Chapter 5
5
I’d just woken up. I was wearing a pair of track pants and nothing else, standing in the kitchen trying to get my first mouthful of coffee into me.
Tia was in one of my shirts, sleeves rolled to her elbows, sitting at the table, munching on toast with peanut butter.
“God, I’m hungry today. I had two bowls of Sugar Crisp before this. I want pizza for dinner tonight, from Venetia. Oh, and what do you think about the name Bella for a girl?”
“Hm?” I was half-asleep, still.
“If we have a girl. Bella. Little baby Bella.” Her eyes were shining with hope but that didn’t occur to me immediately.
“I want her name to have meaning,” she continued.
“Uh, no.”
“No? Why? I think it’s beautiful. It means beautiful in Italian, doesn’t it?”
“A, I fucked a Bella. Twice. The second time was a mistake. Most annoying, grating voice I ever heard. B, we’re not havin’ a girl. Fuck that noise.”
Her face went sheet-white. She looked shocked for a second. And then her eyes narrowed, and I immediately realized my mistake. Shouldn’t talk before coffee. Fuck. Shouldn’t bring up someone I fucked. Ever. Terminator warning screen malfunction.
Her face then went red and shit started flying across the room. The saltshaker, pepper grinder thing, her napkin, the jar of peanut butter. And then the butter knife hit me right in the fuckin’ mouth before clanging to the floor, still covered in fuckin’ peanut butter.
My arms came up to protect my head and I barked,
“Whoa, Tia. Fuck!”
“You’re such a fucking asshole!” she screamed this at me and I heard the disjointed noise of the chair being shoved away before she ran from the room.
Shit.
I followed her upstairs and watched her slam the bathroom door.
“Tia?” I knocked on the door and then jiggled the doorknob. It was locked. “Open up.”
She didn’t answer me. I heard a bunch of shit being banged around in there.
The lock was a shitty bathroom door lock, so I unlocked it with my thumbnail in less than two seconds.
When I got the door open, her eyes were on me and they were on fire. She was pissed at me.
“The second time was a mistake? Only the second time?” she snapped.
“That was a dick thing to say. Wasn’t thinkin’, baby girl. I got a lotta shit on my mind, and–”
She came at me and gave me a shove against my bare chest with both of her palms. She didn’t budge me even a bit and I grabbed her wrists.
“Hey. Chill out.”
She tried to wrestle out of my arms, so I picked her up and carried her out and put her on the bed and pinned her down. Grunting, she tried to shove at me.
“Baby, give me a second to apologize.”
“Let me go. I don’t wanna hear it right now.”
“Tia, I’m sorry.” I put my mouth against her cheek as I said it. I rubbed my nose up her cheekbone. “Okay?”
She stopped struggling, but she was still pissed. I put my lips to her ear.
“I’m sorry. Anyone before you meant nothing. Not a fucking thing. You just threw me off when I was half asleep. I’m not sleepin’ well. I’m edgy.”
Her body relaxed a little bit but her eyes were still fiery.
I kissed her mouth and palmed her face. “I’m a dick. Forgive me.”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You can’t boss me to forgive you.”
“Yes, I can,” I insisted and started to kiss her neck, tracing the curve of it with my tongue.
She shivered and her breath quickened, but she was still trying to resist me.
“Forgive me,” I ordered and took one of her tits into my hand and squeezed, nibbling on her earlobe.
She shivered again, but she was trying to fight that pull. She was chewing on her juicy lower lip.
“I have to talk to you. After I fuck you. Gonna fuck you now.” I smiled against her lips.
She tensed up.
“You don’t want me to fuck you?” I asked.
“No. No, I don’t.” she said, turning her face away but I could feel her resolve melting against me.
“No?” I teased and grabbed her hair and used it to bring her mouth to mine again.
“Tommy, I can’t.”
“Hm?” I got a hand under the shirt, into her panties, and to her ass. I squeezed and tongued her throat.
“You don’t have to, because I can. You just gotta take what I have to give you.” I grinded against her.
“Tommy, I really don’t think I can. All I can think about is poor Tess, and–”
“I have news. She’s okay. She’s in Zack’s hands by tonight.”
