by Melissa Jane
Bittersweet Familia
Book Three
By
Melissa Jane
Laughing Eyes
Published by Melissa Jane
© Copyright
This book is licensed for your enjoyment only. It is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblances to people living or dead, locales and events are entirely coincidental. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient
Produced by Melissa Jane
Front cover by Andrea King
Model: John Daniel
Editor: Al Marie Kuit
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Bittersweet Duet
Little Doll (Book 1)
Crimson Desert (Book 2)
Bittersweet Familia
Laughing Eyes (Book 3)
Sofia (Book 4)
Author Notes
Laughing Eyes is the third book in my collection. It follows The Bittersweet Duet, Little Doll and Crimson Desert. While only a minor character in the first two books, Danny Peters takes centre stage in Laughing Eyes. His is a story that began many years before Little Doll. It’s heartbreaking, it’s raw. We’ve caught a glimpse of him already, but what really is his story?
Laughing Eyes contains SERIOUS SPOILERS for both Little Doll and Crimson Desert. Laila and Aiden are not completely embellished characters in this novel as they have already had their story told in the Duet. Therefore if you opt to read Laughing Eyes first (which I seriously beg you not to) you may find that Aiden and Laila are not well described. I did this to benefit all my readers of the Duet.
As I said before, Laughing Eyes is a journey for Danny. It will rip your heart out, but bit by bit you may well be put back together again.
WARNING:
As well as serious spoilers, Laughing Eyes contains EXTREME adult themes and must be approached with maturity. While this is a work of fiction, there may be cause for triggers in some readers.
Laughing Eyes contains Abuse, Violence, Language, Sexual content and Graphic Imagery.
The devil doesn’t live in Hell. He lives, breathes and walks amongst us.
Dedicated to the late Jane Bowen.
Danny
“Take the fucking shot!” The sarge barked through my ear piece. I flexed my fingers twice to rid the tremble, but it was useless. “You have two seconds to make that shot, Peters!”
“The target is no longer in sight,” my voice croaked back. That wasn’t entirely the truth. Nicolas was right there in front of me, but I didn’t have a clean straight shot at him. Blinking furiously to clear my cloudy vision, my chest pounded painfully against the rubble beneath. The fucker was practically dancing before me and I couldn’t shoot him, not with Tomas also in the firing line.
“Shoot the fucking target, Peters, and get the fuck out of there!”
“Danny, what’s happening?” Hearing Aiden’s concerned voice through my ear piece brought on a fresh wave of tears, a hard as fuck lump forming in my throat.
Aiden hadn’t seen what had happened.
He hadn’t heard the screams or seen all the blood. No one except for me and the fucker I was trying to kill.
Danny
Three months earlier
“You want us to what?”
“You heard correctly.” The sarge said, matter of fact.
“Yes, I heard the words but I’m not quite sure I completely understand what the job is you have assigned us. I mean…” I couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief, “… you do know that we belong to a platoon and have never been contracted out before?”
“I think what Corporal Peters is saying,” Aiden, who had remained somewhat reserved since we entered the sarge’s office was finally speaking up, “is that we are happy and honoured to take on the challenge Sir, but we will require a full briefing with no details spared. This is all new territory, with an international government that would happily destroy us knowing we are on their land.”
“What he said,” I pointed to the man I was about to enter into this fucked up new world with, “especially since we will be acting alone without our team.”
The sarge cleared his throat and stood up from the corner of the desk he had been sitting on for the last half hour, as he implored how much he needed the two of us. “I understand your concerns, Corporals, and you would be acting foolishly if you believed it was nothing to be worried over. However the fact of the matter is, you two are my best snipers and you work well together.”
Aiden and I looked at each other knowing that at least that part was true. We did work well as a team. Without a doubt we excelled at our jobs. Excellent marksmen with perfect track records. But that didn’t change the fact that we were about to become sitting ducks without any backup.
“So we go in alone?” I asked, just to clarify.
“I might be able to muster one or two others, but no one else around here has a set of balls as big as the ones you two have, so I don’t like my chances.”
Heaving a sigh of resignation, I accepted the inevitable. “Well, it’s not like I have anything better to do, so if my mate here is in, then I’m in.” I grinned broadly as a set of eyes that clearly didn’t share the same sentiment bored holes into mine. Aiden was clearly not impressed. “When do we leave?”
“Tomorrow.”
Anna
“Wake up, babe.” I could hear my friend, Luiza’s voice breaking through my haze. It was husky and still sounded half asleep.
“Where did those hours go?” I groaned, stretching my tired limbs to the four corners of the tiny bed.
The lamp shade next to me flicked on casting a soft glow around the darkened room but was bright enough to blind me.
Groaning even louder, I laid my forearm across my eyes.
