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  She broke me, Anna thought once they were on the elevator. She is my master.

  The elevator let them off right down the hall from Madame’s room. Mentally she was somewhere else; her body was working on its own accord. It knew where it was going, but she didn’t remember actually getting there. She knocked quietly on the door, holding the machete up as if to let the girls know not to pull any funny business, and waited for Madame to open the door.

  “I called you fifteen minutes ago.” Madame glowered past the two women and at Anna. “You should have been here twelve minutes ago.”

  Anna pushed the women through the doorway, where they promptly buckled to the soft carpet in the vast room. Both girls heaved in and out, being as they had used most of their energy walking to the room. Ahli had gained some of her consciousness back. Rhonnie tied the cloth around her neck tight enough to slow the bleeding tremendously. Still, if she didn’t seek medical attention soon, the results would be fatal.

  Wrapping her arms around her sister, Rhonnie hoisted Ahli into a sitting position between her legs. She scooted them backward until her back was on the wall by the door.

  “Oh my God. Ahli, look,” Rhonnie whispered into Ahli’s hair, ignoring the sting on her busted lips from her sister’s hair products. “Look on the bed.”

  Rhonnie knew the exact moment that Ahli took notice of what she was talking about, because she felt her body tense up. How did we get here? Rhonnie asked herself. How could we fall into a trap like this? Daddy taught us better.

  “They could barely walk, Madame,” Anna answered Madame. “I had to wait for them to get here.”

  “Then you should have dragged them!” Madame replied icily. “If you would have done your job correctly then they wouldn’t have had to come here! You incompetent puppet!”

  Anna’s jaw tensed, but she didn’t say anything. She just fixed her face before Madame took notice of it. She watched Madame strut happily to her bed and it was at that moment that Anna noticed the things strewn all over her bed. Torture weapons. From knives to guns to syringes filled with only God knew what.

  “Let’s have some fun.” Madame ran her freshly painted nails over all of the instruments on the bed. “Which one do you two want to play with?”

  She spun around to where Ahli and Rhonnie were huddled against the wall. Her eyes darted from Rhonnie to Ahli and then back to Rhonnie. There was a twinkle in her eyes and she slowly lifted her pointer finger to them. “I choooose,” she said in a sing-song voice, moving her finger back and forth like she was playing Eeny Meeny Miny Moe. “You!”

  Her finger stopped on Ahli and her dark grin became a full-blown malicious laugh when she witnessed Rhonnie’s hold on her tighten.

  “You’re about to die anyway.” She made a face and patted her own neck. “I think I cut you too deep. I need to pick your brain before I give your soul to the devil.” From the bed she grabbed three small knives and placed them between her fingers.

  “Stay away from us! Or—”

  “Or you’ll what? End up sliced up like your father?” Madame leered at her. “Now, you’re going to tell me everything you know about Vita E Morte. Now! Where is the formula?”

  “Go to hell,” Ahli said weakly. “Even if I knew where it was I would never tell you. Bitch.”

  “So be it,” Madame told her and progressed toward her, imagining herself slicing her pretty little lips off. However, another thought came to mind and she stopped to smile cunningly down at her. “I know how to make you talk. Anna, come here, and bring your toy.”

  “Yes, Madame?” Anna asked her when she was standing side by side next to the taller woman.

  “I changed my mind,” Madame said, looking dead into Ahli’s eyes. “I only need one of them for now. Kill the younger one and make her watch.”

  “No!” Ahli raised her arms to protect her little sister from the machete. Her eyes pleaded with Anna. “Please. Stop letting her control you! She doesn’t care about you, or any of them. She only cares about herself. What has she really done for you?”

  “Anna! Kill her!”

  “Anna, kill her,” Ahli mimicked. “Do you ever think for yourself, Anna? Or does Madame do that for you, too? Don’t you see why she can’t get her hands on that drug?”

  “Anna kill her! Now!”

  “No, please,” Ahli pleaded.

