Page 19 of Her Mercenary

It was already happening. They were brainwashing me. There I was, secretly begging to be sold to the man they called the King, instead of begging for freedom. I’d take ease where I could find it, like a dog begging for scraps from a table.

It made me sick.

Our gazes lingered before the King turned his back to me. I couldn’t fight the withering feeling of rejection.

I listened to his steps as he walked away, the guards following like dogs on a leash.

The door opened, the men filed out, and the door slammed shut again. The locks slid into place.

I looked at the brunette as she held her mutilated hand to her chest and sobbed on the floor, then at the children, merely unconscious heaps in their cages.

The tiny window was still dark with clouds. There were no rainbows here.

I was a fool.

With that thought, I bowed my head and began to weep.

9

ROMAN

I stared at Capitán, his mouth moving, hands gesturing, though I had no idea what the man was saying. My thoughts were still in the basement, still frozen in time from when my brain had short-circuited the moment I laid eyes on Samantha Greene lying at the bottom of a cage.

I’d finally found her—and she was staggeringly beautiful.

Despite the cuts, the bruises, the grime and dirt, Samantha Greene was stunning, or in spite of them, perhaps. A beauty so rare that cameras were unable to capture it.

It had taken everything I had in me not to rip off Capitán’s hand when he gripped that long blond hair and yanked that delicate face.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen men treat a woman like that. But it was the first time—ever—that I’d had a reaction, a visceral surge of protectiveness, that it almost crippled me, almost destroyed my cover and everything I’d worked for.

She appeared even younger than in her pictures. I’m sure to her that I, the King as they called me, appeared even older than forty-two years. A nasty old man paying for sex, she’d probably thought, hating me as much as the other men.

This bothered me, and that bothered me.

I blinked, trying to focus on the moment, on the bastard in front of me who I had to pretend to respect. Trying to remind myself of the real reason I was there.

The reason that had nothing to do with the blond-haired goddess in the basement.

10

SAM

The next day passed like the ones before it. Long hours of hot, humid darkness, broken up by discarded scraps of disgusting food and water that tasted like dirt.

Capitán had sent someone to stitch up the brunette’s mutilated hand. She’d finally quit crying, realizing it was safer to fade into the shadows and remain quiet and still.

I was grateful for this.

The children had been removed from the room, the guards taking whatever was left of my soul along with them. I stared at the basement door for hours, awaiting their return.

It never came.

The guilt I felt for not fighting to save them when they were dragged in was more painful, more sickening, than anything I’d felt since being kidnapped.

They were children. Beautiful, innocent, naive little beings of wonder.

As a teacher, I knew far too well how a child’s environment can mold their personality. I knew that every life experience was shaping who they would become, the paths they would choose. At the beginning of each school year, I could pinpoint the children who lived in warm, happy, wholesome households, and those who lived under loveless, selfish rule.