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  LITTLE DOVE

  (BOOK THREE IN THE BEAST SERIES)

  A DARK EROTIC NOVEL

  BY

  JADEN WILKES

  Copyright © 2014 by Jaden Wilkes. Amazon. Little Dove. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Everything is from the dark depths of my imagination, but seriously, if you are anywhere close to the people in this book, fucking email me, we need to go for drinks.

  Dedicated to Mr. Wilkes. Right to the very end.

  Also to my beta readers, seriously, this would be shit without your hard work and dedication.

  To my chat buddies, Karen, Joni and Adrienne…thank you for listening to me whine and bitch about writing. I hope it’s all worth it in the end when the book makes it out of my head.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Public Service Announcement

  Previous Work

  Contact Me

  PROLOGUE

  She shuddered as the men gathered around her, pinching her skin and grabbing at her tits. She almost couldn’t remember her name; it had been weeks since anyone had called her anything other than Girl or Cunt.

  She clutched her growing stomach and huddled in on herself to protect it from the jeering crowd. A voice boomed through a loudspeaker in a language she didn’t understand and she was dragged off the platform and thrown towards a small group of frightened women.

  She looked at their faces and understood that they had all been purchased by the same buyer and would soon be traveling together to their new brothel.

  It was a miracle that she was still pregnant, after the beatings she’d endured, but she needed to believe in miracles now more than ever.

  She needed to get back to Boian like the grass needed the rain, like a bird needed the sky. She bitterly regretted leaving him every day since they’d been apart. She prayed he would still want her after all this time, that he hadn’t forgotten her.

  She straightened her back, smoothed her long, black hair and looked at them all, the downtrodden, the beaten, the ghosts of girls long thought dead by the rest of the world.

  “My name is Ioana,” she stated in heavily accented English, “and we are going to get through this. We are going to escape.”

  She saw disbelief and fear ripple through the group, reaching each and every face except for one. A lithe blonde who had been crouched down unfolded herself slowly and stood up. She was tall, filthy and naked like the rest of them. There was something different about her though. She met Ioana’s gaze, looked her up and down with blazing eyes and replied, “It’s about fucking time.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  DIMITRI

  The room was poorly lit when he entered and he didn’t like it. Immediately his senses were piqued, there was something wrong.

  He was here to meet somebody he’d never seen, only heard about. He was trying to settle an old debt and clear his conscience.

  He had lied to Columbia and let her believe he had important business to attend in Prague. It was mostly true, but the business he had was not in Prague, but Bucharest.

  He felt guilty lying to her about it, but his affairs in Bucharest were somewhat shameful to Dimitri. He didn’t know how to admit to Columbia his reason for going, and he was afraid she would see him differently if she knew how dark his past truly was.

  He had been in a particularly cruel phase in his life almost a decade ago, a young man brash with power and lacking temperance. He had settled in Bucharest for a year, taking over the local operations of Sergei’s Eastern European sex network. It hadn’t occurred to him back then that the victims were people, terrified and desperate and most likely would end up dead.

  He’d been drunk with power, abusing men and women like they were nothing better than dollar signs and achievement points to win favour with his boss.

  Until one woman had set him straight years ago, and changed his path forever. Looking back, her intervention in his life had been the thing that precipitated the pulling away from Sergei. Her kindness and humanity had set him on a course much different than the one he’d been on at the time.

  It still took years for him to realize how much of a brute he had been, and how killing with indifference would eventually take its toll on his spirit. It hadn’t been until his own brush with becoming less than human that he had been able to comprehend how valuable human life actually was.

  Her name had been Sanda, and she’d been the head of a house they kept girls at. He knew Sergei’s enterprise had included boys, girls, men and women, but his assignment had been with women and older girls. Sergei had been testing his moral limits.

  Looking back on it, he realized that Sergei had pegged him for a killer from early on, but had thrust this assignment on him in an attempt to curb Dimitri’s growing power inside the bratva.

  Nobody really liked a man who got off on selling women and girls for profit. Sergei had attempted to undermine Dimitri’s growing popularity by setting him up as a surrogate pimp, trading flesh like business stock.

  It might have worked had he not met Sanda, the woman who got into his head and stayed with him until he was almost broken and half mad through his own pain and humiliation.

  He was here to meet her son; he knew it was time to pay restitution. It had taken Nico the last three years to find him, searching through Romania’s records had proven impossible so he’d turned to the massive underground network to hunt them down.

  A single boy had survived her; he’d been in his teens when his mother had died.

  Dimitri was here to see him, to pay for not saving his mother’s life.

