Alex Drakos: Branding Her Again

by Mallory Monroe

  ALEX DRAKOS

  BRANDING HER AGAIN

  BY

  MALLORY MONROE

  Copyright©2019 Mallory Monroe

  All rights reserved. Any use of the materials contained in this book without the expressed written consent of the author and/or her affiliates, including scanning, uploading and downloading at file sharing and other sites, and distribution of this book by way of the Internet or any other means, is illegal and strictly prohibited.

  AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING

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  IT IS ILLEGAL TO SELL OR GIVE THIS eBOOK TO ANYBODY ELSE

  WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CONSENT OF

  THE AUTHOR AND AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake. The cover art is depicted by models and are not the actual characters.

  ALEX DRAKOS SERIES

  IN ORDER:

  ALEX DRAKOS 1:

  HIS FORBIDDEN LOVE

  ALEX DRAKOS 2:

  HIS SCANDALOUS FAMILY

  ALEX DRAKOS 3:

  WHAT THEY DID FOR LOVE

  ALEX DRAKOS 4:

  HIS DANGEROUS AFFAIR

  ALEX DRAKOS 5:

  A REUNION, A WEDDING, A SCANDAL

  ALEX DRAKOS 6:

  FOR MY LOVER

  ALEX DRAKOS 7:

  BRANDING HER AGAIN

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  www.mallorymonroebooks.com

  OR

  www.austinbrookpublishing.com

  for more information on all titles.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  EPILOGUE

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  CHAPTER ONE

  2004

  Fifteen Years Earlier

  “Thanks for picking me up, cousin,” Dajalla Clarke said as he plopped down in the Mercedes.

  “You know I got you,” Maurice responded as he looked at Dajalla, whose name meant “bright light” in their native tongue, and he grinned. “Trying to look all grown-up and shit.”

  “What you mean trying,” Dajalla asked with a smile of his own, rubbing his barely-visible mustache. “I’m seventeen, I’ll have you know. I am grown!” Then he looked around admiringly at his cousin’s 2-seater convertible Mercedes SLK. “This dope, though. Who gave you this?”

  “I gave it to myself,” said Maurice as he sped away from the airstrip on the island nation of Cecoya. “I’m on the family payroll now. I told you that.”

  Dajalla shook his head. “That’s not a good idea, cousin. I told you that.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you told me. You told me a million times. And maybe it’s not a good idea for you,” Maurice said as he drove. Both young men had heavy island accents. “You’re a choirboy. You have brains and can be the first in our family to take his ass to college rather than jumping into the family hustle. But that ain’t me, Dajalla. I wouldn’t know a college book from a comic book. That’s why, when your mother said she wanted me working for her, I jumped at the chance! Now look at me. Driving a Benz. Got any girl I want. I’m living that life, cuz.”

  Although Maurice laughed, Dajalla looked away. The only reason he wasn’t living in Cecoya with the rest of his family was because of that life they led. A life so steeped in wrongdoing that his mother had her goons chauffeur her fifteen-year-old son out of town in the dead of night, drive him to a family friend’s house in Chicago, and then she forced Dajalla to stay there until the heat was off. Since the heat was never off in his mother’s world, he had been living in Chicago two years and counting. His mother thought his trip back home was all about his future. He was coming back to discuss which fancy college she was going to bribe his way into. But that wasn’t his plan. He wasn’t going to college. At least not yet.

  He was only seventeen, but now he had a family he had to take care of.

  “Which one?” Maurice asked him as he drove.

  Dajalla looked at him. “What’s that?”

  “Which college you going to, fool. You know what I’m talking about!”

  Dajalla stared at his cousin, then decided to spill the beans. He needed to tell somebody! “I’m not going to college,” he said.

  Maurice quickly looked at Dajalla as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “Not going to college? What you say? You’re talking crazy, boy! Why aren’t you going to college?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Because you knocked up that girl?” Maurice asked.

  Dajalla looked at him. His handsome face looked puzzled.

  “Yes, we know about it,” Maurice admitted. “Your mother kept tabs on your black ass in Chicago, too, boy. You should have known that. She pays that old lady you’re living with to tell her everything about your goings-on. But is that the reason? Because you got some whore pregnant?”

  “Don’t call her that,” Dajalla said forcefully. “Don’t you ever call her that.”

  Maurice grinned. “So she’s that hot, hun? She must be something superfine to have you all in a beef-up like this. She must be beautiful!”

  “That’s not her. Her specialness is not beauty.”

  “Oh, yeah? So she’s ugly then?” Then Maurice’s eyes stretched. “You knocked up a dog? How could you do that, Man? How could you ruin the family genes by knocking up some ugmo?”

