Chapter 8 Santos #2
There were times where I wondered if twelve years ago, I could have stopped her from leaving and if I should have.
My abuela always said a woman leaving in the middle of the night had more reasons than you could imagine.
I didn’t know what to think when I saw her putting all of the money in the kitchen and walking out of his life.
I immediately woke him up, but he didn’t want to chase her.
He just said that it was a long time coming and she was doing exactly as her father had warned him.
Our enforcer, Fletcher, plowed through the crowd of men standing at the large entryway as he checked in with Zerkos with nothing but a quick glance and tilt of his chin.
He held the starving crowd back from the show they’d been so eagerly anticipating for months, waiting for our signal to let them through.
He was a solid enforcer and someone we considered the right hand of our operation, whatever you threw his way he got done without question, and without fail.
He was a six-foot-three mass of muscles.
An overgrown kid who was raised on the wrong side of the tracks.
We gladly took him in the minute he turned eighteen.
His red hair draped down his forehead in short waves he kept neatly trimmed on the sides and the back with lots of attention.
Just like my brother Zerkos, you couldn’t catch him in anything but an expensive tailored suit, and both the bastards made it look good.
I glanced over at Cecilia and I could see her nerves were starting to show through her facade as she fumbled with the hem of her dress anxiously.
Our eyes met and there was a silent plea between us but there was nothing I could do for her now that she signed everything away on that power of attorney form.
The form was one of the last steps in the traffic trials, after Ronan melted their little minds and offered them the chance to go home, to certain death, they realized sticking with us was their best bet for safety and comfort.
She’d signed it all away without him doing anything.
She was desperate, which meant she was in a lot of trouble.
I couldn’t help but wonder if this trouble was going to come crashing at our door the longer she stayed.
Ronan did a big dramatic speech like he always did every year about our power growing as a gang and the guys all went crazy for it. The look on Cecilia’s face told me she wasn’t even a little impressed though. I couldn’t help but appreciate the fact she saw through his bullshit too.
“Get them down in the kennels, Fletch,” Zerkos said, “all of them.” The loud clang of the chain connecting the three blondes rang out as it clattered against the marble floor from the force of Fletcher’s tug on it.
He didn’t so much as make eye contact with the three half-naked blondes before making his way over to Cecilia. When he reached out for her, she slapped his hand away and I choked back a laugh, swallowing my drink.
“If you put your hands on me, you will regret it. Do you understand?” She said as if she was seven-feet tall.
Fletcher looked to Zerkos for support, but he wasn’t looking at him, he was burning his gaze into her so fiercely I think she would have burst into flames if someone didn’t cut in.
“She can walk down there herself man, just put a bag over her head,” I broke the silence, and he nodded at me as he put the bag over each of the blondes’ heads and then hers.
He gave her his arm, then said, “You’re probably going to have to hold on to me then.”
An audible growl came from Ronan’s direction and the thumping of his blood pressure rising could practically be heard when she put both hands around Fletcher’s bicep.
He guided her into the elevator while dragging the parade of yellow hair behind him.
The three of us entered with them while the rest of the men piled into the other two elevators.
We made our way to the floor directly below ours, but first we spent a few minutes going down and up a few levels to disorient our captives. Once the elevator opened, we made our way through the hall until we got to the apartment set aside just for the kennels.
It wasn’t actually a kennel though, it was just a regular apartment, with a kitchen and a living room and everything, except the bedrooms had no walls and were closed in with metal bars, like cages.
The entire walk Ronan kept his eyes focused where her hands connected with Fletcher’s arms and I was just counting down the seconds before he would explode.
Surprisingly enough, he managed to keep it together through our trek.
Fletcher opened the kennel and shoved the blondes in before removing the bags from their heads as well as Cecilia’s. He closed the metal door, locking them in with the automatic mechanism.
“You okay boss?” He asked Zerkos who still looked like he could have probably killed Fletcher then and there.
