by Keta Kendric
When I didn’t answer Sorio, he ripped my shirt open, exposing my bra. He taunted, but I no longer paid attention to his abusive words or angry shouts. Instead, the sound of Ansel’s voice rang loud in my head.
“I need you to be Gina. That badass bitch that’s not afraid to look a man in the eyes and take his fucking life.”
My cousin’s face was pinched with genuine confusion when his gaze met mine. He no longer saw the woman he’d broken, and I no longer saw a devil. I glanced into the face of a man who preyed on the weak by imposing his will. I’d found what I’d never allowed myself to see before. Sorio was nothing but a man who hid behind our family name and did horrible things to people in the name of Dominquez.
“How are you alive?” I uttered. The question surprised him as much as it surprised me when it fell from my mouth.
He released my arm, and I rubbed it to dull the pain that his bruising grip left behind. There was no doubt he’d use the moment as his opportunity to taunt me.
“You are supposed to be smart, Doctor.”
The way he punctuated the word doctor, let me know that he hated the fact that I’d earned the title. I had something to be proud of, and all he had was our family name.
“With your medical education and degrees, I can’t believe you hadn’t figured the shit out.” He paced in front of me as I kept my back to the wall. His hand rested behind his back like a professor about to school a student. His chest poked out high as a sinister grin lingered on his lips. The men stood a few paces back, awaiting the order from their master when it was time to attack.
“Figured what out?” I inquired. If I could keep Sorio talking, maybe it would give Ansel time to pinpoint my location. I clung fiercely to the hope that Ansel would find me. He may not love me, but I knew he cared about me a heck of a lot more than he admitted to me.
“The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde routine?” Sorio stated while wiggling his eyebrows. “You never wondered why one moment, I’d sit and try to have a civil dinner or lunch with you, and the next I was beating the shit out of you? Or the times when I’d try to clean you up after I’d beaten the fuck out of you?”
I’d assumed he was crazy as hell, not that it meant something. So what? He was crazier than I assumed. What difference did it make? Crazy was crazy.
“It wasn’t me, cousin. All those times I was being nice to you. It wasn’t me.”
Who the hell was it? Your equally psychotic twin?
His smile widened like he’d heard my question.
“The nice one was my brother and your cousin, Mateo. He was a killer too, just not as thorough and vicious as me. He killed when he had to. I kill because I love to. He was the one that talked me into letting you have those weeks off. And what a fucking mistake that turned out to be.”
“You had a twin?” The words tumbled over my lips. A few questioning murmurs came from the men behind me, hinting that they hadn’t known Sorio’s secret either.
“Yes, genius, and an airtight alibi for every fucking crime I ever committed.”
Lumps of fear tumbled down my constricted throat, the news jarring me. August had killed the one person that had likely kept Sorio from killing me or making my life a worse hell than it already had been.
“My mother had us at home. A midwife delivered us. After we were born, my father seized the opportunity. He killed the midwife and threatened to kill my mother if she breathed a word to anyone that she’d given birth to twins. My father started training Mateo and me as soon as we hit double digits. I had the mind for murder, Mateo didn’t so much. He became the decoy, the alibi, the key ingredient needed to commit the perfect crimes. I became my father’s secret little assassin. When my mother threatened to spill the secret…”
Sorio didn’t have to finish the sentence. His eyebrows rose, and his eyes glinted with a murderous gaze that confirmed his suggestion. It was official. My family was a den of monsters. Parents who would eat their young and kids that murdered their parents if they became a problem.
“How do you think your father ended up dead?”
A strangled gasp escaped as I attempted to mute my hollowed cries. My lips started to tremble, but it wasn’t fear I stifled. Anger was the emotion that coursed through me. I’d had a sick sense that our family had killed my father. Now, I was face-to-face with his killer and the man who’d turned my life into a living nightmare.
“Uncle Emilio and his nice little tucked away side-life with his perfect wife and daughter. You really think your mother died in a car accident?”
“Nooo,” came my low murmur of protest, hoping that denying what he said would make it false. I’d had seven short years with my mother, not enough time to build lasting memories of her.
“Nope, my father killed your mother and not because he didn’t like her. My father wanted to fuck her, and that black bitch turned him down like she had a choice. I lost my father because of you black bitches. After my father killed your mother, he went into hiding for years and ended up in the slums of Texas because Uncle Emilio had put a price on his head. Over that bitch. My father ended up getting killed by the little black foster bitch he was raising. After the family had given up the quest, I sought to avenge my father’s death. I started with Uncle Emilio. His murder was some of my best work.”
Sorio stood over me, gloating. He blamed my mother and me for his father’s death. His thinking was an erratic, disjointed mess. He was psychotic and willing to kill anyone he deemed responsible for his unhappiness.
“You abide by the rules of this family, or you die by them,” he declared shaking a finger in my face as he quoted some misguided family principle. “Realigning DG6 was one of my biggest plans. I’d intended to do what your boyfriend and his band of fucking brothers did. It would have taken me longer my way, but thanks to your boyfriend and friends, they took out the top six for me. No one, not even the Social Security Administration knows I had a twin, so guess who took over the reins of the Dominquez Cartel?” He tapped at his chest. “I run DG6 now!”
