Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
AMALIA (PRESENT)
Surprisingly, the stranger next to me hadn’t said a word during the whole journey to the airport. I’d expected questions or some sort of resistance when we arrived, but he’d simply nodded when I ordered him to come with me.
Better the devil you don’t know than the one you do, I guess.
We’d made it just in time to the hangar to board the jet and we were now about to take off. Our travel time was only for an hour, and I couldn’t wait to get back. I hated being away since I couldn’t keep my eyes on everything and Hamza’s men always seemed to mess things up whenever I was gone.
Last time I’d left for longer than twenty-four hours, I’d found one of my prisoners, one I still needed information from, dead because they were bored and wanted something to play with.
I could only imagine what they’d done to Noah in my absence. A pit formed in my stomach at the thought, but I blamed it on not having eaten since this morning and not because I didn’t want anything happening to him.
I ignored the looming thoughts whenever I dared to conjure his name and moved my gaze toward the stranger sitting in front of me. He seemed lost in thoughts, a haunted look on his features as his index finger’s brittle nail scraped repeatedly against the beige leather captain’s chair he was seated in.
What the fuck happened to him?
I didn’t want to care, but he was so young and reminded me so much of my little brother ángel. Of his innocence that ended up being tainted by the blows of reality.
I hadn’t talked to him or my sister, Antonia, in years, but it didn’t take away the fact that I still missed them.
A few months before I was set to leave, I’d drifted away, slowly leaving their calls and text messages unanswered until they showed up one day at my doorstep demanding an explanation.
I’d told them that I needed some time apart and wanted them to stop blowing up my phone. Of course they didn’t buy it, so I’d brought up the only thing that I knew would get them to back off once and for all. I’d told them that I’d rekindle with our mother and that I wanted to spend more time with her, something we’d promised each other we’d never do even if she reached out and begged us on her knees until they bled.
After my admission, they’d told me that if I ever came back to my senses, then we could have a rational conversation. Until then, they didn’t want to hear from me if I had any connection to the woman who’d abandoned us because she’d preferred leaving track marks on her body for a temporary high than taking care of her kids.
My siblings and I had always been close, especially after our father left us the moment ángel was born and our mother followed a few years later when my brother turned three. The hurt from being estranged from my siblings still resurfaced on rare occasions as I lay alone in bed to catch a few hours of sleep, but I always pushed it aside, reminding myself that Amalia was supposed to be gone.
At least until all of this is over , I told myself.
But what if I’d been gone too long that the only person left after all of this was Ines? I’d ingrained myself so much into my role that I didn’t know whether I was still acting or this was who I’d become and would stay as for the rest of my life.
The sound of a ringtone pulled me out of my thoughts. My brows furrowed when I noticed it wasn’t the one from my regular phone. It was coming from my burner phone and only one person had access to that number, which they weren’t supposed to use to call me.
I unfastened my seat belt and stood, grabbing my bag from under my seat. My burner phone kept ringing as I turned and walked toward the back of the plane, passing the beige sofas that matched the front seats where I was just seated.
The plush leather lined the right side of the plane back to the bathroom where I was headed, another set of smaller chairs facing each other with a glossy wood table in between on the opposite side.
I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. The ringing stopped for a moment, only to resume for a second time. I reached for the bottom of my bag and grabbed the small black flip phone.
“Why are you calling? You’re supposed to wait until I call you,” I answered, seething.
“Wow, it’s great to hear from you too, Amalia,” the voice on the other line greeted me, teasing.
He was the only one who addressed me by that and although it was rare in between to hear someone call me by my real name, it never failed to feel like driving a knife into an old wound.
I brushed it off, knowing I didn’t have time for his usual candor since we were minutes away from taking off. “I’d rather not hear from you unless I choose to subject myself to it, Nassim, so do me the courtesy of not wasting my time right now.”
He cleared his throat and I waited for his next words but stayed quiet for a moment, which was extremely unusual for him. His continued silence sent something I hadn’t felt in a very long time traveling up my spine.
Apprehension.
