Then it came to me: Triads. She must be involved with one of the Triad gangs. But do the Triads have a setup on the Upper East Side on Park Avenue? Nope, couldn’t be Triads.

I knew we were headed there because she pictured it in her mind. A penthouse on Park Avenue. Whoever the Master was, dude had to be loaded, filthy rich. I’d been to a party on the Upper East Side once, the place dripped with money. A little dripped into my pocket, but I earned every penny of it bent over the bathroom sink. I wasn’t invited back to any more of those parties.

I tried to maintain composure, but Lia’s thoughts were the most disturbing I’d ever encountered. She played a silent game of torture with me. She imagined things while she watched my reaction. I’d learned years ago to suppress my reactions to people’s depravity.

I read my priest’s mind when I was fourteen. He imagined screwing me while I bent over to tie my shoes. My dress had creeped up to the point he could see my white panties. Totally shocked, I overreacted. I freaked out right there in the middle of church service, making accusations in front of the whole congregation. My father was so angry, shaking his head in embarrassment, apologizing profusely. He’d told me on several occasions, not to react to things people hadn’t done or said, estas loca – you are crazy.

After that episode, Daddy decided he could no longer deal with my peculiarities. He figured if I wanted to accuse innocent men of perversions, then I should understand it. Colombian rationale doesn’t always make sense by American standards. Sometimes two plus two equals three. My father did the math, found me wanting, and sold me to Rubin the very next day.

I never made the mistake of letting my reactions to people’s sick thoughts show ever again. But Lia had sorely tested my composure. I tried not to react. I tried so hard to stay calm as she imagined atrocious, unspeakable things. But she noticed. No matter how quiet I was, how I stilled my shaking hands in my lap, she knew.

She could sense the changes in my respiration, she could smell my fear, and there was that other thing, the colors. She could see this hazy color, an aura. My aura screamed my terror and anxiety. She knew exactly what she was doing to me. She sniffed the scent of my fear, breathed it in deeply. She could even taste it, and it excited her to new levels of imagined violence.

As she envisioned shoving a knife up between my legs Jack-the-Ripper style, I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. The bitch smiled at me.

“Please stop. I’ll never tell anyone. I promise. I don’t want to die.” I begged shamelessly.

I was more afraid than I’ve ever been. I had this sense of her as something more than a petite little Vietnamese woman. She was a predator through and through, a Hannibal Lector, a Jeffrey Dahmer, a psychopath. The girl was extremely dangerous. The kind of dangerous people can be with all limits of propriety and conscience removed, zero regard for the sacredness of life. She was capable of anything, and somehow she had figured out I read her mind. She thought herself an actual vampire, and I was starting to think the same.

“You’ll not die … yet.” Not until we see the Master. “It’s too bad you’re so damn cooperative. And here I thought you had some spine.” All the more fun to rip it out.

She wanted me to come at her, to try to fight my way out. She was purposely trying to scare me into action. Leaving as quickly as we did probably saved my life. My immediate cooperation was the only reason she hadn’t pulled that trigger. She itched for me to make a move, anything she could construe as a possible threat. Then she’d be allowed to kill me. Those were the rules she lived by, the rules of her Master. Straight up fucking weird.

“What, you’re not feeling froggy bitch? Don’t think you can take me? Come on. Do it. You know you want to.” She set the gun down on the seat next to her.

I stared at that gun sooo hard. Oh how I wanted to go for it. She folded her hands in her lap and grinned with anticipation. She wanted me to go for it. She wanted it as much as I did.

“I’m not that stupid.”

“Perhaps. But are you that weak? I thought there was more to you.” She was slick. I wanted to break her slick little nose. I’ve been in a few fights, and knowing what they want to do before they do it does help at times. Knowing where it hurts. The nose is especially painful. I learned quickly where to hit to cause the most pain. I may not be a buff little ghetto rat, but I know how to find what hurts.

“I just want to go home. I don’t want problems. Why can’t you take me home?” I was starting to sound whiny, and I had more goddamn tears. I hate crying. I virtually never cry.

“I guess they don’t make em like they used to in Mexico anymore.”

“I’m not Mexican.”

“Had me fooled.”

Who the hell are these people? I began to think I’d stumbled on some satanic chicken-sacrificing cult. There were several in Colombia, and I’ve heard of them here. But there were no religious fanaticism indicators anywhere in her thoughts. I have seen my share of fanatics on all sides of religion, and I can’t stand any of them. They judge from the word go.