His revelation hung in the air while my brain spasmed in my head. Sorio was running my already evil cartel family, which meant that hell was getting spilled on earth. The men snickered behind me, but I knew my cousin well enough to know he’d kill them for the information he’d divulged. He’d killed for less, and they were too dumb to realize he’d already revealed he’d killed his own mother to protect his secret.
“I know your boyfriend and his friends have connections, so I haven’t shown my face for obvious reasons. Although I could have gone on and lived happily ever after running the empire, there was this one thing I couldn’t let go of. One thing that nagged at me so hard, I fucking couldn’t let it get away from me. One thing that kept niggling in my mind to the point that I needed to do something about it.”
The evil glare that usually sent a shiver through me appeared. Sorio had risked his cover to come after me. A smile spread across his face, revealing his evil intent.
“I’m not going to kill you, cousin. That would be too easy. But, I’m going to make you pray for death every day.” He said this as he slid his tongue across his lips and rubbed his hands together in delight. I stared into the face of blinding evil, a disturbed man that shouldn’t have been around normal humans.
Sorio’s twisted obsession with me knew no bounds.
48
Ansel
“Five miles,” came D’s voice in my earpiece. We’d left the congestion of the city about ten miles back. The dark stretch of highway we’d turned along led us into an area I’d never ventured into before.
It was a smaller outlying area on the outskirts of the city. The view outside my window provided no comfort, only bitter darkness. A still darkness cast in shadows that had me thinking the worst.
When Aaron had been fighting for Megan, I’d assumed I’d understood what he’d been going through. I believed I’d been sympathetic to his feelings. However, it was only now that I understood the fight, the passion, and the motivation that dr
ove him.
When the life of someone you cared about hung on the brink, you’d do the unthinkable to save them. I’d do anything and was ready to kill any and everybody if they stood in the way of my getting Regina back.
I rode shotgun as Aaron drove with Rob in the backseat. Marcus, Scott, and D led the way in one of the two Chevy Tahoe’s we’d borrowed from the parking garage of the Rembert hotel.
The mood I was in, the tone I’d taken, none of the men spoke a word to me unless it was necessary. They knew me well enough to know I’d reached the point that talking was the last thing I wanted to do.
We hadn’t positively identified who’d taken Regina but based on the men we’d encountered at the crash site, they were likely associated with DG6. Heavily accented and speaking Spanish, they were similar to the crews we’d encountered that had been deployed to track down Megan.
The Dominquez family was known for being bad people, but I had no intention of letting any of them live if they hurt Regina.
My eyes focused on our dark surroundings as Aaron slowed the vehicle when the guys slowed ahead of us.
“Three minutes out,” D’s voice sounded. The area we’d arrived in was a large business district. The streets were aligned with hotels and large office complexes. I’d expected Regina would have been taken to a desolate area surrounded by trees. If Regina was here, was her captor arrogant enough to think he’d gotten away?
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Aaron asked as his head turned in my direction.
“Yes. They are either setting us up, or they believe they are in the clear.”
The sound of sliding metal filled my ears as I twisted the silencer on my weapon. The click, clack, and clink of weapons being readied sang into my earpiece. Since we were in an area that had lurking eyes, this mission would have to be a silent one.
The darkness swam over the lights on the telephone poles, making them cast a dim, eerie glow. The moon peeked, the stars stared, and the atmosphere buzzed with the anticipation of our impending mission.
When the vehicles slowed to a crawl, my neck swiveled. We had driven to the end of the street where a train track separated us from a cozy neighborhood beyond it. An interstate overpass crossed the tracks and provided enough noise to help drown out whatever havoc we were about to cause.
“The abandoned restaurant,” D’s voice pointed out. Thick trees and shrubs separated the restaurant from the hotels and offices. The place appeared to have been shut down for years. The tall weeds in the empty parking lot were noticeable from the highway. A chain held up by lopsided poles prevented vehicles from turning into the empty lot.
There weren’t any visible cars in the parking lot, nor was there any visible light inside the building that indicated it was occupied. It was one of those large all-you-can-eat buffet style restaurants. The building stood alone in the middle of the lot, a large L-shaped whitewood finish that nature had taken its toll on.
We moved past the restaurant and headed over the tracks to find a place to park. We turned onto the first side street and parked along the side of the road like the locals had, facing the exit. No one uttered a word as we prepared to go to war.
Three guns, two knives, and five extra clips of ammo were what I’d strapped to various parts of my body. Without seeing any of them, I knew that the rest of the crew was as heavily armed. We didn’t exit the vehicles at the same time. Scott and Marcus exited the lead vehicle first. A few minutes later, D exited the lead vehicle, and Rob exited our vehicle before they joined and faded into the darkness as a team.
The last thing a nosey neighbor needed to see was a gang dressed all in black tactical gear that appeared ready to take on the Taliban. They’d have had the cops on our asses in a heartbeat.
I sensed Aaron’s gaze on me as we waited in the dark vehicle. A lazy breeze through our cracked windows broke the silence. The leather seat groaned beneath him and called my attention before my gaze landed on the dark profile of his fist. My fist bumped his, and we kept them together.
