Chapter 1
1
A Few Weeks After Dare’s Wedding
Tia was asleep, her cheek on my belly, her silky oats and honey-scented hair fanned out across the chest tattoo that bared her name and displayed her symbol. An owl on an olive branch. Wisdom. Forgiveness. Thinking about the symbolism made my gut churn, go sour.
My left hand was tangled in her hair and I was staring at the ring that sat on my finger. Gold and black. Light and dark. Good and evil. Right now, there was more black than gold to me because I’d spent a sleepless night plotting. Plotting the next moves that had to be made. It all went round and round in my brain all fucking night long.
Take down Kruna, being the fucking gophers for the goddamn Feds without getting ourselves killed.
That fucking Zack.
If I had my way, when this was over, the footnote would be a gaping hole in his forehead. Dare was acting like he was leaning toward giving Zack a pass. I didn’t fucking think so.
Bastard didn’t earn my trust overnight. He worked at it, the motherfucking liar. And he’d pay for fucking us over. I never forgot betrayal.
We had to first confirm and then if she was there, (I suspected she was), get Angel’s sister Holly back from Alessandro Romero’s hellhole down in Mexico. Zack said he had it on good authority that this was where she was and it would be a tricky proposition. He wasn’t useless. A lying Fed motherfucker but he was resourceful.
Once he was done fact-finding, we’d have to find a way to get her back, knowing Romero knew what we’d done. We didn’t know him. We’d heard he was an ice-cold mother fucker and it stood to reason that he’d want me dead for killing his Uncle Juan Carlos and Dare dead for killing his brother Jesse. The cartel that I had a relationship with from the takedown of the Castillo cartel was something I didn’t relish the idea of calling on again. They’d helped me for what they’d get out of him being gone.
This time, if we needed their help, we’d be indebted to them and that would slow down our plan to distance ourselves from Pop’s world as much as humanly possible without it meaning we had to disappear into thin air to escape that shit.
I didn’t know much about Romero other than the fact he’d inherited his father’s business in pedaling flesh and in dealing guns. And my guys alerted me once or twice to the fact that people had compared us. I didn’t like that. I’d had people keep their ears to the ground, concerned Romero might set his sights on us after Jesse Romero was blown up.
Beyond this shit with Kruna and with Angel’s sister, we also had the launch of Ben Goldberg’s new project, Fete, and smarmy goof Leo Denarda was being a thorn in my side. This guy wanted in on the partnership, but I made my involvement contingent on him being kept out. Of course, he wasn’t happy. But he was a slimy asshole that I refused to associate with.
He didn’t take the news of his exclusion well and now he was trying to screw with us. And what’d started out as an annoyance had become more than a mere pain in my ass; like a mosquito trapped in a dark room with you.
My patience was not generous. If I found myself in a dark room with a mosquito and didn’t flush that fucker out within five minutes, I’d be tempted to blow the whole fucking room up.
My gut told me shit was becoming dangerous. It’d mean more enemies for us if we weren’t really fucking careful. He was already more hassle than he was worth. I’d talked about backing out, but my buddy John Lewis? Johnny needed the launch financially. He needed it to go well. He needed our help and it’d oust Leo once and for all. I had a feeling I’d need his help with some of the other shit on my plate. John was mostly clean but well-connected and respected. He was an ally and he was a good friend. I’d get to help him out and stick it to Leo Denarda at the same time.
I had to accomplish all of this without putting Tia and my unborn baby at risk. Do it all without losing precious time watching her pregnancy bloom. I couldn’t fucking wait to see her huge, to watch her waddle, to feed her pickles and ice cream or whatever she craved.
So far, all she was craving was my cock. And sleep. All she wanted was fucking and sleeping. Talk about a dream come true…
I needed to get through all this shit while keeping my own demons at bay and those demons were nagging at me with all this goddamn stress.
My tattoo. Forgiveness and wisdom. Maybe it wasn’t wise, but I wasn’t feeling all that forgiving right now. Zack had snowed us with this Kruna shit. I told Dare to just keep his girl and forget Kruna existed. Let the lawyers deal with shit. I told John Lewis that Denarda was just an annoying little gnat, but his uncle finally croaked and Denarda somehow had the stones to make a few key moves before word got out about his uncle’s death and so he now had more power.
