Survival ( Book 2: Stronger Series )

13. System

She was really starting to piss me off. I didn't have time for this shit; I had too much I needed to do. I got in the backseat of the custom, armor-plated BMW while my temporary driver, Bernard, drove us out of the estate. Normally, Scott traveled with me everywhere I went, but I needed him to keep an eye on Jaden until I found her a permanent bodyguard I could trust.

I had a meeting with my accountant/assistant in half an hour. Ronald Lessner was a measly fuck of a man, but he was damn good at his job and had plenty of noteworthy connections, which was the only reason I kept him alive. Outside of my brothers, he was a ghost. Not even my closest business partners knew about him. I made sure he had protection 24/7 because if someone ever got to him, I was pretty sure his loyalty to me would be sliced right out of him. But in this line of work, everything was a risk; the risk just had to be worth it, and Ron definitely was, especially since he was also one hell of an attorney.

Bernard drove us to the warehouse and I checked in on the new shipment of girls through the two-way glass wall by the door. There were five of them so far, and as usual, they all looked the same to me. Half the time, I didn't even bother to learn who they were or where they came from. I had others to make those decisions for me.

We had scouts set up all over the country, prowling in the poverty-stricken cities for optimal targets. The weak, the vulnerable, the naïve—they were so easy to find it was ridiculous. A lot of them ended up being runaways living on the street. They were the easiest to obtain. They hardly even needed to be taken; we just had to convince them with an easy white lie. And with that, my supply was endless. Some stupid rebellious teenage girl was always on the street somewhere, just waiting to be found.

It helped that I owned a small private aviation company with dozens of small planes that carried our shipments from all over the country to the warehouse or wherever else we needed them to go. It was the perfect setup, and with all the business dealings and connections I had, no one suspected a thing. With the right amount of money, you could buy anything and everything ... including silence. Once the girls were in custody, they were drugged and shipped away in cargo boxes with padding inside to prevent bruising during the transport. Once delivered to the warehouse, it was just buy and sell from there. And business was booming.

The girls who didn't sell at the auction were usually the ones who liked to act up during their captivity. If the girls had too many bruises on them, they wouldn't sell the same way as the others who had behaved. They usually were sold at a discounted price to the brothels in Mexico where they were smuggled across by the Coyotes and never seen or heard from again. Everyone receives the same warning at orientation, but of course, not everyone listens.

We had a good business relationship with the brothel chains in Mexico, receiving a nice percentage from their profits while supporting their supply of the heavily requested blond American girl. Everyone in Mexico had dark hair and tan skin. The johns down there liked to change things up every now and then. Though I couldn't understand why they would want to fuck a drugged out American idiot anyway. They weren't nearly as responsive and were a bore to play with. But that was how some of the brothels liked to work. Keeping their slaves as drug addicts ensured their obedience; otherwise, they were denied their next fix until they did their job. Another reason why many of them died after a few months. If the johns didn't accidentally kill them, the drugs certainly would. But that's what keeps the demand so high and the revenue never-ending.

The higher ups were usually pretty good to their slaves, as far as good can be described. We used to train the girls in sexual obedience, but most of my clients preferred to train their slaves themselves anyway, so we stopped bothering. As far as what their training methods were, from what I had been told by them, some were worse than others were, some more sadistic and some more compassionate. The only rule we all had was that the only way a slave could be released from their captivity was through death. I couldn't have freed slaves running around, trying to undermine my business. So far, no one had broken the rules ... yet.