“No. No, I want to stay with you,” she pleaded, grabbing his hand. Ham and Wes stared at one another. The man was nothing to write home about. Short, somewhat soft and pudgy, thinning hair and thick glasses. She was lovely. This was definitely an odd couple.
They grabbed their things and followed the two men to the SUV. Sitting in the backseat, Ham was having troubleunderstanding the relationship between the young woman and the professor. He looked at them in the back seat through his mirror and frowned. Signing to Wes, his friend pulled over on the side of the road.
“Why are we stopping?” she asked. Ham stepped out, opening the back door. He gripped the cell phone in her hand and stared down at the messages. “Hey! That’s mine!”
“You’re working with Vasily.”
“No. No, I swear Shawn. I’m not. They made me.”
“Made you? That’s an awfully sweet message for someone being forced to do something,” frowned Ham.
“You were working with them?” whispered Mills, appearing to be shocked.
“You don’t understand. They had photos of me. My family would be ruined! My father’s business would be destroyed.”
Ham ensured that the tracking was off on the phone, turned it off, and put it in his pocket.
“Where are you taking me?” asked Creek. Ham turned in his seat to stare at the girl.
“Either to prison or a safe place. I haven’t decided yet.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The young women were loaded into ambulances and taken to nearby hospitals. They were malnourished, dehydrated, and some were suffering from hypothermia. They’d refused to dance for Giamanco, so were placed in the small cell of a room and only fed once a day. He hoped to pressure them into doing his bidding.
Their stories were the same. Caught up in gambling, or in one case, she’d asked for a loan to help with her student debt. They all signed their lives away to Giamanco after that. Only one was a student of Professor Mills.
“You know what I don’t get?” asked Gator. “These kids were all going to a top-tier, prestigious university that required certain intellectual standards. They were smart. How the fuck do smart kids, above average intelligence, get caught in something so fucking stupid?”
“I’ll try not to be offended by that,” said Marissa. Gator grinned at her, shaking his head. “Remember, I wanted to stop going to that boat and stop participating in the card games. They wouldn’t allow it. I’m going to bet that something similar happened to all of these people. Maybe it wasn’t in the middle of the ocean but maybe they were taken into the mountains or their families were threatened. We weren’t stupid. We were gullible.”
“Fair point. I’m sorry,” he smiled. “And by the way, I’m thrilled that you’ll be my daughter-in-law.”
“Me too,” she smiled. “I’ve loved Joey for a long time but I honestly thought he was in love with Bailey.”
“I think they loved one another like siblings. I knew nothing was going to come from that.”
“I wish I had known that,” she said with a pain-filled smile. “Maybe my choices would have been different. I would have reached out to him sooner.”
“It’s a lesson we all learn, Marissa. We tend to wait too long sometimes to reach out to the one we love and we come close to losing it all. So far, we’ve been doing alright on our record.”
“I guess we could thank the Belle Fleur magic for that,” she smiled as Red, Bullett, and Bo walked in.
“How are they?” asked Gator.
“Scared, sick, thin, but they’re alive. Only two were caught up in gambling. The others were a mixed bag of tricks. Photos, videos, that sort of thing. One was being accused of cheating on her exams. She didn’t cheat but they had fake documents showing that she had.”
“It’s nearly impossible to cheat on exams these days,” said Marissa. “She should have known that. Then again, I guess to your point Gator, we all should have seen this, known what we were walking into.”
“No. You couldn’t have known,” he said shaking his head. “I was wrong. I forget that you are just kids.”
“Well,” said Marissa hugging Gator, “this kid is going to be in your family now. I hope you’ll forgive me naivete.”
“I think I can forgive that,” he said hugging her back.
“All good?” asked Christopher, smiling at his daughter as she hugged Gator.
“All good, Dad,” she grinned. “What about the other soldiers involved?”
