Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Maestro shrugged. “I don’t feel I’m in jeopardy in any way.”
He honestly didn’t know if that was the truth. He knew it would have been true in any other circumstance, with any other woman. He believed they needed to find where the kidnapped women and children were being taken. He wanted to find out how to get to them before they were sold if Billows was holding prisoners. He absolutely believed in what they were doing.
He’d been imprisoned for years, from the time he was a child, at the mercy of sadistic pedophiles. He knew what the life of a sex slave would be. He’d seen it. Lived it. The purpose of Torpedo Ink was to eliminate as much trafficking as they could. They found pedophiles, took back their victims, returned them to families or took them in if they had nowhere to go. The pedophiles were eliminated, sometimes in not-so-nice ways.
Maestro wasn’t a man to take an interest in outsiders, particularly women. He partied hard at times but walked away quickly from any entanglements. He didn’t feel. That was the bottom line. He’d never met a woman who got under his skin—until Azelie.
Shadowing Zelie these past few weeks, watching her closely, hearing her soft laughter as she teased the merry widows and their gentlemen friends, gutted him. She had slipped into his veins, the fire burning slow until he found himself thinking about her night and day. That was unlike him, and anything out of the ordinary raised an alarm. He didn’t trust emotions—not his anyway, not when it came to women.
Maestro gave the president of Torpedo Ink a look of complete confidence. He felt confident in his ability to manipulate the situation. Zelie was younger than him by a good ten years. He was very experienced when it came to women. She had no experience when it came to men. A man like Maestro could chew her up and spit her out.
When he thought too much about this job, a tiny nagging emotion he couldn’t identify but didn’t like surfaced. Was it shame? He knew betrayal. He had lived a lifetime of betrayal. Women weren’t to be counted on. Neither were most men. He told himself this woman wasn’t any different from the ones who had betrayed him over and over. She deserved whatever happened working for a slime bag like Alan Billows. He knew she was intelligent. He couldn’t get sucked into feeling sympathy for her because she’d lost her family in much the same way he’d lost his and the others in Torpedo Ink had lost theirs.
Young women and children were being ripped from their homes, trained as sex slaves and sold to the highest bidder. Torpedo Ink had to find them. Maestro believed that. It was the vow they’d taken together. Yeah, they had a code they lived by, but that code was between the club members. Anyone involved in trafficking of any kind was fair game.
Czar pinned Maestro with his piercing gaze. “You’re willing to see this through.”
“No problem.” He did his best to sound casual when that weird emotion nagged at him. “I’m looking forward to it.” That was the truth. He wanted a chance to spend time with Zelie. Really get to know her in every sense of the word. “I haven’t been around a true submissive in years. I’m sure that’s the only reason my body responded to her the way it did. It gave me a rush like I haven’t experienced since I was a kid.” He didn’t think she was submissive, more a woman who needed to care for her man, to please him. That was even more intriguing to him.
Steele and Keys exchanged a long look. Maestro noted both expressions held apprehension. Even alarm. The others knew him, but not like Keys or Steele. Keys and Maestro guarded Steele and his family, which often meant they stayed in his home and interacted with him on a regular basis.
“Explain, please,” Fatei “Rock” said.
Maestro exchanged a look with Savage. Savage knew exactly what he was talking about. “I can spot a submissive a mile away, even if the woman isn’t aware she is one. In Zelie’s case, she must know she’s a pleaser. A nurturer. She’s too intelligent not to recognize those traits in herself. She doesn’t think of herself as submissive, and she doesn’t mind pleasing the people she loves or even likes.”
“Would it follow that if she liked Alan Billows, she would please him by assisting him with his trafficking ring?” Fatei asked.
“Not necessarily,” Savage denied. “A submissive isn’t necessarily passive or docile. Oftentimes they are very intelligent and don’t go along with just anyone. They might avoid confrontation, but they don’t give their submission easily.”
Maestro continued the explanation when he read confusion on Fatei’s face. “A submissive doesn’t just turn over their trust to anyone. One has to work at earning it.”