He’d ruffled feathers throughout Vegas and beyond and that would work to our advantage because we’d have help taking him down if we needed it. And I had a feeling we would.
I just had to be careful what kind of help I solicited because I didn’t want to owe too many of a certain type of people favors.
And it was feeling like it was all coming to a head. Like a zit about to pop. A big zit filled with ugly shit that’d ooze over all of us.
Dare wanted to be clean, wanted us to be legit. For the girls. For our future kids. For the rest of the family. I guess I wanted the same; I don’t even know. I’m still having somewhat of an existential crisis. I don’t like the idea of letting go of the connections, the fire power in case we need it. Shit has been so amped for so long, it feels like we’ll always need it.
What I did know is that more than anything, I wanted to watch my wife’s belly grow. Dare wanted to put a dozen babies in his wife’s belly. They’d just gotten married, but he said she was off birth control and they wanted to get pregnant immediately.
But, we had a fucking war ahead of us. A war with more than one enemy. So, I’d have to play dirty. If I had to channel all the dirty, evil shit I’d been fighting to keep at bay, all that I’d inherited from my father in order to clean all this up? So be it.
If I had to hang onto the reins of the crime empire I’d inherited a bit longer so that I have the firepower and connections to see my way through this shit, I’d do it. I’d get as dirty as I had to. I’d get so dirty it’d make Pop smile and say, “That’s my boy.”
Dare and his new wife were going on their honeymoon, so I needed to focus as everything was on my shoulders for the moment. Their wedding had happened fast and I didn’t blame him. Mine happened pretty damn fast, too. When a Ferrano man wants a woman, evidently, he doesn’t pull any punches.
I carefully extracted myself from the bed without waking Tia. She was the only person I knew who could sleep sixteen hours and then go back to bed ten hours later. The pregnancy was making her want to do nothing but sleep. And she was horny as fuck. I was not complaining.
She didn’t look pregnant yet, except her tits looked bigger, fuller. A nice side effect. But she complained they hurt, so I kissed them better at every opportunity.
Her tits aside, nothing seemed different. But everything was different at the same time. I couldn’t wait to see what it would look like. I couldn’t wait to meet this piece of us, this piece of her and me and of what had started out as an unholy union because it came from a place of greed and vengeance. It was already something beautiful, because of all she gave me, and now it would be more. Much more.
I could not wait until she was huge, knowing I made her that way. The ultimate power; to change a woman’s life like that? Tie her to you forever. It made her yours in even more ways. Getting her pregnant? Changing her life so monumentally? It made me feel like a king.
Today wasn’t going to be a good day to be king. I had to fly out to Vegas to meet with Johnny Lewis and Ben Goldberg. The best I could hope for was that it’d be productive. All sorts of shit swirled around this Fete project and it was getting more and more unpleasant by the day.
When I got out of the shower, I heard my phone ringing from the nightstand. She was sleeping right through it despite the blaring noise right by her head.
I glanced at the screen. Zack Jacobs. The guy I trusted. Fuck that lying Fed rat motherfucker. I declined the call. I spotted the pup halfway under the blankets with Tia. His nose poked out of the covers.
“Dog!” I clipped. He was sniffing the air, nose protruding a little more from the blankets.
“Marley,” I growled.
The covers started moving as his tail thumped slowly. He knew he wasn’t allowed in the bed. Smart dog, too, because he also knew she’d let him away with it when I wasn’t there. She put a dog bed in the corner of the room and the little fucker jumped in bed with her as soon as I left it every day.
“Out,” I told him and he jumped down and slunk away, back to his own bed.
“Tia.” I leaned over and kissed her bare shoulder. She was sleeping in the buff.
“Mphf,” she grunted.
“Baby girl…”
Her beautiful jade eyes opened and she smiled at me.
“Morning,” she said. “Mm. Suit porn,” she added with a little stretch, her eyes doing a sweep of me.
I chuckled. “You finish packing for me? Suitcase is wide open. Anything else need to go in?”
“Nope, it’s ready. Zip ‘er up. You going? I’ll get up.”
“No, stay here; it’s early. I’ll call you when I land. Have fun doin’ your girls’ night.”
“Mkay.” She puckered her gorgeous full lips for a kiss.
“Be a good girl,” I told her and leaned over and touched my mouth to hers. I went to move away but she had my hair.
