36. Chapter 36
Addy
The call ended abruptly, leaving a deafening silence in its wake. Dust motes floated lazily in the shafts of weak afternoon light filtering through the high windows. Somewhere overhead, an old fluorescent light fixture buzzed insistently, as if it had been hanging on for far too long.
Pompadour — or rather, Javier — lowered the phone slowly, staring at the blank screen as though it had personally betrayed him.
Across the room Angry Chihuahua stood with his arms locked tight across his chest. He rocked slightly on the balls of his feet in the restless way of someone who had just realized the horrible consequences of his actions.
Neither of them uttered a single word.
Great. Fantastic. Love that for me.
Silence meant they were thinking, and thinking meant they were possibly spiraling, which meant they were potentially about to do something incredibly stupid.
And I really needed them not to do that.
I waited a few seconds.
Five.
Ten.
Okay, that was my limit.
“Well…” The word came out thinner than intended, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “That, uh, felt … productive. In a terrifying, possibly life-ending kind of way?”
Both men looked at me as if they had momentarily forgotten the woman they had kidnapped was sitting just five feet away.
A little insulting, to be honest.
Their confidence had evaporated. On the plus side, this made them less likely to take bold action. On the downside, they might still do something stupid.
Javier dragged a hand slowly down his face and pressed his palm hard against his eyes. He then exhaled the long, defeated sigh of a man who had just realized he had definitely fucked up and nothing was going to plan.
“Rafael is coming,” he muttered.
I tilted my head slightly, as if I were just idly curious instead of actively trying to assess whether I was about to live or die within the next ten minutes.
“Is that good or bad? Not gonna lie, the suspense is starting to kill me.”
Also … who the hell was Rafael in their organizational chart? Boss? Boss-adjacent? “Guy you call when you’ve absolutely ruined your life”?
Please be good. Please be the kind of bad that doesn’t involves me dying.
Angry Chihuahua began pacing again, moving in short, tight lines across the concrete floor as though walking fast enough might somehow undo the last hour.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” he eventually exclaimed, his voice strained and his finger pointing accusingly at his companion.
“You did not tell me that,” Javier snapped.
“I thought it.”
“That doesn’t count.”
I watched them for a moment, my fingers curling slightly against the edge of the crate I’d been unceremoniously parked on earlier, forcing myself to breathe normally despite my chest feeling tight, uncomfortable and slightly too fast.
Okay. Don’t panic.
Panicking was useless. Panicking got people killed.
Talking, though? Talking bought time.
A shaky breath escaped me before I could stop it.
“You know,” I offered, trying to be helpful, “from a personal growth perspective, this seems like it could be a valuable learning experience.”
Neither man acknowledged that.
Javier shifted his weight, leaning one shoulder against a stack of crates, and rubbed the bridge of his nose as if he could feel the beginnings of a migraine settling in behind his eyes.
“Fuck! We shouldn’t have taken her.”
“You’re arriving at that conclusion now?” I blinked at him.
Because, and I couldn’t stress this enough, this felt like something that should have come up in the planning stage.
He shot me a look, but it didn’t have nearly the same bite as before.
Good. Keep them off balance. Keep them talking.
Angry Chihuahua rubbed his face again. “This is the worst hostage situation in history.”
“I’m sure there’s been worse.” I attempted to console him.
Pompadour squinted at me. “How would you know? How many times have you been kidnapped, huh?”
I winced. “… Define kidnapped.”
Angry Chihuahua stared at me in disbelief, while his friend looked up toward the ceiling like he was reconsidering his life choices.
I drew in a shaky breath, willing myself to keep calm and most importantly, to keep talking. They hadn’t told me to shut up yet, and the longer I could distract them, the better.
Sasha was coming. I just needed to still be alive when he got here.
“So,” I continued, shifting slightly on the crate because sitting still suddenly felt impossible, like my body had too much energy and nowhere to put it, “just to clarify — and this is purely for my own understanding, not because I’m trying to critique your process or anything — but what was the plan here? ”
Angry Chihuahua frowned at me. “What?”
“The plan,” I repeated, gesturing vaguely between them. “Like step two. Or three. Or … any number beyond ‘grab random woman and hope for the best’.”
Javier exhaled sharply through his nose. “You were not random.”
“Cool, cool, cool. That’s mildly concerning in a different way,” I muttered. “It’s just … I don’t really get the bigger picture here. Like, what happens after this? I mean, I get that taking me was step one, but … then what?”
