Chapter 53 Elena
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
elena
Tears of pain and humiliation blind me as I realize I don’t have a ride. I rode here with him. To talk, he’d said. But something told me if Carly Rae or whatever the hell her name was hadn’t outed him, he might never have told me about the other night.
But then, I hadn’t exactly asked.
My stupid heart already wants to make excuses for him.
But it feels like I’m not being fair. I told him we were nothing, to go hook up with someone else.
I guess I didn’t expect him to literally run out and take me up on it. But then I knew how I’d met him. How I’d ended up pregnant by him.
I wasn’t special. Just the idiot that forgot to take her birth control and put too much faith in a condom.
Maybe this was for the best.
Once the pain subsides, I’ll tell him I overreacted, and we can be friends. Co-parent our child as amicably as possible.
Besides, I need to focus. I need to get in touch with someone who can be trusted at the FBI or the DEA or whoever handles guys like Diego and figure out how to bring him down sooner than later.
Isaac and his family would be in danger until he was behind bars.
In a way, this was my out. I knew it and I took it.
But I’m wiping my tears and formulating a plan to let Isaac think I’m still angry, so I can get a hotel room and get in touch with my Uncle Emilio.
He’s my father’s brother and has been a cop for as long as I can remember.
He’ll know what to do, who I can contact to report Diego’s threats and illegal activities.
I’m still sniffling and ignoring Isaac calling my phone over and over as I pull up directions to the Wayfarer Inn.
It’s going to suck donkey balls, sorry Jasper, to stay in the hotel where Isaac and I had our first night together, but I can’t go back to the ranch. Not now.
Maybe not ever.
I’m so distracted trying to follow the Maps app walking directions, I don’t hear the SUV crawling along beside me until it’s too late. From the corner of my periphery, it whips around in front of me, tires screeching on pavement as it blocks the alleyway I was about to cross.
“Found you, little mouse,” Diego’s voice says as he emerges from the back as if he was being chauffeured around.
This motherfucker.
I glare at him as my heart rate triples. “What are you doing here?”
“I warned you what would happen if you didn’t come home to me.” He voices the threat in a sickeningly sweet sing-song voice.
“I’m leaving him, Diego,” I blurt out, panicking. “I’m on my way to a hotel right now. No need to do anything dramatic.” I wave my phone at him to show him the open directions app. I contemplate chucking it at his head, but then I have a better idea.
I press the button I use to record when I’m running lines and pray my battery is charged. I’m not great about remembering to plug my phone in.
He scratches his goatee as another man encircles me from behind. Where the hell did he come from?
These assholes have no idea how many years I’ve been practicing Krav Maga.
“Get in the truck, Elena,” Diego taunts me like he’s coaxing a child.
A child.
Oh God.
My child.
The thought of fighting back flees from my mind.
I can’t fight these men. I can’t risk that one of them will injure me badly enough to hurt my baby.
I nod. Overly animated but I can’t help it. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should’ve listened.”
The words taste like lies and sound like them, too. So much for my acting skills.
Diego smirks like he knows I’m full of shit.
Fight or flight kicks in and I check the area for possible exits but I’m being herded.
Thanks to Rowdy and Blue, I recognize the behavior.
A pang of sadness strikes me in the chest when I realize I might never see them again. I text five words to Isaac as quickly as I can in hopes they’ll make sense. Or he’ll at least get closure if I never see him again either.
The thought brings moisture to my eyes. But before I have time to process the pain or plan an escape route, everything goes black.
Cold leather sticks to my cheek as I drift toward consciousness. My head pounds. My stomach rolls.
“. . . too bad the boys who took the dad out didn’t get the sons too,” a low voice says from the front.
Laughter follows, sharp and cruel.
It takes me a minute to figure out why that rings a bell.
Took the dad out . . . whose dad was taken out?
The answer comes even though my head is spinning.
Isaac’s.
Jack Logan was murdered. He’s the dad they’re referring to.
My blood turns to ice.
I keep my breathing slow, as I begin silently searching for my phone. My fingers brush against smooth plastic wedged in the no-man’s-land between the seat and the center console. The vortex of hell every dropped thing disappears into.
That’s just fucking fantastic. But I can see from here that the red light is still glowing. The app is still recording.
I stay still, heart pounding, trying to catch every word.
“We’ll make them wish they stayed out of it,” another voice says.
Diego’s voice is flat, emotionless when he says, “If any of them try to follow us, shoot them in the fucking head.”
I inhale sharply. Audibly.
A shift in the air tells me I’ve been made.
“Well, look who decided to join us,” Diego says, voice suddenly syrupy and sickeningly sweet. The click of metal is unmistakable. My eyes snap open.
A gun barrel hovers inches from my face.
“Welcome back, little mouse.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Now that you’re awake, we’ll swing by the Logan place, grab your things, and let that cowboy know you’re mine once and for all—so he doesn’t make the fatal mistake of coming to look for you and his spawn.”
I stare at him, my pulse a drumbeat in my ears. My hand shifts just slightly against the seat seam, praying the recording keeps going.
Because even if me and our unborn child don’t make it out of this, I hope someday Isaac will know everything.
The truth about what happened to his father.
That I didn’t want to leave him.
That I love him.