Unshackle

by Godwin, Pam

  Beyond the largest pool, nestled deep in the garden, stood a small concrete building. She claimed it housed enough weaponry and ammunition to take down the entire cartel. It was also monitored by multiple cameras and could only be accessed with the top cartel members’ key cards. Silvia was among that membership.

  Loading up with guns and crawling through the hole in the wall was a life-or-death option only. If he broke into the armory, they would know. He could only resort to that if his identity was discovered.

  Hell, it might come down to exactly that because his plan was shoddy as hell.

  He intended to steal a cartel member’s street clothes and cover his hair with a hat and bandanna. Disguised as a thug, he would use Silvia’s key card to enter the monitoring room and steal a peek at the monitors that showed the surrounding area. With any luck, no one would question him before he turned heel and left.

  He had about a five-percent chance of success, and that was optimistic.

  First, he had to spend some time with Silvia.

  A few hours later, he ordered an old fashioned with rye whiskey and found a quiet corner on a vacant veranda. Sprawled in a comfortable chair, he waited.

  She didn’t make him wait long.

  Pausing in the doorway, Silvia wore a red body-clinging dress and matching lipstick. Black hair, black eyes, she looked like Satan’s mistress. He hid his repulsion and pretended not to notice her.

  She approached his chair, placing one strappy heel before the other. Heel to toe, heel to toe, she really put a lot into that walk. Always trying too hard. This time, it was a waste of effort.

  “Good evening, handsome.” She lowered into the seat beside him.

  He sipped his drink, brushed imaginary lint off his suit jacket. Then he gave her his attention. “Good evening.”

  At the edge of his periphery, her key card hung from the front of her dress by a claw clasp. The same clasp that attached his plastic card to his pants pocket.

  The cards looked identical. A swap should be effortless.

  She leaned in, giving him an eyeful of plumped-up cleavage. Heavy mascara lined her lashes, hooding a gaze that darkened with hesitant hunger. She wasn’t certain of his interest. Hell, he’d teased her enough over the past couple of days to leave her hot and bothered and unsure about everything.

  “Why didn’t you leave with your new purchase?” She trailed a finger along his arm.

  “I have unfinished business here.” He raked his gaze down her body and lowered his voice into a suggestive caress. “Something I want.”

  “If that’s true, why did you spend three million dollars on another woman?”

  “Because I can.”

  “But why her?”

  “The one I want said she couldn’t be bought.” He traced a finger along the curve of her jaw.

  Her breath caught. “For that much money, my brothers would’ve made an exception.”

  “Good to know.” He bit his lower lip in a way that women seemed to love. “I might make another offer, but I always sample expensive things before I invest in them.”

  “Is that right?” She purred, an actual feline sound in the back of her throat, and rubbed her face against his touch like a contented cat.

  He wanted to backhand her, which, even for him, exceeded his tolerance of violence. He adored women and treated them as such.

  But not this one.

  This one, he ached to kill.

  Stifling those urges, he reclined in the chair and sprawled his legs in a blatant invitation for her to join him.

  She did instantly, crawling over his lap and straddling his hips. Then she touched him, her hands wandering and exploring his body unfettered. He allowed it, biting back bile and guilt.

  He’d told Vera he belonged to her, and he meant every word. But Silvia’s key card was hanging against his chest, so close, right fucking there.

  “You’re so goddamn sexy.” She slid her palms over his shoulders. “So big and strong and beautifully formed.”

  As she groped his muscles and nuzzled his neck, she went on and on about his physical appearance. He barely attended, his focus on his goal, waiting for the right moment.

  When her breaths sped up and her eyes clouded over with lust, he knew she was lost in her aching need, thoroughly distracted by her greedy desires.

  Without warning, he yanked her tight, bodies flush. In the span of her startled yelp, he unclipped the card from her dress. Her hands flew to his face, her hips abhorrently grinding as he switched the cards and secured his to the same spot on her bodice. Her card went into his pocket under the guise of his knuckles teasing her inner thigh.

  She bent in for a kiss.

  He captured a hunk of her hair, stopping her an inch away. “I do the kissing, not the other way around.”

  Her ruby lips bowed downward into a moue of frustration.

  The easy part was done. Now he needed to untangle her from his body before she put her hands on his cock.

  He wasn’t hard, not even a little. The very thought of her touching him stirred nausea in his stomach.

  Too late.

  Her fingers slipped past his guard and caught him between the legs. He didn’t move, didn’t twitch, for fear he would knock her across the room.

  “You’re not into this.” Her grimace deepened as she squeezed his limp dick. “Almost as if you’re not into me.”

  “I’ve been very straightforward about what I’m into.” He removed her hand and chose his words carefully. “While you match my physical specifications perfectly, you fail to meet other expectations.”

  “You like a fight.”

  “Always.”

  “You want me to struggle and cry while you dominate me.” Her throat bobbed. “You want to rape me.”

  No. He didn’t want anything to do with her. “Yes. Brutally.”

  “I see.” Her eyes flared, and the skin on her neck pulled taut. She wasn’t into that. Not at all. “How would that work if you bought me? Would you rape me and her at the same time? Or would you assign us days of the week and alternate between us?”

