Some of our clients preferred the women to be under eighteen, but I’d banned that months ago. That shit didn’t sit right with me, and I didn’t care how our clients felt about it. “Not gonna happen.” I was a man with no morals and there wasn’t a line I was afraid to cross, but auctioning off underage women was simply disgusting. I dealt with the cruelest men in this world, but I didn’t want to make deals with those particular kinds of men.
“They’ll be disappointed.”
“You think I give a damn?” I wasn’t even sure why we still had the auction. We made money in many other ways, and in my eyes, more respectable ways. Money was made by selling products, whether that was drugs or weapons. Sometimes we killed for a paycheck. But selling a human being into slavery seemed pathetic. Though, the auction had been around for so long that it was part of our brand. If I tried to get rid of it, the men would be angry.
“Just letting you know.” He raised both his hands in the air.
I felt a pair of eyes settle on my face from across the room. It was a sixth sense, detecting someone’s focus on you. I lifted my gaze and met the stare of a Skull King I could hardly tolerate. Vox, a large man who had a muscularity that could rival my own. With a black beard and matching eyes, he had the look of the devil. He was quiet, choosing to have his conversations with just his eyes. He was a strong man and one of my best fighters, but it was obvious he despised me. If he had it his way, he would be the new Skull King. He had his own supporters—but I had far more.
“What?” Heath asked, recognizing my distraction.
“Nothing.” I broke eye contact with Vox, not because I backed down, but because I had more important things to worry about. “Why did you tell Cassini all that bullshit?” My fingers wrapped around my glass as I stared at my brother.
“What bullshit?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. You’re too dumb to pull it off.”
“What?” he asked. “About you keeping your dick in your pants?”
“Exactly that, asshole.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“But why did she need to know that?”
“Because she didn’t understand why I cared so much about us having a clean slate. So I told her she obviously meant something to you.”
My fingers squeezed the glass, and I almost shattered it. The only reason I didn’t was because I restrained myself, stopping my hard fingers from exerting the pressure that would make all the individual shards break apart. “Why the fuck would you tell her that?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“It’s not the goddamn truth. That woman is a damn poker chip. She’s my ticket to taking down Lucian. Don’t put false bullshit in her head to make her think she’s actually got a chance of survival. She’s just livestock. I’ll either sell her, keep her, or butcher her. Those are her only three options.”
“Balto, I could tell her all kinds of bullshit, and she would never believe it. The reason why she believes this is because she’s seen it with her own eyes. If I told her you were a father of three and had a wife somewhere, you think she’d believe me? No. If I told her you were actually a woman, you think she’d believe me? No. She believes this because she already suspected it. So get angry at me all you want, but this is entirely your fault.” He poked his finger into my arm. “And what’s so bad about actually caring about this woman? She’s beautiful, smart, has an attitude full of venom.”
“I don’t want to mislead her.”
“How?”
“I don’t want her to think I won’t betray her. Because I will.” I grabbed my glass and took a drink. “Even if I do care about her, if Lucian gives me what I want, I’ll give her up. She needs to understand I’m still her enemy. She needs to understand she’s not safe. I don’t lie to my victims and let them believe they’ve been rescued when they’ve actually been kidnapped. Not my style. So don’t poison her mind with this bullshit.”
“If all that is true, then I’m not the one poisoning her. You are.” He took a drink. “You’re the one sweeping her off her feet. If you want her to understand how evil you are, then you need to start acting like it. Because all I see is a man so deep inside one pussy that he’ll never get out…because he doesn’t want to get out.”
I sat on my throne and stared at the men sitting at the tables in the dark. Most of them were in suits, sitting alone with their paddles on the table beside them. All from different places with different backgrounds, they were men with one thing in common.