“Huh?” She jerked back and looked at me, wide-eyed.
“We’ll go to Vegas tonight, meet with Zack, get Tessa.”
The rest of the tension and anger in her locked tight body melted away, totally forgotten with this news.
“She’s okay? Thank God. Oh my God, ohmygod!”
“She is now, but I don’t know what she’s been through.”
“Where was she?”
“Mexico. Nephew of Juan Carlos Castillo has her.”
Tia jolted.
“Someone else took her but he got her back as a goodwill offering to us. Long story, can’t get into it right now. I would’ve told you last night, but you were dead asleep. Pack for us? Shit for three, no make it five days, just in case. Something formal, too. We’ll need formal for the Fete opening so pack my black Boss tux. If you want, you can buy your dress there. Up to you.”
She stared at me.
“Sarah and Tessa’s boys are coming so Tess can see her boys right away. Talked to Sarah last night.”
“Uh, wait. Um…”
She looked stunned. I knew she was trying to absorb all the facts I’d just spewed, but she was also thinking about being in Mexico, when Earl Johnson had taken her from me and put her through that hell.
I rubbed her shoulders and kissed her forehead.
“Gotta stay there a few days. It’s strategic. She’ll need to see her boys so we’ll bring them and Sarah can look after them. I’ll get someone to bring racks of dresses in to the hotel for you two to go through, if you want?”
“I’m not going to the Fete opening.”
“Yeah, I need you on my arm. I want Tessa there, too. I’m booking a hotel suite for all of us to stay together and it’ll be under heavy security.”
“I want nothing to do with that. I’d rather just stay home. I also don’t even want you to go but whatever.”
“Huh? What’s all this?”
“If you have to do Vegas, can you do Vegas alone, please?”
“Because you’re worried you’ll be sick the whole time?”
“Because I don’t wanna go. How on earth can you expect your sister, after being kidnapped, to go to a sex club opening?”
“I need to be there; I need you with me. And it doesn’t matter the venue; it’s strategic.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t wanna get into it. It’s about who took her, why, and all that shit. You don’t need the details but her being there will send a message to the little fuck that took her.”
“Tommy,” I whined and rubbed my eyes.
“Tia, I need to fuckin’ know you’re okay. Do this for me.”
“Last time we were there, things were kind of rough.”
Understatement.
“It was rough, yeah. But it was also beautiful, baby girl. Vegas was where you told me you loved me that first time, where you told me you were mine. It’s also where I knew how important it was for me to fix what’s broken in me.”
My heart swelled. “You and me are both a little bit broken, Tommy. But we’re like puzzle pieces that fit together.” I linked my fingers with his and tightened them.
“You’re not a little broken, Tia. You’re ten times stronger than I am.” He kissed each of my knuckles and closed his eyes, pulling me tight to his warm body. “I’m sorry for being a dick this morning,” he said.
I nodded.
He put his hand on my belly. It was still flat, but that wouldn’t last with the way I’d been eating in the last twenty-four hours. I was keeping food down since the day before too, which was a welcome change.
“Talking names? Can’t even see a bump yet but it’s…fuck…shit’s getting real.”
“Yep.” I looked him in the eyes.
He looked back into mine with warmth. “You forgive me?”
“Not sure yet. And it might be a girl, you know. Fifty-fifty chance.”
He shook his head, looking a little disgusted.
“Such a man thing. Prove you’re a man by having boys?”
“Naw, fuck. It’s not that. The idea of having a little girl? Scares the shit outta me.”
I smiled. “God help her boyfriends.”
He sorta looked a little green. He flexed his jaw muscles.
“You gonna puke?” I asked.
“I might.”
I cuddled into him and he wrapped me up tight in his arms.
“Well, whether it’s a boy or a girl it sure as heck isn’t gonna be Bella now,” I grumbled. “Thanks for ruining that for me.”
He put his mouth to my forehead but wisely kept his mouth shut.
I started to trace his tattoo, getting lost in thought. His hand started to move up and down my leg and then he was cupping my ass, his lips moving down my face with feather-light kisses as he made his way to my mouth.
