Il Paradiso - The Haven Ch. 01

She stood before him, naked. Her eye fixed on him. Her frame was slender, her breasts high and her nipples coral pink. Her belly was flat with her fine-toned muscles clear, even in the light of the office lam in a small tidy office. Her sex was neatly trimmed with a fine tuft of black pubic in her pudenda. Her legs were strong and shapely. Her face was elfin and very pretty, despite the trauma she had been through. Her fresh pixie haircut suited her well. She stood and wore an awkward but warm smile on her face. She wanted him to make love to her.

Nicholas Hyde-Tennyson KCVO sat at the desk and took a moment to take the glorious sight, then regained his composure.

"Irina, you don't have to do that anymore. You are safe here and no one is asking you to surrender yourself." Tim cleared his throat.

"I know, Sir Nicki but I want to." Her voice was sweet and light, a far cry from the poor beaten woman that had been brought to the 'Il Paradiso' as the natives called it and she walked into the office, her lither frame illuminated from the hall light. She stepped in and closed the door behind her. The office was functional but for one large, well-worn couch in the corner. She crossed to it and sat back and spread her legs, to reveal her tight little pussy.

Nicholas watched her, despite being the patron of this haven for women who had been cruelly trafficked for sex all across Europe, he couldn't stop his forty-five-year-old penis from responding to her lewd display. He stood up and walked around the desk. Alarm bells rang in his head, he knew he shouldn't be doing this but, the sight of this 26-year-old beauty offering herself to him was a thrill that he had rarely felt.

"Irina..." He mumbled.

Nineteen months ago, Irina sat slumped on a hard bench, along with six other women of various ages in the lock-up at the local Questura di Firenze on numeri 2, Via Zara, Firenze. Nicholas entered with Sofia Rossi, the archetypal Italian mamma with a fiery temper and energy of a medium-sized atomic reactor. The pair was followed by a shamefaced police sergeant, who after being berated by Sofia and then cajoled by Nicholas into letting Irina and the other women be released to their care. As the sergeant fumbled for the keys of the lock-up, a tall, powerfully built ispettore investigative, or detective inspector Marco Costa. Nicholas and Sofia knew him well, and Nicholas had helped Marco with an unexpected family and financial crisis which put him in Nicholas's debt.

"Nicky!" Marco smiled broadly and crossed over and hugged the slender but wiry Englishman, "What are you doing here? Have you been up to your crusading again? I wondered who had brought this latest batch of unfortunates!" Nicholas flushed at Marco's comment, as he had been undercover in the Florentine underbelly of trafficked sex workers and the criminal gangs, and posing at one of the clients, had reconnoitred the brothel and informed his contacts in the espulsione della polizia di Firenze, and an hour later bust the brothel capturing two of the lower level gangsters and a collection of their sex workers.

"The girls in your lock-up were scooped up in your last raid and they're all trafficked. I asked to have them remanded into my care. Sofia and I will make room for them at Il Paradiso. Is that all right with you?" Nicholas asked, with a grin. Marco immediately launched another tirade upon the flustered segreant, who had finally opened the lock-up and had instructed the dishevelled girls to stand up. Sofia, catching sight of Marco, rushed over and gave him a big hug, her ample bosom being squashed on his hairy chest.

"Marco! Oh, bel ragazzo!" Sofia kissed him on both cheeks and then went to deal with the trafficked girls, Irina amongst them.

"Nicholas, I will have to come by with the paperwork, and I have another convert to your crusade, one of my men has requested an introduction to add to your private security." Marco grinned. Many police officers moonlighted as security to bolster their incomes and Nicholas already had four of Marco's subordinates working part-time to help keep the haven secure from the gangs of traffickers that would attempt to take back the rescued girls that were housed there. Nicholas regarded the poor women that filed past and were taken to the large people carriers parked at the rear of the station. Sofia reassured the women that they were all right and that they would be taken to a place of safety. Marco tailed the cars in a police Alfa Romero.

After an hour's drive, the motorcade flanked b two kindly donated police out-riders, parked on the gravel drive, after passing through an electronic gate. Nicholas and Sofia got out and helped the silent women from the vans and in through the front door. The out riders drove off but Marco followed the vans in and waited until the women had been taken in. Nicholas shook Marco's hand, and out of the car, an eager young detective joined them.

"This is Luigi D'Moretti, he will be joining you for the time being. Nicholas, the Romanians won't take this lying down. You know what they are capable of. Luigi is a former army and a police sharpshooter, so he might be useful/" Marco, also a former army captain had been a veteran of combat overseas and three terrible exchanges of gunfire in the streets of his city with Albanian and Romanian criminal gangs, one of which killed his best friend.

"I know. I'm, going to settle things here and we'll be leaving for my Cypriot villa within a month. I'll be out of your hair, and you can retire." Nicholas clapped his friend on the shoulder, " Maria, will be very pleased to see me go." Marco chuckled; his beloved wife Maria fretted over his safety when he was working with this Englishman. Her hollow smile was always on her beautiful face, when Nicholas visited, which was a rarity.

"Ah Maria, she worries and with another child on the way, she thinks you're bad luck." Marco smiled.

"Well, when you are a father for the second time, you will find your mortgage on your home settled. Marco, it is only money and your friendship is of greater value and now go. I'll stay in contact."

