by Shandi Boyes
It’s Roberto. I’m one hundred percent confident of this. The only thing I can’t work out is why. Audrey was taken less than two years ago. Roberto has been missing for almost five years. The math doesn’t add up. Roberto, along with Ophelia, CJ, and I wanted to leave the family behind, but we were meant to do it together. We were a team, a unit, and we pledged never to leave the other behind, so why did he? And does his reasoning have anything to do with Audrey’s kidnapping and Fien’s disappearance?
There’s only one way to find out. “Pack everything up. We leave in an hour.”
Roxanne’s eyes dart up to mine, seeking answers, but I’m out the door before a single syllable can be fired from her mouth.
“What do you make of this?” I ask Rocco, who leaps up to his feet since my unwarranted jealously saw me stationing him outside of Roxanne’s room instead of inside of it.
When I thrust Roxanne’s drawing into his chest, his lips purse. “What does Roberto have to do with this?”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to work out.” He follows my fast pace down the hall. “Roxanne saw him around Slice of Salt the night Audrey was kidnapped.”
“Shit.” Rocco drags a hand across tired eyes before pushing out a set of words I never anticipated for him to speak—especially when it comes to Roxanne. “Are you sure we can trust her? Maybe you should hold back for a moment and take a good look at the evidence.”
I freeze partway down the hallway before glaring at him with steely, annoyed eyes. He forced Roxanne into my life believing she could help me get Fien back, and now he’s asking me to tug on the reins just as things get interesting. Is he brain dead?
“I’m not saying she’s untrustworthy. I just need you to be cautious.” When his roundabout excuse fails to hit its mark, he tries straight-up honesty instead. “Smith sent me to collect Roxanne’s sketchpad from her apartment as per your request.” That was what I texted Smith about earlier. I didn’t want Roxanne knowing how fascinated I was to see if I had featured in her dreams, so I didn’t vocalize my needs. I sent them via a text message. “There was more than one sketchpad. They went back years. This one is from when she was in primary school.” He thrusts a cheap, flip notepad into my chest. “From the dates, I’m guessing she was around eight or nine.”
The already brisk cantor of my heart jumps up a notch when I flick through the extensive collection of drawings. Although Roxanne’s talent isn’t at the level it is now, there’s no denying she was a skilled artist even back then. But the thing is, the sketches are too graphic for a child, far too erotic. The images only adults should see, and even then, they’d be paying top dollar to see them. I know this because my empire was built on this type of filth.
After handing the notepad back to Rocco, I ask, “Roxanne said her drawings are based on dreams. Could that have been the case back then?” My question is a woeful waste of time. I’ve never seen Fien in the flesh, but even I know this type of behavior isn’t normal for a child.
Rocco shifts from foot to foot while nervously breathing out of his nose. “Smith said her mother dropped her off to live with her parents when she was only a child.” He lowers his eyes to the notepad holding graphic images of couples in various stages of raunchy sex. “Could this be the reason?”
I shrug, truly unsure. The information Smith unearthed about Roxanne’s family months ago reveals her parents are fucked in the head, but come on, this is beyond that. You can be dependent on drugs, but that doesn’t stop you knowing the difference between right and wrong. A parent is supposed to protect their child, they’re supposed to love them like no one else can. They are not supposed to make them a mental case like my father did me.
Although my jaw is tight and the wish to kill is doubling the width of my veins, I can’t let this slide. “What if she isn’t wrong, Rocco? What if she did see Roberto that night? If I ignore that, and it turns out she was telling the truth, I’ll never forgive myself. I need to know if she saw Roberto. I need to know if he’s a part of this.” I bounce my eyes between Rocco’s. I’m incapable of recognizing the man glancing back at me but I know one day he will eventually expose himself. “Then once I know, I’ll deal with this. I’ll make this right.” The way I say ‘this’ reveals who I am speaking about. “Just not until Fien is home. She has to come first, Rocco. She should have always come first.”