I got lost in a hungry kiss, but then his phone rang and he looked at the screen and declined the call, a muscle ticking in his jaw as he fiddled with the phone a second and dialed another number. I didn’t tune into his conversation.
My mind wandered back to Tess. Thank God she was okay. She’d been through so much these last few months.
I thought back to my time in Mexico, in the little girls’ room in that dank basement. I felt a little sick, suddenly, remembered it with vivid detail. I smelled it down there. Tasted what that horrible guy down there did to my mouth. And then I remembered what that cop told me Tommy had done to Juan Carlos and to Earl. I felt the contents of my stomach coming up. I untangled myself from Tommy and dashed to the bathroom.
I’ve been sick and sleeping a lot and busy helping out with Lucas and Antonio and he’s been a wreck, trying to find his sister. It’s been awful. We haven’t made love in well over a week. And he’s grouchy.
So, I’d been thinking I’d try to help, entice him into a sexy game. But now my head was overflowing with memories of Mexico and the fact that he wants to take me to Vegas, which has some pretty rough memories, too, maybe even worse than Mexico, because I almost gave up on him, on us, while we were there.
Mexico was scary for me, but Tommy saved me from there. Vegas was painful for both of us and Tommy hurt me there.
I didn’t throw up. I’d just stood over the toilet for long moments, fearing that I would. Finally, I went back out and he was still talking on his phone, sitting on the edge of the bed, so I curled up beside him and put my head on his knee. He stroked my hair while he kept talking, discussing some construction job site problem with materials being stolen. I guess I fell asleep because I woke up a while later and I was still in bed but he wasn’t there.
I got myself mobile and started to pack for Las Vegas. I was looking forward to seeing Tess but I wasn’t looking forward to the rest of it.
I didn’t take the call when Leo Denarda called me again, this time using a phone that had his name on the caller ID. Ignoring the call would send a message and the message it sent was the message I wanted to send. He was not worth my time, and I had no interest in pandering to him.
I wanted him to see my sister on my arm and know that we’d gotten her back, despite his game. Nino was coordinating sneaking her in with Zack so no one would know she’d been retrieved.
While Tia slept, I got a few calls taken care of, including calling my brother-in-law Ed, and my top and most trusted muscle to set up a meeting at a quiet location where I’d be sure there would be no bugs and where we could map out a few potential plans for how to handle Denarda after the Fete opening.
Someone was picking me up. We were all leaving our cars behind and taking burner phones. I didn’t trust that any of us weren’t being tailed. And for the shit that needed to be discussed, we needed complete privacy.
I was so relieved when Zack Jacobs got to Mexico to pick me up. I’d lost track of time but had to have been away for several days at least. I’d been in the dark for a lot of it, rooms without windows, boxes with air holes. It felt like a long time since I’d been home.
I had been safe since arriving at this place, but the first leg of my journey hadn’t gone as well.
Not nearly. I didn’t know if I’d be rescued. It certainly wasn’t looking good when I’d found myself up for bid at an auction.
After I’d been kidnapped, they’d drugged me and whatever they injected me with – it knocked me out. I woke up, groggy, in what looked like a cargo bay of a warehouse. My hands and feet were taped, my mouth was taped, and there was a guy standing over me, smiling a creepy, slimy smile.
He wore a shiny blue suit that was too large on him, not that he was a small guy. He was stocky, kind of tall. Big ears. Bad haircut. He had a 1970s mob movie vibe to him and he smelled like he’d bathed in both Aqua Velva and Polo cologne.
“She’s awake. Move her to that office over there,” he ordered.
My eyes were wide and I didn’t know what would happen next but two large men, one was for sure the one who’d jumped in the passenger seat of my car, hefted my top half and another guy got my bottom half and they carried me into an office as the guy who seemed in charge said, “On her stomach.”
They dropped me on a dirty sofa on my belly. I barely took in the room. Off-white walls, an old beat-up desk with papers all over it, brown corduroy sofa. My nostrils filled with the scent of stale tobacco and sweat mingled with that Polo cologne.
“Out,” the one in charge said and I heard the door click shut.
I felt the shift as his weight hit the sofa, but I faced the backrest and I didn’t know if I should turn around. I was groggy. Disoriented. But scared. So scared .
