He laughs. “I don’t love anyone. She shouldn’t have put a gun to your head. Only I am allowed to do that. She thought she could make rules up around here.”
“So you thought you’d put her in her place?”
“Get dressed. We have some business to attend to,” he says. I stand and let the sheets fall away from my bruised body. His eyes run over me.
“If a man did this to Malia, would you be angry?” I ask.
His face turns stony. “Get dressed, Anna.”
“Would you want this for her?”
Reggie leaves the room, slamming the door behind him. I smile at my small victory. Despite his cruel behaviour, he loves Malia very much, and I’m sure he’d kill any man who treated her like he treats women.
The car stops outside a warehouse. “Why am I here?” I ask.
“Because I don’t trust you to stay home.”
“I could just as easily run from here,” I point out.
“And leave Malia?” He smirks because he’s right. I could never run unless she was with me, and he’s doing a good job of making sure we’re never out of the house together.
I follow him through a packing warehouse and realize I never passed on the information to Reggie about the police. I glance behind me at the entrance. Nothing seems out of place. “You package toys?” I ask as women all around me stuff dolls into boxes.
“Something like that,” he says.
He pulls a plastic sheet back for me to step through and we’re at the back of the warehouse, where two long tables run down the room, women in underwear standing on either side, spooning white powder onto weighing scales. Men dressed in black and holding guns are positioned down both sides of the room and at the entrances. “Shit,” I hiss. Reggie smirks.
“Sit there,” he tells me, pointing to a stool. I sit and he turns to a man holding a gun. “If she moves from that seat, shoot her in the leg.” The man nods once, and Reggie heads off towards an office at the back of the room.
I watch the women packing the drugs like it’s nothing, like what they’re handling won’t destroy lives. Reggie is gone for at least half an hour. My ass is numb and I’m relieved when I see him coming towards me. “Onto the next thing on my list,” he says, and I groan. This is going to be a long day.
I wince at the sound of a fist hitting flesh. I close my eyes and picture my life before all of this, even before I ran from Reggie. Yes, he was controlling, and yes, he beat me, but at least I had some freedom. In the daytimes when he was working, my life was easy, and I never witnessed anything like this.
A man hangs on a meat hook, his hands cuffed. His head is lolling to one side and both eyes are swollen shut. His top half is naked, and bruises are appearing in front of my eyes. Reggie wipes his hands on a piece of cloth and throws it beside my feet. “Finish him off,” he pants to the two men standing nearby. I pick up the cloth and stuff it in my bag, then follow Reggie from the warehouse.
“What did he do?” I ask.
“Marshall Ankers is a scumbag,” he says through gritted teeth. “Running back and forth between two men at war.” He gives me an annoyed look as we climb into the car. “Why do you care anyway?” he snaps.
“I don’t,” I shrug. “Just wondered.”
Next, we go to what Reggie refers to as ‘the club’. On the outside, the building is covered in graffiti and looks abandoned. It’s not the sort of place you’d stumble across because the buildings all around it are empty and derelict.
He pushes through a metal door and we go down some stairs. He knocks three times on the door at the bottom and someone looks through a peephole on the other side of the door. It opens and Reggie shakes hands with a huge man dressed all in black.
It’s two in the afternoon and the place is busy. It smells of sex and alcohol and a low beat pumps out in the background. The lighting is dim, which gives it a dirty feel. There are some couches near the bar area where five women are lounging in underwear. None of them are engaging in conversation, just staring around the club idly. They look unkempt and in need of a good wash.
One girl eyes us as we pass by. Her hair is scraggly, and her black mascara is smudged under her eyes.
An important-looking man approaches us and shakes Reggie’s hand. Reggie hands him a taped-up package. It’s the same as what the women were packing at the warehouse. “Thanks, man. Your girl is working hard today.” He smiles. “I told her about the new delivery, and she’s been working that ass since.”
I look to where the man points and find Michelle is naked and straddling a fat, old man. My heart breaks all over again. For her, for Ziggy, and for Riggs, because he’s tried so hard to help her.
“Good. Give her enough to keep her ass working here for years. I’ve had a lot of interest in her,” says Reggie.
“Probably because she looks good at the minute. Once she’s taken this shit for a month, she’ll look like all the rest,” says the man.
Reggie pulls out his cell and presses record. He points it to Michelle as she bounces on the old man. He records for about thirty seconds, then cuts it off. “A present for your biker boyfriend,” he says to me before stuffing his cell back in his pocket.
By the time we get home, Malia is having her dinner. She smiles at me happily and I hate that I’ve hardly seen her for the last few days. “Can we watch a movie, daddy?”