Javier rubbed his jaw and Angry Chihuahua muttered something under his breath. Neither of them seemed eager to answer.
Fuck, this was not good.
“Oh my God! Please don’t tell me this Rafael person is coming to kill me.” Panic constricted my chest, curling around my ribcage like thorny veins, sharp and uncomfortable.
“Rafael isn’t coming to kill you.”
My shoulders sagged with relief as my mind raced.
“But he’s in charge?” I spoke carefully, letting just enough curiosity creep in so that they would respond without realizing I was fishing for information.
“Not exactly,” Javier said.
I cocked my head to one side. “Then why didn’t you call the person who is?”
“Because we don’t have his num—”
“Shut up!”
“Don’t tell me to shut up, Luis!”
Ah, so that was Angry Chihuahua’s name.
My brain was working overtime, piecing together the fragments I had unearthed. There was the hired muscle, the way these guys appeared to be entirely disorganized, and now the fact that they had no way to contact the man in charge.
Instead, they had called someone else…
Was this an attempt to get a foot in the door, so to speak? Was my kidnapping just a means to an end — a way to climb the ladder?
Good God, they really hadn’t thought this through.
“That’s okay, I get it. You can’t tell me anything. I’m just…” I blew out a shaky breath. “I just like understanding people. Even, you know, people doing, uh, questionable things. Makes it less scary when I know the why.”
They relaxed slightly, their posture softening and their eyes flicking towards each other. It was subtle, but I noticed that tiny shift from guarded to uncertain, like they weren’t entirely sure what the right move was anymore.
I softened my voice slightly, allowing some of the earlier panic to linger, but not enough to alarm them.
“You don’t have to, like, give me any details or anything,” I added quickly, offering them an easy way out and a clear boundary.
“I just … I don’t love the idea of sitting here imagining the worst possible version of what’s about to happen, you know?
My brain is very creative when left unsupervised. ”
Luis exhaled sharply through his nose and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not … it’s not like that.”
Javier glanced at Luis, then back at me. Hesitation was written all over his face, and I could tell he was already halfway to answering.
“Like what?” I asked gently, not pushing, just … opening the door a little wider.
“Like we’re gonna kill you,” Javier clarified, glancing at me briefly before looking away again. “That’s not the plan.”
Not exactly comforting, but I nodded like that was the most reassuring thing I’d ever heard. “Okay. That’s … genuinely good to know. Huge fan of that plan.”
“We just, ah … we needed leverage,” Luis muttered.
I tilted my head slightly, like I was just trying to follow along, like my heart wasn’t still beating a little too fast in my chest.
Sasha is coming. Just keep them talking.
“Leverage,” I repeated quietly, more to myself than to them and nodded in understanding. “Against, um, my side?”
Neither of them confirmed or denied it, but they didn’t really need to. The pieces were falling into place. My stomach twisted, something sharp and cold sliding beneath my ribs, but I forced my shoulders to stay loose and kept a thoughtful expression instead of looking terrified.
“So what’s going to happen when this Rafael guy shows up?” I went on, tone light, almost conversational, like we were discussing trivialities instead of matters of life and death.
Javier hesitated and then exhaled slowly. “Depends.”
On what? Fuck, I really wasn’t built for this.
I wanted to probe further, to coax something more concrete out of him, but the sharp pang of anxiety in my chest warned me not to push too hard, not yet.
So instead, I nodded, like that answer made sense, like depends wasn’t one of the most stressful words he could have possibly chosen.
“Okay,” I said lightly, even managing a small exhale that almost sounded like a laugh. “We’ll circle back to that later, then.”
Luis glanced at me, an uncertain look flickering across his face as if he couldn’t quite figure out why I wasn’t more upset.
Oh, I was. I was absolutely panicking.
“Sooo,” I continued, dragging the word out a little as I shifted on the crate, letting my foot tap once against the concrete because sitting still suddenly felt impossible, “he’s gonna come here and decide what to do with me?”
Javier gave a small, noncommittal nod.
I tilted my head slightly, like I was just thinking out loud, “He didn’t know about this?”
Luis looked away first, his jaw tightening.
Javier exhaled slowly, his brows angry slashes. “We didn’t need someone to tell us.”
I didn’t react right away. I let the words sit between us as if they weren’t a big deal, as if I wasn’t mentally underlining them in bold.