SWNOVELS Savior Complex: Chapter 20
Yaya and Gael have extended their stay to spend more time with Ant. Justin and Nacho are being very generous with Ant’s time off, knowing how important it is to reconnect with family.
For the second psycho school class, Anders—we verified it was him—came with his friend, Parker, who works out of Wimberley in a logistics role. She’s cute and short with a killer sense of style and even sharper wit.
Ant was able to get Anders on the mat pretty quickly, but Parker, who is strong and has a lower center of gravity, proved much more difficult to beat. She showed him a few more techniques for smaller folks against larger opponents.
Apparently, her wife is on the operations side of things and likes to spar. Erik is pretty disgruntled that she bested Ant when he couldn’t, but he’s keeping it to himself. Even if he can’t quite keep it off his face.
I listen in as Parker chats with Ant about crime-scene etiquette, how to avoid detection and arrest, and gives him the number to the Bat Phone, Wimberley’s immediate response emergency number.
“You’re not to use this for prank calls and non-emergencies. Calls to this phone will pull operatives off active ops and send them directly to you. Got it?”
Ant sends me a wide-eyed look. “I’ll be too afraid to ever use it.”
“Believe me, sweetie, when it comes time to use it, you’ll be glad you have these people at your back.”
Ant goes off with Anders and Erik for additional target practice, while Levy and Parker hang back with me.
“So. You’re Gasparín,” she says with a smile.
“Yes,” I answer cautiously, unaccustomed to people knowing my nickname.
“How the hell did you take down so many organizations? Our team is pretty good at it, but there are still places we can’t go. How did you get into that place in Peru, for instance?”
Looking around, I make sure my nephew is nowhere near us. Directing this to Levy, I warn, “You can’t tell him.”
“Okay…?”
I check the space again, then go for the direct explanation. “I was younger and dumber back then, so I used to let them take me in.”
Parker, all four foot eleven of her, recoils in horror. “You let them take you in? As in, you let them traffic you?”
Levy’s eyes widen, and his hand goes to his mouth. “What happened to you?”
“I never viewed it as things happening to me. I mostly worked on domestic traffickers at first, hoping that’s where Ant ended up.”
We go quiet, knowing that’s not at all what happened.
“What’d you learn with the domestics?” Parker asks.
“From what I could tell, the company workers at the locations—mostly manufacturing and domestic labor—didn’t understand where the trafficked workers were sourced from. For example, it’s not unusual for a manufacturing company to go out and legally hire workers from another country, sponsor their green cards, and put them in apartments close by. All of that is contract work, with all sides agreeing to the terms. In the places I ended up, however, no one, save for me, was there of their own free will.”
“Did anyone tell the companies or the homeowners that?”
I shake my head. “It was made very clear that if any of us said anything, we would not make it home. Ever.”
“What did you do?”
“I would work with them for a few weeks, get people to talk to me. Most, of course, were too afraid, but some had been in this life for a very long time and had some good insight.”
“What kind of insight?”
I sigh, hating this truth. “No matter the country, there was a general consensus that this kind of trafficking goes on because the government largely turns a blind eye. Also, stagnant wages mean the working-class folks can’t afford to make ethical choices.”
“How do you think it gets fixed?” Parker asks, genuinely interested.
“This is all stuff that has to be fixed at the government level, which we can’t do right now.”
“Not yet,” she verifies. “What’s your second-best option?”
“It was only me, so I started taking out the kidnappers. They were often the least monitored of the trafficking organizations, and I could take out a lot of them and prevent people from getting sucked into the machine in the first place.”
“I assume the organizations noticed the missing kidnappers when their numbers started decreasing.”
“True. But they were so far upstream, I could cripple an entire organization before they realized there was a problem.”
Parker’s taking notes on her phone, and she stops to laugh. “Shit, Javier. That’s smart.”
“Or very dumb,” Levy says, horrified.
“Oh, it was stupid, for sure. But I got lucky.”
Some thought crosses Parker’s mind, and she shifts uncomfortably.
“Ask what you need to ask.”
“So…what about the sex trafficking? Did you ever get close to that?”
Levy grabs my hand and holds it to his chest. “Tell us.”
I nod, then hold up my hand before I’m peppered with a ton of questions. “First, adult trafficking and child trafficking are two different animals, and I was never able to make my way into the child organizations. I’d rather not go over the choices I had to make, but it’s enough to say that the mechanisms of taking people—lying, bait and switch, kidnapping—remain the same. And I may have taken down the sex-trafficking assholes with a bit more heat if I’m honest.”