I closed my eyes and sighed. My fingers pinched the bridge of my nose as I pressed him. “What is it?”
“You need to leave.”
My eyes blew open. “ Leave ? What do you mean leave?” I asked, confused.
“There’s been a change of plans. You have to abandon your assignment and leave Barrera’s compound. I’m flying out of Cartagena tonight and need you to meet me at the safe house in two days,” he stated. Gone was the lightness in his tone.
Despite being one of the most ruthless men I’d ever met, Nassim always had an annoying cheerfulness to him. Something must be really wrong if he wasn’t delivering a joke with his news and even more so if he was changing our plans months ahead of the time we’d originally planned for.
Uneasiness moved and wrapped around my gut, squeezing tightly. “Why? What happened?”
“I’ll tell you when we meet.”
“Nassim. Now.”
“Listen, I can’t explain right now and I need to get things in order before my flight later. So please, Amalia, just trust me.”
I fought against the retort sitting at the tip of my tongue because he’d only asked me to trust him once before and he had yet to break his promise.
The first time Nassim and I had met, I’d almost killed him.
I’d been in Bemes for an important weapon shipment collection that was coming from Colombia. Our Dutch suppliers weren’t able to keep up with our high demands, so we had to look overseas for a new distributor.
Barrera had appointed Hamza to be in charge, but after months of dragging, I’d grown tired of waiting. Our cargo was growing scarce, so I’d handled it. Just like I handled most things nowadays because for a cartel that had been around for decades, they surprisingly didn’t run as smoothly internally as one would have thought.
After spending some time researching and vetting other cartels, I’d made contact with Daniela, who ran the arms operation for the Aguilar cartel and we’d brokered an exclusivity deal where they’d supply us with weapons and we would let them use our ports for distribution.
It was late at night and I’d been waiting for their first shipment when a black motorcycle pulled up a few feet away. The rider had barely parked and unsaddled his seat, when I branded my gun out and shot him, grazing the outside of his thigh.
I’d adopted shooting first and asking questions later the moment I stepped into Ines’s skin, but never to kill because they might hold crucial information that I could use.
With one hand holding his injured thigh, he’d held the other one up in surrender.
The intruder yelled something, but I couldn’t hear him because of his helmet. He moved to remove it and I shot the gravel at his feet. He jumped back and dropped his helmet to the ground, holding both of his hands up. “I come in peace,” he grunted out.
I squinted, trying to make out his features, but because of the docks’ low visibility, all I could make out at a distance was that he had mid-length dark hair because it was blowing in the wind and he wore a silver band on the ring finger of his left hand.
In my line of work, I’d become hyper aware of people’s body language and I could tell even from afar that he wasn’t lying, but it didn’t matter. He was overstepping on private territory and I had an important package coming.
Whoever this was needed to leave, so with my gun still on him, I shouted, “Leave. This is private property.”
Instead of doing as told, he straightened himself up, wincing and cursing in Spanish. Then, he said, “I have a proposition for you, Amalia.”
My eyes widened and my finger moved back to the trigger. He didn’t look like someone from the Agency and there was absolutely no way I’d made a mistake and blown my cover.
“You have me mistaken for someone else and I won’t repeat myself. Leave or I’ll shoot. And this time, it’ll be at one of your vital organs.”
With his hands still up, he took a step toward me. “I know who you are, Amalia, and you’ll want to hear what I have to say.” He took a few more steps. “My name is Nassim Taleb-Aguilar, and my father was Reda Taleb.”
My ears perked up at the name because I’d recently overheard a heated argument between Barrera and Hamza, where he’d threatened his right-hand man would suffer the same fate Reda had if he went against orders another time.
When I didn’t say anything right away, he took another step, closing the distance, my gun pressed against his sternum. “You can trust me.”
I knew I probably shouldn’t trust this stranger, but the sincerity shining in his eyes told me I should give him a chance.
And I had.
That night alone, I’d learned more about the cartel than what I’d gathered during the first year and a half I’d spent alongside Barrera. We’d only met twice again in person after that during my visits to Bemes since he lived in Cartagena and didn’t want to be found out. It took some convincing on his part, but I’d eventually agreed to help him with his plan.
