by Kym Roberts
Téa understood completely. She put the car in drive and pulled away.
Megan stuck her head out the window and gave one last message to the man she loved. “Don’t you die, you son of a bitch. Don’t you dare fucking die.”
As final words of love went, Téa would’ve chosen differently.
Chapter Fifteen
“Where am I going?”
“Turn left up ahead and roll down the rear window on my side.” Megan rolled down the front passenger window as Téa complied with her directions.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to put my shoulder back in place.” The emotions that had been evident two minutes ago were gone, replaced by the no-nonsense Agent Megan McClary. Minus one thing—the sparkle in her eyes. Téa knew she was going through hell—physically, mentally, emotionally and Megan’s coping mechanism had been to unplug from humanity.
She understood it more than most people. Watching someone else do it, however, made Téa realize how stupid she’d been. For seven years she’d walked around like Megan was now, unfeeling and uncaring. Although present in the here and now, physical pain meant nothing compared to the destruction of the heart and with the carnage, came the freeze. If Megan’s brain didn’t let the rivers of emotions flow, then no one, and nothing could touch her.
It was its own kind of bliss.
“What hotel are we going to?”
“I can’t tell you. Get on the highway, up there on the left.”
Téa glanced over at the agent who had her right elbow tucked in tight to her right side. Tumbling out of a car and onto the ground along the wind from the open windows pulled Megan’s copper tresses from the tightly secured bun she’d been wearing. There were dirt smudges on her face along with some abrasions Téa hadn’t noticed until then. With her back toward Téa, Megan grasped the car frame between the windows with her bad hand. How she was able to grip the car frame, Téa couldn’t imagine. The pain had to be excruciating.
Slowly, Megan rotated her body ninety degrees until she was facing Téa; torquing her shoulder and gazing straight through Téa’s skull. A blink and a pop of her shoulder and the job was done, without a noise from Megan. She slowly pulled her right arm across her chest with her left hand, then laid it there as she pulled her belt off and looped it closed. Megan hung the belt over her neck and used it as a sling for her right arm.
“How far should I go on the freeway?”
“Until I tell you to get off. Put up the windows.” Megan leaned back and closed her eyes. If Téa didn’t know any better, she’d think the agent was going to take a nap. Instead, she knew Megan was mentally regrouping and rewiring her priorities. She had a job to do—Téa.
Just remembering Cooper’s words made her feel more emotions than she cared to admit.
“We should meet them at the hospital.” Téa suggested.
“Shut up.”
“I mean it. We can check on Palmer and Cooper, and Khaos will be there—”
“I said, ‘shut up,’ and I meant shut up.”
The in pain Megan was one thing, but this hateful Megan was another. Téa had never been hateful. She’d never lashed out to stop the pain, and she wasn’t sure how to approach it. Silence seemed the best option but the perpetuity of it stretched beyond even her comfort zone.
“Should you call Khaos?”
Her question went unanswered. It was as if Téa wasn’t there and the car was on autopilot with Megan the sole occupant of the car. Megan straightened her seat, reached into her inside jacket pocket and pulled her phone out to presumably dial Khaos. She didn’t say a word to Téa before holding the phone up to her ear.
The conversation started without a hello. “We’re en route, where are you?”
Megan stared out the windshield and then adjusted the rearview mirror so that she could watch the traffic behind them.
“Is he—” Megan didn’t finish her question and Téa hated that she’d had to ask. Inaudible words traveled through the earpiece. “I’m glad Palmer is out of the woods, but I was talking about Coop.”
More talking on the other end of the line nearly drove Téa crazy.
“There was a bomb—” Megan’s gaze flicked to her. “No, she’s fine. She’s with me, but Coop was—injured. I was hoping he made it to the hospital.”
Waiting for answers and trying to sneak glimpses of emotion on Megan’s face out of the corner of her eye was driving Téa mad. Literally. She was tired of being on the outside. Tired of meetings, and ear coms and phone calls. She was tired of playing behind the scenes. This was her life, dammit. “How is he?”
Megan’s gaze flicked in her direction, but she didn’t bother to respond. She continued to tell Khaos what had happened with the bomb and finally about Stefano and how he’d killed Sister Mary in Mexico City while Téa’d listened to it on the other end of a phone line.
It was all too much. The day had been too much. She wanted to know if Palmer’s wife had been notified. She wanted to know if Cooper had made it to the hospital. Hell, she wanted to know if McDaniels was still in one piece. “I have a right to know,” she demanded.
“He doesn’t know. Khaos is in route to our location.” Megan’s voice was devoid of emotion, but the hidden meaning was clear. Téa was the job. They were all putting the job ahead of the people they worked with, and cared about. Friends, and colleagues and even lovers came last behind the job.
“Put him on speaker.” Her voice barely contained the rage boiling in her system. She knew what it was like to move on without grieving when something happened to a loved one, but she hadn’t had a choice. Her decision to leave was made for her. Her free will had been missing. Besides a paycheck, what the hell would keep these people from staying where they were needed? Her survival was not worth so much destruction and pain.
It wasn’t.
Megan clicked the button and Khaos’s voice filled the car. “I’m five minutes behind you.”