Whatever drug they’d given me hadn’t fully worn off yet. My arms and legs felt like rubber bands. And being beyond scared, frightened out of my mind, I also didn’t know where I was, who these people were, or what they’d do to me.
“Your big brother needs a lesson, Contessa Ferrano Michaelson. You’re gonna disappear, pretty little thing. Jeez, you got pretty hair. Sweet ass.”
I felt a hand on my butt and my body went from shaking like a leaf to locked tight. He was laughing. He was laughing like he was the king of the world.
“You’re gonna make me a few bucks by disappearing. All I’ll say is that if you wanna survive, you’ll learn how to be an obedient little slave pdq. That’s down to you. You get yerself killed, that’s not on me.” I felt his breath against my ear. I smelled it, too. Garlicky.
He leaned over and said in a low and very sinister voice, “Before transport picks you up, I’m thinkin’ it’ll give me that much more joy if I take a piece to remember you by before you go. Then when I see Tom junior’s smug mug at the Fete opening, I’ll look at it knowing I blew my load deep inside his sister.”
Vertigo descended quickly and everything spun in my head. As I went to struggle, he put his hands on me. My hands were taped tight, clasped together with my wrists bound so tight that I couldn’t unclasp them. Same for my feet. My ankles were hurting, because the one ankle was taped so tight against the other ankle that bone was rubbing against bone. I tried to roll after feeling the weight of him disappear from the sofa. I dared to flip over and saw him fiddling at the desk and he was holding up a box cutter.
“In case he ever gets you back. He prolly won’t. But if he does? He’ll know I was here.”
He made his way back toward me and then yanked my sleeve up, pried my left arm one way, causing pain but not separating my wrists, only making the duct tape stretch and cut in deeper.
I felt the cutting pain as he started to carve something into the underside of my forearm with the box cutter. I was screaming behind the tape over my mouth as I watched him do it painfully slow. I kicked and writhed until he looked straight into my eyes.
“Don’t move or I carve your face instead.”
I froze. He finished one last large circular motion on my forearm, which he was holding tight, by my elbows.
He then let go, saying, “Don’t fuckin’ move,” and reached for the desk and grabbed a roll of silver duct tape and quickly taped over my bleeding arm, winding the tape round and round to seal what he’d done. He must have gone around three or four times and it did nothing for the excruciating pain in my arm. In fact, it felt like the tape was too tight and cutting off my circulation.
He flipped me over onto my stomach again and I felt pressure at my ankles as he stabbed through the tape at my ankles with his knife to separate my legs. They were tingling and my ankles felt bruised. I pointlessly tried to struggle. My jeans and panties were torn downwards.
I screamed, deep in my throat behind the duct tape, as he forcefully rammed into me from behind.
I was inside of a large plastic shipping container with light filtering through the airholes in it.
My knees were against my chest, ankles and knees taped together.
My left arm was burning under the duct tape where he’d cut me. My eyes were sticky from all the dried tears and old eye make-up. My already fractured heart was smashed to bits.
I heard multiple voices, heard them talking about an auction, and surmised that I was being put up for bid. Kind of like Lisa and Angel must’ve been, I guessed. I didn’t really know the details of what’d happened to the two of them but how the hell did this happen to me? How was it that I lost my father, my husband, and now my freedom within a matter of just a few months?
My children were in the arms of people who loved them, at least. At least there was that. My family would get them from daycare. They’d love them and hold them and that was the one consolation.
Also, they’d look for me. I didn’t know if they’d find me but my brothers were badasses. They had guns. They had ties to some very, very bad people. Some people considered my brothers to be very, very bad people.
And those ties, or more likely our father’s ties, were undoubtedly what’d bought me to my current predicament. But maybe they’d be able to rescue me. They couldn’t undo what that horrible slime ball had done to my body and my dignity but maybe they’d get me back home to Lucas and Antonio.
I was no longer in the plastic container. I’d seen bright light as the lid got removed and made out a needle coming at me. I’d been injected with something else and then my clothes stripped off. I was put in a shower with two women in bathing suits who un-taped me and washed me as well as shaved me. Everywhere. Talk about humiliating.