“They die,” Aaron stated.
“Or we die,” I finished. Those words caused a faint smile to trace my lips. They meant everything. They meant my cousin had my back no matter what. That we were going to rescue Regina or blow up every room in hell until we got her back.
Aaron and I exited the SUV. In stealth mode, our background was harmonizing insects, the distant booms of the train’s boxcars being connected, and the overpass traffic roaring above us. Over the tracks, in a patch of shrubs, the rest of our crew waited. Their dark clothes and silence left them blended into the night.
The concrete foundation of a building that once stood on the patch of land we converged on was scarcely visible due to overgrowth. The solitary light on the pole next to the slab of concrete provided sparse lighting for the area. Near the restaurant we targeted, a telephone pole stood against the darkness without light. Nine times out of ten, the light had been conveniently shut off.
Its white color gave it visibility, but most of the building was cast in darkness. No sound or obvious signs of life came from that direction. I wanted to question D’s tracking skills but knew first-hand that he was one of the best at what he did.
“Regina’s tracker signal is strong. I’m also picking up multiple heat signatures,” came D’s low tone. Now, we were getting somewhere. “I sent you all the blueprints of this building,” he announced. How the hell he’d gotten blueprints of an abandoned restaurant was beyond me.
“I see two strong heat signatures, but there appears to be more that are dim as fuck like they’re half dead,” D stated, not talking to anyone in particular. I inched closer to D, rustling the tall grass as I moved.
D’s face was so close to the lit face of his phone, he may as well have been kissing it. I glared at it, taking in the dim heat signatures. I pointed at a few more spots on the screen.
“What’s that? I asked D as my gaze remained on what may or may not have been more dim figures.
“I don’t know,” D answered, squinting at the screen as he batted away an insect that lingered near his face.
“This is more than likely DG6. If so, that could well be people underground,” I stated as the blurs of faded orange light on D’s screen danced before my eyes like floating ghost. My statement drew us all tighter around D.
“It sure the fuck could be,” D stated as he glanced around the group. “I hope you strapped on extra ammo. If what we see are men, there are at least twelve of them in that building.”
I didn’t care how many were down there. There would only be one left alive—Regina.
49
Ansel
I took north, Aaron south, Rob east, and D west. Marcus had Tina and was posted up outside the front, ready to lay down sniper fire as Scott remained our eyes in the back of the building.
“Check your feeds,” D’s voice announced. “The dim heat signatures have brightened. I can confirm fifteen now.”
The elongated scratchy sound of the window I’d pried open sounded as I snapped my neck in either direction before allowing my body to cross the threshold. The place was drenched in darkness, making the night goggles a necessity. The strongest heat signatures we’d spotted belonged to two half-wits who were asleep on duty.
Tap! Tap!
The two muffled taps from my weapon sent dark matter splattering against the floor. One fell from his chair and landed on the floor, and the other’s head fell back against the rickety wooden chair he sat in. His eyes were aimed at the ceiling as the contents of his head made drip-drop sounds against the floor.
Fifteen. Fourteen.
The count was on. I needed to reach my number one. If I didn’t, the world would feel the wrath of my disappointment.
“Lupe, Noah, radio check, over,” came a voice, in Spanish, through the radio the two dead men shared.
Aaron, D, and Rob coming into view was confirmation that each area had been cleared. We didn’t speak as we waited for the friends to show up and reveal to
us how to get into the lower half of the building.
Like luring a rat to cheese, the creaking of wood shifting under someone’s weight sounded and sent us into the shadows. Dust particles swirled at my face and swam up my nose with each breath I took. The darkness blanketed me, adding to the dark storm that swirled in my head.
The unmistakable sound of a door squeaking open drew my gaze to the area behind the bar and likely the way into the basement. Regina was here, and it wasn’t the fact that D was tracking her device. I sensed her presence as faint traces of her scent caused my nostrils to flare.
When two shadows crept out from behind the bar, we didn’t have to speak a word to each other as they stepped into the opening, surrounded by us on each side.
“Lupe, Noah, where the fuck are you? Why…”
The talker’s words stopped when he stepped close enough to view the dark and bloody figures of his friends. They drew their weapons, but they were already dead men.
“I got them,” I announced, knowing my team could hear me. At the sound of my voice, the new arrivals turned in my direction. One keyed his radio to call for backup. I wanted him to.
“Alert! Alert! Alert! We got…”
Tap! Tap!
My silenced weapon spoke.
Thirteen. Twelve.
Without night vision, they were sitting ducks that I didn’t waste time picking off. One was slung against the wall as his head exploded and sent dark liquid against the faded and peeling wall, giving it a splash of life. The other’s body flew over the chair of the one lying dead there, toppling it.
If the radio call hadn’t gotten their attention below, the stumbling sound of bodies dropping would.
“We’ve got movement below,” D spoke in a low tone.
“I’m going down,” I announced, already heading towards the bar. I didn’t care if they were coming up or not. I didn’t intend to stop killing people until I saw Regina, my number one.