Chapter 46 Celia
CELIA
Istared at the ceiling in the plainly decorated extra bedroom on the other side of the penthouse while I laid in bed.
Another dream of Caro blending with my time in captivity haunting me back awake.
I told Ronan I needed space and he didn’t fight me on it, it seemed like he wasn’t fighting me on anything anymore.
It was slightly uncomfortable to see him submitting to every wish or demand I made, and I knew it was the guilt eating him alive.
I’d have to let it go eventually, I loved him too much, and this behavior wasn’t sustainable. I didn’t fall in love with a doormat, I fell in love with a man who pushed me to my limits and kept every spark inside of me alive.
My time with the Bratva was still proving to have temporary lingering effects as I continued to wake every two to three hours, gasping for air when the water would splash me awake through my nightmares.
Except for this time, it was the dream with my sister again, the one where everything is pitch black, but I can hear Carolina’s desperate cries and the sounds of bullets ripping through her little body as the cars drove away.
I knew I could easily sneak my way into Mateo’s room if I really wanted to, and even worse I knew that sleeping next to Ronan would likely soothe all of my anxiety and fears that played in my mind on repeat.
As much as I thought I needed to be alone, I couldn’t lie, it was terrifying to be only a few feet away from their protection.
It felt like miles.
But I was dead set on making Ronan earn his forgiveness even if my heart screamed “liar” at me.
The insecure part of me that went unloved for far too long, was starting to feel like I was suffocating Mateo in his own space.
I’d slept in his room every night since I’d come back here.
That was really the main reason I fought to take over this room.
But even as I ignored the pain in my back, staring into the nothing, I wondered if alone was really something I could handle anymore.
I spent so many years fending for myself, so many years on the run, being the only person that I could count on.
Now for some reason being alone felt like torture.
There was also the nagging thought that’d been consuming me ever since Santos put that gun to my back.
Did I somehow lose the only friend I ever truly had since my sister?
It was always at these odd hours of the night that I could count on Santos being awake, playing some video game in our janky old apartment.
How the sounds of zombie hoards and machine guns on the PlayStation could always lull me back to sleep was a mystery, but I never thought too much to question it.
We were living in different times now, and my best friend couldn’t even stand the sight of me anymore.
His unsteady breathing alerted me to his presence, and I turned my head to find him sitting in the white leather chair in the corner of the room as if I’d conjured him up out of my own twisted thoughts.
“Come here often?” I tried to joke, but even in the darkness, I could see the scowl etched deeply into his features.
“Get dressed,” he said coldly.
Oh, it’s that mood.
Here we fucking go again.
I was wearing pajama shorts and a top, and if he was going to threaten to kill me again, I really didn’t want to bother with putting on different clothes for the ceremony. He pushed himself off the chair, stumbling towards me and I tilted my head at him in confusion.
“Are you okay? You reek of booze dude,” I laughed but even shit faced his reflexes were on point and he immediately had his gun pressed underneath my chin, lifting my head up to look at him.
“Don’t fuck with me Morena.”
“Santos,” I breathed, “There’s no clip in your gun.
” I whispered out the obvious fact, he was holding half a weapon in his hand and was in no way threatening to me at all.
“But I’ll go wherever you want me to.” I blinked up at him, wrapping my wrist around as much of his forearm that it could and he curled his lip, his anger only rising the more I kept my cool.
He was drunk, and on a downward trajectory. This entire week had been hell without having him to confide in, to talk to, to tell me that everything was going to be okay because we’d get through it together.
He pushed past me and walked over to the night stand next to my bed, opening the drawer and pulling out another pistol.
Good to know. Apparently, if I want a gun, I just need to open a drawer.
“Hands,” he said, and I sighed a heavy exhale before giving them to him.
He secured the zip tie around my wrists fast, taking me by surprise.
Every part of me quickly wanted to protest and fight back, my red flags were raising high, but it was Santos.
If there was anyone I trusted in this world to keep me safe, it was still him.
Wasn’t it?