  Dajalla shook his head. Maurice was six years older than he was, but Maurice’s ridiculous attitudes made him seem worse than a child to Dajalla. “She’s not ugly. But it’s not her looks I fell for, nor her body. You can find a good looking girl with a nice body on any corner in America. But what I like about Kari is her spunk.”

  Then he looked at his cousin, as if his sincere look could make his silly cousin understand. “She’s really special, though. Mother gave me an American name when she moved me there at fifteen. DayVon is my name there, and on all of my credentials too. But I am Dajalla here, son of Selinda. I think I like being DayVon better. She loves my name. She’s a special girl.”

  “Special, my ass,”
Maurice said. “That’s what guys say when their old ladies are ugly. They’re special. But at least she’s got a hot body, though, right?”

  Dajalla laughed. Maurice would never understand. So he forgot about Maurice, and concentrated on his responsibilities back in the States. On Jordan. And Kari.

  Kari, he thought with a smile, as the wind blew through his curly hair and he looked up at the clouds in the Cecoya sky. She was the reason his hideout time in Chi-Town turned out to be the best time of his life. And Kari loved him so much!

  Too much, he felt, sometimes.

  And then he got her pregnant. And they had Jordan, their one-year old son. And he felt a heavy burden to take care of both of them. That was why, instead of telling his mother he was going to go to college after he graduated high school, he was in Cecoya to tell her that he and Kari were going to get married and move into their own place. Then later, after he saved some money, he and Kari both would go to college. That was his plan. And he was going to stick to it.

  “Oh shit.” Maurice was looking through his rearview mirror.

  “What is it, cousin?” Dajalla asked him, looking anxiously through his sideview mirror. “Is it that car behind us?”

  “No, fool,” said Maurice. “That car behind us contain our bodyguard. You know your mother wasn’t going to just have me pick you up without some kind of protection for her best child.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “It’s that car behind the car behind us,” Maurice said as he continued to look out of his rearview. “That’s what’s wrong. That is the car I’m worried about.”

  Maurice almost sounded as if he was trying to pronounce a tongue-twister to Dajalla. “Why would you be worried about it?”

  Then the car behind their bodyguard’s car suddenly swerved out of the lane and sped up to the bodyguard car. Then the gunmen began shooting at the bodyguard inside, causing the bodyguard’s car to run off of the road and flip.

  “That’s why I’m worried about it!” Maurice yelled as he hit the gas pedal. He drove so fast away from the scene that he almost lost control of the wheel.

  “Be careful, cousin!” Dajalla yelled as Maurice drove. “Be careful!”

  But Maurice knew he had no choice but to floor it because the car with the gunmen inside didn’t just plan to take out the bodyguard. They appeared to want to take out Maurice and Dajalla too. And Maurice knew it. He wasn’t about to slow down.

  Neither was the chase car as both cars were speeding in and out of traffic, around one car after another car, as they tore through the streets of the tiny island nation of Cecoya.

  Dajalla kept looking back, and holding on, as his heart felt as if it was racing a million beats per second. Maurice was driving the best he could. He was hanging tough. But those men behind them, whomever they were, were hanging too. And seemed tougher to Dajalla because they seemed like professionals. But professional what? Killers? Dajalla knew he had to help out. He didn’t want to. That gangster life was not the life he wanted to have anything to do with. But he knew he had no choice.

  “You have a piece?” he asked his cousin.

  “In the glove compartment,” his cousin said as he nearly ran into an SUV and had to swerve suddenly, knocking Dajalla into the side of the door.

  But Dajalla reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the gun Maurice kept there. He checked to see if it was loaded: it was. And then he prepared to turn around and try to take out the tires of the car behind them.

  But when he turned, he realized the car behind them was no longer behind them, but was right beside them. And on his side of the car! And they already had their weapons aimed and loaded, and locked onto his head.

  He ducked, but he could feel an explosion. He just didn’t know where from.

  “Nooo!” Maurice screamed, because he saw where from. He saw the bullet penetrate Dajalla’s head as if his beloved cousin was a rag doll. He saw Dajalla’s head jerk back as if in slow-motion, and then jerk back forward as if it was whiplashed.

  And he saw the blood.

  “Nooo!” he screamed again. “Nooo!”

  And then Maurice swerved his car to the left, to avoid any further flying bullets from the chase car. But the chase car had already taken flight. It had apparently fulfilled its mission. It was around a corner and out of slight before Maurice had even swerved.

  The door to the house flew open, and Selinda Clark, Dajalla’s mother, ran out into the driveway so fast that even the bodyguards, who were already outside guarding the compound, couldn’t get there faster. She ran so fast that her other three sons, all older than Dajalla but, compared to him, total failures in their mother’s eyes, couldn’t keep up with her. It was her baby in that car, and according to Maurice, who had just phoned it in, he was bleeding to death!