“All right,” he agrees with a frantic bob of his head. “Tell me what you need and where you need it, and I’ll get it there for you.”
I slap his shoulder, grateful for his understanding. “I need the jet fueled and ready to go. It’s time to head back to New York.”
I halt flicking through one of Roxanne’s many sketchpads when Rocco enters the plane without her. Although something isn’t sitting right with my stomach, the longer I peruse Roxanne’s collection of artwork, the more my curiosity is piqued. There are no faces on the people she sketched during her childhood, no identifiable marks or features that would help Smith track them down. There are just arms, torsos, legs, and pelvises in various stages of movement. The detail of each piece is so vivid, I can imagine the positions each couple made during their intricate tryst.
If I were unaware the sketches were drawn by a child, I’d purchase every one of them like a crazed collector, aware the artist would be big one day. But since I know that isn’t the case, I’m tempted to burn them all until they’re nothing but chunks of charcoal Roxanne could use to start all over again.
With my emotions not knowing which way to swing, I place the overloaded notepad into my suitcase before raising my eyes to Rocco. “Where’s Roxanne?”
My head slants to hide the tick of my jaw when he answers, “She isn’t coming.”
“What do you mean she isn’t coming? She doesn’t have a choice.” I drift my eyes to the Range Rover parked at the side of the plane. I know Roxanne is sitting inside of it because not only did I buckle her into the seat in more ways than one before our thirty-mile trip, the lights illuminating the hangar are shining into the back seat, lighting up Roxanne’s already bright hair.
My eyes rocket back to Rocco when he mutters, “She said she’d rather be buried in a shallow ditch than forced into a sex trafficking circuit.” When shock crosses my features, he chuckles out a breathy laugh. “Think about it, Dimi. She has a point. How is nearly every white American female lured into the trade these days? Fancy mansion, top-of-the-line Range Rover, and a private jet, then, before you know it, boom-shaka-laka, you’re eating porridge from a dog bowl in a cage. If I were a chick, I’d be gripping the door handle as hard as she is now. You wouldn’t get me in here for shit.”
Neither amused by his humor nor having the time for it, I snap out, “You don’t ask her to join us, you force her to join us.”
He holds his hand out in front of himself like I ordered for him to suck my dick. “You know that isn’t me, Dimi. I don’t do that shit.” My foul mood worsens when he adds, “Especially not to Roxie. I ain’t got no beef with her.”
Needing to leave before I pop a bullet between his quirked brows, I unlatch my seat belt, clamber down the stairs of a private jet, then throw open the door opposite to the one Roxanne is clutching in fear for her life.
“Don’t you want to come to New York with us?” It’s the fight of my life to keep the surprise off my face. I’m stunned by how calm and collective my question came out considering my veins are being obliterated with blackened rage.
Roxanne takes a beat to consider my question before she timidly shakes her head.
“All right. Then off you go.”
The shock I’m struggling to keep off my face jumps onto Roxanne’s. “I’m free to go?”
Her ‘duh’ face is cuter than I care to admit. “Uh-huh. You did as asked. You gave me information I needed to identify Fien’s kidnappers.”
“But I said her captor was a woman. Roberto isn’t a woman.” She pauses to reprimand herself for trying to talk herself out of going. “I guess he could be working with one?
”
“Perhaps, but I won’t find out here. I need to go to New York.”
“Okay.” Her constant licking of her lips shouldn’t be sexy, but it is. “Then go. I can find my way home from here.”
I almost smile at her cunningness. “When I leave, this vehicle, along with my possessions inside of it, will return to the Petretti compound. If anything is removed from it without my permission, it’ll be classed as theft. Theft is a big no-no in this industry, Roxanne. Do you know what happens to people who steal from me?”
Her pupils don’t dilate in the slightest when she answers, “They die.”
“Uh-huh. Is that what you want to happen to Maio?”
Her eyes lock with Maio’s in the rearview mirror for the quickest second before she shakes her head.
“Then, you need to leave this airstrip before me.”