“Anna, do you think they will come for us too?” There was no mistaking the concern in Luiza’s voice.
I swallowed hard as I contemplated the severity of the question.
Peering between one bent elbow to block the invasive light, I studied my friend. It was obvious she’d had another nightmare in the few hours’ sleep we’d managed. “Babe, I think even if they were close we wouldn’t know it. We probably wouldn’t even hear it.”
“Do you sometimes wonder whether we are doing the right thing by sticking around?”
If we were in any other situation, I would say no. I still didn’t want to believe that one man could cause so much destruction in the country I love. In the land I had so frequently traveled; the very place both our parents were born. But here we were. Childhood friends; Luiza and Anna taking on the world one injured person at a time.
For the past few months we would wake at four in morning in our dingy shack we shared and get dressed in our most unglamorous, ultra conservative clothing. After staggering through the door that hung only by one hinge, we would then spend two hours on the back of a 1970’s Chevy truck navigating the windy, ominous roads, picking up other aid workers along the way. Once we arrived at our destination we would set up camp and set about rebuilding the destroyed and bloodied communities ripped apart by El Leon’s control. The group of eight volunteers would stay and nurse those injured back to health, bury the dead and provide food for the otherwise too stricken victims.
The hardest part I had come to learn, was receiving our next call. That next call brought on the worst of two worlds. We would have to farewell the current c
ommunity that in some cases, was only twenty percent reformed to head to yet another rural barrio hit by the sadistic violence.
Needing her to absorb the seriousness of the situation, I propped myself up my elbow and faced her head on. “I think about it all the time. But you know as well as I do we can’t just leave. This is our country, our people. They need all the help they can get.” Although we both lived in the States, our families had been lifelong friends, born in the beautiful Panama,
“I know,” Luiza sounded resigned to her fate as she pulled on her gumboots.
Almost immediately after finishing our nursing degrees, the nation was shaken to its core by rumours of genocide in the country regions. By whom, we didn’t yet know. There had been survivors. Not many, but enough to keep eight relief workers overworked, tired and shaken for the rest of our lives.
“All I know is,” Luiza began, before tying her long dark hair in a ponytail, “I hope someone catches the fuckers who are doing this.”
Danny
“Remember,” the sarge yelled over the noise of the chopper. The thin layer of hair that barely covered his rapidly balding head, flew about as if caught in a mini tornado, “it is imperative that you remain undetected at all times. There is no immediate back up. Ensure that you communicate at 0800 hours and 1800 every day. If for some reason you miss your check in, we will allow a five hour window. After that, we will interpret that as MIA.”
“Sir, are you sure this isn’t just a way to get rid of us off American soil? Cos if this is really about what happened at your fiftieth with your daughter, I just want you to know that it wasn’t completely my –”
“You weren’t at my fiftieth, Peters.”
“Sir,” Aiden shook his head in disbelief, while hooking himself to the zip line, “why do you let him reel you in?”
The sarge studied me closely, seemingly oblivious to the smile on my face.
“No, but seriously. I get the feeling you are sending us to our deaths.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Well, just you keep in mind, I know where you live and when you feel a dip in your mattress or a random slap across the face, it will be my ghost haunting your ass.”
“Peters if you don’t get the fuck out of my chopper now, I will push you out without the fucking line.”
***
Disconnecting our lines we took a few quick steps back and watched as the chopper headed back in the direction we had come from. We had landed not far from our coordinated drop zone and now began the mission of familiarizing ourselves with the hilly, green land. Once that was complete, our mission would begin.
Our briefing was to locate El Leon, a man who had become notorious throughout the Americas and was most notably feared amongst those in Costa Rica and Panama. From the intelligence we had on him, which admittedly wasn’t a great deal, we knew that he was a man born without a heart. A callous murderer who took it upon himself to rape, pillage and destroy vulnerable villages throughout the rural lands if they refused to participate in his illegal arms productions and dealings. He was described as tan-skinned, handsome and tall, with eyes as cold as the deep, artic sea. A distinguishable scar could be seen running from his ear and across his neck. People knew him as El Diablo, a man so consumed with hate and anger he had become a formidable opponent.
Apparently the name Diablo didn’t sit well with him.
Too common, too representative of every other asshole who played this violent game.
He liked to be known as El Leon meaning, The Lion.
The king of the fucking jungle.
Anna
“Don’t even try it, babe.” I said loud enough for Luiza to hear me. “You close your eyes, you fall off.” There was never a chance in hell that anyone would be able to catch an extra wink of sleep while on route to site. The roads, if you can call them that, were makeshift and nothing more than a semi worn path framed by jungle. If the continuous jostling didn’t throw you off the back of the truck, the fear of being ambushed was enough to keep your eyes wide and on alert.
