Manny carried me to the car, while Freddy spoke with a small, older Hispanic man in a customs uniform. I was stuffed into the backseat without even going through customs. When I looked out the window, I saw the two men shaking hands and then going their separate ways.
Now, we were in an extended navy blue sedan with blacked-out windows, snaking down the narrow roads of this beautiful mountain on our way to God knows where. I started to open my mouth and ask but Manny saw me and shook his head once. So I sat there with my throbbing ankle, staring out the window, praying that someone would find me or that these men were really sent by my mother and that soon I would be safe and away from these two.
Driving down the mountainside was a nice distraction. The sun was shining and the weather was warm. Deer frolicked with their fawns in open meadows as we reached the base of the foothills. As we got into the large town toward the bottom of the mountains, we entered a large highway, weaving in and out of traffic, causing my ankle to bump into Freddy’s leg as he sat across from me.
“Aghhh,” I howled in pain. The throbbing was making me nauseous. “Damn it.”
“Shut it, before you have more to complain about,” Freddy warned.
“Cuidado, el jefe dijo que ningun daño le llegue a ella,” Manny reminded him that the boss didn’t want anything to happen to me. Why he spoke in Spanish was beyond me—it’s not like I wasn’t half Venezuelan. My mother made sure I spoke both fluently, but since she left us, I have refused to speak anything but English.
“Quién es el jefe?” I asked defiantly, against Manuel’s forewarnings.
Both men’s heads whipped so quickly in my direction there was a breeze.
Freddy’s cold, gray eyes cut from me to Manny then back. If looks could kill, the backseat of the limo could have been a blood bath and mayhem. “Shut your mouth, bitch, or I’ll cut your tongue out no matter who you are.”
“Chill out, hombre. You don’t want trouble with the boss,” Manny warned as he crossed his thick, tattooed arms over his chest. “She’s not worth your polla, ese.”
Freddy just glared at me from across the car as I shifted uncomfortably. I wasn’t sure where we were exactly, but it wasn’t the horror story I’d heard about. Venezuela was not what I was expecting. Tall modern buildings, luxury cars like the one I was in, people dressed the latest fashion.
We passed by a McDonald’s on the corner, which reminded me I was starving. The sun had already begun to set; it had to be close to six or seven in the evening. As if my thinking about food set off an alarm, my stomach started to growl. It was loud enough to garner more unwanted attention.
“Detener el auto,” Manny barked ahead. The driver followed the order and pulled the car into the parking lot of the McDonald’s. “You’re not a…uh…vegetariano?”
“A quién le importa lo que come,” Freddy growled.
Respectfully, I quietly shook my head and smiled at the kindness Manny had shown me by simply asking the question. I wasn’t shocked by Freddy’s response.
I was, however, terrified to be alone with the little weasel. He wasn’t a small man, but he wasn’t as big as Manny. If I had to guess, I would think he was of Irish decent. The light complexion, grey eyes and glints of red in his hair tipped me off, but it was his Spanish that cinched it for me. He didn’t say much in Spanish, just basic words, short sentences.
As I stared out the window, I felt the weight of the car shift and soon realized he was sitting much closer. Too close. I refused to turn and look at him.
I could feel his presence and smell the oaky whiskey at the nape of my neck. “One day soon, you won’t have Manny here to save your sweet little ass, and it will be all mine.”
His voice was dark and ominous. My skin crawled and shivered at the horrifying scene that just skated briefly through my mind. His freckled hand roughly grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him. Closing my eyes, I tried to pretend I was somewhere else. Somewhere happy and not in pain, sipping frozen cocktails and eating sushi with Brody. His blue eyes would be staring back at me, not the eyes of this predator before me now.
“Open your eyes and look at me,” he demanded with a snarl, squeezing my cheeks so hard I was sure they’d be bruised.
Terrified, I did what he ordered and slowly opened my eyes. Just as I did, he pulled my face to his in an attempt to kiss me, but I jerked my head back as hard as I could, bouncing it off the seat.