A smirk begs to notch my lips higher when she once again shakes her head. I should have known she’s too smart to fall for my tricks. She might only be twenty, but she’s lived a harsh life that matured her at double the rate of her peers. It’s the same for me. I’m barely notching twenty-six, but it feels like I’ll be seeking an assisted living facility within the next year or two. That isn’t surprising considering hardly anyone in this industry lives past thirty.
When Roxanne’s knuckles remain white from her death-clutch on the door handle I cuffed her to for our trip, my bad mood gets the better of me. “All right. Then, I guess I may as well shoot Maio now.”
Before Roxanne can blink, I blow Maio’s brains out. He slumps forward, the honk of the horn announcing to the rest of my crew that the trash has been taken out. I didn’t just kill him to scare Roxanne out of my car. His sneaky hands were stirring one too many pots, and don’t get me started on the comments I heard him whispering to my men when I guided Roxanne to his car, or I’ll discharge my entire clip into the space of air his brain should have been taking up.
Respect for Roxanne’s determination whizzes out my nose when she throws open the door she’s been clutching the past ten minutes, slips out, then hightails it away from me. She doesn’t look back my way once, her focus solely on escaping.
I could threaten to shoot her if she doesn’t stop, or chase her down, but why exhaust myself if I don’t need to? She’s running straight toward the marshlands Clover hid in while waiting for us to leave so he could take care of Maio.
She isn’t going anywhere but to New York with me.
After dumping my gun onto the floor of the Range Rover so Clover can clean up my mess—the Petretti run on the ‘no bodies, no time for our crimes’ theory—I return to the private jet.
Rocco eyes me with confusion slashed across his features, shocked I returned without the package I went to collect. His bewilderment is alleviated two seconds later when a kicking and screaming Roxanne is walked into the plane over Clover’s shoulder. She’s fighting him with everything she has, which only doubles the amusement on Clover’s face. He’s so big, I doubt he’s feeling the slightest twinge of pain from her fists whacking him in the back.
“Did someone order a redhead with a slice of feisty?” Clover asks with a chuckle.
As the men around him laugh, my jaw tightens. There are too many hungry eyes watching Roxanne’s every move. It has me itching to kill even more than Maio’s attempt to bite the hand that fed him.
Rocco’s eyes snap to mine as quickly as Roxanne stops pounding the shit out of Clover’s back when I say, “Take her to the bedroom.”
Knowing better than to double-guess my direct order, Clover immediately commences moving Roxanne to the lower half of the jet.
Rocco doesn’t follow his obedient lead. “Dimi—”
I shut him up with a stern sideways glare. “Tell the pilot I want wheels up in no less than five minutes. We’re already behind schedule.”
Too tired to answer the many questions his narrowed eyes are throwing my way, I sidestep him before shadowing Clover’s walk.
I’ve only just entered the compact yet luxurious sleeping quarters at the back of the jet when Roxanne lands on the bed with a thud. She springs back onto her feet in under a second, but my stern grumble telling her to sit stops her bounce off the springy mattress.
“We had an agreement. You have not yet fulfilled your side of our agreement, so you’re not free to go.”
“This was never part of our agreement.” She peers past my shoulder to the men I feel watching her. There’s no doubt they’re interested, but since they’d have to get through me to touch her, she has nothing to worry about.
The pounding of my heart matches the vein working overtime in Roxanne’s neck when I request for Clover to disembark the jet. She watches his exit, her eyes only returning to mine after I’ve fastened the latch on the only bit of safety between her and my thirsty crew.
“If you think I brought you here to fuck you, you’re wrong.” My next set of words are hard to articulate when the late hour has me confusing the flare darting through her eyes as a disappointed one. “If I wanted to fuck you, you’d already be fucked. If I wanted them to fuck you…” I nudge my head to the door I just locked, “… they’d be lining up for round two. But that isn’t what this is about. None of this is about you. It’s about Fien, my daughter. I’m trying to protect her as your daddy should have protected you. I’m trying to keep her safe.”