I was too weak and groggy to fight. They were older, in their upper fifties I’d guess, and when they saw my forearm. They were speaking rapid-fire Spanish, I think. I could barely hold my head up. I was like a ragdoll.
I was taken out, dried off, and then something else was injected into my arm. They were bandaging my other arm. I blacked out again.
I woke up in a bed, my arm bandaged, an IV connected to me. I was wearing a blue hospital gown and no panties. Everything hurt. I felt bruised everywhere.
Everywhere.
I couldn’t conjure up anything. Not the faces of my boys, not my husband. My dead husband, a Ferrano family enforcer who was a lethal weapon, and who would have died to protect me. But he couldn’t because he was already dead. His body burned to ashes that took up a small place on my fireplace mantel. My beautiful Jim.
James Michaelson treated me like a princess. He loved me. He was one of Dare’s friends and he’d sniffed around me for a year before working up the nerve to ask me out. The way it’d happened was funny. He actually won the right to date me in a card game against Dare and a bunch of their friends. It was the only way he could do it, by calling Dare out in a card game.
“I got no more money but I lose, I give you the pinks to my ‘vette. I win, you let me date your sister.”
He lost. A week without his Corvette until he won it back and a week of buzz among our friend group that he’d bet his ‘vette again in order to try to take me out. He also won the right to take me out that same evening.
Dare busted his chops and joked about it but it was all good, a natural progression because Jim was always around. Pop loved him. Dare and Tommy liked him. He showed respect to Pop and Pop recruited him as an enforcer. Jim saved Pop’s life twice. And then he died for him.
He was a great husband. He bought me flowers a lot. He was beyond gentle when he took my virginity. He told me I was pretty every day. He was handsome and thoughtful and I felt lucky to be his wife. And he would be rolling in his grave right now.
I looked around without moving and saw the two women who had been in the shower with me. One was fiddling at a tray with syringes. One was sitting in a chair, a cigarette dangling from her lips as she fiddled with her smartphone. There were two men standing sentry at the door. They had machine guns slung over their shoulders. Machine guns. I’d seen guns around before. Jim had one. I’d seen Pop and his cronies with gun harnesses on around the house. But machine guns? I had never seen one other than in the movies.
I didn’t know how much time had passed or how far I’d traveled, but I definitely knew I wasn’t anywhere near home. I was most likely in Mexico. They were speaking Spanish and that’s where they’d taken Tia when someone had a beef with Pop.
I didn’t know the details, no one ever spoke of it, but my brother came back days later and both Pop and Dare had been stressed to the max while he was gone. Me and Luc had talked about that and how Tommy’d probably fucked up whoever had taken her. Big time. Rumors about how brutal our oldest brother was were always circulating and we didn’t doubt the rumors at all.
I knew better than to throw a fit. I’d read enough books, seen enough movies, and saw the haunted look in the eyes of my best friend and my new sister-in-law to know that no amount of Italian princess tantruming would get me out of this. I had to bide my time and figure things out so that I could help myself. Or, hope Tommy and Dare were already on this.
The nurse with the syringes was at my bedside, injecting something into my arm yet again. I gave in to the dark and dreamt of my honeymoon in Jamaica with Jim, where we made love under the stars when he took my virginity. He waited until the honeymoon because I was so nervous on the wedding night. My first time, my every time having sex thereafter, was sweet and gentle.
Until that guy with the boxcutter.
It was the next day or maybe the day after, I had no idea, when I was hauled into the shower by those women again. I was then dressed in a short slutty dress and super high heeled red-bottomed shoes. They pinned my hair up into an up-do, put makeup on me and made me eat a bowl of chicken soup.
I still had a wide bandage around my arm. I could see bruising at my uncut wrist and my ankles were black and blue.
After I finished the soup, I was led down a dim and narrow concrete hallway with the two nurses and one of the machine gun toting guys behind us, his eyes narrow, on me, and filled with warning.
I was pushed through a doorway, a name sticker was slapped on my chest, and the door was shut, closing me in a room with a bunch of other girls that were similarly dressed with expressions which likely mirrored mine. Fear. Desolation?
