We both stand there, stock still in the dying New Orleans daylight, our breathing harsh. One minute goes by, then two. Dryas glances at me, his growing uncertainty written all over his face.
Then there are gunshots, at least a dozen of them. Neither Dryas nor I react; you don’t get far in our line of work if gunshots make you jumpy. Then I hear a deep male voice, calling out across the warehouse.
“Yo, boss!” David, one of my bodyguards, calls to me. “We got ’em over here, ready for you.”
I arch my brows at Dryas and head out of the little room, into the warehouse’s main area. There are big gaping holes in the roof, and it just so happens that right underneath where the light pours in, are the three Carolla men, gagged and on their knees a few feet apart. It strikes me as being a little funny as if the light is saying, here they are. Finally, the worthless pieces of scum you’ve been waiting for.
But wait… shouldn’t there be four of them? I am fairly certain there is another little Carolla boy running around, not to mention the daughter. Not that I ever expected her to come here.
I did expect all four of the men, though. I stride up to them, putting my firearm away. I can see that they know who I am from their expressions, although we haven’t yet met.
“Hello,” I greet them, as casually as you please. “I’m Arsen.
None of them speak to me. That’s fine because I like to start my interrogations with a bang. Choosing the youngest of the group, I walk right up to him and pull his head down, bringing my knee up at the same time. The contact is brief, but there is a satisfying crunch of bone as I shatter his nose and a resultant spray of blood. As he screams, I step back, letting him fall on his hands and knees.
I wipe his blood off of my hands and onto on my pants as the other Carollas glare at me.
“Fuck you, you fucking Greek piece of shit,” another brother spits at me.
I look at him, see him trembling with rage and fear. The fact is, he will die within the next hour, along with most of his family. I give him a crooked smile, pull out my firearm, and aim it at his head.
He flinches a little, a sign of weakness. How weak and lazy and fat these stupid Americans are. I step towards him, my combat boots squeaking a little as I step through his brother’s blood.
“This is for Anna, the little Russian whore that you all took turns ruining,” I say. I take the safety off. “It’s only the first of many lessons I have to teach you… but it is the most important. Never, ever take what is mine.”
I fire the shot from only a few feet away. Everything slowed down for a second, to allow me to appreciate what is happening.
The bullet begins to leave my gun. The boy that I am aiming at soils himself and squeezes his eyes closed. He leans back as if that will save him.
“No!” screams the father, moving towards the boy. The other two brothers look on in horror.
The bullet traces cleanly through the boy’s brain and exits through the back of his skull. The bullet hole on the boy’s forehead blooms with the faintest hint of red. He stares at me, openmouthed as if he can’t believe that I just killed him.
A little shiver of excited energy passes from him to me as I see the awareness leave his eyes. That moment, that power I derive from watching his life end, that is everything.
Everything speeds back up. Then there is blood everywhere suddenly. All over the boy’s back, all over the floor. His body topples over backward, arms flailing even though there is no consciousness left in his body.
His father turns to me, shaking and sweating with his rage. He doesn’t seem to realize that he is in a weak position, even though he is still kneeling on the dirty floor of an abandoned warehouse.
“Fuck you,” he swears, his voice low. “I will make you suffer. I will make you bleed. I will fucking cut you into pieces and feed you to the fish in the Mississippi.”
He starts to move toward me, only to be subdued immediately by two of my bodyguards.
His threat makes one corner of my mouth crook upward. “It that right?”
“I will fucking end you!” he shouts, little bits of spittle leaving his mouth.
“You know what I would find more interesting?” I ask calmly. “I would really like to know where your other son is, and your daughter.”
His eyes go wide. He wasn’t expecting that, somehow. “Fuck you. I’d rather die than tell you.”
That makes me smile. “Is that right?”
He just glares at me, not answering.
I point my gun at the other son, the one whose nose I’ve broken. “We’ll see.”