For the first time tonight, the wetness in Roxanne’s eyes isn’t from fear. She’s remorseful, although it has nothing on my guilt when I ask, “Did your father fuck with your head or his druggo friends?”
This isn’t a conversation we should be having now. I doubt it’s even one we should have in the near future, but for the life of me, I can’t hold back my interrogation. The knot in my gut won’t lessen until Roxanne gives me the answers I’m seeking, and even then, I’m certain it’ll take more than words to fully smooth it out.
“What?” I can see how badly she wants to deny my claim, but with her mouth refusing to relinquish another lie, she could only get one word out.
“You have the markings of an abused child, a fascination with the man who watched you get off in an alleyway.” I didn’t just feature in her latest drawings. My rain-soaked, cloaked-by-darkness form is the only thing she has sketched the past year. “The sexual maturity of someone much older and wiser.” I lock my eyes with her watering ones. “And your nipples bud every time you feel threatened or scared.” She can deny my accusations all she likes, but the straining of her nipples against the thick material of her dressing gown is undeniable. “So that leads me to believe your daddy either fiddled with you, or he sold you to his drug-fucked buddies like he did your mother.”
Roxanne’s hands ball as tightly as mine when she shakes her head, denying my accusations. “He never touched me.”
“So, his friends did?”
“That isn’t what I said.” Her words are as icy as the color of my eyes and just as lifeless.
With anger clutching my throat, every word I speak is delivered with a gravelly growl. “You didn’t deny it either, Roxanne. So what is it? Did they touch you? Or did your sweet ole Pa treat his daughter like a dirty little whore?”
“It was neither of those things!”
When she attempts to race by me, I grab the tops of her arms and drag her to within an inch of my face. “Then… What. Was. It?” My voice is as loud as hers, my anger just as palpable. I’m not angry at her. I’m fighting the urge not to track down her father and slit his pedophile throat.
This kills me to admit, even more so since Ophelia’s life was cut short right around the age Roxanne is now, but Roxanne’s eyes hold the same dark, gleaming secrets Ophelia’s did any time our father returned home after a long stint of absence. They were badly stained, but not enough to have you believing they were wholly broken. They could be fixed if the right person was willing to put in the hard yards.
I thought Isaac Holt was that person for Ophelia. I was wrong then just like I could be now, but I can’t stop pushing. I
need to know who hurt Roxanne. I need to know more than my lungs need their next breath.
“Did he touch you, Roxanne? Is that why you were sent to live with your grandparents? Did your mother try to protect you after your father already fucking hurt you?”
“No,” she denies again, even with her eyes screaming the opposite. “He didn’t touch me!”
“Then what did he do? Why do you act as if he doesn’t exist?” I crowd her against the door of the private jet just as its engines roar to life. “Why do you hate him so much that just the thought of saying his name has you wanting to vomit.”
“He made me watch!” she shouts before she can stop herself. “He made me watch what they did to my mother.” Tears roll down her ashen face unchecked as she repeats, “He made me watch.”
I want to kill, I want to go on a rampage, but instead of doing either of those things, I do the last thing anyone would ever expect. I pull Roxanne into my chest, hopeful her tears will cool the rage burning me up inside.
If they don’t, I’m sure I can find another means to dispel my anger.
Torturing her father will be a good start.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Roxanne
Sighing, I rest my cheek onto the top of my knees. The meal a member of Dimitri’s staff is placing on the bedside table smells as divine as the previous three, but no number of excited rumblings from my stomach will pull me out of the slump I’m in.
I cried in the chest of a man who’d rather kill me than bed me.
If that isn’t bad enough, it seems as if that was the beginning of my punishment.
I’ve been shunted from activities. Left out in the cold like the naughty child I am.
The confession Dimitri forced out of me three nights ago on his private jet isn’t to blame for my disturbing ways. I was barely a child when my father found humor in my pink cheeks and wide eyes. He wanted to embarrass me, where in reality, he sparked a sinister curiosity for sex.