a gated piece of land in the middle of nowhere with four buildings. One building housed security personnel and the handlers on site, the remaining three housed girls of all ages. Building A had dormitories and training areas for girls under ten, Building B had the same for all girls aged ten to eighteen, and Building C—the one where she lived—had slightly larger dormitories and one medical room. Though it was a normal room, it had been dubbed so by the girls because that’s where they were sent if one of them came back too injured. It was the nicest room she had ever slept in, with a proper bed instead of the bunk beds they were given, and a soft mattress and two pillows. Her mattress was hard and her single pillow harder. Although it didn’t matter because usually when someone went to the medical room, they were in too much pain to notice any of the nice things.
She had been there once since she’d come to the complex—the night she’d met him.
She swallowed, shaking herself out of the painful memory, one that had sent her to the room for weeks to heal, one that had almost convinced her she was going to die.
Getting out of the car as the security people closed the gates, she made her way toward her housing and watched her handler, Three, come down the stairs from Building C. The girls didn’t know the handlers’ real names. Most of them didn’t even know their own real names. They were all given names, and that’s who they became. Three had been her handler since she came to the complex at sixteen, for eight years. The woman was usually not as bad as handlers One and Two were. She was fair to the girls, wanted them fed and rested and looking good, and had simple rules for her dorms. As long as one toed the line, she was decent. But Lyla wasn’t fooled by the charade. She knew how quickly the switch flipped, how little time it took for calm to become cruel.
The older woman, at least in her forties, looked down at Lyla with a frown on her face. “Again?”
Lyla nodded. The question hadn’t even needed to be fully asked. After six years, they were all aware of the bad luck she brought her buyers. Everyone knew someone targeted them, but no one knew who.
Three shook her head. “Idiot men, they never learn.”
Lyla stayed silent, waiting for instruction. She didn’t have to wait long.
“Go, get rest.”
Without waiting for more, Lyla quickly skirted the other woman and climbed the stairs to the building. It was a few decades old, the paint peeling in some places and the furniture cracked in some, but it was still the nicest house she had been in. Complexes like these were many, and Lyla had lived in five different complexes—the most unusual for any girl—for some bizarre reason. Usually, a girl stayed where she was initially sent, getting familiar with the location and the handlers. She might be moved once, or maximum twice, but never five times, and Lyla didn’t understand why she had been. She’d been a compliant child, a quiet adolescent, and it just didn’t make sense. She was just glad she’d been steady for the last eight years.
Climbing the stairs to the second floor where her room was, she passed a few girls loitering on the landing, talking to each other about their customers or masters, whichever they had. There weren’t as many girls in this building as the others, mainly because a lot of girls were contracted for long-term and had to stay with their contractors. Just like her friend Malini had been for a few months.
She and Malini hadn’t been close, not until the night that had changed her life and the other girl had stood by her, letting her scream as she held her hand. In the aftermath of that event, Lyla had found the closest thing to a friend for the first time, and it had made breathing a little easier for a while.
Opening the door to her room, she walked in to find both of her roommates locked in a heated kiss, pulling apart when she entered.
“Sorry, I’ll come back later,” she told them.
“Nah, it’s fine,” the taller one of the couple, Reina, spoke. “We heard you got bid on again.”
Lyla hesitated before entering and going to her small bed in the corner, collapsing on it. “Yes.”
“Is he dead?” the other roommate, Millie, asked.
“Yes.”
“Damn,” Reina muttered, climbing the bunk bed to get on the top. “How?”
Lyla pointed to her forehead. “Bullet to the head.”
“Girl, I’d just about give anything for your stalker to be obsessed with me right now,” Millie remarked, the tinge of envy clear in her voice. “Any man near me dying? No fucking anyone? The best kinda life.”
“It’s not just any man,” Reina reminded her. “He’s a killer. Sorry, but I’d take rich pricks any day over him. With rich pricks, I know what I’m getting. I can handle that.”
“But can you imagine…”
Lyla tuned out the conversation, closing her eyes and lying flat on the bed, not wanting to hear what they had to say. They didn’t like her. They lived with her, tolerated her, but she wasn’t their friend. They didn’t look out for her like they looked out for their actual friends. She didn’t know why, but that was just the way it was. For some reason, nobody had wanted to be her friend in all the years. The one friend she’d had in childhood had left her behind and run away, and Malini had left now too.
And she was tired.
Without changing, she simply climbed under her thin sheet and turned to the wall, giving her back to her roommates.
