Stealing Candi Page 5

  We were seconds away from opening fire on that little hatchback before it stopped completely and she jumped out of the car with that big smile on her face. She looked so fucking out of place, like a princess from a movie or something suddenly appearing in our world. The second we saw her, we knew she wasn’t a threat. We thought she was lost.

  And then she stole our shit.

  She just walked right up and took it. We were as stunned as half a dozen gang members can be as she walked her entitled little ass up from the car and started picking our stuff up.

  She didn’t care that it didn’t belong to her. She didn’t care that she was taking money from someone else. She may as well have walked into a restaurant and taken food directly off someone’s plate. The arrogance of it all had us stunned.

  My boys were ready to go out and take her down there and then. She was seconds from a beat down that would have left her bloody and broken on the street. She would have deserved it. But I stood them down. Told them I’d handle it.

  Maybe I was curious.

  Maybe I was bored.

  Maybe I thought it would be a waste to ruin a sweet ass like that.

  Whatever it was, it led to this moment.

  “I’m so fucking sorry,” she babbles. “Please, please don’t hurt me. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  I have her by the wrist, pulling her out from her little hiding place. Her nice clothes are covered in dust and cobwebs. She’s damn right she’ll do whatever I want. She’ll be whatever I want.

  There’s rope on the desk. I keep a supply of it. It comes in handy for handling difficult people, and Candi is already one of the most difficult people I’ve ever tried to handle. I’ve never taken anyone like her. The people I have to bring here are usually men and they’ve usually not fucked up half as bad as she has.

  “Hold still,” I growl, pulling her up and over my thighs to get her bound. That short skirt of hers doesn’t do anything to hide her modesty. Pretty soon I’m seeing flashes of panty. They’ve got strawberries on them, and cream. I feel myself stiffen at the idea of adding a little more cream to the mix.

  She starts wriggling as soon as she feels the rope around her wrists. So much for doing what I say. This girl doesn’t care about keeping her promises. She doesn’t even try to. She just says what she thinks she needs to say.

  I’m going to make her mean her words. I’m going to take them away, so she can’t tell anything but the truth. I’m going to introduce her to the idea of truth. The real truth. Not the cotton candy bullshit she has been taught to pretend is real.

  I’m going to hurt her. She’s going to feel pain. And she’s going to think I’m the bad guy for making her feel that pain, but she brought this on herself.

  I tie her up, tight, winding the rope around her wrists to keep them together, leaving just enough room for blood flow and no more. Then I cut the rope and push her further over my lap, wrapping the rope around her ankles and giving them the same treatment. Soon I have her trussed over my lap. I think about hog-tying her, having her dangle from a beam with her arms and legs behind her. It’s a vulnerable position and I know it will terrify her.

  She deserves this. She deserves everything I do to her. Hell, she deserves a whole lot I won’t do, too.

  If I’m going to tie her to something, having her ankles and wrists bound isn’t enough. Can’t hang someone from those points in the position she’s in and not cause damage - which is not what I want. That means more rope in more intimate places. I thread it between her thighs and snug it up against that strawberry covered mound of hers. She mades a frightened little grunting sound that quickly turns into a moan she can’t hide as the rope slides past that sensitive spot and up around under her shoulders and around her breasts.

  I take my time with her, turning her over on my lap, pulling the rope through the tight little spaces her already bound body makes for me, enjoying the look on her face. There is something innocent about her. How could there not be? She’s young, and she’s spoiled, and I don’t know if she’s been fucked before, but I do know she’s going to be.

  When she’s wound in rope to my satisfaction, I attach a heavier cord and get her trussed up over a beam outside the offices, dangling maybe five feet from the ground, my sexy little privileged piñata.

  “Please… please…” she keeps whimpering like she’s owed mercy, but she’s not owed a damn thing. “Please don’t hurt me…”

  “You stole from me,” I remind her. “It’s only right I steal something from you, too.”

  “Oh my god. Oh my god.” There are tears beading in her eyes, streaming down her pretty cheeks, dripping down onto the floor below. I’m sure tears usually work for her. They're not going to work on me. I’ve seen enough tears to last a life time, and these girlish little sniffles aren’t anything compared to the cries I’ve heard in the past. She’s going to scream before I’m done with her.

  I stand back and watch her, slowly rotating because she’s struggling, so fucking pretty and so goddamn spoiled. Where to start with her, that’s the question. Can’t do anything too dramatic, I have to send her back to her safe little life at the end of this.

  “I’ll do anything,” she babbles again.

  “Yeah, you keep saying that,” I observe. “But I don’t think you mean it.”

  “I do mean it! I do!”

  “So if I told you I wanted you to go rob a bank, you’d do that?”

  “Uhm…”

  “Or how about kill someone. Would you do that?”

  She lets out one of those pathetic little sobs that cover her refusal.

  “You won’t do anything, because you can’t do anything. You’re a soft little girl in a hard world, but I’ll tell you what you will be, and that’s my toy. I’m going to come and play with you whenever I feel like it.”

  I see her gulp, but she doesn’t get any more panicky than she already is.

  “You like that idea, huh? You want someone like me to use you like you should be used?”