  “I would do whatever the fuck I wanted because I would own you.”

  “The day you arrived, you said you would buy my freedom, and when I walked out of here, I would be free.”

  “I’m revising my offer.” He cupped her throat and applied pressure. “You require a leash.”

  That did it. She shoved off his lap and straightened her dress, her nostrils pulsing with indignation. She brushed a hand over the key card, checking its presence.

  Standing taller, a spark of cruelty lit her gaze. “Have you heard from your bodyguard?”

  Alarm spiked through him. He started to reach for his phone and changed his mind. Tomas wasn’t supposed to make contact until he put Vera on Restrepo’s plane and began his drive to Texas to deal with the email issue. That would’ve taken hours.

  Except it had been hours.

  He swallowed down his rising panic. “I’m not expecting a call.”

  With a smirk, she curled a lock of hair around her finger and angled her face to the camera in the ceiling. “Turn his service back on.”

  What the fuck? They’d cut the signal on his phone?

  All the blood in his body drained to his feet. His skin prickled, and his stomach bottomed out as he removed the phone from his pocket. His hand shook as he turned it on and flipped through the screens. No missed calls. No texts. She was fucking with him.

  Before he could release a relieved sigh, the phone started buzzing, blowing up with incoming texts as the service came back on line.

  The first message had been sent three hours ago, and when he absorbed the words, his heart stopped.

  Unknown: Your tie is crooked.

  It was a code phrase, designed to convey that something had gone terribly wrong. Only Tomas knew that code.

  More texts followed, timed several minutes apart.

  Unknown: The escort took her.

  Unknown: Kicked me out of
the limo on an abandoned road and drove off with her.

  Unknown: Hello?

  Unknown: Answer the phone.

  Unknown: I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop them. I was forced out of the limo at gunpoint.

  Unknown: I don’t know where they took her.

  Unknown: Are you getting this?

  Unknown: Where are you?

  Unknown: I’m tossing this phone. Will be in touch.

  Pain detonated in his chest, lungs, and throat. The roar of his heartbeat thrashed in his head, and terror paralyzed him, making it impossible to think.

  The cartel had Vera.

  She wasn’t safe.

  They knew. They fucking knew he’d been playing them in an effort to rescue her. They were going to hang them both from meat hooks.

  Silvia watched his reaction, studying him too closely, way too hard. He kept his expression in check, and in the next breath, he flipped a switch.

  The calculating side of him took control, squashing all fear, wrath, and love. He extinguished every ounce of emotion and let the coldness creep in, numbing his limbs and deadening his heart. He blinked, drew a steady breath, and focused on the facts.

  If his cover was blown, they would’ve killed Tomas. And Vera, too. Unless they kept her alive to use her as a hostage to question him.

  Why would they question him if they knew he was the rescuer they’d been waiting for? Why had Silvia tried to fuck him just a moment ago?

  There was no way the cartel knew he was part of a vigilante group or that their lives were targeted by such a group. The brothers simply wanted to retaliate against Tula Gomez, their father’s killer, and whomever she’d sent to save her sister.

  If they truly knew Luke’s identity, he would’ve already been tortured and cut into pieces.

  This was another game. A test. Maybe they suspected that he’d been sent for Vera, but they weren’t convinced enough to risk his backlash if they were wrong.

  From their viewpoint, holding Vera as a hostage was forgivable. She was just a whore. Killing Luke’s assistant, however, was just plain bad for business.

  So they let Tomas go, effectively removing Luke’s bodyguard from the property with no way to return.

  The cartel didn’t know that during the hours that Tomas had been texting Luke, he would’ve found another phone—would’ve stolen one from a random stranger if necessary—and contacted their team.

  The Freedom Fighters would’ve learned at least an hour or two ago that Luke was in trouble. They just had to find him.

  But they had intel now. They had everything Tomas would’ve passed along.

  Luke turned his attention to Silvia, taking his time to speak.

  “Why?” Slowly, casually, he rose from the chair and pocketed the phone. “I paid for her. You received the money. Alejandro assured me that you honor your deals.”

  “It’s just a technicality. A hiccup in the deal. I’m sure we can work it out.”

  “Explain the hiccup.”

  “I’ll show you. Follow me.” She pivoted and strode away, giving him no choice but to follow.

  CHAPTER 25

  As Silvia led Luke outside, a disarming chill saturated the air. Maybe it was just him. His skin rippled with the prickles of a cold sweat, and the drum of looming doom sounded in his ears.

  Unarmed and without backup, he had to keep his wits about him. Maintaining his composure and talking his way out of this were his only lines of defense.

  Unless his cover was already blown. In that case, he was a walking corpse.

  She escorted him along a trail through the lush garden, her heels carefully maneuvering the cracks in the cobblestones. He considered making a break for it, his flight-or-fight instinct gripping him hard. He could outrun Silvia with ease, but he couldn’t escape the cameras and the armed guards.

  Even if he could, he would never leave Vera. If she was even here.

  The path led to a small pond encircled on all sides by dense trees. The moonless shroud of nightfall cast the water in inky black, the muddy edge occupied by half a dozen man-shaped silhouettes.

