Chapter 31 Mateo
MATEO
My palms were sweating from anxiety, the thought of this mission going wrong lingered in the back of my mind like a constant threat. We couldn’t mess this up. I needed Cecilia back just as badly as Ronan, and though I didn’t think I could ever tell him that, I kind of knew I somehow didn’t need to.
When Santos told us he was staying back, Zerkos’ fists went on autopilot, and I had to push him out of the house before he used up all his good rage on our brother. Neither of us knew what his problem was, but if it wasn’t strictly Black Crow business, he wasn’t talking.
He had holed himself up in his room and was wallowing in some sort of misery that I couldn’t figure out. My brother was hurting, and we needed to get to the bottom of it before it turned into another issue that would surely explode right in front of our faces.
There were already too many to deal with as it was.
We had a security problem, we had a Dezmond Senior-trying-to-pull-rank-on-us problem, and we had a Bratva problem.
On top of all that I had a Cecilia problem that was surely gonna be the death of me, and possibly the end of me and Ronan.
Except, now I had the taste of her burned into my memory like a brand on my soul and I couldn’t let her go.
I refused to.
She was the peaceful silence I had been longing for all these years.
Unlike music, she could take away the pain permanently.
The melody of her voice could drown out the sounds of my regret and self-loathing.
The headaches had been the permanent reminder of how I failed my sister.
But with Cecilia around, I could finally quiet all those screaming reverberations of my remorse so that all that was left was her.
Cecilia felt like home, it was something I hadn’t experienced in too long to just let it slip through my fingers.
I couldn’t let her go to waste.
I refused to let her go unloved in all the right ways.
It’d been three days now since they had taken her, and Ronan and I both knew what that meant.
Our chances of getting her back were becoming slimmer by the hour, she could have already been bought by anyone.
Dez reached out to the Bratvas to arrange a buyer meeting, and we headed for Sapphire as soon as they passed him the location.
That was the plan, Dez was the buyer, I was his grunt, and Ronan was playing driver tonight.
He was pissed when Dez told him the plan, but even he knew it was too risky for him to go inside.
Too many people knew Zerkos as the face of the Black Crow Brotherhood.
If the wrong person recognized him, it was only a matter of seconds before we were all dead and they rained down another attack at the high-rise to get Oksana-Susana back.
Maybe it was better that Santos stayed back, who knew if they would attempt another strike on us. Now that we knew someone on the inside was feeding them intel, we could use the rat to manipulate whatever outcome we wanted this way.
Ronan’s jaw clamped tightly as Dez went over the plan for the fifteenth time in the car ride, but he nodded his head and breathed through his anger instead of taking it out on our lawyer.
We’d be patted down once we got inside, so we couldn’t do this with weapons, we had to do it their way.
Taylor was in the lab waiting patiently for the text to wire over funds to the Swedish bank account, so all we needed now was to see our girl and make the purchase.
Dezmond Archer Junior and I made our way through the club, first going through an extensive pat-down process, followed by a metal detector wand.
They checked the list for his name, and once he was confirmed they let us through the strip club.
Tacky red velvet lined the floors, and a royal purple fabric covered every booth and chair in the room.
There was an elevated runway that ran down the center of the room, and cocktail tables had been set up on either side of it.
Expensive-looking men sat at every booth, most with masks covering their faces, and I wondered if we fucked up, coming in exposed.
It was too late to worry about it now, we just needed to find Cecilia and get the fuck out.
Scantily dressed women passed each table and took requests for drinks. Dez placed an order to keep the illusion of normality, but I waved her off when she got to me. She raised her eyebrows like I was making a big mistake, so with a heavy sigh of defeat I gave in to her demands.
“Tonic and lime,” I said, wondering if she’d honor it, or if the drink was going to come back spiked. Obviously, they preferred their business transactions to happen with a cloudy head and a foggy mind, but I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
I tipped my chin towards Dez in approval, a signal for him to continue drinking as he kept the pretense up in case someone was watching us.
