NIGHTINGALE**“By any chance, is the man you went with yesterday, Scorpion?” Destros asked.He could probably already guess the answer to his question by the ashen look on my face.“Y-yes.” I replied.He took a step towards me and I took two steps back.“And you didn’t bother to mention that the man you left with is my worst enemy. You can’t claim that you didn’t know how much I loathe his very existence, everyone in this damn neighbourhood knows to stay away from anything that concerns him because I don’t want anything that belongs to me anywhere near him. Yet you thought it would be a good idea to leave with him, and then bring him back into my territory.”The menace in his voice terrified me.“Answer me!” He banged his closed fist on his desk.He hadn’t even asked me a question in the first place but I wasn’t stupid enough to point that out to him when he was in this state.“I didn’t know who he was when I bumped into him, I just wanted to get away from here and he accepted to tak

NIGHTINGALE***The minute Hakan’s car went out of view, Destros yelled and punched the guy standing next to him. I was shocked that he did something like that and at the same time, glad that he hadn’t channelled the anger to me.“You’re fucking useless.” He yelled as he grabbed my elbows and shook me like a rag doll.“I told you all that happened between us, you’re the one that insisted on making something where there was nothing. Were you really expecting him to just comply with your demands just because I fucked him? I’m nothing special, I just happened to be available when he needed someone to warm his bed.” I said to him and he let me go.Saying the words hurt me, but I realised that it was the truth, I was stupid to think I was more than a hookup to Hakan, he hadn’t even bat an eye when there was a gun at my head. Destros took deep breaths and ran his hands through his shaggy hair repeatedly, all in a bid to calm his temper. His phone began to ring so he brought it out of his po

HAKAN ~ Letting Nightingale leave the car all by herself to go get her sister was one of the hardest decisions I had ever made, and that was saying something, because I made hard decisions all the time. The night I spent with her was the best I ever had, she was the first woman I’ve ever brought into my own bed, the first woman I ever fell asleep beside in a damn long time. I hadn’t even known where my gun was while we were together which never happened, even while having sex, I was always on guard. I always had a weapon close because with the life I live, people were always trying to kill me through one means or the other. She was the first woman I desired intimacy with, the first woman to make me feel something, even though that something was feeling a little more like obsession with every passing second. I was losing my mind waiting in the car, checking my watch almost every five seconds, just waiting for the ten minutes I promised to give her pass by, waiting to see her smiling

NIGHTINGALE**The person Destros knew who worked for the butcher was a woman in her mid forties who was in charge of the prostitutes at the bar the butcher owned. These prostitutes, both male and female, were here of their own free will. They got paid for their services, but this establishment was just used to cover up his real business of selling human beings off as sex slaves. Madame Doris was the woman’s name, and she wore more makeup than was necessary. Her voice was hoarse from years of substance abuse, and she had a frown that seemed permanently etched on her face. Apparently, she owed Destros a favour after helping her clean up a mess aa while back. But she still wasn’t willing to risk her neck for me despite that. She would only help to get me into the basement where the people waiting to be sold were being kept.The bar was nice by a lot of standards, it was definitely better than my former place of work even though it wasn’t as exotic as some more expensive bars. It was the

NIGHTINGALE~The first thing I noticed when I woke up was how badly my breath smelled. I was lying on a hard surface, facing sideways, and when I tried to turn, it hurt like I had landed on that side and maybe fractured something. My head felt like it had been thrown into the washing machine and spun around till every component in it was shaken loose, and my eyes ached even though they were closed.“Wake up.” I heard someone say.The voice was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t remember who it belonged to, not just because my head was still ringing, but because I instinctively knew that whoever this is, I may know them but I hadn’t spoken to them in a while.“Get your fucking ass up, birdie. This ain't a hotel.” The person said and shook me again.This had to be someone from my high school, they were the only ones who called me birdie for years no matter how I tried to make them stop. The only thing I could recognise from the voice was that it belonged to a male, and from the way my sk