I will get the information out of him, even if I have to get out the torture kit.
I always do.
3
Katherine
I stare out the window of the Escalade, looking at the streets of New Orleans pass me by. Tony and I are supposed to be going grocery shopping, but he drove us in the opposite direction of Rouse’s Supermarket, heading east up into the Gentilly area.
I pull my too-short pale pink dress down, puzzled as to why Tony would suggest that I wear it today. It’s a Christ store purchase, something that I grabbed for myself and hid in my room. My father would flip if he saw me wearing it, honestly.
Tony found it a couple months ago when he was digging through my laundry, looking for God knows what. He mocked me but never said anything to Dad about it. He never brought it up at all, and I sort of forgot about it.
Until today, when Tony said I should wear something nice, and suggested this dress. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but… I don’t know. Something is off, but I can’t figure out what.
I look at Tony, who’s driving with one hand and chewing a nail on his free hand.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” I ask, frowning as we hit a particularly broken-down stretch of the city.
The little shotgun houses here have peeling paint and ratty yards, barefoot kids in diapers taunting mean-looking pit bulls that are chained up outside. The homes are half-collapsing, leaning far too one side or the other. Even the streets are messed up here, the concrete so busted up and broken that Tony has to drive slowly over it.
“Yeah,” Tony grunts. “We’re almost there.”
I glance at Tony, feeling that something is wrong. His eyes are fixed on the rearview mirror, his posture so tense that he’s sitting forward instead of leaning back. He’s been sweating bullets since we got in the car, biting off terse answers to my questions.
I lay a hand on his arm, and he practically jumps out of his skin. “Jesus! Don’t fucking touch me, Katherine.”
I narrow my gaze and speak slow and low. “What’s going on, Tony?”
He glances at me; the whites of his eyes are a little too wide. Maybe he’s on some kind of drug? It would explain the sweating and the nervousness.
“Nothing you need to worry yourself about,” he says. He tenses his jaw in such a way that I know he’s lying. I just don’t know what his lie is about.
I push back in my seat, unsatisfied. Tony keeps looking in the rearview mirror, driving all of twenty miles per hour. I start wondering how long it would take me to get out of the car, here and now. If Tony’s on drugs and running from the cops, I need some kind of backup plan in case something goes wrong.
Even as I think it, I see the blue flashing lights of the New Orleans police behind us. I swear, a minute ago I didn’t even see the SUV, but now it is flagging us down.
Tony doesn’t stop right away, forcing the police SUV to turn on its sirens. I look at Tony, who is staring in the rearview mirror and gripping the wheel so hard that his knuckles are turning white.
“Tony, you have to stop for the cops,” I tell him gently. Obviously, he’s in a pretty altered state because I shouldn’t have to tell him stuff like that. What, are we just going to run, and see who wins?
On these streets? I don’t think so.
His eyes roll over to look at me. He starts shaking. “You don’t want that, Katherine. Really, you don’t.”
“Pull over, Tony,” I plead, looking him in the eyes. I know I have no real authority here.
“You don’t know…” he says, glancing in the rearview again. “You have no idea what’s about to happen…”
“Tony,” I say, placing my hand on his arm again. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay, I promise. Just pull the car over, all right?”
He looks straight ahead, then grabs the wheel and jerks it to the right, braking abruptly. We jerk to a halt, hard enough that I’m worried about having a mark where the seatbelt went taut against my chest.
“Jesus, Tony,” I mutter, looking behind the car.
Four uniformed N.O.P.D. are already climbing out of their SUV, pulling their guns as they begin to approach us. They flank the car, moving quickly.
“Fuck!” Tony says, turning halfway around in his seat. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“It’s okay,” I try to soothe him, though I am very worried about the police officers rapidly approaching just outside our windows.
“Unlock the doors!” commands the officer on Tony’s side. “Both of you get out of the vehicle right now, slowly.”