  But something wasn’t right, the room was too dark and the hotel too quiet. He sensed an ambush and almost felt as though he deserved what he had coming to him.

  If it weren’t for his little dove, most likely pacing the hallways back home and nibbling on her thumb when she was terrified, he might have given into their attack.

  But he had to make it home, he had lied to her about where he was going, but he wouldn’t lie to her about going back to her.

  “You can come out,” he said into the silent room. It was a standard suite in a mid-level hotel in the middle of Bucharest’s tourist district. “I know you’re here.” The son had chosen it, and Dimitri had agreed, against his better judgment.

  A movement from the short corridor between the main room and the bathroom caught his eye. A single figure stepped forward i
nto the shared light of the table lamp.

  Dimitri eyed the man up. He was younger than himself, leaner, but just as tall and just as tough looking. He was well muscled, with short dark hair and tattoos winding around his arms and peeking out the top of his shirt. Dimitri hoped he wouldn’t have to fight this young man; he didn’t want to have to kill him.

  “So, we finally meet,” the young man said in heavily accented English. He stopped and sized Dimitri up, looking at him from dark, hooded eyes. The resemblance was unmistakable though, this was Sanda’s son.

  “We finally do,” Dimitri replied and straightened up. He couldn’t show a moment of weakness or the young man would attack.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Only to repay a debt,” Dimitri said in a calm, even voice, “something I owe you from long ago.”

  “Did you kill her?” he asked with his lip curled in a sneer.

  Dimitri thought about how to answer this, yes, he had been there when Sanda had died, but it wasn’t as cut and dried as her son might think. He simply answered, “I didn’t, but I was responsible for her death.”

  Without warning, the he pulled back and threw a punch at Dimitri’s face. Dimitri ducked and swung his own, striking the man in the jaw. Not enough to break it, but enough to split the skin on his knuckles and knock the man back on his ass.

  Dimitri held his other hand out and wondered how long before the jaw swelled up. He’d better make this quick.

  Sanda’s son took the hand begrudgingly and stood. He stared at Dimitri and flinched. It was an almost imperceptible gesture, but one that gave away the fact that he was carrying a weapon. A gun, Dimitri supposed, it’s always a gun when they want to kill you quickly.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why, or how?” Dimitri said to cut through the thick silence between them.

  “Does it matter? She’s gone and I never had a chance to know her,” the man said and appeared to deflate. He slumped forward and his grief was almost unbearable for Dimitri. He knew he couldn’t reach out to offer comfort, the younger man would never take it.

  “She was a good woman,” Dimitri said, “and she changed my life.”

  “I never knew her,” he replied and looked at Dimitri. He laughed, an ironic twist to his lips, “You know, I was raised in an orphanage. I was an orphan with a mother, but I never met her.”

  “She talked about you constantly,” Dimitri told him, “she always meant to go back to you but by the time she got free, she was too ashamed to show her face. Had she known your grandparents had died and you ended up on your own, she would have come. I promise.”

  “You say that, but who can really trust the word of an old whore?” he said and inhaled deeply. He exhaled, as if gathering his thoughts. “She was a whore, wasn’t she? I’ve heard it said on the streets, but never knew exactly what she did or what befell her.”

  “She wasn’t by the time I met her,” Dimitri replied, “she was running a house by then. She was as kind as she could be to the girls who came through, but she had to be hard. She didn’t want to be hard, but she had to be.”

  “Did she have a husband? My grandparents told me she ran away to be with a man.”

  “She had a pimp, but no husband.”

  “Can you tell me how it happened then? How did she die?”

  Dimitri paused and rubbed his hand across his freshly shaved head. Columbia had done it just before he left, to make him more imposing she had said. He didn’t feel imposing at the moment, he felt contrite.

  “I was a very different man back then, please understand this. Can we sit?” Dimitri asked and gestured towards a small dining table near the window.

  “Sure,” he replied and they both sat down, Dimitri was careful to keep his legs facing out so the table didn’t impede him if he needed to move quickly. Dimitri was impressed to see the younger man did the same.

  “She was a beautiful woman, your mother. Sanda, but everyone called her Beauty because of her thick, dark hair. When she was younger, a pimp lured her to the city with the promise of work for a wealthy couple. She’d planned on sending money back to your grandparents for your care and education. She’d always meant to return after she made enough to cover your university costs.”

  The man laughed, a sardonic sound that belied his grief.