“Why?” She bit out.
“Why?” He repeated.
She wasn’t sure what was so confusing about her question. It was a legitimate question. “Why are you five minutes behind us? Why are you following us? Why aren’t you with your agents who need you?”
“Because you need me.” There’d been no hesitation in his answer. It was simple and truthful and so much bull crap she wanted to scream.
“Your agents need you. I’m nothing but the job.”
His response wasn’t instantaneous. Nor was it as strong. It was something…else she couldn’t put her finger on. “You’re more than the job to me.”
A glimmer of hope began to spread through her chest, and then she remembered his sister. How had she forgotten his sister and her fiancé? “Megan, hit record on your phone.”
Megan just stared across the console at her. “Take the next exit in ten kilometers.”
“Either hit record on your phone or I’ll keep driving to Spain if that’s what it takes.” She meant it. She’d had enough.
“We’re heading south toward Naples.”
Téa’s temper flared. “Then I’ll turned the damned car around and go to Spain. Hit record on your damn phone!”
“We’ll talk about it at the hotel, Téa.” Khaos’s voice was calm, as if both women needed a mediator to keep them from unraveling in the tiny car. She wasn’t sure intervention would be a bad thing for her, she couldn’t tell with Megan.
“We’ll meet you at the hotel.” Megan turned away from her and said something into the phone Téa couldn’t hear.
Probably something she didn’t want to hear. Like, “I will kill you myself, for sacrificing Coop for this piece of crap driving this car.” She knew Megan’s vocabulary would be stronger, she just didn’t want to admit to herself how little she meant as a person. As a job, she was everything. As an individual, she was worthless.
Megan hung up the phone and began tapping away with her one free hand.
“What
are you doing?”
“Just drive.” The cut to Megan’s instructions was biting. When she finally turned her attention to Téa, she was holding her phone up as if to take her picture. “When I tell you, to go, tell your story from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out. Got it?”
Megan’s gaze was steady, and relief washed through Téa. She could make things right and put a stop to the risk these people were taking. This was her one shot to end this once and for all. She nodded and took a deep breath, then exhaled.
“Go.” Megan held up the phone and recorded what Téa had to say.
“My name is Téa Bello Vanetti from Newark, New Jersey. My father, Alessandro Vanetti was murdered by my great uncle, Marco Vanetti seven years ago when he refused to let Frank and Marco Vanetti supply his business with mob contracts. I didn’t see my father die, but my mother Olivia Vanetti did. They executed him in front of my mother while I was at school. And when I got out of school, a neighbor boy Stefano Astrella picked me up and took me to my dad’s office. It wasn’t uncommon for Stefano to run errands for everyone in the neighborhood for extra cash, so I didn’t think anything of it at the time.” As the memories of how happy Stefano had been that day came crashing down around her, Téa wished she’d been able to read the boy of twenty who’d never been happy a day in his life.
“When we got there, I immediately knew something was wrong. My dad’s car wasn’t there and neither was my mom’s. When I got out of the car, Stefano pulled a gun out of his waist. I immediately thought it was a toy. No one in the neighborhood carried a gun. We didn’t have need to.”
Cars began passing them and Téa looked down at her speedometer to see that she’d unconsciously slowed down, but she kept it at that speed to make sure she didn’t make any mistakes that would cause an accident.
“He forced me to get into another car with a bald guy. He was the same man I saw here in Rome just a few days ago. I don’t know his name, but he was chasing me at the train station with Agent Artino. Anyway, we got in the car and they drove me to some house. To this day, I have no idea where it was, but Marco was very comfortable there. I literally ran in and hugged him when I saw him sitting behind this huge desk.” She released a derisive snort for the naive girl she’d been.
“That’s when I saw my mom. She was on her knees. Her blouse had been torn, her right eye was blackened and her mascara was running down her face. She couldn’t stop crying.”
Téa wiped her nose as the snot began to run freely with her tears, but she refused to stop telling her story. It had to be documented so Marco and Frank and Stefano and all of the other horrible men she’d met, paid for their crimes. She’d remained silent in fear for too long.
“When I tried to go to my mom, Marco grabbed me by my hair and held me. My mother begged him to spare me. She said she understood why he shot my father and why he couldn’t spare her, but that I was innocent. Marco told her he wouldn’t kill me and then he nodded to Stefano who ran a blade across her neck. I screamed for my mother and begged and pleaded for them to help her. Marco said my parents had to pay the price for betraying the family and that we would all pay for my father’s sins.”
Her uncle had looked at her as impassively as he would a nuisance. A rat in a trap that hadn’t died when the spring snapped closed on its bait. Except instead of taking a hammer to her head to end her squealing and screaming, he’d analyzed her like a profit margin. He could shut her up permanently and be done with her, or…
God, the or had been so much worse than dying with her parents. She’d begged and pleaded for death when the or had come.
“It seems my uncle has some sick code of honor, because he kept his promise to my mother. He didn’t kill me. He sold me to a middle-aged billionaire named Jonathan Phillips who had a sick desire to hurt. For two years I prayed for death and when I tried to kill myself, he punished me further.” She pulled down her coat and shirt at her shoulder to expose just a few of the scars that marred her back and as she looked past the phone into Megan’s eyes, she saw the pity. She wanted to stop telling the story. She’d never told a soul the whole truth. It would have only gotten them killed, like Sister Mary in Mexico City, who’d only known her history as far as Miguel, her pimp, and nothing more.
