The door flew open and Tito shoved me forward, still clutching my arm. I stumbled and was jerked forward to stand right in front of Marco, his arms crossed in front of his chest. The way he towered over me had always frightened me—except that in the past, I had been Remy’s girlfriend and untouchable. There was no saving me now.
“Cory,” he breathed out as dropped his arms from his chest. His large hand grasped my arm. “It’s been awhile. The boss has been looking for you.”
A new round of fear shot through me. Alejandro? Was the boss still alive? Had he made it somehow? I had never stopped to check—
“Remy has missed you something fierce. He wants you back.”
I almost breathed a sigh of relief, but then something deep inside of me was screaming that this still wasn’t a good thing. Remy would not be happy I had killed his uncle.
I didn’t say anything as Marco hit some button on his phone and shoved it back into his pocket. His grip tightened as he pulled me back, and I winced as pain shot up my arm.
“You guys are all set to go. Thanks for bringing her here.” Marco whipped out a large yellow envelope and handed it to Cisco.
I trembled with fear at the whole exchange, knowing I had just been sold like I’d done to so many other girls. It was karma for what I had unknowingly done.
“We could stick around and watch. Help out…” Tito started to say.
“We’re good. Take it and go. You don’t want to see what happens.” His voice matched his words and I crumbled inside. I almost wished Cisco would have shot me and taken me out of my misery.
I caught Tito’s eye and he smirked. They turned to leave, but not before Tito groped me with his eyes one last time.
“You’re looking good, C.” Marco tugged on me to walk forward to the car.
My eyes darted, hoping for someone, anyone who might be around and see what was happening. No one was around. I could run. How far would I get before he shot me in the back?
I struggled against his grip but he only tightened it. “How did you find me?”
“You left Texas the same way you left San Diego.”
My head snapped to look at him. I hadn’t killed anyone in Texas.
“A man is still in love with you. Seems like you break hearts everywhere, don’t you?”
I had no idea what he was talking about, and didn’t have time to think about it as a white van pulled around and the side door opened. Frantic, I looked around for any type of car. If I could just go to jail instead, I was sure my chances of survival were greater than if I were back in Remy’s hands.
Marco pulled the handle for the sliding door and shoved me in. I couldn’t make out what I’d slammed into at first—until the same large thing I’d slammed into spoke. “Well, well. Looks like the boss will be happy. Finally.”
My eyes darted from person to person, recognizing not just one but two more men as Alejandro’s old henchmen, and my mind flipped with thoughts of what they’d probably do to me.
“Yeah. Man, it’s been awhile, Cory. The boss has been looking all over for you.”
“You should be flattered. I never thought he’d go to such lengths to find a girl. One that should be dead anyway.”
I wasn’t even remotely flattered. Not in the least. My eyes darted around the inside of the van, hoping to find a weapon or some escape.
“Don’t even think about it, Cory,” the guy said, and while I thought I had been panicked before, I became frozen in fear as I felt the cold latch of handcuffs clasp around my wrists, followed by some type of fabric wrapped around my eyes and then tightened at the back of my head.
“Just a precaution. Don’t look so scared.”
The other guy laughed. “Man, what you trying to do to her?” He paused. “Be afraid. Remy’s been screaming at us all to find you. For years.”
My heart quickened even more though I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. Remy. I had left him without saying a word. He had told me so many times how much he loved me. How he’d die for me. I never really took that into consideration until after I killed his uncle and ran. I’d thought about him so many times while I ran. Thoughts about how things should have been different. How under other circumstances, I might have loved him eventually. Until I found out what he was truly capable of—and then any feelings I had for him were gone.
It could have been me.
I thought about every teenage girl I’d found and brought to them, and knew that it could have been me. Yet because of Remy and his uncle, all those other girls had been forced into a life they’d have never wanted. I had smiled and waved them in, thinking I was helping, and I was just a fool—a girl bringing each one to slaughter.
I closed my eyes, allowing the guilt for all those innocent girls to wash over me. There was no way to escape it, and by the time I’d confronted Remy I’d had to embrace it. This was karma getting me back. It would be my turn to face what they had.
“That’s right, Cory. Just relax until we get there. There’ll be time enough for panic later.”
He was right. There was nothing else left for me to do but just accept my fate.
Twenty-Five
Cory
“Hey!” he yelled as I was shoved in a chair. The room was dark and smelled of musk. “Easy. I told you she was not to be harmed.” The unmistakable voice I knew all too well. Remy. My ex-boyfriend and the guy who had always told me he’d never let anything hurt me. Yet there he was having his guys manhandle me.
“Yeah, Boss. We know. You want to do the damage to her.” One snickered to the other and a chill ran up my spine. Hearing Remy directing everyone around, I wanted to throw up. All those years I’d been with him. All unknowing what he and Alejandro really did. Drugs were one thing—it was what we always fought about—but what they were actually doing…
The door closed and I heard his footsteps. Unsure of what Remy would do, I shifted uneasily and tried again to pull from my cuffs. They were on too tight, and aside from the way they dug into my skin, there was also no way to get out of them.