I looked down at the name sticker. It was a Hello My Name Is sticker. In red ink was the number 13.
I was in a lounge of some sort, black leather sofas bordering the walls. A large coffee table filled with bottles of water and juice sat in the middle. There were three other men with machine guns in the room.
The girls ranged in age from younger than me (looking barely legal or underage) to a few years older than my 24 years. Some of these girls looked beaten up, like me, some with too much concealer attempting to hide the bruising on their faces.
Most of them were Spanish-looking. One black, two Asian. And me. The rest were Latinas, including one set of identical twins who didn’t look any older than eighteen and had long glossy hair, huge breasts, and big eyes. They were strikingly beautiful.
I don’t know what people would say I look like. I’m short and curvy at the hips and boobs but with a tiny waist. I’m ? Italian and I’m naturally dark blonde with lots of slightly wavy long hair. I recently had the dark bleached out from the ombre I’d been sporting for a few months, so it was all dark blonde right now. I have light brown eyes, like Pop’s, like Tommy’s. I guess I look Italian. I’m not unattractive. None of the girls in this room are unattractive. Some of them are exceptionally beautiful.
A light went on and it got very bright. Everyone winced or squinted. One of the nurses grabbed my sore arm and pointed for me to sit. Somebody was talking in Spanish over a speaker. And then there was a man walking around with a camcorder, stopping at each girl and speaking in Spanish. A bottle of water was put in my hand by an older Spanish lady, older than the nurses.
Each girl reminded me of a deer caught in headlights. The third girl he stopped at backed away in fear and he grabbed her by her hair and held her there while he kept talking, holding the small video camera in front while he palmed her breast and then laughed.
Her face went red and her eyes went downcast. No one else misbehaved after that. He got to me last and talked for a really long time, holding my chin up, taking the camera from me to him and back to me again as he spoke about me. I heard him say “Ferrano”. They weren’t keeping my identity secret. How many people who were viewing this auction knew my father? Would that work to my advantage or disadvantage?
And then the guy with the camcorder left the room, the lights dimmed, and the nurses encouraged me to drink. I drank a bottle of water and looked at the girl who I’d sat beside. She glanced my way with big eyes. I could feel her trembling beside me.
I grabbed her hand and squeezed. She leaned into me. We didn’t know one another but we were in the same hell right now.
Over the next few hours, we were slowly picked off one by one, removed one at a time, except that at one point, the set of identical twins were taken out at once. I was third last to be ushered out by one of the nurses who took me down that long hallway and put me into a small office with the announcer guy with the camcorder and an older but distinguished man in a suit, who was seated on a big leather chair in front of the desk where the camcorder guy sat. He looked Italian to me. Maybe Spanish. Or maybe mixed. He gave me a once over.
“Knees,” the camcorder guy said to me. “She has had no training yet, senor, we only got her in last minute. I know your facility can handle the training. This is a very important person you got sold to, slave thirteen. You better not fuck up.”
The older man looked at me and spoke in clear English, “Down on your knees, thirteen, then sit back on your calves and place both hands on your thighs.
I shakily obliged.
The man in the suit then slapped an envelope down on the table and I saw the camcorder guy with a large wad of cash.
They spoke in Spanish for a few minutes and then the older man in the suit said, “Shoes off. Leave them here. Walk beside me, eyes to the floor, until we go. My car is outside. If you misbehave, you will regret it for the rest of your life.”
He said this so simply, so calmly, that I believed him without a shadow of doubt. I could see something sinister in the man’s eyes; I knew plenty of sinister men from growing up where I did. He meant what he said.
I nodded a little. It was enough to satisfy him.
The camcorder operator shook that man’s hand, spoke a few more words in Spanish, and then said, “Adios” and left.
The man held his hand out and looked at me. I took his hand and rose to my feet and followed his directions. What else could I do?
It took a long time to get out of the maze of hallways in the warehouse we were in. When two guards with machine guns opened a steel door and we were outside, I took in that we were in an alleyway with reddish dirt, the sun beating down on us. My eyes burned, so I shielded them with my hand. It’d been days since I’d seen the sun.
