Monster (A Prisoned Spinoff Duet Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

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  Copyright © 2017 by Marni Mann

  All rights reserved.

  Visit my website at www.MarniSMann.com

  Cover Designer: Letitia Hasser, R.B.A Designs

  Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  Proofreader: Judy Zweifel, Judy’s Proofreading

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1975979058

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Did You Enjoy Monster?

  Marni's Midnighters

  About the Author

  Newsletter

  Also By Marni Mann

  For Ricky.

  For believing in me. For inspiring me.

  For pushing me.

  For replying to every text no matter what time it is.

  I never could have done this without you.

  Shank

  One Day Before Release

  I sat on the dirt floor with my legs out in front of me, knees slightly bent. There wasn’t enough room in this goddamn cell to fully stretch out. Even if I lay on the shitty blanket that I called my bed, I still wouldn’t have the space to extend all the way. Besides, the blanket was just as hard as the ground, and my ass was killing me.

  Fucking prison.

  I looked down at the piece of paper in my hand. I’d been holding it for hours, reading the kid’s words over and over to the point where I’d memorized them. There were several more letters tucked inside my makeshift mattress, a few in the small space between the toilet and wall, and a handful more in an empty bottle of shampoo.

  I’d kept them all.

  Every last one.

  I’d told myself that I was holding on to them because they were the only entertainment I had in this cell. But, every time I looked at the letters, whenever my palm caressed the paper he had touched, I felt something inside my chest. A feeling I wasn’t all that familiar with, that I’d only felt once before. And one that made me vulnerable.

  I didn’t do feelings.

  I never did vulnerable.

  But, the sender, he wasn’t just any kid.

  He was my kid.

  He’d come into my life during the peak of my career when my buddies, Beard and Diego, and I were running the most successful underground prison in South America. We’d built it on a piece of land in Margarita Island, a small island off the coast of Venezuela. People from all over the world would hire us to murder their enemies. We’d torture the hell out of them, drain their souls, incinerate their bodies, and dump their ashes into the ocean.

  That was back then.

  But, now, I was on the wrong side of the bars.

  Fuck, everything had gone so wrong, so fast.

  I collected the letters from around my cell and spread them over my blanket. I couldn’t take them all with me. The pages stacked together would be too big to shove up my ass. One of the prison’s ridiculous rules was that we were allowed to leave with only the items we had come in with. For me, that was the clothes I’d been wearing the night the guards dragged me inside this jail that were covered in dried blood and about an inch of black soot.

  So, I chose the letter that had the line I liked the best. It was from the one that had come in yesterday. The one that said, I’m looking forward to you getting out, Shank, at the bottom. Tomorrow morning, I’d roll that shit up and wrap it in plastic and cover it in spit and straight up my ass, it would go. Then, I’d walk out of this motherfucker.

  In the meantime, I’d push my back against this cold wall and remember, like I’d been doing since the moment I was incarcerated.

  I remembered the days and the long, playful nights.

  I remembered her screams.

  I remembered the sound of all their cries.

  And I remembered my sweet, submissive Toy, the only man I’d ever loved.

  I knew that some people found God in prison. Some wallowed in regret, clinging to the door of their cell, begging for a redo, for forgiveness.

  I didn’t have regrets, nor was I looking for a god—or for anyone else—to forgive me.

  Asking for forgiveness meant I’d have to admit I had done something wrong.

  I was an innocent man, just trying to live my life.

  And, fuck, that life had been so good, full of sex and torture and blood.

  So, how had I become an inmate? That wasn’t something I could rehash in the few hours I had left in here. That was a story that would take some time to tell. But that was the thing about a long prison sentence.

  I’d had time to remember it all.

  Time to write it down.

  Time to send it to the kid.

  He’d needed to know who I really was.

  He’d needed to hear it from me.

  And he had.

  Huck

  When I felt a shooting pain in the back of my throat, like the tip of a knife was slicing through my Adam’s apple, I tossed my cell on the desk. I couldn’t look at Jack’s text anymore. Because it still filled the screen, I pressed the side button to make the phone black.

  I should have deleted our history of tex
ts or at least stopped reading them. But, for weeks, I hadn’t been able to do either. And, each time, I’d felt the knife. And, each time, I’d thrown my phone as though the damn thing were on fire.

