Dark Vengeance by Kristi Belcamino (libby ebook reader .txt) 📗

“We are also searching for the girl. Meet back at the marina at 2100 hours.”

That was only two hours away. He called Kue.

“No luck, boss.”

This was bad. Really bad. He couldn’t show up back at the marina without Rose. If he didn’t find her, his whole carefully crafted world was going to blow up.

Then his phone dinged. It was Kue.

“A shopkeeper here spotted her. She’s heading toward the east side. Khan is meeting me there.”

Khan was Kue’s twin brother who had come early to scope out the marina and who had gone into town to have breakfast like a dumb fuck at the exact same time X was due to arrive.

“He better get his ass over there. He’s already fucked up enough today,” X said.

The east side was the red-light district in town. Perfect. Money talked there. People would sell their own souls for a few American dollars. And X had plenty of those bills to pass out for the right information. Even if X didn’t come back to the marina with Rose, he was confident it would only be a matter of time before someone in that part of town gave her up.

For a second, X hesitated, wondering if he should alert his contact as to where they thought Rose was, but then decided against it. Even though more manpower would be helpful, he was worried that if he didn’t bring Rose back himself, he would be punished.

Punished.

His mother was a master at punishment.

When he graduated from high school, he’d come home from an all-night party and found his mother smashed—falling down drunk. It had taken him aback. If she had drunk during his childhood, she’d hidden it from him. But now she greeted him at the door wearing some sort of long, see-through robe. Underneath, she’d had on cream-colored panties and no bra. He could clearly see her breasts and her large, pointing nipples.

He had been drinking, too, and realized he was staring. Quickly, he looked away, but she had seen. She gave a slow smile.

“It’s okay. I know you’re a virgin, Joseph,” she said and looked pointedly down at the bulge that had arisen in his pants. “You can’t go off to college as a virgin. You need to know what to do when you meet all those Phi Beta Kappa girls. I’m not going to let you be ruled by your cock in college. You need utmost control of yourself so you can make a wise decision—a senator’s daughter would be nice.”

“What?” His head was spinning. He was stunned that his mother was talking this way. His cock?

But before he could comprehend her words, she was down on her knees in front of him, quickly unzipping his pants and had him in her mouth.

She was right. He was a virgin.

A helpless disgusting virgin who allowed his mother to commit depraved acts with him and on him for the rest of the summer “so he wouldn’t be a ‘sex-craved maniac’” when he went off to college.

She had ruined him.

He realized it at the time and couldn’t stop himself. Now, he was only turned on by older, dumpy women like his mother.

The first hint of it was when he had a hard time getting it up with the prudish sorority girls his mother wanted him to woo.

And then, right before he was set to graduate from college, his mother died. A massive heart attack. It was only then he discovered she was a pill popper – addicted to prescription pain meds. He’d never known or suspected.

He thought he would feel grief, but he felt exuberant. He was free.

And then it got even better.

His mother had left him a million dollars. He’d actually thought his trust would be much more, but apparently, she’d been spending more than he realized.

For the first time in his life, he had money of his own.

His mother had doled out monthly allowances that allowed him to appear rich to the sorority girls, but every penny was closely watched and allocated.

Now, suddenly wealthy, he went on a reckless spending spree: A Porsche. Vacations to Europe and Asia and Hawaii. An apartment in Manhattan. Designer clothes.

Within nine months, he’d blown the entire million dollars.

And then he was destitute. Without a monthly allowance, he was fucked.

So, he sold his apartment in Manhattan and used the proceeds to rent a small crappy place while he figured out what to do next. He was down to his last dollar, eating beans and rice when the answer came.

It was when he saw Mrs. Samantha Jackson and her ugly little dog walking in the park.

That’s when he embarked on his new, lucrative career: wooing lonely, horny, rich women and then scamming them of all their wealth before moving on to the next woman.

His days of poverty and punishment and control were over.

No more.

Joseph was dead.

X was alive and well.

He’d rather die than go back to that life.

X would find Rose if it was the last thing he did.

Dialing the number, he dreaded, he spoke rapidly, not waiting for someone to answer first. He had to come off as confident and not afraid. If he didn’t, he was dead meat.

“This is your fault,” he said in Mandarin. “You didn’t tell me she was a goddamn Ninja. I drugged her, but she still got away. But not to worry, she’ll be back in my captivity by the end of the week at the latest.”

The voice on the other end was silent for a few seconds. When the person spoke, X couldn’t tell if it was male or female. The voice was so high-pitched it sounded like a girl’s, a child’s voice. But what the voice had to say was anything but childish:

“If you ever speak to me this way again, I will cut off various pieces of your body, starting with your nose and ending with your prick, and make sure there is someone to sew you back up so you can live the rest