My sweet Levy wraps his arms around me and squeezes tight. “I can’t believe you did that. No wonder you were so upset about Ant.”
Parker pats my arm solemnly. “I can see why Anders likes you—you’re as crazy as he is.”
I laugh. “No one’s as crazy as Anders.”
Levy puts his head on my shoulder and anchors himself to my side. “What else did you learn from all of that?”
I nose through his hair, accepting his sweet support, thinking about how to word it.
Finally, I answer, “Getting humanity to put people before profits will take some time and some politicians aging out, frankly. You’ve got companies and people willing to use human beings who have been enslaved and trafficked, and in my opinion, they need to be named and shamed.”
Parker nods along. “We’ve got people working on the systemic issues, but the companies are a little trickier because they can hide behind third-party vendors and layers of corporate policy and say they didn’t know. But we go after the crime syndicates who deliver people to these organizations.”
I shake my head. “You’re definitely missing the lowest layer. The kidnappers are people wanting to get into these syndicates and gangs by doing their dirty work for them. I went after those who put their actual hands on people, the ones collecting bounties from these crooked criminal organizations.”
“How did you get away with killing so many people?”
“You already know my nickname. I was very quiet and would hit an entire neighborhood at once, taking out two or three pieces of shit, one right after the other. A quick slash to the neck, and then I’d disappear.”
“You never tried to hide the fact you were murdering these people?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t have time for elaborate coverups, and I preferred to work alone.”
“But you did have help from time to time, right?”
“Sure. Sometimes the people I’d help wanted to get involved. I didn’t really want a sidekick, so I’d train them to do it independently.”
“I’m taking it you didn’t appreciate having a nickname applied to you.”
“It was good and bad for business. Good, because I remained unidentified. It would have been bad had anyone ever connected my nickname to a picture of me. As far as I know, yours is the only organization that has positively identified me.”
“How did you search for Ant then?”
“I carried his picture with me. I also got a lot of information out of the people I hurt. Nobody ever said they recognized him, which didn’t surprise me, but they would often give up the details I needed to damage their organizations a little further upstream. I like to think I made it incredibly expensive to be in the trafficking business in Mexico, Central America, and South America.”
“Did you know there’s a rumor going around that you’re in Southeast Asia now?”
I grin. “A good friend of mine spread it around for me, figured we would split the focus. He liked my style and started copying it.”
“For your work to have that kind of impact, you had to go through thousands of individual operators.”
“Perhaps not thousands. At some point, I realized one gruesome death would discourage the other kidnappers from continuing. Leaving out one man’s entrails influenced hundreds of his low-life colleagues.”
She snorts. “I like the way you think. As I understand it, Charlie is trying to avoid having to kill the actual predators because his focus is on the people. You strike me as somebody who likes it both ways.”
“I love helping people walk out of places like that. Going into some of these horrible situations with no trace of Ant, though…I found the killing helped balance things out. It was awful but necessary.”
Levy smiles sadly. “What you’re saying is the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
I nod. “True. I, however, have been doing this for a decade and have made many, many mistakes he hasn’t had the chance to make yet. I’m not lying when I say I got lucky. I don’t want his survival based on luck.”
“What was your biggest mistake?” Parker asks. Her curiosity is authentic. I can tell she’s not trying to poke the bear but genuinely looking for a better process.
“Sadly, it was trusting a government representative down in Lima. Actually, trusting any government representative is tricky. Many want to help, but the same number of people are happy to take a bribe and look the other way. They depersonalize the people swept up in this. They are poor, marginalized members of society. No one should have to worry about this kind of thing happening to them.”
“We’ve found the same thing,” Parker says, her tone going serious. “We had a couple of ops go sideways because a government operative had it out for one of our guys. This has been really helpful. Assuming you’re okay with it, I’m going to share your story with our team, and we may have some additional questions for you as we make some adjustments in our operations.”
“I’m happy to help.”
Talking to Parker, admitting the lengths I’ve gone to find my nephew, it all drained me. Levy drives me to his trailer, and we shower, enjoying the quiet nature around us, kissing and holding one another.
I can tell he has questions, but he’s letting me have my space around that. After edging each other in the outdoor shower, we make our way back into the trailer, kissing, nearly falling on our asses as we make our way to the bed in the back. Anders did blood work on all of us to verify whether or not he could use certain medications. Since Levy and Bram have some pretty devastating cancers in their family, he’s holding off on some treatments for them that I’ve been approved for.