  What I should be doing tonight was counting the tips the girls had earned the previous evening and putting all the cash in envelopes for them to take at the end of their shift. I also should be ordering supplies—new sheets and blankets for the private rooms and massage oil, lube, and condoms for the girls to use on their clients.

  Serviced—the high-end rub-and-tug I’d opened five years ago—needed my full attention. It wasn’t even getting half of my concentration, and that had to change. No one cared about this place like I did. No one would step in during my mental absence and make sure things were running how they should be.

  No one, except for Jack.

  He’d given me the money to start the business, and he’d helped me oversee things from across the ocean in Grenada, the same place I’d grown up.

  And, now, I had no one but myself.

  Shaking my head, trying to get Jack out of it, I reached for the office line to order some dinner. That was when the top monitor caught my attention. There were twenty-eight of them on the wall—one for each of the private rooms, the front desk, the lounge, and the museum. The museum was like a display window where the girls waited behind a thick panel of glass, dressed in costumes or panties and bras, enticing the clients with their mouths and fingers, so the men would choose them.

  And it was fucking empty.

  I heard the chair slam on the ground after I pushed myself out of it and the pounding of the wooden door as I smashed it into the wall. My feet slapped on the tiles as I rushed down the two flights of stairs and toward the backside of the reception desk.

  “Lawan,” I hissed from behind her.

  She turned around in her chair, and I fingered her into the hallway.

  I waited for her to walk to me before I said, “Why the hell is the museum empty?”

  She pressed her hands together, holding them just under her chin, like she was praying. “I’m sorry, sir. So, so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” I snapped, trying to keep my voice down, so none of the men out front heard me. “Just get me more girls.”

  “I can’t, sir. All the girls are with customers.”

  “Your job is to keep a minimum of forty women here at all times. Running out of girls isn’t an option. Ever.” My teeth ground together. “You know that.”

  And I knew this wasn’t the only reason I was angry.

  But this, I could control.

  Jack, I couldn’t.

  “I know, sir, but a few called in sick. No time to—”

  “Lawan, all you’re doing is giving me excuses. I don’t want to hear them. I want to hear how you’re going to fix this.”

  Her neck was so thin, I could see her pulse hammering away.

  “In the morning, after my shift, I’ll go to the village and hire new ones. I won’t disappoint you again, sir.”

  That wouldn’t solve the issue we were faced with now—an empty fucking museum and over ten men sitting in my brothel who wanted to spend money and choose which girl would fulfill their fantasy, and they couldn’t do either.

  We were better than this.

  “Lawan…” I repeatedly banged my fist against the wall, feeling it bend with each hit.

  “Please don’t worry, sir.”

  Don’t worry?

  Every night, almost a hundred American and British tourists walked through my door, and none of them spoke Thai. Lawan was the only female here who was fluent in English, so I needed her at the front desk. The few times I’d worked it, the clients hadn’t responded well. It seemed they didn’t like being greeted by a tatted-up heavyweight who was far more intimidating than welcoming, so I stayed upstairs as much as possible and managed things behind the scenes. But the village, at this hour, just wasn’t safe, and that was why I couldn’t send her there now.

  “By tomorrow afternoon, I expect a handful of new girls sitting in that museum. I want them to give the best blow jobs in Bangkok, their cunts to be tight, and their asses to be primed and ready. I want the best whores you can find. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir. Won’t let you down.”

  “When you go back out there, you talk to the ten men who are waiting, and you make this right.”

  “Yes—”

  I held up my hand to cut her off, not wanting to hear another sir come out of her mouth. Then, I turned around and headed back to my office, cursing Lawan the whole goddamn way.

  She’d been working at Serviced since the day I opened. She knew the rules and the reputation I wanted to uphold.

  An empty museum?

  I might as well close the goddamn doors.

  These sluts weren’t sick. They just had tough lives, and sometimes, their situation at home prevented them from coming into work. I didn’t accept that as an excuse. I needed women who would fight to be here. Who appreciated the insane amount of money I paid them, a sum they wouldn’t find within three hundred kilometers of here.

  That was because Serviced was different. It wasn’t like the other rub-and-tugs nearby. It was high-end, and it was fucking expensive.

