Mafia King's Contract Breeder
Chapter 12 The Devil’s Lair

Chapter 12: 12 The Devil’s Lair

Lara POV

BANG BANG BANG.

I jolted upright in bed.

Shockingly, I was still asleep when Emmanuel Sagres’s enforcers came knocking. I really must have been too sleep-deprived.

I opened the locks on the door.

Outside stood a man with military-like posture and close-cropped dark hair. In his late twenties, by my estimation. He looked at me with flat grey eyes, like a man who had seen everything and kept secrets close to his heart. My gaze caught on a tell-tale bulge at the waist of his dark bomber jacket – a gun.

It made me swallow heavily. This was really happening.

"Lara Brinson?" he said, in a tone that allowed no argument. "Mr Sagres has sent me to pick you up. Come on now."

He stepped back, nodding towards the car waiting at the side of the street, engine running.

"Okay," I said faintly, not sure if it was to him or more to myself. "I’m ready."

I zipped up my jacket and pulled my bag over my shoulder, walking wordlessly to the car, a nondescript black sedan. The armed guard followed at my back, making the back of my neck prickle.

Just as I got to the car, I pretended to just notice my shoelaces open and dropped to untie them.

Looking up through my eyelashes, I took a moment to memorise the plate number.

"Hurry up," the guard said curtly.

"Sorry, I’m done now." I flashed a smile.

He didn’t smile back.

Tough crowd.

I slid into the back seat of the sedan. Warmth replaced the early morning chill of the street, and the fuzzy smell of the inside of a car washed over my face.

The driver glanced around; a man in his forties with tattoos down both arms where he was gripping the steering wheel.

The guard got in beside me, and there was the click of the door locks engaging.

Trapped.

I looked out of the window at the familiar street and the familiar front door. Nothing particularly heartwarming came to mind about leaving this dump – that had always been the plan – but for 21 years I had called it home.

Just keep breathing, I told myself. In fact, let’s establish that as a short term life goal.

What were the odds that Emmanuel Sagres would actually let me go, as opposed to throwing my body into a canal after he was done with me? Ha. Let’s not think about that too deeply. Put it into the box deep in the back of my mind labeled ’Do Not Dwell On’, along with the rest of my broken dreams.

"I need to put this on you," said the guard, holding up a strip of black fabric.

A blindfold. And not the soft-core sex toy kind that they used at The Red Door.

I held still while he wound it around my head.

Once, twice, three times. The fabric pressed against my eyelids and the world went away. Pitch black.

The sound of a mechanical whirl made me flinch back–

Then a strap settled across my torso with another click. Oh. The seatbelt.

Who knew a fucking seatbelt could feel like bondage?

The engine’s rumble shifted in register as we pulled out. The car turned — left, I thought, from the slight lean of it — and then we were moving, and I had no window, no streetlight, no fixed point.

Maybe I could still gauge how far away we were from my house by how long the journey took, but–

Time seemed to pass by agonizingly slowly like this.

"What’s your name, Mr Guard?" I asked.

I heard the sound of fabric shift.

"I don’t want to escape or anything. I knew what I was getting into," I said, gesturing towards my face. "It’s just really boring like this."

Another pause. The car went over something — a speed bump, or a bad patch of tarmac — that rattled the chassis and sent a vibration up through the seat.

"Dover," came the reply.

"Dover," I repeated. "That a first name or last name?"

"Last name."

Dover was a man of few words, I gathered.

"OK, Mr Dover. Nice to meet you. And you, Mr Driver?"

A surprised cough came from the front of the car.

"Jim Bradley."

"Mr Bradley," I repeated. "Any relation to Sean Bradley who runs the Poker Club on Stooge Street?"

"That’s my brother," said the driver.

"Oh, no way. My mom is a regular there. You play poker yourself?"

"Nah, and definitely not with Sean. He’s a bloody cheat."

I laughed softly.

"And you, Mr Dover? You from around here?"

Mr Dover, it turned out, was an ex-military mercenary type. He was far less chatty than Jim Bradley, who soon warmed up with rousing complaints about his brother Sean getting the cushier job of running a gambling den while he was stuck as a driver. Still, I learned that Dover was in the marines, and appeared to be rather high up the chain of command in Emmanuel Sagres’s organisation.

It always helped to make a friend. Whether that was friends in high places, or friends in low places.

—

The first thing I saw when the blindfold was taken off was the inside of an underground car pack filled with bleak fluorescent lighting.