More importantly, for this moment, however, is that Levy and I are negative across the board. It was Levy who asked if we could go bare with each other.
I crawl on top of him, sinking onto his strong, plush body. “Fuck, I need this,” I whisper.
“So do I,” he says, bringing me in for a deeper kiss.
As we kiss and make out, hardening against one another, I nose his jawline. “Can you top me tonight?”
He brings his hand to my face, kissing my cheeks gently. “Of course. Are you still good to go without condoms? I don’t mind wearing one.”
“No, I need you to fill me up. Help me get out of this headspace.”
We flip so he’s on top, and he takes me in a strong kiss before touching his nose to mine. “No problem, lover.”
While I generally enjoy being in charge of things, having him kiss me assertively and show me without words how much he wants to be here in this moment with me…I fall a little harder for him.
Trailing kisses down my chest, he pinches and sucks on my smallish nipples, making me arch off the bed from the nipple play alone.
Reaching down, he touches a finger to the clear, viscous precum dripping from my cock. Bringing his fingertip to his tongue, he licks it off while locking eyes with me.
“You’re so delicious and horny for me, Javi. Why don’t you spread your legs for me so I can make you happy?”
I obey automatically, widening my thighs as he trails more kisses down my abs, stopping to lick and suck at the happy trail from my belly button to my pubic hair.
Stroking my cock, he dips to take one ball into his mouth, then the other. I come to the edge so quickly that I shout, “Close.”
Levy pulls off, and as much as I didn’t want him to, I’m glad I didn’t prematurely ejaculate in his face. Also, this feels too damn good to be done so soon.
He continues to lick and suck my balls as he strokes me. After several long minutes of his delicious, torturous attention, he pushes my knees back toward my chest, exposing my hole to him. I’m not used to this level of vulnerability, but with Levy, it’s not scary at all. I give myself over to him completely, willingly.
Grinning, he dips down, and I feel his hot, slick tongue against my hole. I’m a little embarrassed about how hairy I am down there, but he doesn’t seem to care. His tongue is at first smooth and tentative, intense on the delicate skin. When he pushes the tip of his tongue inside, it’s almost too much.
Pausing for lube, he slicks his middle finger along with my hole, then carefully pushes his finger inside me.
“Fuck, baby, you’re so tight,” he whispers, his voice rough.
He’s careful as he opens me, slowly adding two more fingers, teasing me by avoiding the nerve bundle screaming for attention.
“Please,” I finally beg. “Stop torturing me and fuck me.”
His grin broadens. “That’s what I needed to hear.”
Lining up, he notches himself at my entrance, then pauses to look into my eyes before pushing in. I pant as I stretch around his girth, grimacing, even as I love taking every fucking inch of him.
He stops, letting me adjust to him.
“Sorry, I haven’t bottomed in a very long time.”
“I can go back to using my fingers if you’d prefer.”
I shake my head. “No. I want this. Please. I need it fast and rough.”
Grabbing my hips, Levy snaps forward, and I shout as pleasure and stretching pain hit simultaneously. He continues to snap backward and forward, his piercing rubbing against the sensitive nerves, sending pleasure racing through my muscles. He cups my jaw as he leans in for a romantic kiss while absolutely taking me apart.
He follows every clue my body gives him, ensuring I have everything I need. The wonder, stress, and agony of the last week all bubble to the surface. Rather than let the emotions get the best of me, I start fucking him back, pushing firmly against him, tipping my hips, meeting him at the perfect moment of thrust.
“Fuck,” he grits out, “you’re gonna make me come before you do.”
Grinning, I strengthen my grip on his hips, wondering if I’ll find purple bruises on his inked hips in the morning. The violence with which we come together intensifies, and his eyes darken as his body tenses.
“Fill me. Fucking fill me.”
Letting out a rough shout, he pumps me full of his cum, some of it spilling out of me as he continues to piston his hips. Grunting, he changes the angle, hitting me once again right where I need it. I grab my cock, stroking it as the intense, intimate orgasm takes hold of me, shaking me out like Pick-Up Sticks.
I breathe in as he breathes out, reaching over for the T-shirt. His arms shake as he holds himself up, wiping me down so carefully. We both take a quick turn in the bathroom before collapsing onto the bed, holding each other, not letting go until the morning light.