I heard him exhale and I wasn’t sure if anyone else was in the room. I lifted my head, trying to see out of the bottom of the blindfold, but I couldn’t.
“Why didn’t you just turn a blind eye to it,” he whispered, and he sounded like he spoke from across the room.
“Because you made me a part of it. If you’d just left me—”
BAM. The force of the back of his hand against my cheekbone exploded across my face. I cried out in pain as the sting lingered on.
“Dammit, Cory. I loved you.” The sheer force with which he said that left me no doubt.
“Love doesn’t hurt, Remy. If you truly loved me you wouldn’t have brought me into that life.” My voice wavered, though I tried to summon everything inside of me to be brave.
“And give you all that you had? I’d have never been able to give you any of how we lived.”
I wasn’t sure exactly all that we had was much, even though I knew it was way more than what we’d had back at the trailer park.
“I’d have been fine with nothing, Remy. I didn’t ask for anything.” I kept my voice steady and as calm as I possibly could.
“You did!”
I heard a step echo off the walls, followed by another one.
“You did, though. Every time I gave you something, you kept wanting more. I could see it in your eyes.”
I had no idea what he was talking about but knew I had to keep him talking. I was still blindfolded, my arms cuffed behind my back, and terrified of what he planned to do to me.
“I took you away from your stepdad. I protected you. Clothed you. Fed you. I gave you a second chance at—”
Anger seethed through me even though I was in no position to argue. “You set me up to hunt down innocent girls, like me, and send them off to slaughter. To work for you,” I snapped. “For that disgusting unc—”
BAM! Another slap, that time to the opposite cheek, and I was sure my eye would pop out from the s
earing pain. My head throbbed even worse than before, and tears that I’d tried to hold back seemed to be flowing on their own without any control.
“Don’t you ever talk about Alejandro like that! He was a saint to me!”
“To you,” I spat. “Sure, to you. You thought he was fucking God. You know what your precious God did to me, Remy? Do you?”
“Nothing.” I could hear his voice waver with uncertainty. “He swore he’d keep you safe. He made sure you weren’t touched because of me. Because we were blood.”
“Your blood tore at my clothes. Your blood bent me over his desk. Your blood—”
“Lies! Don’t you dare lie about Alejandro like that! He’d never—”
“He did!” I screamed. “He raped me. He forced himself on me and raped me repeatedly, and the only thing that saved me from him doing it again was when I grabbed his knife and jabbed it into his throat.”
He was pacing now. I could hear his footsteps against the concrete flooring, echoing off the walls as they had earlier. Now there was more hardness to the sound. He was definitely angry with me—or with Alejandro?
“Remy,” I pleaded. If I could figure out a way for him to feel some sort of sympathy toward me, I might have a chance. Although I wasn’t sure what chance that would be. Would he turn me out to prostitution for him, for the pain I’d caused him by killing his uncle?
“Shut up,” he yelled. I heard the scrape of a chair against the floor. I turned my head toward the sound, but it was no use because his voice came from what seemed to be somewhere else.
“I need to think.” He exhaled and stood there while I was trying my best not to tremble. Not to show fear. I hoped that the blindfold was catching my tears, but every once in a while I’d taste the salty drops and knew he could probably see that. I didn’t want to show fear.
“You don’t need to think. I did what I had to in self-defense, Remy. He wouldn’t stop. He—”
The chair scraped against the floor, followed by a loud crash. I cried out when he grabbed my arms and shook me so hard that it added to the throbbing pain from his slaps.
“I…I loved you, Cory.”
“And now?” I cried out.
“I hate you,” he seethed. “You killed my—”
“Because he raped me.” If I could just get that through his head.
“No, he promised—” He was frustrated now, completely conflicted, and I had to get through to him somehow.
“Had he ever held a promise?”
“To me he did,” he yelled, and I could tell he was in pain not knowing what Alejandro had really done to me. He might not believe me at all, finding out now after hating me for so many years.
“No.” I shook my head, wishing I could look into his eyes. To make sure he understood. “It hurt. Oh, God, Remy. It hurt worse than when Stan—”
“No!” His voice carried through the whole room worse than before. I pictured him covering his ears, like he used to do when we fought. It used to make me laugh because he was acting like a child. Now I just felt sorry for him and the pain he must have been going through to know that his idle had crashed off his pedestal.
“Yes.” My voice was harsh, and I knew I teetered on making him angrier. If I couldn’t get through to him, I was already dead. “Remy. Please. He hurt me. He did what he had promised you he wouldn’t do. Alejandro wasn’t what you thought he was.”
My blindfold was ripped off, pulling a few strands of my hair with it, and I tried not to wince. Now, maybe I could get through to him if he saw the pain in my eyes.
He was older now. His dark hair disheveled, his eyes rimmed with red. I had loved him once, in a friendly way. I had put Alex on the back burner, possibly forever, for Remy and what he had done for me.
Remy’s brown eyes had always matched mine, and it had reminded me of an odd reflection at times. Now his showed how hurt he was. How much pain the truth about Alejandro caused him.