The alley was dirty, dumpsters overflowing, a horribly dank rotting meat smell in the air. There were a couple of kids kicking around a soccer ball. They stopped and looked at me. One whispered something into another kid’s ear, eyes aimed at me. The limo driver honked the horn and the kids scattered. The back-passenger door was opened by a man in a dark suit who looked like a secret service agent. The man who’d bought me put his hand to my back and led me into the vehicle.
I sat.
He got in and sat. Not close, not far. The car surged forward and puke came up in my throat but I swallowed it back down.
Before long, we were on a dirt road with no buildings in sight. The suited man reached into his pocket. My heart started to race and the fear I felt was a living and breathing beast, putting weight on my chest. I tried to focus on my breathing as he lifted out a phone from his inside pocket. He fiddled with his phone a moment, one-handed, while reaching into a small fridge in the sumptuous limo and passing me a bottle of lemon Perrier.
I accepted it, opened it, and downed half of it. Then, when we were on a four-lane road with plenty of traffic, he dialed and put the phone to his ear.
“Hola. I have the parcel.”
He held the phone a moment and then said something softly in Spanish and then passed the phone to me.
I fumbled and then got it to my ear, more than a little unnerved.
“Hello?” I croaked out, not having any clue who was on the other end or what might happen next.
“Mrs. Michaelson? I’m not an enemy. I am going to get you back to your family. Please believe that and cooperate with Rocco. Consider Rocco to be your protector. Understand?”
“Uh… all right,” I croaked out, stupefied.
He continued, “You’ll be driven to my property and I am reaching out to your brothers through a mutual acquaintance. You’ll be made comfortable until they can arrive.”
Oh, thank God. Thank the good sweet Lord above. Relief washed over me, through me. Tears pricked my eyes.
Wait. What if he was lying? I fought to find words but stupidly just held the phone.
Please don’t let this be a lie.
“I’m being completely honest,” he assured. “If you want to increase the chances of being able to get to your home and your two sons, you’ll cooperate.”
“I will,” I replied, worried that he knew I had two sons. Was this a threat? Was I being ransomed? Or was this guy a friend to my family?
“I’m glad to hear that. Pass the phone to Rocco, please.”
“Okay.”
I handed it back to the suited guy.
What must have been many hours later, many hours of driving in silence, we were entering the gates of what looked like a very large residence, an estate, really. I’d nodded off over and over, fighting sleep most of the way there.
At one point, Rocco said, “Nothing is going to happen to you if you allow yourself to sleep.” As kind as he’d seemed when he said it, nothing would make me trust that, even if I wanted to. My body just kept jolting every time I’d drift off.
Finally, we had arrived. I sat up straighter as the gates swung closed behind us.
I silently prayed that things weren’t about to get worse.
I was ushered, by Rocco, to a comfortable guest room in a very lavish mansion, where I sat on a bed. A handsome man in a suit came in with a woman in blue scrubs.
He had thick dark hair, lots of it, and a stubbled jaw. He was very handsome. He belonged on an Armani billboard in Times Square in that tailored suit, his hair all messy-perfect.
His dark eyes assessed me. “I’m Alessandro. First, your brothers are being contacted today to arrange for you to be returned to them. Can you tell me what happened to you?”
I stared blankly for a second.
“Let me see that arm?” The lady in scrubs cut in.
“Will you allow Jimena to check your arm? She’s a doctor.”
I lifted my arm, offering it to her and she moved closer. I looked at Alessandro as she unwound the bandage. He had the angriest eyes I think I’d ever seen. When he saw my arm, they went even angrier.
I glanced down at my arm and saw the horrible lettering I’d seen each time the bandage had been changed in the past few days, which had at least been often. Those nasty nurses were doing their best. I guess. This time I saw what the lettering actually said.
“Am I in Mexico?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I was taken from my car, put in some kind of video auction.”
“Did anyone touch you sexually? There or before that?” he asked me. His English wasn’t broken, nor was it heavily accented.
I stiffened and looked down at my hands on my lap.
“Yes,” I said in a small voice without making eye contact.
The doctor was applying ointment to my arm.
“On a one to ten scale, how badly did they touch you? One: groped you, ten, had sex with you against your will.”