“They’re going to need another bed. Go get one,” he said to him, sending him away with a flick of his finger. “Start it up, will you Kane?” He signaled Mateo as he pulled up a metal folding chair and opened it up in front of the kennel sitting on it backwards.
Across the hall was another empty kennel of the same size but with three twin size beds in it.
This kennel was as big as a standard bedroom, but there was nothing in it, just three walls lined with metal bars along with one exterior wall.
The walls that were present were exposed brick, but that’s because they were a fake wall we built to cover the windows that were once here.
Probably wouldn’t want anyone looking in here, even if we were fourteen floors high.
Kane went inside the kennel grabbing the hose and started blasting all four of them with water until they were forcibly pressed up against the corner of the kennel trying to use each other for protection.
All except for her.
She was just standing there with her eyes fixed on Ronan as if he was the one holding the hose. I mean shit, he might as well have been.
“Just three more hours of this, ladies!” Mateo yelled out and he turned to us and said, “Go chill out man. Come back when you’re ready to get busy, and your head is in it. I’ve got this.” He reassured him and Ronan nodded.
We both got up and made our way back to the elevator.
The rest of the men were gathered in the makeshift lobby we created for the fifteenth floor where the kennels resided. They watched the show from the flat screen TV that played the live camera footage, but we didn’t acknowledge them as we waited for the doors to open.
Once we were both in the elevator all it took was a glare for his composure to drop. He slouched down to the floor with his head in his hands, reminiscent of the broken boy I once had to put back together.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
“I think you weren’t supposed to turn your ex into a prisoner,” I said, the disdain still obvious in my tone.
He shook his head at me, “It shouldn’t have gone down like that.
I didn’t think she’d sign. I never knew that girl to be anyone who would buckle or break under pressure.
She wasn’t supposed to sign, she was supposed to fight me on it,” he said without looking back up at me.
“She fights me on everything, she signed without a second thought. What the fuck is after her?” He said exasperated at the situation, but all I could see was that Cecilia was in more trouble than we could probably imagine if she chose this willingly.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we keep playing the game, I need to know what she’s running from, and if breaking her is the only way to get any sort of answer, I’ll deal with the mess later. Whatever she’s hiding from is so bad that she’d sign away her freedom to get away from it. I need to know what that is.”
“She’ll hate you for it,” I said matter of fact.
“Good. She still has a lot to pay for.”
“I won’t play this game, man. Believe it or not, I don’t have a beef with Cecilia, leave me out of it. Where are you going to even tell the guys she’s coming from?” I asked.
“She’s Mexican, just tell them she has cártel info,” he said it like it would even be believable.
“The Cártel is too big for us, and the guys know it, what if one of them touches her?” I crossed my arms in question.
“Why would they do that?” He immediately stood back up and got in my face.
The elevator dinged open, but we didn’t get out yet. He kept breathing hard waiting for an answer from me, like I was the one feeding her to the fishes.
“I’m not the enemy brother, I’m just presenting all the possible scenarios you just opened our world up to. She just signed a piece of paper that turned her into Black Crow property, all of the Black Crows.”
Zerkos backed up and slammed his hand on the button to take the elevator back down, I followed him out, back into the kennels.
“Out!” He shouted at the entire lobby and the men scrambled to make their way out and take their post doing whatever it is the fuck they did when we weren’t around.
Within a few minutes they cleared out and we turned the corner down the hallway to the kennels, where Kane was still laughing like a mad dog while he power washed the girls against the wall.
Kane chuckled at us once I unlocked the kennel door, “That didn’t last very long.” He said knowing full well there was no way Ronan was going to stay away from Cecilia for long.
With the hose off, the girls had a minute to catch their breaths, the three blondes huddled together for warmth in their underwear and Cecilia began lifting her drenched and now see-through white dress over the top of her head.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ronan asked her, his eyes noticeably shifting toward the surveillance camera, and I could see the physical relief on his face that he had already sent all the guys out of the lobby where they could watch the show.
“It’s wet. I’m wet,” she said, cutting the T’s sharply as she threw the sopping wet dress onto the opposite corner of the kennel.