“I served seventeen years in that rathole,” Buroot said. “Seventeen years and nine months. Almost eighteen years. And I swore, when I got out, that I was going to punish the man responsible for my father’s fate, and my own. You,” he said.
“You,” said Hancock.
Then Buroot exhaled. “My mother was wealthy. She died while I was in prison. She died broken too. Another one of your casualties. She left me all of this land and money. And I used that money to recruit your enemies. Hancock was the first. I wanted to demoralize you. Every little nugget I found, I planned to exploit. Your wife’s past. Your past. Your son’s past with married women. Yes. I paid that woman to seduce him in that bar, and take him to her home, and for her so-called husband and son to beat his ass. I did that too. And he went running to daddy like the punk he is!”
Carly was shocked. Even Amari’s beat down was a part of his web? She looked at Trevor. But Trevor was staring at Buroot.
“I used everybody willing to be paid and used,” Buroot said. “And just like Margo, that so-called husband and his son were killed. So was his wife your son slept with. I would have killed Jason Davis, too, but you safe-housed him, and I didn’t see the point of risking that level of exposure. But everybody died who was willing to do my dirty work.”
“Including Margo and Kate,” Trevor said.
“Absolutely,” Buroot said. “Kate’s death was no accident either.”
Carly looked at Trevor again. But Trevor was still trying to find a way out. They were in the kind of danger that he didn’t think was possible to get out of, but he had to find a way out for Carly’s sake.
“But you were smart,” Buroot continued talking. “You knew how to figure things out. And you figured out the connections. But funny how it all works out in the end. Because you and your wife ended up right where I wanted you: in my clutches. And I’m going to put an end to your misery right here, and right now,” he said, and reached out his hand to Hancock.
But Trevor was nobody’s fool. He had an ace up his sleeve, too, one he would only use when the last of the last second was upon him.
He kept a tiny revolver in his cufflink. It was government issue and government designed, and fired only at close range, and silently. It was to be a getaway weapon from the ultimate capture.
Because Carly was involved, Trevor saw their predicament as that ultimate capture.
Despite his chains, he was able to maneuver his thumb over to his cufflink and, just as Hancock was about to hand Buroot his gun, Trevor aimed the cufflink, not at Buroot, but at the man with the gun: Hancock. He pressed the cufflink, and it fired. Hancock was shot in the stomach. He dropped his weapon and fell on his knees, and then fell over dead.
But as Hancock was falling down, Buroot was grabbing a knife from his person and Carly in front of him, and was putting that knife to Carly’s neck.
“Drop it,” he said. “Whatever you just used, drop it or she dies!”
But Trevor knew he couldn’t drop it. If he did, he would surely be killed and, most importantly to him, Carly would too.
He had to take a shot.
He might hit Carly, but that might be the only way to save her life.
He relied on his training, and he took a shot. Before Buroot could call on his guards. Before Buroot could adjust that knife to scare Trevor any more than he was already terrified, he took his shot.
It grazed Carly’s arm. She winced and grabbed it, but dared not cry out to alert Buroot’s guards outside. Because Trevor had done it. He had shot and killed Buroot too.
But Trevor didn’t rest on that victory. He ran to Carly and began to untie her. He was in chains. And he didn’t have a key. But she was tied with rope.
He untied her. She would be able to drive them out of there, if they could only get past those guards.
But just as they were about to make their way toward some back exit, they heard gunfire outside. And plenty of it.
Trevor and Carly looked at each other? What the fuck, Trevor thought.
“Wait here,” he said, and hurried toward the front window. But before he could look out, the door flung open violently. Trevor’s heart dropped, and he stopped in his tracks.
But when he realized who those two faces belonged too, he smiled. It was Hammer Reese and, more surprising to Trevor, his son Amari.
He let out a long exhale of relief. “It’s alright, babe,” he yelled to Carly. “Help has arrived.”
Carly hurried toward the living room. When she saw Hammer and Amari she sighed relief too, and ran to Trevor.
“Is it safe?” she asked their two rescuers.
“It’s safe,” Hammer said, “or I wouldn’t be here.”
Carly smiled. “Thank you,” she said.
“Thanks,” Trevor said, too, heartfelt. “But didn’t I tell you to leave Amari out of it?”
“Are you kidding me?” Hammer asked. “It was Amari who pulled me into it!”
Trevor and Carly looked at Amari. “How?”
“When Bridgette said you left the office with Carly and her friends. You left, she said, even though you had a meeting with one of your top clients. That wasn’t like you. So I started sniffing around. Found out that you had safe housed some people, and that you had taken your plane to Maryland. So, I contacted Uncle Ham.”
“Do you realize how difficult it was to find you two?” Hammer asked.
Trevor knew it was never easy finding him. But he was grateful to his brother and his son. He placed his arm around Carly. She was okay. His family were okay. That was all that mattered to him.
EPILOGUE
Everybody waited. Big Daddy. All of Big Daddy’s children, including the mayor of their town, Bobby Sinatra. And even Mick and his wife Roz were there, too, along with his oldest son and underboss, Teddy Sinatra and his lady Nikki. They all were waiting.
Trevor was super nervous. He couldn’t stop pacing no matter who suggested he sit his ass down. But he was worried sick. “It shouldn’t take this long!” he kept saying. Then he’d ask how long it had been.
It had been a tough first year of their marriage. But after they got out of Buroot’s clutches alive, and after Trevor released Ralph and Melissa and Jason and Shay from that safe house, he knew they had made it through a tough road. And he wasn’t going to hold back any longer. He gave Carly the green light. She admitted that she had already given it to herself, and they began traveling down the road they now found themselves upon.
And then Jenay walked into the room with the news Trevor, and everyone assembled, had been waiting for. She looked exhausted too. But they all stood erect in anticipation. Trevor and Big Daddy hurried up to her.
“Well?” he asked.
Jenay smiled. “She’s healthy, she has all of her fingers and toes. She’s fine,” she said.
While everybody clapped and cheered, Trevor and Big Daddy asked the same question at the same time: “What about Carly?” they asked.
“Carly’s fine, too,” Jenay said. “She handled it like a champ. You can go in and see her, and the baby, too,” she added.
But just as Trevor was taking off to go and see his wife, Big Daddy was taking off too.
But Jenay grabbed him by the arm and stopped him. “Not this time, Big Boy,” she said. Then she added, with some sadness in her voice: “She’s Trevor’s now.”
Big Daddy opened his suitcoat and placed his hands on his hips. It was a searing realization. But one he knew he had to accept.
He nodded his head. And let Trevor go to his family alone.
Inside the hospital room, Carly was smiling at the baby as she held her. When Trevor arrived, she smiled at him too. “She’s so big,” she said to him.
“She doesn’t look big to me,” Trevor said as he gingerly walked around to the baby. And when he saw his daughter for the first time, he smiled.
“Wow,” he said.
And then Carly handed her to him, and he carefully took her in his arms for the first time.
“She l
ooks just like you,” Carly said, beaming with pride.
But Trevor was crying. He didn’t care if she looked like a chia pet, she was his chia pet!
He looked at Carly as he carefully bounced his baby girl, and he started grinning.
“We have a baby,” he said. “A baby!”
He gave her the green light to stop using birth control when they returned back to Boston all those months ago, and she became pregnant almost right away. He thought he’d regret it. But he didn’t.
He looked back down at his baby girl, and looked at sweet Carly again.
He didn’t regret a thing.
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Trevor Reese: His Protective Love Page 17