. I was muscle, plain and
simple
. I had my gun, in a shoulder holster under my suit jacket. Mr. Black always had us in shirts and ties.

I made my way to the door at the back of the
stage
and then looked over my shoulder, back to Vlad. He laughed and waved me on. “It’s
fine; just
us
grunts here so far.”

I nodded and opened the door. It was dark in the back room, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. There were fewer lights here, their bulbs orange and
slight
instead of bright and yellow. In front of
me,
there was a cage, big enough for a man, but it was empty. I moved on.

I found another cage, but this one wasn’t empty. It was six feet high and four feet wide, and two women stood in it, holding one another and crying. They looked young, both of them no older than twenty. They had fair skin and dark hair, and their eyes were dark and hard to see in the
low
light. They looked to me and shrunk away. It made me feel terrible. I was a bad guy, I did bad things, I knew that, but these two women, as scared as they obviously were, seeing me and reacting physically like that, it made my head swim with shame.

“I won’t hurt you,” I said as I
stepped by
. Beyond that
cage,
there were others, each with one or two or sometimes three young women inside. I felt nauseous, and I hurried and turned back to the door, and rushed out onto the stage.

Vlad saw me and he laughed. I felt a wave of anger roll through me. “First
rodeo
?” He asked.

“What is this?”

“What do you think
kid
, come on, you’ve done too many bad things to be naive.”

I knew what it was of course. Those women were going to
be sold
. Sold to
rich
weapons dealers and drug
kingpin
sold into their beds. Sex slaves. Young women, twenty, nineteen, God one had looked fifteen. I shook my head. I wanted to leave then and there, just walk out the door. And I would have if I hadn’t stopped and thought about what Mr. Black would do if I did. If I
walked
out of a job, there was a chance my legs would
be broken
. Broke legs
was
literally
the best case scenario. I could also wake up at the bottom of a
river; cement
blocks strapped to my
legs
.

I didn’t say anything to Vlad. I didn’t know what to say. I moved to the edge of the stage and sat for a moment. My adrenalin was pumping, my heart beating a thousand miles a minute. I had been
calmer
in gun fights. Something about those cages, those women, it
really
got me. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat.

Half an hour passed and men started streaming in. Not grunts like me, but rich guys. Mobsters, crime lords, all in expensive suits. Old guys, fat guys, one guy with a giant scar running from eye to chin that made Vlad’s look like a scrape a kid got falling off his tricycle. These guys were big
time
though I noticed none of them were good looking. They were the kind of guys who had to throw their money around to get chicks. And what was an easier way than just buying a woman outright? I tried not to think about what was about to happen
around
me, and stood off to the side of the stage. Vlad was at the other end, a few guys from different crews
were dotted
around the room. I didn’t expect trouble, in all it would be an easy job, if not for the fact that I was about to see women sold into sexual slavery.

Mr. Black wasn’t there, and I was thankful for that, though if I was
there,
I knew he had his fat fingers into the pie somewhere, and he was profiting off the night. I tried to push it from my mind as the first woman was brought out.

I was expecting them to pull the cages out, but they didn’t. A man brought a woman out, bound at the wrist with thick rope. She was beautiful, wearing a short dress with a plunging neckline. I guessed that she was thirty or a bit older, and then the bidding started.

Men in the audience, standing in front of the stage, held up small paddles. An auctioneer was on the stage, standing next to the woman. It was over in a matter of minutes. An old man with a lazy eye I didn’t recognize bought the
thirty-year-old
for thirty thousand dollars. It was a lot of money to me, but somehow it didn’t seem as though it was enough for someone’s life.

The night wore
on; women
were paraded
out, one after the other. All of the pretty, none of them older than that first
woman
. I tried not to look at them, and didn’t for long, but as they
were led
through the door at the back of the stage, I would steal a glance. I couldn’t help it. I had to see them, if only for a moment.

Then she walked through. I didn’t know her of course, but something about her struck me. She was gorgeous. She seemed a few years younger than me. She had dark olive
skin
and dark hair. Her eyes were the brown of
a coffee
with too much milk in it. She wasn’t
American; I
could tell that just by looking at her. She was
Mediterranean
. She had to be from
Greece
or someplace similar.

The young woman was wearing a short dress, much like the first one had been. She was curvy, with
well-defined
hips and large breasts which pushed at the top of her dress. Her nipples were hard, natural in the chilly warehouse. She looked terrified. Her lips were plump and sensual, and they
were pulled
into a tight frown. I saw her, and I felt as though I had known her for years.

The bidding was fast and furious
on
her. It got up to fifty thousand, and the next thing I knew it was at seventy thousand. I thought quickly. I had a couple hundred thousand in the bank. Not bad for a grunt like me. I knew how to save. The bidding was up to one hundred and fifteen thousand when it started to slow. I stepped forward just before the auctioneer could award the olive skinned woman to a fat guy with a bad combover.

“One hundred twenty thousand,” I said.

Silence. Every face turned towards me. I ignored
them
and stepped to the woman. I looked
to
the fat man with the bad hair, to see if he would bid more. He didn’t.