“Three hours sleep just doesn’t cut it.” She grumbled, attempting to rest her head on my shoulder. It was a futile effort considering we were both swaying and bumping. I didn’t begrudge her feelings. When we did manage some sleep, our dreams soon became nightmares as we relived the day’s gruesome findings in our heads.
Being volunteer aid workers, we were not allowed to carry weapons for self-defence. We were told that just like reporters, aid workers were usually exempt when it came to terrorists choosing their targets. I wanted to believe that to be the case. Unfortunately however, I was a hundred percent certain that the bad guys in this situation would not discriminate.
The eight of us were travelling to yet another remote village that had been ravaged less than a week ago. It had been a sickening scene. Corpses, bloodied and hacked had been strewn about the site as children who had managed to avoid being bludgeoned roamed around crying hysterically, searching for their fallen mothers. Young women were found lifeless in the their huts, legs wide open, blood staining their thighs, eyes capturing the last look of horror.
When we arrived, those who had managed to escape and watch the scene unfold from the safety of the commune perimeters within the jungle, would nervously make their way back, too shell-shocked to tell us what had happened. Not that we needed much explanation. It was obvious what had happened. But I guess the answer we all wanted, was to know who exactly was responsible for this and why.
Who could be filled with so much hate to cause this much destruction?
Something that even rivalled the age of the Vikings.
Out of around sixty people, only twenty three had survived this latest tragedy. The stench of bodies baking under the heat of the sun still filled the air. We had cleared most of the corpses out of the main grounds, but the blood-soaked earth still remained. It would take us near a week to be able to bury the dead and to treat those who could be saved. There were some who had been spared, but wouldn’t last before the week was out. Our medical supplies were limited and our skills were not sufficient to meet the demand or complexity of some of the injuries.
“Ok ladies,” Eduardo, our leader ran an exhausted hand over his face. We had only just arrived for our days’ work and already he was a mess, not knowing where to even begin with the damage control. “Can you both triage the wounded and see whose dressings need changing, those who require more pain killers and those who well…you know.”
We did know.
Those who were close to death from either the severity of their wounds or from infection were moved to a separate building block where they were left to die. It was an awful concept. It seemed so callous and third world, but we didn’t have any choice. There were no surgeons on our side, no government intervention, no UN, nothing. Just a small group of people who cared enough to offer the extent of their services.
“Are you ok?” I could see Luiza turning a sickening shade of green. When we had first arrived at the site, she had been absent for the first hours, vomiting behind one of the smaller structures. For someone who had chosen nursing as a career she certainly didn’t handle blood all that well. These were however, extenuating circumstances. We would all carry with us the gruesome images and terrifying sounds of anguish for the rest of our lives.
“I’m um… I think I’m going to need a night out or something. Just to try and attempt to forget about everything.”
Unlikely we would forget, but I didn’t have the guts to tell her. It seemed like alcohol would have to play its part in temporary relief.
“We can ask to borrow Eduardo’s truck to head south.” My friend squeezed my hand in way of thanks before her eyes lit up and drowned in sorrow at the same time. I followed her gaze and saw one of the youngest surviving children waddling our way. He wore only a pair of filthy shorts, his chubby belly on full display. With a finger in his mouth and curious eyes watching the two of us, we couldn’t help but smile at his cute innocence.
; “Bambino, come here,” I said gently, bending down with my arms out wide. He paused for a moment, his wariness getting the better of him before he picked up his pace and fell into my embrace. I hugged the small child who had witnessed the death of his whole family and his friends, as he clung tightly to me.
It was then that I smelled the stench from the makeshift hospital wafting in the gentle breeze. We were too far from the burial site, the smell notably stronger than what the blood-stained earth offered.
Still holding onto the little boy, I stole a glance at Luiza, whose eyes were locked on to the incriminating building.
“Take him,” I said, placing the child in her arms, “I’ll go. Keep him here.” She nodded gratefully and clung to the boy as if he was a shield.
I needed to take a deep breath to calm my nerves, but I didn’t want to inhale the putrid smell.
I knew what I would find.
I knew it would shatter the already broken pieces of my heart.
Standing in the semi darkness of the first room, I used my shirt to cover my nose, a swarm of flies buzzing around confirming my dreaded thoughts. Fabia, the woman who had taken care of the little boy since the massacre occurred, was lying motionless on the makeshift bed, the bandage on her shoulder saturated with blood, her eyes wide and unblinking. There was a real chance she had died from loss of blood if her stiches had reopened during the night or from an infection resulting from such a massive wound. Whatever it was, the child had been with her the whole time.
Movement to my left caused me to jump with fright. A young teenage boy and a middle-aged man began to stir, seemingly unperturbed with the stench. They were used to it. The whole village smelled of death.