Mostly bikers came through. I figured out pretty quick that Hades was the co-president of the Reapers, an MC that used to be based in Tennessee but had split into two chapters. One operated out of Iowa, and the other called Louisiana home.
They referred to themselves as an MC, short for motorcycle club, but from what I could tell, they were pretty much a well-run criminal motorcycle gang. They mostly ignored the girl in the dog cage.
But his co-president, Waylon—a ruggedly handsome biker who turned out to be his cousin—had a couple of questions when he came down.
“This her?” he grunted, looking me over with a frown.
“Ouaip,” Hades had answered—the French version of yep. He spoke fluent Spanish and bits and piece of Cantonese, but he always fell back on Louisiana’s unofficial second language when he was relaxed.
Waylon hadn’t looked nearly as unbothered as him.
“Why she ain’t dead yet after what she did to Amy?” He had a thick, flat Southern accent, and unlike the highly nuanced Triad members, a direct way of talking that left nothing misunderstood.
Amy was Mama Fairgood’s first name, and apparently, he was just as annoyed by my continued breathing on this earth as Ellie.
Hades merely shrugged. “Fate’s bullet ain’t found her yet.”
Waylon harrumphed. “She’s also pretty as a fuckin’ supermodel.”
I’d frozen when he said that. The other Reapers never paid me much attention, and I suspected that was on purpose.
One of the Eastern Europeans had offered a little too heartily to buy me and hadn’t accepted no as an answer. He’d kept on upping his price and even came over my cage to make kissy sounds at me and say something in his language. I couldn’t understand it, but I could tell it was vulgar.
And somewhere in the background, Hades had said, “Ah, hell—Derelict, just end this fonchok. He’s pissing me off.”
A red dot had appeared on the guy’s forehead, and the next thing I knew, I was splattered with his blood. By the time, I figured out Derelict had shot him with a silenced gun, the two guards he came in with also fell to their knees with holes in their foreheads.
That had sent a message. No other visitors had commented on the girl in the cage, or even let their gazes linger on me too long. It was like the story had spread through Hades’s underworld like a viral tweet.
But maybe Waylon wasn’t on criminal social media.
He not only asked his cousin about me, he also dared to comment on my lips.
“She is a blood debt. Let’s not talk about her anymore,” Hades suggested. His tone, usually so full of bon amie when he was conducting his business, had gone from wryly amused to ice-cold.
Waylon raised his eyebrows, but in the end, he just went back to talking about a potential deal with some old-school New York heavy hitters. I assumed that was code for Italian mafia.
And I tried not to think about how quickly I was learning to read between the lines and interpret heavily coded Criminalese.
Anyway, that was how I passed most of my days before Derelict and Jam carried me back upstairs. Then came Ellie with dinner—the only meal I was allowed to eat sitting up and with my own hands. After that came a bathroom break, for showering and waste management—turned out humans could also be trained to only go potty twice a day, same as dogs.
Then, just to keep the good doggie treatment going, I got to walk around under Ellie’s slit-eyed supervision for a while. Again, I had no idea for how long. Time was a dimension I couldn’t track in Hades’s underworld.
But eventually, Ellie would get a text message. Then it was back in the cage for me, and she’d leave without so much as a goodbye.
Ten to fifteen minutes later, Hades would come in with the Catch of the Night.
I used to be innocent. By Hades’s decree, as it turned out.
I wasn’t anymore.
In the time before my 21st birthday, I’d never seen two people have sex in real life. And certainly not right in front of me.
Now, I got a front seat every evening. With Hades’s silver gaze burning into me as he plowed into the woman from behind.
Hades had been right to tell the redhead “maybe.”
Sometimes—okay, when I was on my period—I turned around in the cage and buried my face in my knees as they went at it.
