And that’s how he got Mia. She’d been busy throwing her life away. Even her brother couldn’t stop her from running with the wrong guys, jerks who treated her with total neglect and disrespect. He knew why. She was so freaking beautiful she didn’t feel she deserved it. His wife needed someone to worship the ground she walked on, give her confidence she was worthy of love. Fredo didn’t care how much he had to grovel, he was just like that high school wrestler. He would never quit. He’d never quit on Mia, or stop trying to bring joy to her life.
It was so long ago, and yet it was only days really, since they’d had that big fight and he’d questioned her faithfulness. But this was more where he was coming from than her. He often wondered what she saw in him. He’d totally understand if she wanted to be with someone handsome, a guy all the girls would fall over. Especially a guy who could give her children.
But she was in many ways just like Fredo. Mia wouldn’t give up on him. He knew that now. He’d been such a stupid fool for letting that matter. If she’d stay with him, who cared? If he made her happy, if he made her laugh and she seemed to enjoy living with him, raising little Ricardo as his own son, what was one more?
Now, in light of everything else he’d seen these past two days, how little it all mattered. The world was a pretty dangerous and crummy place sometimes. If they could carve out their little piece of heaven, it could all go to hell. Just leave his little fantasy life with Mia alone. She wanted that, too.
If anything happened to her, he wouldn’t stop until he got those responsible for it and put them in an oily grave and set it ablaze. He’d make sure they suffered the flames of hell, and he’d suffer right along side them if it meant they’d pay the ultimate price for harming one hair on her head. Even if she told him she wanted to leave him, even if he was forced to watch her leave, he would never ever give up hope in his heart. He’d always be there, just in case she changed her mind. Just in case she saw the error of her ways.
As deals went, his wasn’t such a bad one. He got the most beautiful wife in the world, one beautiful toddler and another baby he’d love just as much. He had a job he loved and men he worked with who would take a bullet for him at any time. And they were needed. They weren’t the best of the best of course because there were a lot of incredibly talented and strong warriors in the brotherhood of the military. But as a group, there was none better, none more trained, and none who had consistently the right combination of skill, mental prep and dumb luck to get the impossible done. Those things that others wouldn’t or couldn’t do.
For all these this, he was grateful.
And here he’d been moping away, whining about his life and his fears, leaving Mia alone with that asshole that wanted to plant flowers next to her. Who could blame him? But that wasn’t Mia’s fault. It was Fredo’s. He’d left her alone. He’d gone off because he couldn’t emotionally reel himself in and had left her unprotected and exposed.
If that asshole had anything to do with harming Mia, or was even part of the reason she wasn’t answering her phone, he’d willingly saw off every body part of his and feed it to Coop’s dog. Or slice him up and drop him off the pier and let the sharks get him. He just couldn’t get that guy’s picture out of his head for some reason.
He thought about Julio, the kid with the blue eyes. The kid who saved his life. just because he’d known his older brother.
If he wanted to feel sorry for someone, he should feel sorry for Julio. Bright kid, lots of potential, but stuck in a neighborhood with nothing. The Center would help, but he’d have to stay clean long enough so they could get him trained and get him into a BUD/S class. If he could get in, he’d make it, Fredo knew that. And they’d do it in honor of his brother, Ephron.
Ephron was perfect SEAL material. Tall, handsome, hell of an athlete, but with one little flaw: he hated swimming. That was it. He would have made one awesome warrior. It was such a shame his blood had been wasted on the dirty streets Fredo and the other men of SEAL Team 3 were trying to clean up. Now that wasn’t a fair shake. A pregnant girl without a husband, baby without a father, mother without a son, little brother without his older brother to protect him.
And here he’d been so caught up in his own little dented head sperm he hadn’t thought about any of them. What a selfish prick he was.
He got up and used the lavatory. The transport didn’t have attendants, but someone had thought to bring them an ice chest full of waters and a basket with small packets of pretzels, potato chips, fig bars, and trail mix. He sat at the end of the row, three seats down from the next Team guy, strapped in, and drank his water in silence. He needed a shower. Something hot and steaming.
“Fredo,” she called him. When he opened his eyes, the room was filled with steam. “Come here and take a shower with me.” Mia’s red nail polish was easily recognizable. He was confused. Wasn’t he on the airplane coming home to her? Had he missed the whole drama? The reunion? The touchdown? How had he gotten home?
“Hey, Mia. Where were you?”
His clothes were already shed. The steam shower was warm and inviting. Her body was more curvaceous than he’d remembered her before, but then she was pregnant. She smiled, her red lips inviting, her teeth so white and straight.
“Poor Fredo. You’ve had a rough couple of days. You need to put your life back in Mia’s hands, huh, mi amore?”
She drew him into her, and soon he melted into her slick, wet, bulbous body. Her arms were up over his shoulders, laced at the back of his neck. Her breasts rested against his chest as she leaned and squeezed her tiny body against his. Her belly pressed into his. She turned back and forth, her nipples dragging over his chest, her thighs massaging his. “No more worry. No more long faces, mi amore. You’re here now, with me.”
He knew it must be a dream, but he surrendered to her anyway. His hands eagerly rubbed the warm water over her body, smoothing down shower gel. Everywhere he touched her, she arched and moaned. He turned her, suddenly urgent to be inside her without their long foreplay. The tiles were cool to his forearms as he pinned hers beneath him, clutching her fingers in his. Bending his knees, he spread her thighs. Then he bent lower still and angled up, catching her just right, rooting deep inside and nearly taking her off her feet. She pushed against the wall into him as he balanced her on his cock. He found the fine hairs behind her ears and at the base of her neck and got lost. He pressed her upper torso into the cool tile as he whispered love poems, pressing inside and up deep again and again. He couldn’t fill her enough. He held her thighs under her knees, careful to give her belly room as he pumped against her.