  When the guys from the offshore oil rigs came inland, they expected two things—good booze and clean, pliant women.

  They got that here.

  And those men made up half of our clientele. A majority of the other half were tourists, and the last percent were rich locals.

  Lawan’s oversight could make tonight’s clients walk out the door and never come back. It could cause them to talk to their friends and turn away more business. I wouldn’t let that happen. That was why all ten guys waiting in the lounge were going to get their dicks sucked for free tonight.

  As I reached the top of the second flight of stairs, my phone began to ring. Rada appeared on the screen, and I cursed again.

  “You can’t keep calling me.”

  “I know. I just missed hearing your voice and…”

  And she missed me.

  I knew because I felt the same way.

  Goddamn it.

  “Tell me things are good,” I said. “That you’re doing well in school.” I glanced at the monitors. “That no one is hurting you.”

  I heard her take a breath, which she didn’t exhale for several seconds.

  “Nothing has changed since the last time I called.”

  That meant, she was still in the same apartment, taking three classes and waitressing at night—things she could have done here.

  Out of all the women I’d been with, Rada was the only one I’d asked to move into my apartment on the third floor of the brothel. I’d told her up front that the only thing I needed from her was trust. To trust that I wasn’t fucking any of the girls downstairs, to trust that I cared about her enough to want to sleep next to her every night.

  She’d lasted six months.

  Jealousy had destroyed our relationship. And, when she’d left, she hadn’t moved back into her village. She had taken off to fucking London.

  I sat at my desk, fingers on my forehead, massaging my scalp before my headache gnawed straight through my skull. “I need you to say good-bye,” I said. “For good this time.”

  “I want to. It just hurts.”

  There was a gentle knock on the door, followed by, “Sir? Can I come in?”

  “Hang on,” I said to Rada. “Yeah, Lawan, come in.”

  “I see nothing has changed. You’re still making everyone else a priority,” Rada barked.

  I ignored Rada and watched Lawan crack open the door, showing just a sliver of her face.

  “Sir, there’s a girl downstairs, asking for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Don’t know, sir. She wouldn’t give me a name.”

  I suddenly felt hopeful. “Is she looking for a job?”

  “I…” Her hesitation told me something wasn’t right. “I don’t think so.”

&nb
sp; “Then, what the fuck does she want?” I pushed myself to the end of the chair, searching the monitors. There were now seven men waiting in the lounge along with the bartender. I checked the other feeds to see if there were any women I didn’t recognize. “Where is she?”

  “Out back, sir, behind the building.”

  Her face changed, and I knew that look. She wore the same expression whenever she had to deliver uncomfortable news. Lawan might work at a whorehouse, but this place hadn’t hardened her one bit.

  “What does she want, Lawan?”

  “I found her on the ground. Near the trash cans. She was crying and bloody, whispering your name. She wouldn’t say anything else.”

  I closed my eyes and remembered some of the others who had come here in the past. The lice, the bruises. The shaking. The fucking toe-curling cries.

  “I have to go,” I said to Rada.

  “Of course you do,” she snarled, reminding me of the side of her that I didn’t miss at all. “It’s always something with those girls and—”

  “I don’t have to listen to your bullshit anymore, and I’m not going to. Don’t call me again.”

  I slid my phone into my pocket and said to Lawan, “Bring me to her.”

  I followed Lawan down the stairs and through the hallway, moving in the opposite direction of the lounge. Once she opened the rear door, I saw a nest of dark hair on top of the gravel and a body lying in a tucked fetal position, trembling.

  “Hold it open,” I told Lawan, pointing at the door.

  The wider she held it, the more light shone on the girl.

  I walked around her frame until I found where her head was folded into her chest and said, “You asked for me. I’m here.”

  Whimpers came through a hidden set of lips. “Huck?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it really you? You’re here?”

  Her accent told me she was American.

  “Yes.” I knelt on the ground, waiting for her to show me her face. “Why are you looking for me?”

  This wasn’t the way it ever went down. I always got a call first that gave me as many details as the seller had. Then, if I was interested, I’d give one of the bouncers enough cash to cover the transaction, and he’d go to the docks. When he returned, he’d have the girl with him.

  “Huck,” she cried softly. “Huck.”

  Still, no face, no words besides my name, which she continued to cry out with every breath.