My puzzlement is evident. I look at Tony, who just puts his hand on his unlock buttons. He glances up at me, his too-wide eyes filling with tears.
“I’m sorry,” he says, as he presses unlock.
What is he talking about? I wonder.
I don’t have time to process his words fully, though. My door is yanked open, and I turn away from Tony. There is a burly officer there, reaching in the car, trying to unfasten my seatbelt.
“Okay! Let me just…” I say to him, but he reaches in anyway. He manages to detach my seatbelt. Grabbing me by the shirt, he pulls me from the car, slamming me against the Escalade’s side. “Jesus!”
Through the windows, I see Tony getting the same treatment. He’s arguing with the cops, probably trying to talk his way out of jail.
“Hey man, you have her,” he’s saying. The cops frisk him and start to frisk me. The hands that go up and down my legs are rough, and I’m distracted as I strain to listen to what Tony is saying. “That’s the deal, right? Y’all take her, and I go free?”
“Shut the fuck up,” the cop frisking him says. “Just stop talking, and we’ll get you on your way soon enough.”
The cop on my side pulls my arms together behind me, fastening them with a zip tie. “Wait a second… Officer, wait, what did I do wrong?”
The cop spins me around, grim-faced. “Born into the wrong family, I guess.”
“What?” I ask, mystified. “I—”
“This’ll go a lot easier on you if you shut up,” he says. Pointing me at the police SUV, he starts to frog march me toward it.
“No, no, this is a mistake,” I say, growing desperate. I look around the neighborhood, hoping that someone is watching, maybe recording my arrest. But no, there isn’t anyone. The street is deserted.
I look back at the Escalade, expecting to see Tony in handcuffs too. But instead, he’s standing by the car, watching me sullenly. The cops have left him alone, and they are all following me toward the police SUV.
“What the hell?” I ask. “Tony! Tony, what is happening?”
Tony glances away, breaking eye contact. He opens the door to his car, and it sure as hell seems like he’s just about to leave me with these cops.
“Tony!” I shout, tears breaking through in my voice. My heart rate starts pounding, the sound of all the blood rushing through me echoes in my ears. “Don’t leave me! Please! What did I do?”
“I told you to shut up,” the burly cop that holds me says. “Dean, get the back.”
One of the younger cops hurriedly goes to the SUV’s rear, opening it. I start to tremble, my body rebels by going boneless. The burly cop seems prepared for me to do it. He quickly puts his whole hand around the back of my neck, forcing his thumb deep into my neck, making me cry out with pain.
It’s all too fast for me to resist, to form any real plan or to escape. I am marched around to the SUV’s open rear gate. I stare at the blue plastic tarp that they have laying there, and all my senses scream, GET OUT OF HERE.
I scramble for the words to describe what is happening to me. I am bewildered and very, very afraid. “Help! Help! No, no, don’t! Rape!!”
For some reason, my brain supplies the word rape as a thing you say, because I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it’s a word that stands out.
Even as I am saying the words though, the burly cop grabs me by the waist, lifting me up and dumping me into the back. I immediately try to crawl out, but he backhands me, hitting my skull with a white-hot crack.
His blow felt like a thousand shards of agonizing heat, blooming outward from my temple. Stunned and temporarily too shocked to move, I allow the back door to be shut on me without protest. There is some kind of beige barrier thing that is blocking me in on top. The door lock clicks, leaving me in a blue tarp and car-seat beige kind of hell.
I immediately grow insanely claustrophobic. I can’t see any light, I just see the blue tarp beneath me and on my sides, and the beige barrier overhead. It’s like I’ve been sealed in a tomb, making me panic even more.
My head throbs and my blood rushes in my ears. I have this sensation like a million little bugs are crawling around me, just far away enough not to touch my body.
I wrestle with the handle on the door, pulling frantically. It doesn’t budge. I hear the doors open, feel the cops climb in just in front of me. I kick the seat as viciously as I can.