“You got ten minutes?” she asked, her voice husky.
“Five. If that,” I told her.
“Quickie? You can do a lot with five minutes.”
“Baby, I don’t think so. Gotta zip up that suitcase, grab a coffee, hit my office for shit I’ve gotta bring. Nino’s probably outside already.”
“Aww,” she pouted.
“Tia, I fucked you twice last night. You’re that hungry for my cock already?”
“Mm hm.” She stretched and the blankets slid down, revealing her tits.
Fuck.
She looked at me and smiled, seeing where my eyes were. She circled a nipple with her index finger and I watched it pucker up tight. My cock rose to attention.
“Baby, you’re lucky you’re carrying my baby or I’d throw you over my knee for being such a sassy little vixen when I’ve got to go.”
“You can still throw me over your knee. Gently. The throwing part. Spank my butt as hard as you want. Just as long as I get your you-know-what for a couple minutes.”
“I’m not spanking you,” I told her.
“Even if I’m very, verrrry naughty?” She pedaled her feet until she’d kicked the blankets way down and then she spread her legs and trailed her fingers down until she got her middle and ring fingers of her right hand down there and they disappeared between her folds.
I felt a rumble come up. She’d started out bashful about touching herself in front of me. Not since I married her and especially not since I knocked her up, though. I glanced at the time on the phone. Her left hand went to her tit and she squeezed it. The diamonds in her wedding rings sparkled.
Fuck it. If anyone could get me there on time it’d be Nino. I tossed the phone onto the nightstand.
“Knees. Now,” I demanded as I undid my belt and then my suit pants. She smirked triumphantly as she turned over and rose, presenting me with her cute little ass. I grabbed her thigh in one hand, and her throat in the other, and then got her earlobe in my mouth as I slammed inside, to the root, feeling no resistance whatsoever. She was like hot silk.
Fuck.
She groaned and tightened her pussy around me.
I let go of her thigh and started working her clit, driving in fast and hard.
She whimpered and started circling her hips, rearing back against me.
“Fuck, you feel good, baby,” I told her. “Who do you belong to?”
“You, Tommy. You. Ah!”
“Yeah, you naughty girl. And since I’m late, if you don’t hurry up and come, I’m doin’ it without you. I need to go. Come quick for me, baby girl.” I gave her a playful little slap.
“It’s okay, if you don’t, I’ll finish myself off after you g-go,” she panted.
I just about came right then.
“I don’t fuckin’ think so. I get you off. Every time. Don’t I?”
“Yeah,” she said, “Every time.”
“So, come for me, babe; fuckin’ hurry. And when I get home, I’m watching you make yourself come five times in a row.” I gave her pussy a little slap and then tweaked her clit harder.
“Ah!” She was starting to circle faster.
My phone made a sound and that briefly brought my mind back to the trip and the surrounding bullshit and before I started to lose my hard-on, I looked down at her sweet ass, at her back, bowed in front of me, and let go of her throat so I could grab her tit. Sensation built, starting at my spine.
She made a weird sound.
I slowed.
Her body heaved forward a little and then she gagged.
“Tia?”
“Unf.” She scrambled away from me and ran for the bathroom, her hand over her mouth.
And then I heard her puking.
I was on my knees on the bed, my dick hanging out and my wife was naked, hurling into the toilet, the door wide open. I could see her small feet with pink toenails and her bare ass from where I was.
I shook my head, got to my feet, and put the beast away. With the sound of her puking, the beast didn’t really mind.
I wandered into the walk-in closet and zipped up my suitcase and carried it out to put it by the door. I heard her flush the toilet, so I went into the bathroom and she was sprawled and half laying on the toilet seat. She looked grey.
“You done puking?” I asked.
She nodded. “I think so.”
I got to the sink and wet a washcloth and crouched down and wiped her forehead and cheeks and then she took it from me and put it over her mouth. She gave me big apologetic eyes.
I scooped her up into my arms and carried her back to the bed.
“I’ll go get you some water. Crackers?”
She nodded.
I kissed her forehead and went down and got a glass of ice water and a sleeve of crackers and brought them up. Her eyes were closed.
“Tia?”
Her eyes opened.
“Here, baby. You want me to take a later flight?”
She sat up and I fed her some water. I fetched one of my plaid shirts from the closet and helped her into it as she replied.