The wet sound of kissing filled the room like it did a lot of the nights, and Lyla simply tuned it out. All the girls got trained with both men and women, and many of them found companionship with each other as they grew up. It was perfectly natural in her world, and she was glad that Reina and Millie had each other. In the fucked up world they lived in, it was a boon to find something like this.
For her, there was nothing.
She had lain in countless beds and been used against her will, nowhere to escape but in her mind. Sometimes, her body had reacted, sometimes it hadn’t. Sometimes, it had been painful, sometimes it hadn’t. She’d thought that was the worst that could happen to her, and yet the threat of worse always lingered.
She felt dead inside, the only spark of life brought on by the man in the shadows, and even that she didn’t know if it was because of their history or because of attraction.
As the breathing behind her got heavier, Lyla closed her eyes and wondered about him. Why was he fixated on her? Why give her black eternal roses for every kill? Why have a conversation with her now and instruct her to tell everyone it was him? Why did he do anything he did? The more she thought about him, the more pissed she became. And it was exhausting to have her emotions sway from anger to depression, a constant back and forth.
Somehow, maybe because of the exhaustion, she felt herself slowly drifting, her last thought of the hypnotic mismatched eyes and a feeling of danger chasing her.
***
She woke with a start as someone shook her.
Blinking rapidly to focus her eyes, she saw Reina’s concerned face looking down at her. “Three has called you to the office.”
Dread pooled in her stomach.
The office was never used, not unless someone from higher up in the operation was visiting and wanted to hold meetings.
And they were calling her.
Fuck.
Swallowing to wet her suddenly dry throat, she swung her legs around and straightened, her hair a nest falling around her body. “Did she say why?”
“No.”
Okay, this wasn’t good. But she knew it was coming. She might be bringing them money but she was losing their clients permanently. That wasn’t good for business. They were either going to send her away or simply kill her, and the bone-tired weariness inside her almost felt relieved at the thought of the latter.
Without wasting any more time, she walked out of the room in the same clothes she’d slept in, the now wrinkled clothes that he had given her, and stepped out of the building into daylight. She barely took a breath of air before a guard was quickly escorting her to the main building, not even granting her a split second of reprieve to feel the sun on her face.
Straightening her clothes, she made her way into the building, following the guard as he turned left into a corridor, leading her toward the last door down the path. Despite the daylight outside, the corridor was dark and damp, a musty smell inside that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.
He opened the door and nodded for her to enter.
Taking a deep breath, she went in.
And froze.
Three stood in the corner, an older man sat behind the desk, and he occupied the chair at the front.
What the hell was he doing there?
She stayed still, keeping her face as neutral as she could, and faced Three.
The older woman indicated the only empty chair in the room, in front of the desk and beside his. Heart pounding, she gingerly sat in it.
“This is Mr. H,” Three spoke in the way of introduction, indicating the older man behind the desk looking at her with a scowl on his face, his beady eyes making her distinctly uncomfortable. “You know why he’s here.”
Lyla nodded.
“Speak up, girl!” Mr. H’s voice boomed, making her jolt with the sudden loudness. Heart racing, she willed herself to calm down, hating that he would hear her voice again when she’d told him he wouldn’t. The fact that Three hadn’t introduced him even though he was there made her wonder if she even knew who he was. Did Mr. H know? Did anyone?
“I… I don’t know what to say,” she told the older man quietly, deliberately ignoring the dark presence on the side.
“For a start, tell me how last night happened,” the older, creepy man instructed.
Ignoring the way his eyes were burning on her, but aware of what he’d asked her to say, she addressed Mr. H. “It was the Shadow Man.”
Three gasped.
It was fascinating, seeing the way the older man’s scowl faded, replaced with something very akin to fear. She knew the Shadow Man was a rumor in the underworld, but to witness just the impact the sound of his name could have on someone powerful like Mr. H made something warm twist in her belly.
For the first time in her life, she understood what the barest glimpse of power felt like. And she wondered if it gave him a rush, to be there and witness it in person, to see how people reacted to his name, oblivious to the fact that he was right there.
Maybe that was why he had come. To find some twisted satisfaction in their terror.
Mr. H leaned forward. “How the fuck do you know that?”
What could she say to that? Thinking quickly on her feet, she answered with as much earnestness as she could muster. “There was a call on the phone after the buyer was shot. The man on the other side introduced himself as the Shadow Man.”
Mr. H frowned. “That’s very strange. Not a part of his M.O.”
She didn’t comment on that.