He jabbed his fingers into his own chest. “I’m the boss now. I have been since I got the call. Since Manuel found him and called me in. And to know who had done it, to know that it was at the hand of my own girlfriend—the one I wanted to marry.” He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out a diamond solitaire ring. Large in size, it would have been a huge deal in our circle of friends. I couldn’t imagine the jealousy it would have caused too.
I closed my eyes, realizing how close I had been. What if I had married him and then found out what they had put me up to? There was no way I’d have been able to get out of that situation. There was no way I’d have been allowed to leave. Would Alejandro have raped me then? Maybe that was the reason he had. Thoughts of trying to reason it all out kept jumbling up in my mind. Nothing made sense.
Remy began pacing again, holding the ring between his fingers. “They thought I put you up to it.” The anger rose with every word he spoke. “They weren’t going to give me the respect I deserved. All because he died so viciously by you.” He sniffled. “They told me that you and him had a thing going. That the two of you had been doing this behind my back for years.”
I snapped my head to his. “No! No. I never wanted him touching me, Remy.” I stared into his dark brown eyes as I told him honestly, “I loved you.” I really had, in a way.
Remy stared at me as if he were trying to gauge if I was lying to him. I wasn’t. However, Remy had always doubted me, always thought I was cheating on him despite my protests. There were times I never left the house just to prove to him there wasn’t another man.
It was then I realized he wasn’t trying to see if I was lying. He hung his head. “Loved,” he whispered. Shutting his eyes, he shook his head as his lips pressed together.
I realized my mistake and tried to think if I should correct him. If in order to save my life, I should lie to him.
“I…meant love. I mean. I’ve been running for so lo—”
“Stop.” His voice was harsh, and he still refused to look up at me. “Don’t. Don’t even try to change what you really feel.” He took another step toward me as he looked into my eyes. “Is there someone else?”
My eyes darted away before I had a chance to answer.
He laughed. Cold. Maniacal. He was hurt. “I was afraid of that.”
“Remy—”
He held up his hand to stop me from saying more. “I’ve made up my mind. The question now is if I’ll do it or have one of my men.”
I swallowed, trying to think of something to say—if he’d even allow me to speak. I had to try. “Remy, after Alejandro raped me, I had to escape. There was no other way. This wasn’t my choice. My life was with you. It was us.” I watched him, surprised that he was allowing me to continue. “I said ‘loved’ because it was so long ago. I’ve been running, knowing how much you loved him. Yet what he did…you were protecting me from that, and yet the one person you looked up to did the vilest thing I could ever imagine. He did this to us, Remy. You want to blame me for what happened, but you can’t. I only protected myself while you were out.”
“Why were you even with him?” He couldn’t even look at me. Remy’s dark eyes fixed on the wall behind me.
“He told me he needed to speak with me. About you.” His eyes flashed to mine when I said that part. I’d always mulled in my mind repeatedly over that one thing. “Said he wanted me to give you a message.” I sniffled. “I only went because it was about you.”
Remy refused to say anything. His eyes were still fixated on the door behind me.
My heart stopped when he stood up, grabbing the gun left on the desk. He paced the floor for what seemed an eternity before finally turning to me.
“All these years, Cory. I thought you two were together behind my back. If you’re lying to get yourself out—”
“I’m not. Remy. Alejandro did this to us. If he hadn’t—”
“Stop. No more. Not one more word. It’s time.”
He pointed the gun to my head and I closed my eyes. Alex’s sweet teenage face flashed through my thoughts
, followed by the last sight of him as a man. I whispered a prayer that he would find love. Tears sprang from my eyes as I heard the click of the lock and I breathed my final prayer.
Twenty-Six
Alex
We pulled up to a broken-down building while the white van we had been following continued on. I knew the area well: it’d been where my brothers and I had been mulling over trying to rebuild the neighborhood. It was no use, though—not at that point. The area was ridden with crime. Hell, even the prostitutes didn’t want to go down there, because it was mostly used for gang-related incidents. Now Cory was in the middle of it in some white van that we were no longer following.
To think I had thought she was skittish from an abusive ex-boyfriend—that I could protect her from. There was something much larger going on, and I needed to find out what exactly it was.
“No! Keep going,” I yelled at the guy driving the car, angry that they weren’t following the car Cory was in. Yet he kept going, around the building and down the street. The whole drive, the assholes hadn’t been following the green Chevy like they should have been. We had stopped at one point and then started following some other white van. I wasn’t even sure if Cory was in that van. If it hadn’t been for the guy in the front passenger seat talking on some walkie talkie and hearing that “the switch” was made, or “got them,” I’d have thought for sure the guys were following the wrong vehicle.
We pulled over and the guys started getting out. My eyes widened and I panicked. What the fuck are they doing?
“You stay here,” Kyle tried to tell me.
“Fuck no! Look around this place. I’ll be killed along with the car getting jacked. No thank you. I’ll be with you guys.” I jumped out of the car and pushed my way forward.
Trust Me Forever (Forever Happens Series Book 2) Page 16