I stirred my drink, watching the ice cubes clink against each other.
I was unwilling to test even a sip of it in case there was booze, or something stronger lacing it.
Once every rich fucker in the room was on their second or third drink, the lights in the room turned off completely and a bright white spotlight shone on the stage. A voice boomed out from somewhere behind the curtains announcing the auction was about to begin.
I curled my fist anxiously and released my fingers over and over again as each girl stumbled onto the stage with a look of stupor that let me know they had been drugged to oblivion prior to this. They were young, barely a few years older than Andrea had been when my father killed her.
It was taking every ounce of personal restraint to not stand up and kill every mother fucker in the building for having a part in this horror show. Dez cleared his throat and shook his head at me in a silent warning, as if he knew exactly what was going through my mind at that moment.
I started to wonder if I had been the right man for the job as each victim stumbled through the stage until their new owner claimed them for themselves. My mind couldn’t help but go to that dreary place where nightmares lived side by side with my own memories.
I curled my fingers tightly against the glass in my hand while I waited for each girl to get auctioned off and escorted from the stage. As the night slowly dragged on, panic began to creep in. There couldn’t be that many left, so, where was she?
Was I too late?
My mind was already running through every worst-case scenario that could have happened.
Maybe she had already been sold, or worse, she was dead.
I pressed my fingers to my temple to relieve the incoming migraine and hoped to God I was wrong.
“The next one is a special treat,” said the voice behind the curtains through the microphone and every hair on my body stood up. “She’s a little older, but this exotic beauty is a fighter if you’re looking for someone to go a few rounds with.” He laughed out and confirmed what I already knew.
My girl with skin like sunshine was next.
Head in the game. I thought to myself as I waited for Cecilia to come out on the stage.
Someone pushed her through the fabric, and she stumbled forward, falling but unable to crash down on the floor as a makeshift leash held her up and she floated, choking in mid-air.
I immediately recognized the piece of shit with the bulldog face who destroyed my instruments.
He pulled her to her feet while the other hand stayed tightly around the leash that fastened on her neck.
Cecilia's head wobbled and her body swayed, I knew she was too far gone to even realize what was happening to her at that moment. Anger wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed, unlike Ronan I didn’t thrive from it, I survived in spite of it.
My fury was the only thing that made me feel truly out of control in my own body.
It reminded me of my piece of shit old man, and so for some reason I thought that if I could keep myself from getting to that place, that I wouldn’t turn into him.
But at that moment, the rage curdled my blood as her eyes squinted from the spotlight blinding her vision and the ugly piece of shit nudged her forward another step.
The bidding paddles flew up and my eyes went wide at how many buyers had been waiting for someone just like her to be brought out.
These sick fucks got off on girls like Cecilia, the ones who didn’t give up, the ones who put up a fight before they forced them to give them what they wanted with violence and pain.
I kicked Dez under the table and he lifted up the paddle to get our bid in. One by one, paddles came down as the price increased, but it didn’t matter if it drained every bit of our finances. We would leave here with her, even if it made me a poor man.
At a million and a half, the last paddle went down, and I sighed an anxious breath of relief out of winning her away from the savagery of the men in this room. Dez nodded to me and got up to complete the transaction, I texted Taylor to let her know the purchase would be going down.
I followed him into a small office room where I stood back, continuing to play the part of his lackey as he hashed away the financial portions of the deal with a masked man sitting at a laptop. I feigned disinterest to keep up the charade and did my best to look away the entire time.
Once the wire was completed, he led us through a narrow hallway and unlocked a room where Cecilia stood with a dark bag over her head in nothing but underwear.
Her wrists were handcuffed behind her, and a giant scarred-up motherfucker held her by what I could now see was a leather belt secured against her throat.
I pumped my fingers in and out again and I twitched my nose, knowing we were only a few moments away from getting out of here. I couldn’t let my impulsive behavior fuck it all up when we had gotten so far, when she was so close to being free. Ronan would no doubt kill me if I fucked this one up.