About a dozen cars were parked in orderly rows. All dark. All nondescript in the same deliberate way as the one we’d arrived in.

So. I suppose this was the Devil’s lair.

My stomach flipped. For a moment I pushed myself back against the car seat as though I could blend into the leather upholstery.

Dover pulled open the car door from outside.

"Alright, sugar." Jim’s voice came from the front seat, accompanied by the creak of him turning around. He had one hand extended toward me across the centre console, the script tattoo visible at his wrist where his sleeve had ridden up. "This is your stop. You take care of yourself."

I shook his hand.

"I’m sure you’ll land a better job soon, Jim."

He chuckled. "Sure I will."

"Come with me," said Dover, still blank-faced. He already had my bag in hand.

He moved as though he was teleporting through the space – by the car one moment, the next three paces ahead of me, heading towards a door by the far wall. He clearly knew it like the back of his hand.

"So what’s next?" I asked, keeping my voice bright.

He didn’t answer until we reached the door, where he drew an access card from his jacket pocket and held it against a panel mounted flush with the wall. A green light, a beep, and the door clicked open. Beyond it, a long corridor stretched away under the same fluorescent lighting, the walls painted the same off-white institutional color as every staff passage in every commercial building I had ever been in the back of. Linoleum floor, slightly scuffed. A series of identical closed doors along one side. Fire extinguishers at intervals, bright red, the only color in the space.

Good to know the mafia still cared about fire safety, I thought.

"Security check," he said briskly. He lifted the handle of my bag slightly. "These need to be searched. You need to be searched. Nothing gets in front of Mr Sagres before my men have okayed it."

"What?" I huffed, tucking a curl of wayward hair behind my ear. "Is that really necessary? Look at me. Do I look as though I could cause any harm to Emmanuel Sagres?"

And also, where was all this procedure when he fucked me at The Red Door?

– Oh yes, back then I was blissfully unaware of who exactly was giving me the orgasm of my life.

My mood plummeted so fast I could no longer keep up the brave face.

"Them’s the rules," said Dover. He swiped open another door with his access card.

Inside, several security guard type men sat around talking. They all snapped to attention when Dover walked in, spines straightening, the conversations stopping mid-syllable.

Beyond another tinted glass wall, more security guards moved around in a room with a full screen of various camera feeds.

Dover dumped my bag onto a long table.

"Search this," he ordered. "And her – take her for a strip search."

One of the men pulled my bag open carelessly.

The man nearest to my bag pulled it open and reached inside without ceremony, turning it on its side and drawing out the first thing his hand found — my washbag, which he set to one side and unzipped without looking at me.

I prickled at the thought of strangers digging through my tattered little bag. The family photo I’d stuffed into the ripped lining. The damned vibrator.

I had so fucking little to call my own, and they had to rifle through this too?

"Hey–" I said, stepping forward to stop him.

Before I got to my bag, my problems multiplied.

Another man stood up and tried to grab my arm.

I stepped back.

"Hang on," I said incredulously, hand on my hips. "A strip search?"

"Standard process," Dover repeated flatly.

"No," I said firmly. "I’m not doing that."

Dover lifted his eyebrows.

"Shy? I thought you were a whore," he said, without inflection in his tone.

"Your boss’s personal whore," I snapped back. "That was the deal."

Dover sighed as though this was very inconvenient for his work. He gestured at one of his men.

"Call Vienna."

The man put a short range radio to his lips and said, "Vienna, Vienna. We need you to do a strip search for a woman."

"Oh, so there are women in this organization," I said scathingly.

Dover’s gaze flickered once, his only reaction. Then he pulled open the door to a connecting room, empty.

"In here," he said.

I took another look at the guards rifling through my belongings.

"Hurry up," Dover said, "We’re on a schedule."

"What schedule?"

"Security at 9. Medical check at 10. Grooming at 12."

Medical check? Grooming?

My mind spun with it.

"And when do I see – my employer?" I asked through gritted teeth.

"When he calls for you," Dover said simply, as though that was exactly how the world should work.

I don’t need a wife. Just a pretty, obedient toy.

Emmanuel Sagres’s cold, matter-of-fact voice echoed in my head.

When I didn’t move, Dover pulled out his gun.

I didn’t wait for him to point it at me. I stormed into the connecting room, jaw clenched.

I hadn’t even set eyes on Emmanuel Sagres yet, and this whole thing already felt supremely violating.