Marco smiled and hugged his friend, turned and then left after leaving a liturgy of instructions for the young, over-eager sniper. Once Marco had completed the instructions, Luigi set off to digitally secure the perimeter.

The house was large but formidable. A former castle fortress, with thick stone walls and just remote enough to give seclusion for their needs and twelve bedrooms. Nicholas had equipped the property with a well-equipped clinic, enough bathrooms and a large kitchen for the use of the residents, who were all trafficked women.

Sofia had approached Nicholas three years ago with a plea for financial support and a plan to help trafficked women in the region of her birth. Nicholas, a former army officer, who lost his wife and his purpose took Sofia's plea and made it a crusade. With his financial independence, he could set up houses across Europe to rescue and return trafficked women to their homes or settle them in countries, within his own company as a chance to rebuild their lives.

Whilst, the bricks and mortar were easily found, the rescuing of these unfortunate women was a military operation. Sofia and Nicholas had built a foundation and had been successful in helping women trafficked for the sex trade in the Tuscan region. Before them was another collection of women who had been abused by well-organised criminals and made to work in pop-up brothels. Nicholas was always shocked in the initial stage of their rehabilitation; his natural frustration and outrage were barely contained as the girls filed into the large hallways. From the rooms, came a collection of eight other women, all trafficked, that were waiting for their transit home or to safe houses across Europe. Two nurses appeared in uniform and a young doctor crossed the hallway and conferred with Sofia.

Sofia looked at the group and tried to set their minds at rest, she spoke Italian first ad, then in broken Romanian and finally in English.

"You are all safe now, we will tend to your injuries and do our very best to get you home, back to your families. I am Sofia, I am the Senora, here and if you need anything, then you talk to me. You are safe. The nurses and our doctor will examine you and then get cleaned up and set to your beds. You are safe here, no one will harm you." Sofa repeated the word; safe' to try and reassure the women. With Nicholas, being the only male in the hallway, they shied away from him but eventually, they all made their way to other rooms.

Sofia turned to Nicholas, " They are all so young. It breaks my heart, Nicky. " Sofia had been helping trafficked women and knew the trials they must have gone through. From above, Nicky looked up to the other eight residents of the house, he smiled, and they waved back. One, a blonde Russian, blew him a kiss.

"At least, we have helped some of them, My dear Sofia. They were broken once, but you and your staff put them back to get her." Nicholas waved to the other gaggle of girls, who waved back and also blew kisses.

"Only with your help, Nicky. Now, let's see to our new guest's needs." Sofia shuffled off. Nicky watched the procession of the girls, ushered to rooms on the ground floor. One girl turned back to look at him. All Nicholas could do was smile.

By the evening, all the women had been assigned rooms, fed, and given a bath and a medical assessment. Dr Carlo D' Alegre, the physician that Nicholas kept on retainer, explained the women's condition. It wasn't good.

"Sir Nicky," the name that he had adopted in reverence to his patron, "the women all suffer a variety of physical abuse from extensive bruising, and various cuts or burns and I'll treat them all for STI's including Chlamydia. They all need rest and one of them, wants to talk to you about her friend. She's still in the hands of those bastardi!" His tone was icy and his revulsion evident.

Whilst the Doctor went off to administer the antibiotics to his patients, one of the nurses brought the now freshly showered Irina into the office and sat her down. Sofia and Nicholas offered her coffee and waited for Irina to speak. After a sip of the hot liquid, it all came blurting out.

"My friend, Mari was taken. She was taken by the men to the other place!" Tears welled in her eyes.

"You speak English?" Nicholas was surprised. Sofia went over to her and held her shoulder.

"Yes, and some Italian and Romanian. I heard the men talk about the other place. The railway.! Irina shook as she knew what would be happening to her friend, "They make you fuck twenty men each. Mari is small, smaller than me and they will hurt her." She looked shamefaced. They had been trafficked together and under such terrible conditions, had forged a bond to try and help each other.

"The railways?" Sofia was puzzled. There are too many police and nowhere to set up the girls at the railway. Nicholas thought and then jumped up, crossed the room, and looked at the large region maps blu-tacked to the large whiteboard, covered with photos of the Romanian gang members and their cars.

"The railway yard, it's the other side of the city but with some bribe money, they could set up in one of the disused carriages and pick up the casual workers in the yard. Christ! There will be over sixty men there, all away from home." Nicholas turned round, his mind racing. He had already stung the Romanian operations this year, and with the girls in the house, he had over half their stable of sex workers. If he could close this brothel, the Romanians would be starved of girls and would have to clear out or attempt to find their missing commodities. Nicholas knew he had no choice but now faced a big problem. Sofia looked up to him, and she knew it too.

"Nicki, you've been seen by the Romanians, they might recognise you and shoot you on sight!" Sofia stood up and went to him, "You can't go, I won't allow it!" Her voice was cold but unwavering.

"We could stop them tonight, that's a risk I have to take." Nicholas countered.

At that moment, Luigi knocked on the open door and walked in.

"The perimeter is secure, and I couldn't help but hear your conversation, but I could go in and check it out." The young officer smiled, "I can call Inspector Marco, and he can gather as many men as he can and meet us there!"

"Make the call, and I will personally pay each man 10 000 euros for his assistance tonight. Let's go!" Nicholas smiled and hugged Sofia.

End of Chapter One