But despite keeping her mouth shut, more people had been injured and they didn’t even know why, other than she was the job. It was her turn to do her job and make sure the right people were held accountable before it was too late and they silenced her forever.
“I lived on a private island in the middle of the Caribbean where I serviced countless men of wealth and means. To them, I was nothing but a whore.” Her hatred spilled out as she spoke of those men who could have had any woman they’d wanted if they’d asked, but instead, they liked to take…and take.
“My personal jailer was Stefano. He loved playing that roll. He was nothing like the boy my parents believed him to be. Marco had given him a taste of power and he thrived. I stayed on the island until a new girl took my place. Then I was given to Stefano. He is a special kind of evil.”
Megan questioned her like a reporter getting an exclusive story that would topple an empire. If it brought down the Vanetti la Cosa Nostra back in the States, she was all for it.
“Does Stefano go by any other names?”
“From what I understand, he’s going by the name of Stefan Asher now. He probably had his name changed on Jonathan’s island. It’s where they illegally changed my name to Bella Garcia to get me into Mexico, so I imagine Jonathan did the same for him.”
“What happened after you were given to Stefano?”
“I refused him.”
“How did you refuse him?” She asked.
“I tried to convince the other men I would do things for them if they didn’t hurt me. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.” She shrugged off the implications of that. People could judge her how they wanted, she couldn’t change their minds. “I knew Stefano would hurt me no matter what. If I said no, he would be especially cruel. I’d seen him that way with a young man who was brought to the island. So I didn’t comply, but I didn’t say no either. I laid down and let him do what he would.”
“Did he rape you?”
“On multiple occasions, yes.”
“Did he beat you and hurt you?”
“He gave me the scar on my mouth right before he handed me over to Miguel.” She pointed to the ugly scar on her mouth that everyone stared at, but no one asked about. Including Khaos. Looking into the cell phone camera, she felt like he was her audience. Everyone else was irrelevant. “I can’t identify the rest of the scars on my body to a particular person. I can say who injured me and if it was bad enough to leave a scar. Stefano injured my back on three occasions.”
“What happened then?”
“Miguel was hired muscle for a drug cartel in Mexico. Jonathan dealt with them every now and then to dispose of his merchandise.”
“Dispose?” Megan asked.
Téa could see Megan’s anger on her face. Her expression seemed to be fueled by a bonfire. She wanted vengeance for the victims, for Palmer, and for Coop. In contrast, Téa’s flame barely held kindling. Even after years of abuse it was hard to get it to ignite with a passion as hot as Megan’s. Strong feelings were new and frightening. Numb had kept her safe and secure for too long. Because of Khaos and his team, though, she was willing to light the fire and let it burn.
“I don’t know how many came before me, but Mexico is where Jonathan sends girls like me to disappear and never be heard from again. My friend Sandra was one of those girls.”
Dawning crossed Megan’s face. She may have only known bits and pieces as to why Khaos had put so much on the line for Téa, but she knew Sandra’s name. When she’d escaped five years ago, she hadn’t watched the news to follow the story. Téa hadn’t known anyone would care. According to everything Khaos had told her, she’d been wrong, and Megan’s reaction was proof.
Her voic
e softened. “Tell me about Sandra.”
“Sandra was a beautiful person. She’d been a high school student in Vera Cruz looking to earn some extra cash when she was approached by a woman who promised her the world. She made the mistake of believing the lies. She was on Jonathan’s island for a little over a year when he shipped her back to Mexico. She was twenty-one when she died.
“I wasn’t able to cry for Sandra at the time of her death. We’d only known each other for a few weeks, but accepting her friendship had helped me survive. In the end, it was her death that allowed me to escape.”
“Tell me about the night she died.” Megan probed. She seemed distracted by something behind them, but without the rearview mirror, Téa couldn’t see what she was looking at.
“Miguel met two agents with the Secret Service in a bar he frequented for clients in Mexico City. He struck a deal and delivered us to their hotel room.”
“You said there were two agents?”
“When we got to the room, there were two waiting for us. They paid Miguel and he said he’d be back to pick us up in the morning. Sandra went with one guy who immediately started feeding her drugs,” She shook her head as she watched the traffic ahead of them. “The last thing she needed was more. She was having trouble walking when we got there. The second guy pulled me into his bedroom.”
“What was his name?”
“I have no idea. We weren’t allowed to ask the johns anything personal.”
“How did you know they were with the Secret Service?”
“Miguel told us because Sandra had been with one of them on a previous visit and he’d asked for her again.” Sadness took over as Téa thought about how she’d volunteered to go with Sandra. Khaos and anyone who watched the video would have a hard time not judging her with what she had to say next, but it was the truth, and it would come out sooner or later. If it made people believe she was a willing prostitute, so be it. She’d be the one to confess her sin and not sit by and let someone else tell it for her. “I volunteered for that date.”