CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The young women were loaded into ambulances and taken to nearby hospitals.
They were malnourished, dehydrated, and some were suffering from hypothermia.
They’d refused to dance for Giamanco, so were placed in the small cell of a room and only fed once a day.
He hoped to pressure them into doing his bidding.
Their stories were the same. Caught up in gambling, or in one case, she’d asked for a loan to help with her student debt. They all signed their lives away to Giamanco after that. Only one was a student of Professor Mills.
“You know what I don’t get?” asked Gator. “These kids were all going to a top-tier, prestigious university that required certain intellectual standards. They were smart. How the fuck do smart kids, above average intelligence, get caught in something so fucking stupid?”
“I’ll try not to be offended by that,” said Marissa.
Gator grinned at her, shaking his head. “Remember, I wanted to stop going to that boat and stop participating in the card games. They wouldn’t allow it.
I’m going to bet that something similar happened to all of these people.
Maybe it wasn’t in the middle of the ocean but maybe they were taken into the mountains or their families were threatened. We weren’t stupid. We were gullible.”
“Fair point. I’m sorry,” he smiled. “And by the way, I’m thrilled that you’ll be my daughter-in-law.”
“Me too,” she smiled. “I’ve loved Joey for a long time but I honestly thought he was in love with Bailey.”
“I think they loved one another like siblings. I knew nothing was going to come from that.”
“I wish I had known that,” she said with a pain-filled smile. “Maybe my choices would have been different. I would have reached out to him sooner.”
“It’s a lesson we all learn, Marissa. We tend to wait too long sometimes to reach out to the one we love and we come close to losing it all. So far, we’ve been doing alright on our record.”
“I guess we could thank the Belle Fleur magic for that,” she smiled as Red, Bullett, and Bo walked in.
“How are they?” asked Gator.
“Scared, sick, thin, but they’re alive. Only two were caught up in gambling. The others were a mixed bag of tricks. Photos, videos, that sort of thing. One was being accused of cheating on her exams. She didn’t cheat but they had fake documents showing that she had.”
“It’s nearly impossible to cheat on exams these days,” said Marissa. “She should have known that. Then again, I guess to your point Gator, we all should have seen this, known what we were walking into.”
“No. You couldn’t have known,” he said shaking his head. “I was wrong. I forget that you are just kids.”
“Well,” said Marissa hugging Gator, “this kid is going to be in your family now. I hope you’ll forgive me naivete.”
“I think I can forgive that,” he said hugging her back.
“All good?” asked Christopher, smiling at his daughter as she hugged Gator.
“All good, Dad,” she grinned. “What about the other soldiers involved?”
“Similar stories. Gambling, photos, one case of two soldiers involved with one another. They’re fucking kids. All of them are under twenty-one. Not an excuse, just a fact.”
“Well, Giamanco is taken care of but what about his family?” asked Marissa.
“They’ve agreed to back off but I also suspect that Vasily had taken some control of the family,” said Christopher. “A few well-placed calls by our leadership team and suddenly they claim Tomas was rogue. However, they did warn us all that Vasily won’t stop until he gets what he wants.”
“Marissa?” called Paige sticking her head in the room again. “We need you to review this data. It’s not making any sense to any of us.”
“I’ll be right there.” She turned to Gator and Christopher, looking at all of the men. “You know that I’m happy you’re all here and I will do whatever you ask of me. But I’m asking you not to leave me out of this. Don’t think I’m some fragile flower. Confused maybe. Fragile, no.”
They all chuckled, nodding at her as she walked down the hallway to Paige and the other women.
“We’re all agreed once they have that information sorted out, they go back to Belle Fleur?” said Joey.
“Oh, hell yeah,” smirked Wes. “They’re out of here as soon as we can get them out. Vasily is no joke. If he wants what she has, it must be something pretty fucking amazing.”
“I think one of the many things I’m confused about,” said Gator, “is just like we said earlier. Others have tried this before and it was too unpredictable. If Marissa was able to harness this, figure it all out, we might have a bigger problem than we think.”
“Like what?” asked Red.
“Like the government knocking on our door.”