“No. I’ll just sleep a bit. It was like this yesterday. The crackers helped. I’ll be okay.”
I let out a huff, not feeling great about the idea of leaving her.
“It’s okay, baby,” she waved it off, her too-long sleeve flopping. “I read that morning sickness is a sign of high hormone levels. This is probably a good thing, means things are going like they’re supposed to. Even if it feels like a shit thing. I’m sorry.”
“Naw, don’t be sorry.” I hit Sarah Martinez’s contact details. “Just grow our baby strong. I’ll survive.”
He was on the phone.
“Sarah, I’m headin’ out. Tia’s got morning sickness. Can you check on her in an hour? She’s in bed.”
My stomach roiled again, and I felt that acid rising and bubbling in the back of my throat. I scrambled out of bed and ran for the bathroom again. I needed to pee, too, but I needed to puke more.
He called in, “You need me?”
“No. Go, honey. I’ll – unf,” I gagged, “I’ll be okay.”
I felt his presence behind me. He pulled my hair back and kissed my temple.
“Love you.”
“Love you. Call me later.” And then I rested my cheek on my hand and dry heaved again.
He was still standing there.
“Go, honey. It’s okay.”
He didn’t want to leave me like this. He probably didn’t want to leave me at all. He was still very protective. But he was trying.
I had company lined up for while he’d be away. Tonight, I was having my foster sisters over. Tomorrow night, I was staying over with the girls a few doors down at Lisa’s and Tessa’s. He’d either be back the day after that or Sarah would come stay over until he got home. He didn’t want me alone all night. Beyond the company I’d had planned, he also had people patrolling the property.
“I’ll get Sarah here now.”
“It’s okay, Tommy.”
“Sarah, can you come over? She’s puking a lot and I don’t wanna leave her alone.” He’d ignored me and called her anyway.
“Go catch your … (gag) …flight,” I insisted, but he gave me a look.
When the puking stopped, I’d managed to go pee and brush my teeth. As I was coming out, he met me at the door and lifted me up again and got me back to bed where he held me and stroked my back and my hair. He left only after Sarah arrived and that meant he’d missed his flight, but he waved it off as no big deal, saying there was another one shortly.
She made me some warm citrusy drink with ginger in it, forced me to take a few sips, and was gonna hang out downstairs until I felt better.
“Want me to make up some meals for your freezer, Chiquita?”
“No, please. I can’t stand the thought of the smell of food cooking.”
There was also the fact that my freezer was full already, having no less than six lasagnas and an assortment of other meals that she’d sent over. It was her mission in life to keep everyone in the family away from sugar but with freezers filled with food.
I was still early in my pregnancy, but I guess my comment the other day about feeling great, other than sore boobs and feeling sleepy, had been a jinx against myself. I’d been fine until yesterday.
Yesterday I threw up for two hours off and on. And he knew it. I’d been reading to him from my favorite pregnancy website and told him all about the morning sickness cures and how I’d stocked up on crackers and that was how he knew to bring me some. Today was feeling even worse than yesterday.
Tommy would be gone to Vegas for a few days and then we were talking about going to Costa Rica to spend a few days, pack up the rest of our things, and close up the house there.
We’d planned to do it right after Dare’s wedding, but Tommy had some work stuff come up, so it’d been put off. Tommy decided to buy it for us to keep as a vacation house.
I’d asked about whether or not that was a good idea or a waste of money and maybe we should at least rent it out while we weren’t using it and he’d laughed at me and told me money was not a worry and no way would he want anyone else staying in our house, sleeping in our bed.
Money had always but always been a worry to me, and I wasn’t accustomed to it being available in abundance. I doubted I’d ever take it for granted.
I’ve been looking forward to having a sleepover with Beth, Mia, and Ruby. They didn’t know that I was pregnant; I was going to tell them that night. I’d had all these plans for awesome snacks and girlie/baby movies (Look Who’s Talking, Baby Geniuses, Knocked Up, etc.) and I hoped I felt well enough to get out of this bed. Morning sickness sucked.
The first weeks of married life weren’t exactly bliss. Being married to Dare was bliss, waking up in his arms, how he made love to me and was so caring and nurturing… definitely amazing.