  “Shut up!” Anna screamed at the top of her lungs. She brought her hands to her ears, trying to get a grip on herself.

  Madame smirked. “Right,” she said. “Shut up, Ahli, and prepare to watch your sister bleed dry in front of you knowing that it was all your fault.”

  “Actually, I was talking to you.” Anna turned on Madame and held the machete in both hands in front of her. “You will not hurt anyone else ever again!”

  Madame was shocked to say the least, but she regained her composure almost instantly. The blade was centimeters from her face; all Anna had to do was swing once. Madame looked into Anna’s angry face and, even though she was threatening her life, all she saw was a scared little girl. Madame stared without blinking into Anna’s eyes and moved her face closer to the machete.

  “I always thought Rhebecca was my biggest disappointment, but it was you. I saved you! When you were alone and nobody wanted you, I took you! And this is the repayment I get? I should have killed you when I had the chance. Go ahead, do it.” She stuck her tongue out and slowly licked the tip of the sharp object. “Kill me if you have the balls to do it. Kill me. Kill meeee!”

  Anna’s body shook and her face was twisted up as the saline tears fell down the sides of her face. “I hate you,” she said, squeezing the handle of the weapon even tighter. “You didn’t save me. You brought me to hell.”

  Anna brought her arms up with the weapon so that she could bring it down with force on Madame’s neck. When Anna’s arms went up so did the hand in which Madame had the small knives between her knuckles. She uppercut Anna repeatedly under her chin, until Anna’s eyes looked like they were about to bulge through her head from choking on her own blood. When Madame drew her arm back the last time Anna’s body dropped, jerking violently, to the ground. The skin underneath her chin was shredded, along with the bottom of her mouth and her tongue. When her eyes rolled to the back of her head and it was clear that she was dead, the only thing Madame felt remorseful about was her bloodstained carpet.

  Madame turned back to where the girls had been huddled on the wall, intending to finish the job that Anna couldn’t, only to find that they weren’t there. The door to her room was wide open and she knew that when her attention was averted they must have made a run for it.

  “This should be fun,” she said and bent down to where Anna’s dead body had fallen.

  She grabbed the machete, the same one that had started all of this so long ago, and walked out of the room to find her two new additions. The only sounds that could be heard were the sounds of her heels stabbing the ground, and the calm humming coming from her mouth.

  Chapter 18

  “Come on, LaLa,” Rhonnie panted, trying to make her sister keep up. “We have to get out of here before that psycho bitch kills us.”

  “We can’t leave Brayland.”

  “You heard her; he’s dead! And if we don’t find a way out of here we’re going to be dead too.”

  Ahli’s heart was broken. She was positive that maybe she just wasn’t meant to love. It hurt even more because she knew that Brayland’s death was in her hands. If only he would have gone his separate way after fleeing Miami he would still be alive.

  They moved as fast as they could through the long hallways of the Opulent Inn, hoping they wouldn’t run into any more of Madame’s puppets. The moment she had taken her eyes off of them they used that as their window of opportunity. She had been so thrown off by Anna’s betrayal that she’d forgotten the real reason they were all in her room in the first place.

  The girls hobbled down the hallway, struggling to move fast. They used each other and the walls on the sides o
f them for support and willed themselves to move forward, trying the doorknobs of every room they passed for refuge. Everything was locked and finally the pain was too much to bare.

  “NaNa.” Ahli stopped to lean on the wall. “I need a break.”

  Rhonnie looked behind them down the long, dimly lit hallway. No one had come yet, and all of the room doors were closed; still, she could only allow Ahli to rest for a minute. She rubbed her sister’s back lovingly.

  “I don’t know how we got here. I can only guess that it’s because of our parents.” She sniffled and allowed herself to cry. “If I don’t get the chance to tell you this ever again, I love you, Ahli. You are my best friend.”

  Ahli placed her palm over her little sister’s bruised-up cheek and used her thumb to wipe one of the tears away. “I love you too, sister, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to protect you. I was supposed to protect you!”

