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This is my cue to leave. I duck a punch from a staggering Caruso, give him that knock on the head I had promised, and dash for the private exit. You’d find that I’m a man of my word.
“Get him!” Caruso’s order propels my flight.
His men come after me, but thanks to the cars and private jets, I can skim around and miss shots fired at me.
There’s an opening for cars to go out through and I dash for the metal gate before they can get there and block me out. I pull my gun out, opening fire. Whoever is unfortunate enough amongst the men will be taking yet another hello from me to the devil.
As the gate clanks open and I put a foot out, two shots hit the metal, ricocheting with a loud clunk. A bullet slides past the narrow opening before I close the gate and step out of the building. It meets the back of my leg, and I don’t take a moment to linger on the all too-familiar sting as I keep running.
The pain will come later. I made my point.
For now, that was some adrenaline. It's okay to fuck things up every once in a while. To shake the balance and reshuffle the cards.
Knowing Caruso, he will bite back.
But when he does, I’ll be waiting.
For now, I’ve got a family to fool.
Chapter Four
ALEJANDRA
Peaceful nothingness.
Here I am free. I feel nothing.
A journey to a lifetime where I’m hoping they don’t find me again.
I am swimming in space until a romping vibration starts to rock me. Then faint horns and a harsh baritone that sounds like it’s backing orders.
“Don’t waste a minute more, got it?” echoes around me and I feel a sharp headache slice my brain in two.
Next is the smell of musk shrouding my nose and the dry taste of starvation and dehydration at the back of my throat.
My eyes twitch, my lips join in the show, and my every bone in my body hurts as I unfurl from the ball position I’m lying in. I look around, but instead of the booth, I see windscreens and I feel leather beneath me.
I jump slightly, a faint surprise due to my new environment. I’ve been caught off guard. I don’t like surprises. I like to prepare even when it’s the worst-case scenario. Surprises trigger anxiety no matter the nature, good or bad. Though I’ve not had many of the good kind lately.
I look forward to the driver in a black dress shirt and tattooed fingers clamped around the steering wheel. He flashes me a glance in the rearview mirror and I look away to the side before he meets my eyes.
And there he is.
I kill the reflex to climb out of the car as my eyes land on a man sitting on the other end of the passenger’s seat with me. Also in a black dress shirt, but with visible holsters. His legs are spread out confidently and his hand holding his phone. Chocolate hair, like mine.
So this is the man I have been sold to? The one that offered one million dollars for damaged goods like me.
My anxiety simmers in my stomach, making me jittery and dizzy. I curl up even more, a survival mechanism to ward off the shuddering. As my fingers curl onto my thighs I feel the soft brush of something foreign register.
Fabric.
I grab a fistful of the plush material hanging loosely on my skin. I want to tear it off, the feel of a fabric against anywhere on my skin but my neck is stifling, and I start to shudder visibly as I pick at it.
“Easy.” He doesn’t say it as an order but I stop picking. I even hush my anxiety to quiet down and not shake us into a first fist punch.
I’ve been trained by a pro when it comes to breaking one’s spirit. I have no fight in me to give. The only fight I have is kept for Alejandra if she ever makes it out of this den of predators.
As expected from me, I bow my head, dropping my upper body to my thighs and letting my head dangle between them.