All that Lia had on the brain was plain and simple bloodlust, a desire for violence. Violence for violence sake. The freak thought herself a vampire and wanted to drain my body of every drop of blood. She wanted to suck me into cardiac arrest.

Vampire or not, it didn’t really matter. She thought I knew the truth about her, and was willing to kidnap-kill-maim-mutilate to keep her secret. To think, I’d been totally enamored with her sensuality an hour ago. Now all I wanted to do was run and hide in the deepest darkest hole I could find.

I’ll never understand how a person can go from having sex with me to wanting to kill me in the span of a few minutes. I’m not made that way. Sure I have a temper, I get angry, maybe hold a grudge for a while, but I can’t really stay angry. I did the nudity thing with Rubin to prove a point, to take away the power he held over me. I didn’t do it out of hate. I’m not that way, and I find it hard to understand people that are. People like Arana and Lia, and even Faustino. How could they commit such acts of violence against another person?

There must be something missing, something fundamentally flawed within. They are soulless, or their souls have been damaged beyond repair. Who knows, I don’t get it.

The limo stopped.

“Get out and walk very slowly. You move too fast, you start to run, and I will spread your skull all over this parking garage.” I got out and walked, slowly, cautiously.

We had arrived at a massive Park Avenue high rise, the Clementine Building. Very nice, posh, ritzy. I felt like a mouse entering the lion’s den. I had left home in nothing but a black silk bathrobe, no shoes, shirt or underwear. I entertained the silly hope my attire would magically bar my entrance to the inner sanctum. Saved by one of those little signs that read no shoes, no shirt, no service. I kept looking for one of those signs with the foolish hope of children.

Turns out they had a residents-only elevator. Lia had the code, 6627, which I plucked from her mind and promptly memorized. The limo driver accompanied us up the elevator. He worked for a limo service providing drivers, but they didn’t own the limo. Lia’s Master owned the limo.

The short, bald, fifty-something driver stood dead silent the whole elevator ride. He had excellent self-control with his demeanor, but his eyes and thoughts were all over me. Up my robe, tweaking my nipples, putting his finger in my ass, his fist in my hair. He imagined doing all sorts of things to me. I was nothing but a warm piece of meat to him, a trashy whore, which is kinda how I felt at the moment.

Though his view of me seemed accurate, I did not choose this life. I’d never really been given a choice. My father, Rubin, Faustino, they all told me what to do, whether I liked it or not. This was just another group of assholes taking away my freedom for their personal gain. Beyond killing me, there wasn’t much they could do that hadn’t already been done by someone else who got to me first. I tried to bolster my confidence with the idea that whatever happened, I could endure, like I have always endured. Truth is, I felt pretty dejected, and the asshole limo driver’s smug nasty thoughts weren’t helping.

The driver deposited us in the hallway and left for his next job assignment.

“Move it. We’re almost there, but you already know that, don’t you?” Lia smirked, a wicked gleam in her eye as she waved her pistol at me.

The penthouse apartment was massive. The word apartment didn’t even come close to describing the opulent elegance of the interior. The place reeked of money. All rich dark wood tones interspersed with creams, tans, reds, and browns. A few maroon pieces here and there. It reminded me of something in an Architectural Digest I saw in a doctor’s office waiting room. I stood in a “Lifestyles of the rich and famous” exposé. Artwork on the walls – really expensive art – probably worth thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. I don’t know shit about art, but I could smell the money. Here I stood in my twenty dollar bathrobe, feeling more and more like a rat in a trap I might never escape, a trap constructed of money, power, and murderous intentions.

“We have a guest? What have you done, Lia?”

The sound of a bodiless voice startled me.

“We have a problem.” Lia snarled, casting a hateful look my way.

I opened my mouth to defend myself only to shut it as a man walked out of the shadows, a man who could only be the Master. Tall dark and handsome, at least six feet, he stared down at little ole me. Slender, he had a sinewy grace. He wore his long dark brown hair slicked back into a tight pony tail, along with a neatly trimmed goatee. He had pale flawless skin, an alabaster statue. His cold eyes were a light shade of brown, almost hazel, with little spokes of green and gold. It seemed his eyes actually changed color from brown to green to gold as he looked back and forth from me to the freaky Asian psycho bitch.

He was one of those rare people who radiated power and confidence. It flowed off him like water, royalty. This guy had to be Sir something or other, Your Grace, the Duke of Fuck-me-running. I knew he was a Spaniard because Lia knew it, but from him I read absolutely nothing – utter mental silence.