  Nothing like walking into a waiting throng of armed, distrusting, coldblooded murderers. His anxiety surged into overdrive.

  As he approached, he squinted through the darkness, searching for Vera’s small frame among them.

  Marco, Omar… All four brothers were here, dressed in a range of suits and street clothes. A few others in the cartel accompanied them.

  No Vera.

  “Where is she?” Luke paused a few feet away and wiped his slick palms on his pants, trying to control his nerves.

  “Did you know,” Miguel asked, tilting his head, “that the black widow is the deadliest spider in America? At times, the female eats the male after mating, hence her name.”

  He could’ve gone without that visual.

  Impatience dogged him as he probed the pond and surrounding trees, his temper growing short. “I paid a lot of goddamn money for that girl, and you fucked me over. If this is how you do business, I will—”

  “Careful.” Miguel’s accent sharpened. “A smart man would think twice before making threats against La Rocha.”

  “Fuck you. Where’s my property?” As the insensitive question left his lips, he detected a disturbance at the center of the pond. His pulse lost rhythm, spiraling turbulently, his eyes refusing to adjust in the darkness. “What’s out there in the water?”

  “The black widow’s bite is venomous.” Miguel slid a hand down his tie, needlessly straightening it. “But not usually deadly to humans. A single bite doesn’t have the potency. But many bites? Dozens attacking at once, especially when threatened? That would be fatal to a small woman. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” He chuckled. “Nature is not merciful.”

  Tension breathed down his neck, and vertigo threatened to buckle his legs.

  Spiders.

  A pond of tenebrous water.

  Nothing foreboding about that.

  Put Vera in the middle of it, and they couldn’t have orchestrated a more sinister nightmare.

  If the desired effect was to scare the ever-loving fuck out of him, job well done. His throat felt like smoldering ash, his chest a cavern of dry ice.

  But he only showed them the man he wanted them to see—an arrogant prick whose time was invaluable. “Get to the point.”

  “Omar.” Miguel nodded at his brother.

  Omar flicked on a portable spotlight. The blinding beam shot across the pond, illuminating two shapes at the center.

  An unfamiliar man sat in a kayak with a paddle resting across his lap. A few feet from him, a small dome floated on the surface, wrapped in some sort of metal mesh, like the screening material in windows. It allowed in airflow and light, but little else.

  He didn’t have to look closer to know what he’d find inside. The contraption was only slightly larger than a human head, and that was what it held.

  Vera’s head.

  With her body submerged to her neck—presumably anchored to the floor of the pond—her eyes squeezed shut against the glare of the spotlight. Her mouth angled above the water, but she couldn’t shout or make a sound because her lips were stretched open by a spider gag.

  The metal ring sat behind her teeth, holding her jaw in a gaping O. A buckle secured it around her head, and four steel legs fanned out from the ring. Those curved legs extended over her chin and cheeks, preventing her from turning the ring in her mouth while forcing her jaw wide open to accept anything into her throat. Like probing fingers. Or a cock.

  Or a black widow spider.

  His stomach churned. His heartbeat tightened, and his insides ran too hot and too cold as he fought the excessive need to swallow. He couldn’t trust himself to speak without a quaking voice.

  “She can put her head underwater.” Marco stepped to Luke’s side, his dark features ever darker in the thickness of night. “Though I don’t think she’d enjoy that. Have you ever tried to keep your throat closed while your mouth is held open un
derwater?”

  He’d learned many survival tricks during his time in Van’s attic. But nothing related to water play.

  “She can’t dislodge the mesh hood,” Marco said. “It’s connected to her life vest. Her hands are bound, and her feet are tied to a cement block, keeping her vertical.”

  “Why?” He girded his backbone, forcing strength in his tone. “What’s the point of this?”

  “We don’t trust you, John Smith.”

  “I assure you,” Luke scoffed, “after this double-crossing bullshit, the feeling is fucking mutual.”

  “We haven’t double-crossed you. We’re merely being cautious. See, we investigated you, as we do with all our guests, and we can’t find a single piece of information about you.”

  “I didn’t give you a real name.”

  “No one does. We use facial recognition software. You can’t hide your face in public these days. Not with all the cameras spying and recording your every move. Except you’ve done exactly that. It’s as if you don’t exist, and that makes you…questionable.”

  Luke had fallen out of the system when he ran away from home. When Van abducted him, no one knew he was missing. No one cared. He was as good as dead. After he escaped, he remained dead. He never used his real name. Never had an encounter with the law. When Cole Hartman joined their team, he erased all of the Freedom Fighters from every hidden corner of the Internet and dark web.

  None of them existed.

  “This shouldn’t surprise you.” Luke squared his shoulders, watching Vera hold her shit together at the center of the pond. “If a man has the means to spend three-million dollars on a slave, he should certainly be able to cover his tracks effectively.”

  “Yes, we’ve taken that into account. This is why your assistant is still alive. Once you’ve answered our questions, your property will be returned to you, and your life will resume unmolested.”

  “I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.” Fury flushed through his body, hardening his muscles. “Release her.”