“Let me out!” I scream, my mind whirling. I scratch at the tarp where the door handle must be, trying to rip a hole in it, but it is too thick to be ripped. “Tony, don’t let them take me! Tony!! Tony! Don’t let them take me! Help!!! Anyone, help!”
“Shut the fuck up,” one of the cops says, although his voice is a little muffled.
One of them says something that I can’t quite hear, and the engine roars to life. My head throbs as I try to figure out what I am supposed to do now.
Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Think, Katherine. Think!
I roll around as the SUV progresses, my body crackling the tarp beneath my body. The men in the front are mostly silent, occasionally making a comment here or there, but it’s too muffled for me to hear.
I push at the barrier above my head, thinking that maybe it’s meant to be removed, but it doesn’t budge. I push again, out of desperation, and it moves the tiniest bit.
Good to know, I guess. I file it away, wracking my brain for what to do next. I remember an article that I read online that was how to escape a potential kidnapping, but that was a list of ways to avoid being put in a car.
Never let anyone take you to a second location. I remember that specifically.
But what are you supposed to do if you’ve already been put in a car?
Think, Katherine.
Maybe I can scream then we are at a traffic light, and get someone outside the car to notice me then? The SUV rolls to a stop, and I hear the faintest thud-thud-thud of music… maybe from another car, or a business?
I take a deep breath, fortifying myself. I can do this.
“Help! Rape! Helpppp!” I scream.
Then there is a scuffling sound as one of the cops turns around, rips the barrier above my head off, and points a gun directly at me. I blink at the sudden explosion of sunlight, freezing in place, my hands shooting up by my sides. It’s a gesture that says, don’t shoot me!
The cop’s head appears over the back seat, and he looks surly as hell. He motions to me with the gun.
“I won’t tell you again,” he growls.
“Please,” I beg, my eyes filling with tears. “I don’t know what my brother told you—”
“Will you shut her up?” someone else in the car complains.
The cop pointing the gun at me glances over his shoulder for just a second, annoyed with the person speaking. Then he looks at me.
“It wasn’t your fucking punk-ass brother. Your father
sold you. Now you belong to the buyer, as simple as that. And we are just carrying you from one place to another, nothing more. So, shut the fuck up, and don’t make me shoot you.”
His words are incomprehensible to me.
“My— my father?” I say, trying to understand.
The cop doesn’t say anymore. He just disappears and then the barrier comes down again.
“No!” I say, shrinking away from the barrier. “No! Stop! Please, I can’t breathe in here!”
It feels true; I feel like I can’t breathe; like I’m suffocating. I feel the cop shift in the seat just in front of me, and I feel my head throb once more.
I suddenly realize that I’m running out of time. If the cop was telling the truth, pretty soon I am going to be in the hands of some stranger… and it sounded like that stranger would be better equipped to deal with a struggling girl.
I definitely don’t want that. I’d rather take my chances with the cops, to be honest. I think for a second, then realize that I want to go through the tarp and out the back, if possible.
I just need something sharp to cut the tarp, something metal. I glance at my watch, which has a metal band. Yes.
I scramble to unsnap the watch, then find the sharpest part, just where the band links together. Forcing it into the sharpest shape possible between my fingers, I slash at the tarp.
No luck, though I can tell that I damaged it a little. Biting my lower lip, my head pounding and crazy thoughts trying to intrude, I try again… and again…
I manage to open a gash in the tarp about the size of my hand. From there, I work my hand through the gash and pull. It’s tough going, but I struggle with all my might.
The tarp finally gives way with an audible ripppppppp. My breath freezes in my lungs.
Please don’t let the cops have heard it. Please let my prison have muffled the sound.
But a few breaths later, I realize that they can’t hear it. I quickly rip the plastic again, my movements frenzied. I put my head through the hole, then work the tarp down the rest of my body.
Capture: Cherish Series Book One Page 2