“Ten.” I didn’t look up.
“One person or more than one persons? How many times?”
“One. Once.”
“I’ll leave Jimena to care for you. I’ll return soon with an update. You have nothing to fear here. You will be well taken care of until someone arrives to bring you home. This door will be locked but there’s an intercom on the wall by the bathroom door that will summon someone up if you push it.”
Thank God.
“Thanks, um, did my brothers hire you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. We have some common ground, so I’ve just stepped in to help.” He turned on his heel and left the room.
I looked at the lady in scrubs. She was rifling through a first aid bag she’d set on the bed beside me and then she began to gently put a new bandage around my forearm.
I spent almost 48 hours there before Zack picked me up and during that time, I had been seen by the doctor and a housekeeper who brought food and drinks and towels. Alessandro had come in just once more, the day after I’d arrived to ask if I needed anything and to tell me that I’d be leaving the following day.
He had brought in a phone and let me speak to Dare briefly. Very briefly. And then the day I was to go, a housekeeper took me to a dining room for a quick lunch with a pretty teenaged blonde girl named Holly.
Two guards had been in the room the entire time, strangely standing sentry but not holding machine guns, just looking expressionless but watchful.
It was an odd lunch. I tried to ask her questions about who she was and how she’d come to be there but she dodged my questions. She didn’t seem afraid or anything like that, but she avoided my questions about why she was there and what the place was. I’d been kept in a comfortable room with a terrace overlooking a lush garden, where I could get fresh air. I’d been fed good food and drinks, and the room had a television in it. And the doctor had been taking care of the hideous wounds on my arm. But I had no idea who Alessandro was or why I’d sat and had lunch with the pretty blonde girl.
Alessandro spoke to me about her afterwards, on our way to meet Zack.
“Did you have a nice lunch with Holly?”
“Yes, thank you. Thank you for the hospitality. I…appreciate it. She was nice.”
“Holly is the common ground,” Alessandro offered as an explanation as he walked me through the halls of his mansion to an office.
“Holly is?”
He nodded. “I found out Holly has a connection to your family and later found out that you had been taken. I intervened in order to use you as a bargaining chip to ensure that your brothers do not attempt to take Holly from me.”
“From you?” I asked.
“She belongs to me. Her sister belongs to your brother. I don’t want him considering an attempt to take Holly from me. He wouldn’t succeed. It’s best for everyone that he knows that.”
I felt sick as I tried to absorb all of this.
“Please tell Dario that you met Holly, that she’s fine, and that I’d prefer not to make enemies with the Ferranos. If anyone tries to take her from me, we will become enemies.”
“Holly is a teenager. She…” I felt sick. I couldn’t continue the sentence.
“She’s mine,” he said. “I haven’t touched her yet. I won’t touch her until she’s old enough. But she is mine. Pass that message on.”
I nodded. “I’ll pass on the message.” I wanted to tell him off. I went into some sort of mother bear mode but I kept my mouth shut. I had to get out of here.
“This door.” He opened a door and waved so I could precede him.
I stepped into the room and saw Zack Jacobs, who I’d met a few times with my brothers, but who I only barely knew. He was giving me a careful smile, assessing my physical state.
“You okay?” He moved to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“I will be when I get home to my family,” I answered softly.
“Let’s go,” he said and shook Alessandro’s hand. “I’ll pass on those messages and thanks again. I’ll call you.”
Alessandro nodded.
“Thank you for helping me,” I said softly.
I didn’t know what the deal was with this guy. All I knew was that he’d gotten me away from that auction to get me back to my family. I also knew that by the way that Holly had looked at him when he’d come in to get me from that dining room, that she either had a relationship with him or had feelings for him. I didn’t know anything else.
He was extraordinarily handsome, seemed powerful and mysterious. He also had an air of extreme danger. And he seemed angry and cold. But she was young. And she was obviously Angel’s sister, which made no sense to me.
I couldn’t process any more feelings about Alessandro and about Angel’s sister. I needed to just get home and feel my boys, smell them, cuddle them. And contact a plastic surgeon about the hideousness on my arm so I could forget this horrible experience and never leave the house without bodyguards ever again.