Keeping Allie (Breaking Away #3) by Meli Raine Read Free Book Online Page A

lips tighten as she says the last two words, eyes flickering to me.
    Slave girls . I feel like the words punched me in the gut. That’s all I am right now. A slave girl. Trapped on the Atlas compound, being readied to be handed off to El Brujo.
    By my not-so-dead mother.
    “I’m supposed to be his slave ?”
    Chase makes a weird grunting sound. His face remains blank as he looks out the window and says, “No. You’re supposed to cure him, if what Frenchie says is right. Then you get sold into sex slavery.”
    “Jesus,” I whisper, suddenly cold. Mom grabs my waist and holds me up.
    “But that’s not happening,” they both hiss at once.
    A few weeks ago I was bored out of my mind at the bar, polishing glasses and getting ready for the night crowd. I hated my dull life. Jeff controlled most of my time. I had one friend—David—and a sister I loved and wanted to see in Los Angeles. I mourned my dead mother. I had no future.
    Now, I have a mother who is alive and the old lady of a motorcycle gang president. I fell in love with the son of the rival gang’s president. My drug-dealing stepfather is dead. I’m a suspect in his murder. And I’m about to be used for my virginity by a drug lord to cure his AIDS, then sold into sexual slavery.
    I’ll take boring any day over this.
    But I want to keep my mom.
    “Allie! Get with it!” Chase snaps. He gives me a gentle nudge and grabs a hairbrush, thrusting it in Mom’s hand. “You need to comb her hair and get her ready, Jackie.”
    “Her name is Helen,” I say through gritted teeth. 
    Chase’s head jerks back. He frowns. “Oh. Yeah. Helen.”
    “Jackie. Helen. Mom. Bitch. Whatever. Call me anything as long as you get Allie out of here safe,” Mom pleads.
    Chase reaches for me. I flinch. There isn’t an inch of skin on my body that isn’t scratched, scraped, torn open or bruised. But that’s not why I react like that.
    “I’m sorry,” he says in a ragged voice. “Truly, madly, deeply sorry. I couldn’t keep you out of this mess, so I followed you into it. I left L.A. because Frenchie sent me a text that said if I didn’t deliver you, he would. I came back to try to find some other way.”
    His eyes flash with anger. “And I failed.”
    The touch of his hands on my shoulders feels like I’m transported to a better time. His palms are hard and hot. He’s practically vibrating with tension.
    “You won’t fail.”
    “I already did.”
    “You only fail if you don’t love me.”
    He looks at me for what feels like forever, then says, “I can’t kiss you. Just know that I want to.”
    And he runs out of the room, boots clacking on the tile like a metronome.

Chapter Eight
    “Honey, honey, it’ll be okay,” Mom says in a soothing voice as she combs my hair. The comb yanks my head back. Her hands are shaking. “Sorry,” she adds. 
    “It’s fine. You need to make me pretty for El Brujo,” I say, hysteria bubbling up. I look at myself in the tiny mirror on the vanity. I’m sitting in a metal chair with what looks like a needlepoint cushion for the seat. The chair is iron, bent into curls. So is the desk. It’s ornate and beautiful, like something from two hundred years ago. There are perfume bottles and makeup all over the top.
    “Hush,” Mom insists. “We’ll get you out of this. I’m doing what your boyfriend says right now, but if he can’t help, I’ll go to Loogie.”
    “Loogie,” I say. His name feels weird in my mouth. “Is he...are you...”
    A long sigh escapes from her. The corners of her mouth turn down. She looks like Marissa. “Loogie’s my old man.”
    “You fell in love with him?” My heart can’t stop squeezing in my chest every ten seconds or so. It’s like it has to remind me I should be terrified. That El Brujo is coming. That Frenchie and Chase have to deliver me to be destroyed.
    Like something out of an old Greek mythology movie. Like I’m about to be tied to a stand and devoured by a sea monster.
    “I did,