  “You’ve done a great job at doing that my whole life.” Rhonnie grabbed Ahli’s arm and put it over her shoulders. “Now it’s my turn to return the favor.”

  In the distance they heard the sound of heels walking along the wooden floors echoing on the walls. Rhonnie got a good hold of Ahli before she began walking as fast as she could with Ahli in tow.

  “I think the lobby is this way,” she gasped. “We just need to get out of the doors and back to the highway so we can flag somebody down.”

  She held on to the hope that they were close to the exit, but at every turn instead of seeing the light from the lobby they were greeted with another hallway. She was going based off of a the faint memory of when they first walked in the building. She grew more and more discouraged but after a few more turns down dimly lit hallways they finally made it back to the brightly lit lobby. Time seemed to be on their side as there was no one at the front desk to stop them.

  “Come on, sister, we are almost there.”

  The closer they got to the door, the more hope penetrated their chests. When they reached the doors Rhonnie reached for one of the handles and pulled.

  “What’s taking so long?” Ahli asked when the door didn’t come open.

  “I . . . I think it’s locked!” Rhonnie exclaimed and removed Ahli’s arm from around her neck so that she could help her sit down. She needed to use all of her strength to pull the door.

  Even when she used both hands to pull and push at the doors, they wouldn’t budge. They were trapped inside. “No!” Rhonnie screamed with sobs in her throat. “No, no, no!”

  She banged at the doors in hope that maybe somebody on the outside would hear her. If only she had her gun then none of this would have taken place, but all of the weapons had been with Brayland.

  “Silly girls.” They heard the same cold voice as before come from behind them. “Did you really think that it would be that easy?”

  When Rhonnie turned around she saw not only Madame, but at least twenty other women, half naked, holding sharp objects, standing around her in the huge lobby. All of them had a hungry look in their eyes.

  Ahli had lost all the fight in her and the wound in her neck had started to bleed again. She was losing the feeling in her body and her vision began to come and go.

  “What do you want from us? We don’t have what you want!”

  “Maybe not,” Madame said and looked Rhonnie up and down. “But because of you I lost one of my best girls. I think I’ll take the two of you as retribution. If you come without a struggle then I will see to it that Ahli gets the best medical treatment there is. She looks like she’s, well, dying.”

  Rhonnie’s eyes darted back to Ahli and she saw that she had fallen to the ground and was hopelessly clutching the cloth on her neck. She ran to her and dropped down to her knees to pick her sister’s head up and hug it to her chest.

  “No, Ahli,” Rhonnie whined as she rocked back and forth. “Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

  “If you don’t come without a struggle then my girls will have no problem cutting you to shreds . . . literally.”

  Rhonnie held her sister close to herself and weighed her options. If she said yes then Ahli would live, but at what cost to them? To be forced to give their bodies night after night to complete strangers and never see the outside of that inn again unless Madame allowed it? That was no life, and Ahli would never forgive her if Rhonnie agreed to it, even if it meant saving their lives. Rhonnie spat toward them all and turned her nose up at them in a disgusted manner.

  “Fuck you,” Rhonnie told her, “and your hoes too. I’d rather die than to serve a monster.”

  “So be it.”

  Madame made no move except a slight gesture with her hand. The women recognized the kill signal, swarmed the girls, and began to slice away. Rhonnie covered her sister’s body so that she would take all of the damage and pain. Her blood sprayed the walls of the lobby like new paint and her shrieks were equivalent to the ones you’d hear at an opera. Just when she was about to succumb to death she swore she heard the loud booming of the doors behind her being kicked open. Not only that but she swore she heard the sound of automatic rounds occupy the room, followed by screams and the sounds of bodies collapsing. Suddenly all the pain stopped, but she wasn’t able to keep her eyes open long enough to see why. Karma had a funny way of coming back around. For her, it was with death.