“You’ll pay for that,” he hissed. He snatched a handful of my hair up and wrenched my head to one side, cocking it at an odd angle.
Please God, get Manny back here. Please don’t let this happen to me.
With a tight grip, he held my head and once more grabbed my face and planted his vile lips right over mine. It took everything in my power not to throw up all over his putrid face. I tried and failed miserably to pull away to break the kiss. Thankfully, I did manage to curl my lips in and keep them clamped shut like a vise grip.
This only served to anger Freddy even more. He pulled back and scowled harshly then shoved me away, jostling my already hammering leg again.
“You think they’ll save you, you uppity cunt? No one can save you from me,” he vowed. “When the boss is done with you, I’ll make you wish you had died in that wreck. Your rich little boyfriend won’t recognize you when I mail you back. Piece. By. Piece.” He moved back across to the adjacent bench. “I’ll have you begging—”
The door opened and Manny climbed back in with a large bag of food and three sodas in a cardboard drink carrier. He took one look at me curled up against the opposite door and dropped the bag of food. “What the fuck did you do, Freddy? Why is she cryin’?”
It wasn’t until he said it that I realized I had tears streaming down my face. I wasn’t sure if it was the pain or the peril Freddy promised I would find myself in.
“She’s learning her place. The sooner the better.”
“No se anda con ella,” Manny roared at Freddy, warning him not to fuck with me. There was definitely distension among the ranks of this organization.
Freddy waved him off, not the least bit intimidated by the ogre of a man. I had a feeling that Freddy needed to be more afraid of him than I was of Freddy. Manny was becoming my gentle, yet murderous, giant protector.
Finally, Manny told the driver to continue on to our destination as he opened the back of food and handed me a sandwich and a drink. “I got you, mamita. Eat.”
“Thank you, Manny,” I whispered.
He nodded as I unwrapped the cheeseburger and scarfed it down, almost choking. Never in my life had I been so excited to see a McDonald’s cheeseburger. Even if it had mustard. I hated mustard, but today it didn’t matter. I was starving.
I paused long enough to take a few sips of my drink then shoveled the rest of the burger down and turned to Manny. “Thank you. I was so hungry.”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s Mother Teresa and Gandhi. Shut up already,” Freddy muttered with a roll of his eyes.
Our journey continued on as the sun eventually disappeared. Every bump along the way did nothing to help the swelling and agonizing pain I was experiencing. It was hard to see where we were going because of the tint on the window and the lack of sunlight. I could tell by the popping of my ears we were at least lowering in elevation. Finally, the car stopped.
I looked over and was met with a somber giant. Manny’s shoulders sagged as his head fell. “Time to get out of the car, mamita,” he said woefully.
He refused to meet my eyes. If I was going to my mom, it surely couldn’t be as bad as he thought it would be.
Scooting across the bench to the door, Manny hoisted me into his arms, careful not to hit my leg. “When we get you to the boss, they will give you pain medicine. The boss has a doctor ready to help you.”
“Who is the boss?” I quietly asked him again. When I looked up at him, his eye snapped forward and his lips ceased movement. He was again silent.
“Where are we going? Can you at least tell me that?” I asked as
he carried me across a parking lot, toward the water. Lit along the lapping waves were rows of docks and boat slips. If I had to guess, I would think we were getting aboard a boat. “A boat? We’re getting on a boat?”
“Would you shut her the fuck up already?” Freddy shouted from a few feet ahead.
“Why does it matter if I know where we are going? Or who we are going to see? It not like I’m going to tell anyone. I’ll find out eventually,” I retorted.
“Fine. You win. We’re gettin’ on a boat,” Freddy stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Well, some of us are,” he said as he laughed sadistically.
Surely he can’t mean just him and I. Could he?
“I will not get on any boat with just you, just for you to have your way with me,” I snarled at Freddy.
Manny stopped dead in his tracks and looked down at me, murder and mayhem written all over his face. “What did you say?”