We’d had a few obstacles since we started working together, but the one thing he’d never wavered on was his word.
I groaned. “Fine,” I finally agreed, deciding to let it go and trust him once again. The pilot’s voice came on the intercom, letting us know that we were ready for takeoff. “I have to go,” I said before hanging up on him and tucking the phone back into its hidden compartment.
I was fucked.
Not only would leaving be extremely difficult to do, but, to my dismay, I now had another person to account for. The other option would be to leave Noah behind, but I knew that wasn’t a possibility, no matter how much I’d like to.
I had no idea yet how I would escape without bringing attention to myself, but I knew I had to figure out a plan and quickly.
I heard the hum of the plane as it slowly taxied onto the runway and exited the bathroom. On my way back to my seat, I stopped by the small refrigerator in the corner to grab two water bottles and whatever snack options were available.
The refrigerator would normally be more packed since a flight attendant was usually part of the crew when I traveled with Barrera or Hamza, but whenever I was alone, I asked for her not to be here because the one they always hired was too chatty for my taste and her incessant voice grated on my nerves.
The stranger I’d taken prisoner didn’t look up when I approached, still in the same position I’d left him in, like he’d barely noticed I’d been gone this whole time. I sat down, shoved my bag back under the seat, and fastened my seat belt.
I placed the water and the two Merendina on the glossy wood table separating us, hoping the small chocolate cake hadn’t expired, but his gaze was set far away, his nail still grated over the leather.
“Your seat belt,” I said, hoping to get his attention, but he still didn’t look my way.
The plane came to a slow stop at the start of the runway, and the pilot called “ready for departure” over the radio. The engine wired louder and the man in front of me still hadn’t moved.
Frowning, I repeated myself, this time much louder, “Your seat belt.”
His finger stopped its movement as he finally snapped out of whatever world he’d gotten lost in. He looked over at me, the same lost look still drowning his brown eyes.
“Yeah, sorry,” he whispered. He shook his head and moved to fasten his seat belt just as the plane accelerated on the runway, taking off. His head then drifted to the side like it did when he sat down earlier, his hand moving back to where he had it before.
My next words slipped out before he could resume his patterned sequence.
“What’s your name?”
My question seemed to have taken him by surprise by the way his attention snapped back to me, his eyes wide. He let out a deep sigh and said, “No one’s asked me that in a long time. They called me Number 7, but my name is Gabriel.”
He’d just confirmed what I’d suspected all along.
He was one of Zakaria’s courier workers. The Alaouis were known to use young men and women—anyone they could put their hands on or who owed them money—as a mule to smuggle their drugs across the Mediterranean. They used other ways to get their drugs across international borders, but this was their main method.
It was highly cost-effective for them and the easiest to stay below the radar. No matter the human cost.
It made me sick to even think of because I knew that if the mule couldn’t swallow the drugs, they implanted them surgically, without anesthetic.
There were many questions I could ask him about Alaoui that would help me gain an advantage, but something deep down told me to give this kid a break from it all. Even if it was just for an hour.
Instead, I gave him a curt nod. “I’m Ines.”
Something about him made me keep going, so I pushed the water bottle and one of the sponge cakes closer to him. “Eat. It isn’t much, but that’s all I could find.”
I would try and get him real food when we landed, but it would be much harder since I couldn’t show any care toward him. He was supposed to be a prisoner, not a stranded that I’d benevolently taken in.
He reached for the hood over his head and slid it off, sticking his hands into the jacket’s pockets. He titled his head to one side, examining me. “Why are you being nice?”
I arched a brow and fought the unexpected urge to laugh. I’d been called many things over the last few years, but nice had never made it even close to the list. “I’m far from being nice. Eat or don’t, but I won’t carry you when you pass out.”
He considered what I’d just said for a moment before reaching for the water and unscrewing the cap. “This isn’t drugged, right?”
“I have better things to do than lace a water bottle.”
Satisfied with my response, he started gulping the water, like he’d been stranded on a deserted island for days and this was the first water he’d come across.