But, my thoughts were all over the place where my sister was concerned. The day after our wedding, my first official day as Mrs. Dario Ferrano, wasn’t easy. My new husband told me, in our honeymoon suite, that my little sister Holly was missing.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the news that my sister was gone. Had I broken for nothing if it never even saved her? No, not nothing. If I hadn’t broken, I wouldn’t have lived to become Dare’s.
Dare said, at first, that they had a lead on where she might be. But then he started backtracking with me and said he wasn’t 100% sure if Kruna had let Holly go and she’d run away or if they’d kept her or sold her. He tried to talk calmly, asking me to not jump to conclusions. He was still working on figuring out what happened.
I tried not to tell myself that his backpedaling was that he was sparing my feelings until we knew for sure, but then I decided that he knew best. I was trusting him to handle things. I had no choice; I didn’t have the strength to process this in the natural way.
He promised to find out what happened to her. When he said he thought his private eye might know where she was, he asked me if I wanted to be kept abreast of things as discoveries were made.
“Would it be terrible if I just left that up to you?” I had asked him.
He looked thoughtful for a minute. When he kept watching me, mulling it over, so I explained.
“All this time I wanted to believe that what I’d done, going along with them and not fighting, was keeping her safe. Now to find out that she’s missing? That she’s been missing all this time? I don’t know if I can process that. If I try…”
My whole body started to shake.
He took me into his arms. “I’ve got you,” he said and cupped my face. And he admitted he didn’t know for sure whether his lead was solid. I had a feeling he was backpedaling to settle me down, but maybe I needed to live in that state of denial, or maybe a state of hope.
Before Dare, I’d had no hope. He gave it to me when he rescued me from Kruna.
Hope. Yeah, I’d hope. He taught me it was okay to hope. Even just a little.
“Maybe they don’t have her, Dare. Maybe she ran away. Maybe she ran away to Uncle Charlie and Aunt Betsy’s and is living on my farm.”
“Maybe,” he said but he said it guardedly. “But baby, even if you hadn’t cooperated, nothing would be different. Except maybe they wouldn’t have let you live. Whatever has happened, you did the only thing you could do.”
I nodded but deflated. “I don’t know if she’s been raped and murdered, is living as a sex slave, or if she’s living with my horses, trying to find out what happened to me and living thinking I’m dead. I don’t know if I can handle this. Dare. Master, I…” I started to feel the panic rise. “But if she did escape, she would’ve looked for me and your private eye would’ve found that out by now, right?”
“Stop.” His hand gripped the back of my neck tighter, not painfully but with surety; it was reassuring.
I let out a breath and felt my body calm. It was becoming an unwritten rule for us that when I called him Master, he knew that’s who I needed him to be. I’d been doing it less and less often and usually only in the middle of the night when I had a nightmare.
But now? With the knowledge that my sister, who would now be seventeen years old if she was alive, had been missing for two years? That she might not have been seen after I’d seen footage of her bound and gagged in a cargo plane, naked penises surrounding her?
She was turning 18 the day after Christmas, and I prayed to God that she would see that birthday somewhere on this planet and that she would see it free. Safe. Whole. Not raped. Not ruined. Not like me.
I hoped with all my heart and soul that she was with Charlie and Betsy. In her final year of high school. A cheerleader. Dating some sweet jock who looked at her like she made the sun rise every day. Because even in my darkest days back in Alaska and the even darker days in Kruna, Holly was such light, such purity, that I held onto the fact that the sun would want to rise, even if it was just for her.
“I’ve got this, okay? I’ll find out what’s happened and when I know, I’ll tell you.”
“Maybe that’s better,” I agreed.
“If you decide you want to know where things are at, at any time, you just ask me, my baby, and I’ll tell you. You are in control. If that means you give that control to me, I’ll hang onto it because you want me to. If that means you want it back, you tell me. Okay?”
I nodded.
“Maybe she went to Uncle Charlie’s. She knew of the place. I talked about it all the time. They’d take her in and treat her like family. I left her a bit of emergency money and had a copy made of one of my credit cards for her when I left. It was a MasterCard. Can you check that out? Can you get them to pull my bills? Maybe we can find out if she used the card. But don’t tell me anything Dare, until we know. I can’t. I can’t…”
“Shh, I’ll take care of all of it. I’ll take care of you, too.” He pulled me closer.