  Maurice jumped out of the driver’s side of the car, holding his head in shock and pain and utter remorse, as Selinda, in her bare feet, ran to the passenger side and flung open the bullet-ridden door.

  When she saw her son, her heart dropped to her feet. Dajalla was sitting in the seat, being held upright by the catch of the seatbelt alone, as his head was slumped down onto his chest and the blood continued to drop in heavy droplets.

  “Oh, my baby,” Selinda said hysterically when she saw her son. “Oh, my baby!”

  But even in the midst of her agony, she was still Selinda. She was still looking around, to make sure that no further ambush was eminent.

  “Get him inside,” she ordered her sons, and they all grabbed Dajalla and carried him inside in a fast run. The bodyguards, holding their shotguns defensively, stayed outside in case of any further attack.

  Selinda grabbed the gun that had fallen from Dajalla’s hand when he had been attacked, and she was running too. She knew who was to blame: one of the rival families on the island. But she didn’t give a shit. Her son was dying. Her son’s head looked as if it had exploded.

  She’d get her revenge.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight, all she cared about was Dajalla.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Girrl, if you don’t make that crying baby shut up!”

  Sixteen-year-old Kari Grant was holding her one-year-old son in her arms. She didn’t understand why he wouldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t like him. Jordan was a good baby who almost never cried. But he was crying now.

  And Kari’s mother, Jeanene Grant, whom they lived with in her Chicago apartment, wasn’t having it. “I can’t hear myself think with all that noise!” she yelled. “Damn, Kari, do something about it!”

  Jeanene was sitting at the kitchen table smoking reefer with her friends from up the block. They had old school on the stereo, with Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell singing about mountains not being high enough to keep them apart, and beer bottles were all over the table too. Kari and her son were in the bedroom just off from the kitchen. She would have closed the door if they had a door. And the curtain that once was up had been snatched down earlier that night by her temperamental mother.

  “I work damn-near seven days a week,” her mother was saying, “and then I come home and try to have a little fun with my friends. But I can’t even do that shit because of that crying-ass baby!”

  Her mother was either high or drunk, Kari thought, although she didn’t know which. But she was lit. And Jordan would not cooperate!

  “It’s okay, J,” she said to her crying son as she bounced him in her arms. “What’s wrong? Everything’s okay.”

  He wasn’t wet. He wasn’t hungry – he would turn his pretty head away every time she tried to give him a bottle. But something was wrong.

  And he continued crying for a good long time. She got up and carried him around the room, and sat back down, then got up again. She would have walked outside with him, but the sun was going down and the area they lived in was too rough. She stayed put.

  Until she started feeling funny, too, like something wasn’t right. Like something had happened, or was about to happen, and she fe
lt a sense of dread about it. And suddenly she understood why her son was so irritable. He must have felt it too!

  And then she got that phone call.

  When the phone began ringing, she hurried around her bed to the landline phone on the night stand to answer it, hoping it was DayVon. He had left for the island of Cecoya early that morning, and was supposed to call her when he got to his mother’s house. But she hadn’t heard a peep from him all day. But Kari’s mother beat her to the punch and answered the call before she could get there.

  “Hello, who this?”

  That was how her mother always answered the phone. And it normally annoyed the hell out of Kari. But that night, she didn’t care. She bounced her still-crying baby in her arms and waited for her mother to give some clues.

  “Yeah, she here,” her mother said. “Who this?” she asked again.

  But Kari was already grabbing the cordless phone from her mother’s hand, and began heading back to her bedroom. “DayVon, that you?” she asked anxiously into the phone.

  “Is this Kari Grant?”

  Kari was surprised by the voice. It had that island accent that DayVon had, but it wasn’t DayVon’s voice. “Yes, it’s me. Who am I speaking with?”

  “This is Maurice. I’m Dajalla’s, I mean DayVon’s cousin.”

  Why would his cousin be calling her, Kari thought. Why wasn’t DayVon calling her himself? “Where is he?” she asked.

  “He’s been transported to the hospital,” Maurice said.

  When he said those words Kari’s heart almost skipped a beat. “The hospital?”

  Jeanene looked at her when she mentioned a hospital.

  “Why is he in a hospital?” Kari asked into the phone. “What’s happened to him?”

  “I just wanted to let you know, because I know how much he cares for you, and I saw your number in his wallet.”

  “But is he going to be alright?” Kari was panicking.

  “Yes. If you pray. Pray for him, Kari. The doctors are doing all they can.”

  “But where is he? Which hospital?”