“Hey, slow down before you throw everything up,” I warned him.
He brought the half-emptied water bottle down, placed it on the wooden surface, and grabbed the sweet. “I haven’t had these since I was kid,” he said, a hint of melancholic nostalgia in his voice.
An unexpected sorrow washed over me at his tone. Who I used to be might have become foreign to me, but one thing I’d promised myself was to never let Ines become heartless past a point where she’d treat victims the same way as the ones who’d taken them.
I’d killed a lot of people over the last five years, but they’d never been innocent. I didn’t know Gabriel’s story, but something in my gut told me he’d been put in this situation involuntarily out of necessity and not because he was guilty of a heinous act.
I didn’t say anything and watched him closely as he ate the sponge cake, taking small sips of water in between bites. My eyes roamed over his features, really taking him in for the first time.
Aside from the weighted history he seemed to carry over his shoulder and the beating he’d just had, he wasn’t bad-looking. Although matted, I could tell that his dark hair was shorter on the sides and slightly longer at the top, but not by much. The cut above his left brow had stopped bleeding, a few trails of dried blood running down from his cut to his temple and disappearing into his hair.
His left eye was swollen shut, bruises in various stages of healing covering his under eye. There was a shallow cut on his lip and another set of bruises on the left side of his face.
Zakaria had left no expense in whatever lesson he was teaching him. I’d known of Zakaria’s brutality and if Gabriel’s face and ginger movements were any indication, I could only imagine the canvas of bruises and welts on his skin hidden underneath the clothes he was wearing.
He downed the remnants of his water bottle and the hint of tattoos peeked underneath the fabric that had slid slightly with the movement, but before I could decipher what the words at the bottom of what seemed like a larger tattoo were, he dropped the bottle onto the table and reached for the other one.
He must have just realized I’d been observing him this whole time because he stopped himself short, his fingers hanging midway. “Sorry,” he apologized, taking his hand back.
“It’s fine,” I told him, my tone coming out softer than I’d heard it in a long time. Most likely because I knew that once we landed, I would have to put him into a cell and treat him like anyone else. He’d once again become a prisoner, just at the hands of someone else. So, at that, I offered, “There’s a shower in the bathroom at the back of the plane. We land in less than an hour, so if you want to use it, I’d do it now. There’s no change of clothes, but I suggest you keep the same ones you’re wearing now.”
He stared at me for a moment before speaking, “What’s the catch?”
Something about his question caught me slightly off guard. I’d expected him to jump at the opportunity, but instead, he’d questioned everything I’d offered him so far. “Where I’m taking you isn’t nice, so you might as well enjoy the last few moments of liberty you have,” I said truthfully, not wanting to waste my time lying.
I would try to find a way to get Gabriel out, like I’d done to many other kids Barrera captured, but right now he was the least of my worries. He might have reminded me of my little brother, but I had to bury the thought away.
We didn’t have long before we landed and whatever ounce of niceness I’d shown toward him would have to evaporate, like it had never been there in the first place.
I still had two days to spend at the riad and any change to who Ines was would trigger Barrera and I didn’t want to raise any suspicions.
It took Gabriel a moment to let my words sink in before he accepted them, giving me a curt nod. He then unfastened his seat belt and stood, moving to walk away but paused midway.
He looked at me. “For what it’s worth, thank you,” he said with a small smile, the faint hint of a dimple appearing on his cheek before it vanished as fast as it appeared.
He moved again and I watched him as he headed for the back. His gaze roamed over the space, his fingertips skimming the surfaces before he finally disappeared into the bathroom.
While he showered, I reached again for my duffel bag and retrieved a cloth, ropes and a gun, then placed them on the table in front of me. By the time the plane touched down, Gabriel was bound and gagged, something he didn’t fight me on.
“Let’s go,” I said in a muted tone once the plane was parked, reaching down to grasp his arm.
I pulled him to his feet and pushed him in front of me. Once I heard the mechanism of the aircraft’s door being unlocked to open the door, I brought my gun up and slammed the butt against the back of his skull, sending him tumbling to the ground.