This was a fucking death trap. The Spiders were slaughtering us and I was sent to be a part of it. I couldn’t decide if it was because they thought I could help or if they wanted me dead. But if Dante was here as well, it couldn’t be because they thought we’d all die. He was too important to waste on something like this.
No, if Gian requested me, he hoped that I’d be able to help.
So I kept my head on a swivel. While I didn’t know the guys around me, that didn’t meant they weren’t trustworthy. The mafia didn’t employ men for these sorts of things who weren’t good with a gun, and these men all looked hardened and like they knew what they were about.
No, it wasn’t going to be brute force that I brought to the table. It was going to have to be something else.
The truck slowly pulled up closer toward the warehouse. The outer fence was opened up and the truck drove straight toward us. The men made room as the truck drove straight in through the enormous steel doors and stopped right in the middle of the warehouse itself.
I stood off to the side as men opened the large back doors of the truck.
“Here we go,” Dante said. “The pussy train is coming.”
Ignoring him, I watched as, one by one, young girls began to climb out of the back of the truck.
There must have been thirty or forty of them, way too many for the trip to have been anything resembling comfortable. Those container trucks were hot and sticky, not to mention rough. I could imagine them huddled together, barely able to breathe the humid, stifling air.
They looked thin and hungry. Sunken eyes, dirty clothes, and the occasional track mark from needles getting shoved into their arms defined the group. Some of them were beautiful and some of them weren’t, but it didn’t really matter. There was some sick fuck out there for each and every one of them.
The men began to herd the women toward the trucks. I watched as they were piled in, and soon every one of the cars were full of these young, half-dead women.
“When do they usually come?” I asked Dante.
“Now,” he said. “They attacked just as the truck pulled in last time.”
The warehouse seemed silent. The men who were scouting had returned, and it seemed as though everything was going well.
Dante got up and clapped me on the back. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get moving before the pussy train pulls out without us.”
I grunted and followed him toward our car. We got in and fell in line in the caravan as the group of cars, the women in the middle, began to head back toward the city.
I couldn’t help but think about the girls shoved into those trucks. Young and stupid, they had no life ahead of them, not while they were slaves to the mafia. I didn’t love that my people did things like this, but I knew they had to if they were going to compete. Our operation was nothing compared with the Russians; they imported thousands of girls a month to our hundreds. The Latinos were pretty bad themselves, bringing girls up from South America, nice and addicted to Colombian heroin.
The club we were headed to was in the middle of a seedier neighborhood on the edge of downtown. The city flashed past the window of the truck as we moved, heading farther and farther into the city. I kept expecting the Spiders to hit at any second, but all was quiet.
The caravan eventually made it to the club. We pulled down an alleyway at the back of the club. It was a tight squeeze getting all of the cars in there, and there wasn’t much space to maneuver.
“Whose decision was this?” I asked Dante as we stopped and got out.
“What do you mean?”
“This alley is a fucking death trap.”
He gave me a look. “Shit,” he said.
The girls started to get out of the trucks up ahead. We had some room to move around, but not much. The trucks and cars were parked bumper to bumper, and there was no way to get out unless the cars on the ends moved first. Basically everyone was boxed in with nowhere to go.
The muscle got out and stood around, looking uncomfortable. I couldn’t tell if they were thinking the same thing, but this was bad. There were too many people jammed into this small space. Back when it was just three or four trucks bringing the girls in, this drop-off was probably fine, but now it was jammed with men standing around with weapons.
I wasn’t surprised at all when the gunfire started.
It happened fast. As the first group of girls got out of their truck and moved toward the back door, bullets started raining down on the trucks. Men scattered and started yelling orders as I found cover behind our truck.
“Fuck!” Dante yelled. “The roof!”
I looked up, and sure enough there were men up there in black masks firing down at us. The girls were screaming and scattering all over the place.