  “Oh god,” she whispers, almost under her breath. She’s really squirming now, making herself spin even faster in place. I reach out and grab the rope to steady her and make her keep her eyes on me.

  “Answer me, Candi.”

  “No,” she whimpers. “I don’t like that idea.”

  I don’t believe her for a second. Her face is flushed, the way a girl’s gets when she’s close to orgasm. I haven’t even really touched her sexually, but the rope has. She’s probably dripping back there in that virginal pussy. Girl like her has probably been fucked, but not by anyone who knows what his dick is for.

  “It’s that, or you get me my money.”

  Candice

  My world is crumbling. I take a deep, sobbing breath, and nod. What choice do I have? I have to say what I need to say to get out of here and then maybe I can find a way out of this. Like running away to China or Russia, or anywhere this man isn’t. I don’t want to sacrifice my schooling, but I can’t be this monster’s plaything.

  The rope is biting into my legs and my breasts, it’s confining me and utterly redefining my entire world. Being pulled up off the ground, not even being able to anchor myself to the earth, makes it even more torturous.

  “Time to pay.”

  “I can pay! I can pay! How much do I owe you? Two thousand bucks?”

  His head lifts a little.

  “Five thousand?”

  The brows go up and he jerks his head a little higher.

  “Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? How could it be that much? It was just whiskey.”

  He shakes his head and smiles in a way that makes me feel like I’m about to be lunch. This man is predatory, carnivorous. “You owe me three million dollars, blondie.”

  “Three… million? You’re not serious!?”

  He spreads his arms out and turns around, gesturing to everything. “What about this tells you I’m not serious?”

  Oh fuck.

  “I don’t have three million. I don
’t have one million. I have no millions.”

  “Lucky for you, you got something else I want,” he smirks.

  “I…”

  My objections are cut off as he presses his finger to my lips and shakes his head. “No more talking, chica,” he murmurs. “Time for you to start paying me back.”

  I can only imagine what he’s going to do to me. He’s going to take me even if I don’t want it. He’s going to do all sorts of unspeakable male things to me. He’s going to… run his fingers through my hair?

  A hot shiver runs over my scalp as he grazes the tips of his fingers over my scalp in a caress which is far more gentle than I anticipated him being capable of being. That touch runs down the back of my neck and then slides around, following the confining lines of the rope… he is taking his time. He’s not doing what I expected him to do, ripping off my clothes and heading straight for my nether regions. I can’t even bring myself to think the actual words for the parts he plans to touch. There’s no urgency to his motions, and why should there be? We’re in a remote location and he has all the power. The law has failed to protect me and I am at his mercy.

  Everything I ever believed in has been washed away, replaced with the horrific realization that there are some men in this world who will get their way no matter what, and I am looking into the deep, dark gaze of one of them.

  PEW! TING!

  Theres a weird sound in the background. I don’t even notice it at first. It doesn’t register to me as anything other than something maybe mechanical, but Dante reacts right away. He moves faster than I thought it was possible for a man to move, his knife flashing as he cuts the rope off me in swift motions and catches me as I fall, before throwing my body back into the room where I came from.

  “Get back where you were hiding,” he hisses. “Don’t make a fucking sound. No matter what.”

  I have no idea what’s going on, but suddenly the big roller door at the end is thrown up. Two cars come speeding in, big black things with men hanging off the sides, engines roaring, tires squealing. This is an entrance made for drama’s sake.

  “Put your fucking hands up, Dante!”

  In spite of what sounds like a lawful order, I realize pretty quickly that these guys are not law enforcement. They have to be other criminals who have managed to corner Dante in his own lair.

  Dante doesn’t put his hands up. He walks toward the cars, his hands at his sides, and it occurs to me that I might be about to watch a man die. Not a good man, sure, but a man.

  “What are you doing here? You know I told you to call before you drop in. I ain’t got no tea and crumpets for you.” His voice is dipping into a hardcore street style of talking. I notice it does that, moves between styles of speech depending on who he is talking to and what image he wants to convey.

  The passenger door of the front SUV opens and a tall man wearing a suit gets out.

  “I haven’t come for supper,” he drawls in a very British accent. “I’ve come to tell you to stop selling in my territory.”

  “You could have messengered me that.”

  “I could have,” the guy agrees with a dark smirk. “But I thought it would be easier to talk in person.”

  “It is easier,” Dante agrees. “Easier to tell you that you don’t have any territory here. Go back to New York and carve that up with all the other wannabes. This city is mine.”

  “Really? Because, from where I’m standing, you don’t have anything but an empty warehouse. Where are your guys, ese?”

  The crude Spanish sounds particularly aggravating coming from that man’s mouth, like he’s mocking Dante. I don’t know if Dante is Hispanic, but he certainly knows how to speak the lingo of the streets without sounding like a bad after school special.

  “I don’t need to roll with a dozen dudes just to talk to one guy,” Dante says. I could argue that. He came with at least half a dozen to look for his stolen merchandise the other day. But now’s not the time to get involved in the conversation.

  “I’d argue that you probably do,” the British guy says. “You’re very alone here. I could kill you right now and nobody would know.”