“I will not get on that boat with him. I’d rather you kill me here. Now.”
“Did he try something with you?” Before I could answer, he shifted and cradled me in one arm while he reached behind his back. When his arm came forward again it was brandishing a large silver handgun. “Freddy, I don’t care what the boss said, I’m coming with you to make sure you don’t try anything.”
“Fuck you, Manuel. Boss said—” he started.
Manny fired a shot, narrowly missing Freddy’s head. The bullet whizzed by and lodged in a nearby blue wooden shed along the docks. “Próxima será entre los ojos.”
Freddy jumped back, stumbled and fell on his treacherous ass. “What the fuck is your problem? Have you lost your fuckin’ head?”
“I call the shots now. You are staying here. I’ll take mamita to the boss. You are not getting near her,” Manny informed Freddy as he regained his composure and regulated his tone.
“I’ll fucking kill you, you stupid son of a bitch,” Freddy screamed, scrambling backward and standing up with Manuel’s gun still trained on him.
“Never mind. You are coming with us. I cannot take the chance of you lying to the boss,” Manny told him, waving him forward with the shiny pistol. Hesitantly and cursing the whole way, Freddy moved across the parking lot and down the dock to a large speedboat at the end.
As Manuel carried me down the wooden pier, I realized that when he was mad or rushed, he spoke Spanish, but otherwise he spoke English. I hoped, for my sake, I never heard him speaking Spanish like that to me. While he was ruthless and fierce, I had a feeling he’d protect me from further harm. At least until his boss told him otherwise.
Then, all bets were off.
As we boarded the boat, Manny kept his gun trained on Freddy. He sat me down on the bench at the back of the boat and forced Freddy down below into the small cabin. He closed the door, locked the hatch and then braced the small door with a boat paddle.
“Mamita, I hate to do this, but boss’s orders were for you not to see where we go from here. I have to give you a shot,” he told me.
Crying, I started to beg. “Manny, please. I won’t say anything. I promise. Freddy won’t know—I’ll be quiet. I won’t say a word,” I pleaded as he came at me with the prefilled syringe.
“I am sorry, but I have to. Boss would know if I did not follow orders. You’ll be asleep for a few hours and when you wake up, we will be there and you will be away from Freddy. Boss won’t let nothing happen to you,” he told me as he grabbed my arm and sank the needle in. “I am truly sorry, mamita.”
I didn’t fight him. I knew better. I would never be able to overpower him and he had been kind to me. So far.
“Don’t…let…them…hurt…me,” I mumbled as I quickly succumbed to the powerful sedative.
“Prometo, mija.”
That was the last thing I heard as the light and consciousness slipped from my grasp.
Chapter Twenty-three
~Brody~
“We have been holed up in this hovel for almost a fucking week, Kai. I cannot sit idly by another day and wait for the perfect changing of guards, people out of the vicinity or the fucking stars to align. I want her out. Now. Do you understand?” I screamed for the sixth day in a row.
For six days, we’d staked out the massive, walled compound that was fifty yards away. She was in there. We had no idea where, because the intel said she wasn’t in the same room as the first day she was seen. When our person on the inside, a maid, said she was carried in unconscious, I almost lost my shit. I wanted to storm in there with an arsenal and take her back, but Jaxon reminded me that would be the way I got myself killed and left Lillian all to him.
Yeah fucking right. That wasn’t happening.
Sure, he was a great stepdad, but he was not taking my place. Not even over my dead body.
So for the last one hundred and fifty hours, I’d been pacing, planning and plotting on how to get Emmery back. Finally, that morning, the maid called Kai and said that Em was allowed to use the wheelchair and move about the property.
Kai asked the maid, Isabel, to tell her that help was coming and to stay as close to the kitchen as possible. It was on the southeast corner of the compound and closest to us. Jaxon, Marco and Kai were working on getting a helicopter. If we could, Rosa and Kaci would be circling the city waiting for us to call for an extraction.