  “She meant it. But of course, there was no housekeeping job and she was sold into sexual slavery the night she arrived. They keep girls in houses around the city…around the country and even the world. There is a never ending supply of men who will pay, who will use, abuse and treat them like cattle.” Dimitri fell silent, thinking of his own mistreatment of the girls he had once paid. The girls he had once considered less than human, even those right up until he met Columbia.

  “Go on,” he said and leaned forward. He really wanted to hear this, Dimitri thought, but it was going to be difficult.

  “By the time I was sent here to oversee the entire operation, your mother was no longer seeing clients, she was running her own house. She was good to her people, but cruel to her enemies. And as she gained power, she gained many enemies.”

  Sanda’s son shifted in his seat and placed his hand on his abdomen, exactly where Dimitri would have had his own weapon strapped, had he brought one.

  “We worked together, on and off. It was strictly business, but eventually a friendship developed. It is imperative you understand what kind of man I was back then. I worked for the Solntsevskaya Bratva,” he said and paused when the other man opened his eyes wide in surprise, then recovered immediately. “I was the boss’s right hand man, and you know what that means.”

  He nodded, and said, “Why were you babysitting whores in Bucharest then, if you were his second.”

  “I believe now I was being punished for being too good, too efficient at what I did. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that your mother became a friend to me, and planted a seed in the back of my head that started to grow. She helped shape me into the man I am today.”

  “And what kind of man is that?” Sanda’s son asked with a sneer. Dimitri knew this was a lot to process and afforded him a very wide berth in accepting what was being said.

  “I am not a good man,” Dimitri said, “but I am a better man than I was and that’s all I can lay claim to.”

  “How did she die?” he asked at last. He was still and seemed perched on the edge of his chair. This must be a lot for him to take in, finding out about his mother from the man who was there at her death.

  Dimitri rubbed his hand over his head again, conscious of his nervous gesture after Columbia had pointed it out to him. He said, “I was there at the end, she was brave until the last moment. We'd been attacked by an American gang trying to edge their way into our market. They were collecting our girls, herding them up and stealing them, setting fire to our houses. We were in an all out war with them.”

  “What does this have to do with my mother’s death?”

  “We were at her house one night, a converted townhouse here in Bucharest. A few blocks from here, you never would know what it was from the street. We were going over the week’s figures, your mother was counting the money she owed the bratva and complaining about the general problems that came from running a whorehouse. Breaking girls in, clients getting too rough, the usual things. It was a pretty quiet night, a Sunday if I recall.”

  Dimitri paused and took a deep breath, clearing his thoughts and thinking back to that night. “I never knew it at the time, but looking back it seems that my mentor had set me up even then. He was in league with the Americans from the get-go. They broke in the front door; shot anyone they saw and eventually made their way to where we were situated. There were maybe twenty of them in total and they did a lot of damage on their way to your mother’s quarters.”

  He paused again, remembering Sanda’s determined look that night, the set to her jaw and how quickly she had reached for her guns. Dimitri had drawn his own weapons and fired at will.

  “We wer
e outgunned and outnumbered but your mother fought like a true hero. She showed me an escape hatch she had built in and I insisted she go through ahead of me. She refused and I refused to leave her. We were trapped and we knew it, but she would not leave without finding the girls who needed her. You see, even though she was a hard taskmaster and cruel when she had to be, your mother saw them as people. Everyone else I worked with, myself included, saw them as meat…objects to be traded and sold. Your mother taught me to never forget that they were human beings.”

  The younger man pursed his lips as if in disbelief. “But she never came for me,” he said. “She never came back.”

  “She couldn’t,” Dimitri replied, “and she always thought she would…when she had saved some more money, when she had gotten a better job. She lived with regret every day of her life, if that means anything to you. She died helping girls through her escape hatch, she gave her life so many could keep theirs.”

  “But you said you were responsible for her death,” he said, his eyes flared with anger.

  “I had something to do with it, yes,” Dimitri told him. “I should have made her leave, I should have forced her to safety and killed the men on my own. In the end we got backup and I survived with a couple broken ribs and a grazed ear. But as your mother died, she told me two things. The first was to never forget that they are all people. Everybody has a story and unless they show you they deserve to die, we don’t have the right to take their life.”

  “What was the second?”

  “She told me to find her son, find her Boian and make sure he’s taken care of for the rest of his life…that she loved him.”

  Boian looked down at the surface of the table, his face was an unreadable mask but Dimitri sensed a maelstrom of emotions just under the surface. He gave him a moment to process the information.

  “What are you saying?” Boian asked at last. “So she’s dead and you’re here to what, save me?”

  “Not save you, but make your life much more comfortable than it has been until now. You won’t ever have to work again.”