  Epilogue

  Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

  The sound of the machines hooked to the girls’ bodies proved that there still was life in them. Sadie watched them both, waiting for one of them to come to. It had been a long two months, but finally she had tracked down the two people who had hit one of her most notorious trap houses in Omaha, Nebraska. The spot was so low and almost impenetrable so when she heard that it only took two people to rob her out of her product she was insulted. Now to find out that the two people were women, she was intrigued.

  At first she thought Dot had robbed her since the product was recovered in his camp; however, when his dead body showed up more questions came up. She tied his men up by the ankles and shot off their toes one by one until they told her that he’d purchased the drugs from some man named Quinton. It wasn’t too hard finding out where Quinton lived, especially since he made the rookie mistake of registering for the hotel he stayed in under his real name and address. Not only that but she realized that he’d become too comfortable when she and her men pulled up to his house preparing for a miniature war only to see him being removed from the house dead and on a stretcher. She recognized the team cleaning up the mess as one she often hired for the messy cleanups of her shooters in the city of Omaha. The fact that they shared the same connections intrigued her even more.

  She took it upon herself to go inside and rummage through the house, knowing that she didn’t trust any eyes but her own. She didn’t find anything but a few old family pictures until she went inside of his room. There lay an artillery room behind an illusion bookshelf. She only saw it because whoever emptied it left the door slightly open.

  She felt like Sherlock Holmes when she had her men scoop up the shattered pieces of the computer on the floor. She planned to figure out who had been bold enough to rob the Last Kings and put a whole clip in their skulls, especially since she was always just missing them in passing. When her best men finally cracked into the hard drive she had to admit that she was slightly astonished by the fact that the people who had hit her house were hired thieves. Thieves like Robin Hood, not the ones roaming the streets looking for a quick fix or come up.

  She made her men dig deeper into the encoded files in the hard drive and soon they found where the next hit would be: Coralville, Iowa. She made the decision to meet them there. What a perfect way to repay their debt to her. She knew what kind of cars to look for all the way down to the plates on the vehicles, so imagine her surprise when she saw the BMW on the side of the road in a rainstorm with two blown-out tires. She drove right past it when the shooters she sent ahead of her called her and told her they heard screaming coming from an inn a few minutes ahead.
For once Sadie seemed to be on time in the whole ordeal.

  As soon as the doors were kicked down she and her shooters began to body everybody holding a sharp weapon, which was everyone in sight, until there was nobody left. The leader, a woman in a black dress, put up the toughest fight she’d ever seen in life. No matter how many bullets entered her body she still tried to reach the two sliced-up women with her machete. There was a crazed look in her eyes and Sadie swore she screamed at the girls, asking them for something . . . but she couldn’t have heard what she thought she did. The woman didn’t drop dead until she had ten bullets in her chest and another fifteen in other places of her body.

  When Sadie’s shooters turned on the two still-breathing women in the room she stopped them from firing. There was a war going on inside of the inn, and it was clear to see that they were the ones being attacked. That and the fact that they weren’t dressed in slutty clothes set them apart from everyone else in the inn. When she got a good look at them women, even with cuts on their faces she knew they were the two she was looking for. Instead of murdering them in cold blood right then and there she had them transported to her home in Detroit.

  “Mmm.” The older of the two women stirred in her sleep. She was still cut up pretty bad but the doctor Sadie hired to nurse them back to health stitched up the gash on her neck very well. Sadie sat patiently in the chair to the side of her and waited for her eyes to open. She wore a simple yellow blouse with frills along her cleavage and a peach body con skirt. On her crossed feet she wore her yellow Chanel house shoes.

  “W . . . where am I ?” the girl asked in a muzzy voice. Sadie watched her eyes open and survey the large guest room in a daze. When she realized she had tubes coming from her body, the girl panicked. Her hands rummaged over her body and felt all of the tubes there and then tried to pull them out. “Rhonnie! Rhonnie!”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Sadie finally extended her voice when the girl tried to sit up. “You lost a lot of blood. You’re going to make yourself lightheaded.”