As he contemplated in silence, she felt a gloved hand touch hers, the man at her side slipping something into her hand. Paper, from the feel of it. Fisting her hand, she surreptitiously stuffed it in her jeans pocket to look at later, confused as to what was going on.
Mr. H stared at her in a discomforting way for a long time before steeping his fingers, resting his elbows on the desk. “You present quite the conundrum, girl. You get some of our highest bids and lose us some of our best clients.”
Lyla stayed silent, not sure if and how to address this. She focused on the man speaking, aware of the man silent at her side, and felt an odd feeling of safety envelop her. Odd, because it wasn’t an emotion she was familiar with. She might not know anything about him, but she knew he wouldn’t let her be killed for his own reasons. His presence there ensured she stay alive.
A sudden slight gleam entered Mr. H’s dark eyes. “Alright, that’s all. You can go now.”
Lyla didn’t know what the change meant, but she doubted it was anything good. Taking that as dismissal, she stood up and walked out of the office, the guard waiting to escort her back to her room.
Thankfully, the room was empty, both Reina and Millie somewhere away. Sitting on her unmade bed, she took the crumpled piece of paper out from her pocket, looking at the note he had passed her, a masculine string scrawl of a sentence that made her breath catch.
‘Your voice makes my atoms sing.’
She didn’t understand the rush she felt at those words. It was… beautiful. Almost poetic, and she wouldn’t have called him poetic in her wildest dreams. But was he just saying it to soften her or did he mean it? She didn’t know but she knew she shouldn’t feel that rush, especially not when it was coming from him. But sitting alone in her room, she couldn’t deny it affected her. He affected her, no matter how much she tried to resist. Over the years, she had gone from hopefully opening herself up to his impact on her, to accepting it, to denying it, to resisting it, to hating it, and repeat. A cycle rooted in the fact that she wanted him completely but didn’t know if he returned the feeling beyond keeping her safe.
And she was exasperated—with him and herself and their twisted relationship.
But he’d never given her a note before. What was he up to?
Getting up, she went to her locker and took out the box from the back. Opening it to all the black eternal roses she’d saved over the years, some dried and wilted, some comparatively fresher, she placed the note inside with them, hating herself slightly more for keeping them all. Tucking the box at the back again, she locked up and went to freshen up, knowing she had a few hours before starting her shift.
After using the communal showers, she dressed in shorts and a tank top, tied her hair up in a bun, and went down to the kitchen to eat something. There weren’t many options to choose from, but they did feed everyone, and frankly, that was more than enough on most days. The kitchen was busy with girls taking their meals, some of them talking to each other, most of them keeping to themselves like she did. It was common. Something was broken within every single one of them, and while that was a point of commonality, it wasn’t a point of companionship.
Keeping her head down, she got some milk and cereal in a cheap plastic bowl, and went back upstairs to the solace of her room before she had to start work in a few hours. When she wasn’t being auctioned for short- or long-term contracts, she worked as a server in the Club District, rotating in The Syndicate nightclubs, strip clubs, and sex clubs, sometimes even as a dancer if they needed more girls on stage. She got groped and whistled at and couldn’t keep any of the tips she made, but it was still better than a lot of the other girls had it. There were girls who got drugged and got fucked on a daily basis for videos sold on the dark web; sex slaves who lived with masters so cruel their lives were horror stories, children who were made to do things no child ever should. And it wasn’t just girls. She knew there was a whole operation like this one for young boys too. If there was a buyer in the market, they were catered to with whatever they needed. So, she truly felt lucky that her daily job was only limited to unwanted attention and groping.
And yet, despite telling herself that she was luckier, she felt cursed.
Her eyes went to the knife and an apple on Reina’s small desk, her mind swaying again. That was the thing she couldn’t explain within herself. Sometimes, she caught sight of random, potentially lethal objects and immediately, her brain conjured up the image of what it would be like to use it on herself. That knife, for example, would be so easy, the sharp side of the blade going over the veins just once, so simple to put a full stop to it all. They would find her in the room, her white expensive shirt soaked in blood that matched her hair, a smile on her face for the first time as she said goodbye.
Closing her eyes, she put a stop to the fantasy, a slight tremor in her hand as she gripped her bowl.
Eat. Sleep. That’s all.
That’s all she needed to do. Sleep. Wake up. Repeat.
Just one more day.
Quickly finishing the last of her cereal, she climbed back into bed and slept again, quieting the demons in her head, at least for a bit, praying for a dream that would bring her some solace. And just her luck, she dreamed of him.