I felt so torn. Part of me wanted to slip into my new life as his wife and pretend nothing else existed. The horror was trying to sink in and part of me was so afraid that all had been for nothing, that Holly had been suffering as long as I had.
I felt like I was on the verge of breaking and I didn’t want to break, I wanted to be strong, for him, for me, for Holly, so I decided to let my husband lead. I decided to trust him with this, knowing with every ounce of me that he would handle things well and handle me with care.
It wouldn’t help me to torment myself right now. I’d been so fragile since we’d met. I couldn’t take this on. I had to trust him to find out what happened to my sister and I’d try really, really hard to not lose it in the meantime. When the truth was revealed, we’d go from there. I couldn’t blatantly hope, because my brain would run through the details over and over and let logic tell me that the chances were far too slim.
I also refused to simply think all was lost because I knew; I was living proof, that sometimes hope came when you thought it was impossible.
I would try to focus on what was in front of me and leave the rest of it to Dare. If I still was lucky enough to be his and didn’t have what I had in him, I’d never know about my sister anyway, because we’d never have delved into my other life, life before Thailand. I had to remember this and just put one foot in front of the other.
We had a honeymoon to go on. He told me he was going to find out about my sister for me and that in the meantime he wanted to make me happy. I was so lucky to have him. I’d never forget all he’d done for me. I wanted to make him happy, give him babies, make him laugh, be everything he needed.
“I know you won’t be able to put her totally out of your mind. I want you to just be what you need to be. Okay? Do you want to go on this trip? Or would you rather stay here while I figure this out?”
“I want to go on our honeymoon. I want to live while we figure this out. Is it selfish of me?”
I was weak and selfish and stupidly na?ve. I had to be. I couldn’t do anything else right now; common sense would destroy me, completely obliterate me.
“What would she want for you? What did you want for her while you were there?”
I took a deep breath. He was right. She’d want me to live. She’d want me to enjoy my new life, my new husband, after all I’d been through. I couldn’t forget her, but I’d try to live like she wanted me to live.
“I have people working on this. We’ll find out what happened, okay? And if she’s somewhere where we need to rescue her, that’s what we’ll do. If she’s safe and sound, we’ll find a way to safely connect. Keep our cover until that fuckin’ place is nothin’ but a distant memory for us.”
I prayed that rescue wasn’t what would need to happen, but I had to compartmentalize Holly right now until we knew more. If not, I’d wind up in the loony bin. And the loony bin, which might not be a bad idea for me, wasn’t an option because Kruna still existed and if they found out, the entire Ferrano family would be in danger. I was now lucky enough to be part of that family. I would never, ever want to put any of them in danger.
He wanted to take me to Italy and Iceland for our honeymoon. Dare wanted me to meet his mother and he wanted me to meet his Icelandic family, too.
I knew that despite my need to tuck her away somewhere safe in the back of my mind, Holly would creep into my thoughts until we found out what’d happened. It would take major effort to stop myself from obsessing.
I said a silent prayer that Mr. Frost and the others at Kruna had kept their promise to me and let her go and that she’d somehow made it to Charlie and Betsy.
I tried to ignore the nagging voice that told me that they were liars, that they were sick and sadistic human traffickers who would sell a gorgeous platinum blonde-haired blue-eyed teenaged beauty’s virginity with nobody left but an addict of a mother to worry about her to the highest bidder.
I talked to Lisa before we left for our honeymoon and she told me I was doing the right thing. I needed to live right here and right now. She told me to trust my husband when he said he’d find out about Holly.
“These guys, they have connections,” Lisa said. “Tom spent years building a network of people he could go to for any type of problem. Dario will find out what happened to her. It might not be good news, you have to be braced for that, but you’ll get answers.”
She was doing well, on the road to healing. She impressed me. I decided to be motivated by how together she seemed. She told me that the retreat she’d gone on had helped. She’d had counseling. She’d talked about what’d happened to her. She knew it was dangerous but felt she had no choice but to do it. So that she could move forward.
“I owe it to the people behind. You know? The ones still there, still trying to make it through every day.”
“The ones working on their A to B plan.”
Lisa inquired, “A to B?”
I explained my initial plan and told her that she’d inspired it.
And then I told her my story, how I’d found myself at Kruna. It wasn’t easy to tell that story. I felt like any moment they could burst in and take us back. But she was incredibly supportive.