“Let’s go,” he tapped me with the mouth of the weapon, and I slid on the fuzzy slippers Mateo bought for me, before opening the bedroom door. Once we got to the elevator, he pressed the ‘G’ and I turned to look at him.
“Not going up this time?” I asked, but he didn’t answer, like looking at my face was somehow going to piss him off further.
The elevator took its time making its way down each and every floor of the high-rise until we reached the parking garage.
The humidity rushed its way through the doors of the lobby like a suffocating blanket I couldn’t pull off and it became hard to breathe.
“Where are we going?” I asked him, forcing the crease between his brows to become more prominent. He took the black bandana out of his back pocket, folding it into a thin flat shape before wrapping it over my open mouth and tying it behind my head, keeping me gagged and unable to speak.
This wasn’t right.
A tear pricked its way out of my left eye, and I quickly brought my bound hands up to wipe it away.
“Walk,” he pushed me, causing me to trip over my feet and fall on the rough concrete of the parking garage. He huffed and grabbed me by the arm, lifting me up to my feet again and we both walked. I kept my gaze down as we walked, unsure if there was anything I wanted to see anymore.
We walked through the damp garage, no sounds but the slow dripping of a nearby leaky pipe and the tapping of our feet against the concrete.
“No shit, that pretty little cocksucker is what all this trouble is about?” I lifted my head to see the old creep who called himself Dezmond Senior leaning against the trunk of a black Range Rover and my heart nearly stopped.
“No questions. Can you get rid of her, or not?” His voice was colder and rougher than I'd ever heard before. This wasn’t a Santos I knew, every sane part of me told me I should be scared and every muscle in my body was shaking from fear, no, not fear.
His betrayal was quickly settling in, and anger was taking the place of the panic that wanted to rise inside me.
“And what do you get out of this?” He asked Santos.
“No questions,” he repeated in the same solemn tone.
“Well, what do I get out of this then?” The bold Archer continued to ask questions, despite the fact Santos looked close to putting him six feet under.
“What do you get? How about when Ronan finds out you’ve been consorting with the Bratvas, I’ll let you go far enough away from here that you don’t hear your son’s skin being fileted from his limbs piece by piece.
” His nostrils flared wildly, and his chest rose and fell heavily with his breathing as Dezmond Senior’s eyes widened in shock.
“There must be some mistake, I-” Archer tried to backpedal but Santos quickly interrupted him.
“Call your contact. Now!” He waved his gun at the old man’s face and with trembling hands he pulled his phone out and made the call.
“An-O…” I tried to call out his name, but the bandana gagging me got in the way.
He turned sharply to face me while Dezmond Senior made the call.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry Cecilia.
I wouldn’t be doing this if there was another option.
” I had so many questions, and my biggest fear wasn’t the unknown future I was headed towards right now, it was the possibility I wouldn’t be getting an answer.
If the Bratva were involved there was a good chance I was going straight back into the hell I just came from. I reached out to him with my bound hands, but he stepped back and pushed them down with his own.
“The Cártel wants you dead, which means Los Muertos put a hit out on you. Either you die by my hand, or you die by someone else’s, but you will die Morena.
If I don’t get you out of here, the entire Brotherhood goes down with you.
I can’t have that.” His eyes went soft with his explanation, and I wished to God, he hadn’t given it to me.
It would have been much simpler to do this with hatred in my heart instead of the sympathy I now felt for him.
I would have thrown myself to the wolves too.
Hell, if he cut me free, I would probably go willingly. I’d known enough about the way the dynamic between Santos and his cousin worked to understand, I was endangering every life inside that building by staying here.
This was a message from my tio.
There was nowhere, or no one, I would be safe with.
And no one would be safe from me either.
Not until one of us was dead.
I nodded my head in understanding at him, the terror starting to lift its way off me as I remembered the piece of comfort buried under my skin. His plan would only last as long as it took for Ronan to find me again.
He would find me again.
Right?
Had I caused too much damage? Had I put too much of a distance between us?
Maybe it was time I just accepted my fate.
Maybe I could look at the situation with the Bratva as an opportunity, they could sell me to someone and perhaps that was the best way for me to finally disappear from my tio’s radar.