  Dante just smirks. I can see him through the doorway and the dirty old window of this little office area which probably used to allow supervisors to look out onto the shop floor. He doesn’t look scared, and he doesn’t sound it either.

  “Am I going to have to do that, Mr Dante?” British guy threatens softly. I don’t like him at all. He has an arrogance about him which borders on the racist, and I’d put money on a few other -ists as well. He’s come here to bully Dante, which seems like a really fucking bad idea.

  Given that I was just being tormented by Dante, maybe I should be impressed by this British guy, or hopeful that maybe he’d help me, but there’s something about him which makes me want to stay well fucking clear of all of them.

  For some reason I don’t understand, I’m not panicking. I actually feel incredibly calm. Maybe it’s because I’m not tied right now and maybe it’s seeing that Dante isn’t god on Earth. There are always bigger fish in the sea, and maybe the shark is about to get eaten by a whale.

  “Let me tell you what happens if I die,” Dante says in a perfectly conversational tone. “First of all, your family dies. And I’m not just talking about your wife. I’m talking about your mother, father, cousins. I’m saying every single person who shares blood with you will be wiped from the planet.”

  He pauses, almost with the air of a college lecturer. He's not threatening. He’s just explaining. “That’s how the ancient Japanese did it, and that’s how it will be with you. You won’t be killed, not right away. You’ll be left alive until the very end, until you’ve seen them all die. And then your death will come. And it will be slow. So slow you beg for it to be over. But it won’t end. And maybe when I’ve broken you as much as I want to, I’ll let you go. Let you start a new life. And then maybe I’ll take everyone in that life too. Until you die alone. Unable to ever love anyone again, because you’ll know just looking at someone, let along loving them is enough to end their lives. I have men who will carry that sentence out to the letter, and take pleasure in it.”

  There’s a very long, very intense silence in which we all collectively process what the hell was we just heard. There’s a weight in the air now, gravitas which is just flowing out of Dante like a real thing. I can feel his strength, even at this distance.

  “You are a sick fuck, Dante,” the British guy laughs, breaking the silence, but still managing to sound nervous.

  I don’t know if he’s afraid. I would be, if I was him. Dante’s tone has a cold steel to it, a measured, deliberate callousness which gives me the feeling he is absolutely able to follow through on his threats.

  Dante is outnumbered. These guys could easily overwhelm him and very seriously hurt him. But they’re not. It seems to me that they’re shrinking away from him. When they first rolled in, they were hanging off the sides of the vehicles, weapons pointed at Dante. Now those weapons are held high, and fingers are slipping off the triggers. These are wild men, outlaws. These are criminals. Gangsters. Whatever name you want to use for them, they don’t want anything to do with Dante.

  “Don’t come to me again and tell me that I’m on your territory. There is no territory here. There’s only what’s mine and what isn’t, and what isn’t, doesn’t exist.”

  There’s a growl in Dante’s voice, a feral fire which makes what he is saying even more terrifying. These aren’t empty threats. These are the warnings of a soul so lost to the world they sound as though they come from some disembodied demon. I can see the horror on the faces of the men listening, a pale draining fear which I understand to the core. When Dante is fully Dante, he is one scary fucking monster.

  British guy has a serious problem now. He can’t really back down, not without looking stupid in front of his guys, and he can’t keep pushing Dante, because he started with a death threat that led to a threat to kill, well, everybody.

 
; There’s a long moment which becomes almost embarrassing. If the girls were here, they’d be drawing out the word awkkkwaard.

  And then it gets worse.

  There’s a distant sound of engines rumbling which quickly grows in intensity and volume.

  “Get back in the cars!” British guy calls the order, but it’s too late.

  A phalanx of motorcyclists and SUVs and sedans roll up. I see them as they pour through the open garage door which the British left up, bikes rumbling powerfully, the vibrations from the motors making the very walls vibrate.

  In seconds, the tables are turned completely and utterly. The British guy is boxed in. His vehicles have no exit. I’d call this an ambush, but it was completely self-inflicted, and I don't know what the word even is for that, besides stupid. Really. Fucking Stupid.

  Watching from my hiding place, I’m aware of the way this is making me feel. My heart is pounding; my breath is coming in short little gasps. I can feel everything; the slightest breeze on my skin because I’m so sensitive right now, adrenaline exciting my body to the point where I am aroused. I’ve heard of adrenaline junkies before, of course, and I would never have said I was one of them, but god, seeing Dante stare down a man with a pack of other men holding dangerous weapons, a man who came to intimidate and possibly even kill him, that turns me the hell on.

  I have to remind myself that I’m not actually on Dante’s side. I’m not on anyone's side. All of these people should probably be in jail. Most of them could do with an anger management course. Then I realize that Dante handles his rage in ways I could never. The British man, whoever the hell he is, caught him completely off guard. If Dante hadn’t been so quick, I would have still been hanging from the ceiling during that entire interlude. But he got me away, and he put me somewhere safe, and I guess that means he cares. Usually I’d expect a boy to show his feelings via an app, but getting me out of the firing line is nice too.