“I saw him,” she said after I was finished telling my tale.
“Saw who?”
“Jason Frost.”
“At Kruna?” I asked.
“Of course at Kruna, he’d practically lived there before I left for the U.S. I’ve had the pleasure, if you get my drift. I mean at the retreat. I saw him in passing in a hallway when I was first being deposed. I guess they had him at the same facility. He’s might still be in protective custody there.”
I shuddered at the memory of Jason, at how messed up things were at the horse barn when we’d talked before guys from Interpol swooped in and took him. When Dare found out about the task force and Zack’s ulterior motives.
Thank God Jason hadn’t been able to purchase me after Donavan Frost died.
Stan Smith got ahold of me a couple days after our wedding to tell me that the Kruna partner summit had been rescheduled and it was happening in a few weeks, leaving us a little time to take the extended honeymoon I wanted to take. I would’ve said no ; I would’ve sent Stan. I fuckin’ wanted to say no . But, the bullshit with Zack and that task force wouldn’t make that easy.
Zack said they needed me to go gather more information for them. They wanted me to take my wife. I’d promised her they’d never hurt her again and the very concept of setting foot on that property would hurt her. It made me fuckin’ sick, the thought of making her lie her head there.
It also made me wanna go with all the fire power I could gather, even if it took every last dime I had, so I could get in there and just take the fuckers down.
She needed time to heal from all she’d been through. She should be able to do that, knowing that as my wife that shit would never touch her again.
She should be able to focus on trying to get pregnant. That was all she seemed to want right now, as evidenced by her wedding gift to me (removing her IUD), and what I wanted most was to honeymoon with her, take her on a vacation, give her reasons to smile, not to mention continuing to work hard on the baby-making.
But, she also had to face the fact that her sister was missing, and I knew she’d torment herself with that knowledge unless I took the lead and was strong for her. So, that’s what I would do.
She tried to paint on a smile for me. I decided I’d give us a short honeymoon to help her have something else to focus on, and then when we got back, we’d talk about Kruna. See where things were at with Holly, unless it was good news, because Angel needed blissful ignorance where Holly was concerned right now.
Zack told Tommy and I, on a conference call, that leads were now pointing more and more towards Alessandro Romero, but he wasn’t 100% sure yet, where she’d been sent after that. This was her last suspected location.
This did not sit well. Based on Zack’s initial intel, Tommy had first called his cartel contact, the one who helped Tommy take down Juan Carlos Castillo, because it looked like he’d gotten Holly and that she’d gone to a brothel that was partly owned by a sick fuck named Delgado, one of the Kruna partners.
When we got that initial intel from Zack, it was promising because if she was still alive, there was a good chance they would help us get her back. The cartel leader and his top men had a relationship with my brother, and if Holly was alive, they’d help us move mountains to broker a deal so that whoever had her would sell her back to us. And they’d do it behind a mask to stop Delgado from finding out. Or, if we were at risk of being made by Delgado, we’d find a way to take him out.
But, we found out that a deal had been made with Alessandro Romero for some girls, the timing matching up, and it was looking like Holly Mooney might have been a part of that deal. Young blonde virgin acquired through contacts of Delgado gets bounced a couple times until people lose track of her?
The young underage blonde who was said to be coming from the north (she was marked as having come from Northern Canada) had been added to a shipment of girls and we traced every girl but the blonde underage one. She vanished.
The odds of someone like that winding up with Angel’s sister? Unfortunately, the seedy underworlds our father operated in were incestuous that way and there were multiple criminal organizations linked with the partners of Kruna.
Her ending up with a guy who had plenty of reasons to hate us? Not good news for us.
If he had gotten ahold of her, she might now be anywhere. Or nowhere. And even if she was still alive, if he found out her sister was married to the guy who blew up his brother Jesse by booby trapping my safe house and leading him there? It might not go well for Holly. Or me.
The fact that Romero was doing business with the cartel who had taken over his uncle’s territory during a time when the rivalry had been very much alive was valuable information and it might work to our advantage.
That brewing hatred was one of the reasons that other cartel helped my brother take out Juan Carlos Castillo. Things were very political in Mexico and we were still fact-finding. I was glad Angel wasn’t demanding to be kept up to date on every detail. This would be a roller coaster for her emotions and the information was trickling slower than molasses uphill.