“Brody, I’m doing everything I can. As fast as I can. I will not jeopardize the mission and move in before we have it planned. We know that Alejandra is on the property, because Isabel has seen her with Emmery, which means that if she thinks she’s going down, she could hurt her. We have to play this safe, boss. Which means waiting this out and planning every meticulous detail,” Kai told me calmly. He never showed much emotion. He was always passive and stoic until he was called into action. Then he was agile and lethal.
“It doesn’t take a week, Kai.” No response. I turned to Jax and Marco who had their heads together across the room at the only table in this three-room little apartment we were currently residing in. “When did Isabel say she’d call?”
“As soon as she got a moment to speak with the girl away from her mother. She said they were always in the same room, like Alejandra refused to let her out of her sight.” Marco repeated the same information he had shared from his earlier conversation.
“Makes sense she won’t let her out of her sight. She’s planning something. I have a feeling,” Jaxon stated.
“What?”
“She needed her here for a reason. Marco said there has been chatter about a meeting between ‘The Boss’ and Juan Carlos Varela,” Jaxon started. “We don’t know when, but they seemed to think soon.”
“Fuck.” Drew cursed from his position at the window. “B, we got a real fuckin’ problem out there.”
Rushing over, I took the binoculars from Drew and looked at where he was pointing. From our vantage point on the third floor we could see over the concrete, barricaded wall into the courtyard.
Parked in the driveway was a black sedan, but that wasn’t the problem. I pulled back the binoculars and asked Drew, “Are you sure that’s him?”
“I’ve memorized the faces of all of the players. That’s him,” Drew told me as he shuffled the papers and pictures that were thrown all over his mattress on the floor until he settled on the picture of the man who had just been walking around the courtyard of Alejandra’s compound.
Richard Lennox.
“What the fuck is he doing here? He’s going to ruin everything. Does he fucking think he can just storm in there and demand they let go of his daughter?” I asked everyone and no one. “Fuck.”
Kaci had pulled up images of all family members that we could find. While we were mostly concerned about Alejandra’s relatives, his photo happened to come up, so she printed it. Never did I think he’d be stupid enough to come here. When I talked to Jane yesterday, she said he sounded antsy but I never thought he’d take matters into his own hands. She assured him I was trying to get her out safely but that it would take time and finesse.
&
nbsp; He just blew the finesse right out of the motherfucking water.
“Kai, get Isabel on the phone. We need to know what the hell’s going on in there,” Jaxon ordered.
“On it,” he said, already tapping on his phone. “I’m texting—she can’t keep getting calls. We’ll have to wait until she has a minute to check in.”
I was so sick of waiting. The last week had felt like an eternity. I wanted Emmery safe. In my arms. I wanted to feel her soft, olive skin under my fingers and know that she was mine.
And she would be. Mine.
Someone’s phone dinged.
“Is that her?” I asked practically jumping out of my skin.
“No, sorry. That was Taylor checking in,” Joselyn apologized with a frown.
“Brody, maybe you should lie down and try to sleep for an hour or so,” Kaci suggested. “Joselyn could give you something to help you. You’ll need to be rested and ready to go in. And by the way things look now, it could be the middle of the night.”
Fuck. There was no way I would make it until the middle of the night. I needed Em now. It was only nine a.m. and I was tired. I didn’t want to sleep, to once again be plagued with nightmares of her being tortured and begging me to save her.
Maybe if I let Joselyn give me something it would get rid of the dreams. “Joselyn, will it knock me out? As in no dreams?”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“I don’t want to sleep for that long.”
“It’ll only be four or five hours. And don’t worry if something happens while you’re asleep, I have Narcan I can give you to wake you up,” she assured me with an encouraging smile and nod.
She walked over with the large duffel-sized medic bag that she brought along and dropped it beside me on the floor.
Pulling supplies from the bag, she drew up the drug, wiped my arm with an alcohol swab then asked me if I was ready.
His Redemption Page 20