He had barely caught his breath when he opened his eyes again and she was on him in bed. With her large belly in front, she carefully rocked her torso on him, squeezing her breasts, her nipples dark and huge. Mia leaned forward, closing her eyes as his thrusts sent her some place wonderful. She balanced her forearms on his shoulders enough to raise her hips up and down on his shaft. The long strokes made him grow, and he worried he’d soon be too big for her. She suddenly stopped, letting him feel the spasms milking his shaft as she shattered into orgasm and they came together perfectly.
With one arm under his head, he just lay back and looked at this beautiful creature who brought him so much pleasure, who loved him just as hard and as intensely now as the very first time they made love in the cramped cabin of the cruise ship. His Mia. She always would be his Mia. He lived for her. He would gladly endure anything for her. Maybe it was real after all. Maybe he was really there in his bed, the sizzle of their lovemaking hanging in the air, her beautiful light brown body glistening in the moonlight. Even sweaty, Mia was beautiful, like she was covered with tiny crystals of sugar.
He had dribbled on himself, thinking about tasting all the places and body parts that had been dipped into sugar. He brushed his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and it broke the dream. Opening his eyes, he saw the back of a plane, an eerie red light pulsing, the equipment jiggling, and heard the drone of the engines,
deafening, even with earphones.
He examined the row of men he’d done battle with. Not a one was awake now. Yet he was still here.
He closed his eyes, trying to get back into the dream. He envisioned the shower, all the ways they’d made love under the water, all the ways they’d made love in their bed. He pretended he was an angel or bird above her while she slept. He held her every morning before she awoke, his fingers on her bare body, claiming her anew each and every day. He wanted to do that until the day he died, and even on that day, he wanted to touch her. He would always touch her.
THE PLANE JOLTED onto the runway, and the tires screeched as they landed. Fredo was instantly awake and alert. He had slept after all. He could hardly wait to be home, and now he was close.
The rest of the team began to stir, some putting away reading devices or powering up cell phones to check for messages. Fredo looked at the screen on his, hoping for something and found it blank. Not one.
But as they began to taxi to the gate, several phones beeped and two phones rang. Both Kyle and Armando had their devices to their ears. Fredo watched, holding his breath. Both of them looked sternly back at him, and he knew something had happened. Something he didn’t want to know about.
Chapter 27
‡
THE HOUSE HAD been surrounded. Riverton was standing beside Malmoud while the technician connected a headset to a computer device and place it on his head. “We’re gonna want you to try to talk to Sayid, if he’ll let you.”
All he could do was nod. He had no words. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. His gut was doing flip-flops.
The drone they’d sent in was tiny, smaller than a bird, but had a powerful camera. Inside the house, they could see the women handcuffed to chairs. A toddler screamed, his face red and terrified. The man he didn’t recognize, who was probably Khan, had lost his temper and was about to strike the child with a backhand. What terrified the child even more was that he saw what could be coming his way.
To his credit, Sayid stopped the teacher from striking the child.
They’d watched as Sayid and Khan had previously been on the telephone, making calls, then yelling to people on the other end of the line. The dark-haired younger woman was now screaming, then yelling at Sayid. Mahmoud braced himself for some violent act on his part, but he turned, spoke to Khan and untied the baby from the high chair where he was restrained, and gave the child to the woman. That left her with one wrist connected to the chair and the other around the child’s waist, but more importantly, reduced the decibel of tension in the room. She was talking to him, trying to soothe him, calm his nerves, for the good of them all.
The older woman stared back defiantly, hatred brewing in her eyes. Malmoud didn’t think this was wise, and wished he was there to protect her.
“Try the number again,” Riverton said to the technician.
Everyone listened for a ring, and there was none. The police couldn’t figure out what had happened to the telephone they knew was in the house.
“We should try her cell again.”
“Try Sayid’s. I will talk with him,” whispered Malmoud.
Riverton looked down at his feet for a minute. “Only if you’re talking to him, not Khan. You tell him that we have surrounded the house and there isn’t any escape. Tell him to somehow incapacitate Khan.”
“What if he won’t?”
Riverton shrugged. “We’re running out of time. That baby is going to be a problem. They’ve been trying to call people now for the past two hours. I think Khan will tire of this soon. He’s already lost his temper once.”
“Let me try first.”
“Do it,” Riverton said to the technician. He adjusted the headset on Malmoud’s head and listened in through an earpiece spliced in by a phone jack.
“We’ve got only another five minutes on the drone,” someone told Riverton.
“You got backup?”
“We only bring one. In five minutes, it will do an automatic homing for a recharge.”
“Let’s hope he picks up.”
They could see, though the screen was becoming wavy and cutting out in bursts of blackness, Sayid looking through a square satchel, probably for his phone. He glanced to the other room before he answered it.
“Hallo?”
“Sayid, this is teacher Suliemani. I have urgent news for you. The police have surrounded this building. You are in danger. Can you disable Khan?”
Sayid laughed. While he yelled in Arabic, Malmoud translated. “He’s getting Khan. He’s unmoved, telling him the police have surrounded the area.”
Riverton swore. He signaled the SWAT commander, “Go.”
Sayid spewed a load of epithets into the phone.
“Losing signal,” the tech shouted to Riverton.
The picture was getting very grainy, breaking up. And then it went black. After several other choice sentences, the line went dead.
Malmoud removed his head set. “I’m afraid I’m the son of a goat whore and a snake and various other things, including traitor and that I have condemned my family to death.”
Riverton put his hand on Malmoud’s shoulder. “I’ve been called worse.”
He could see someone had affixed a white package to the front door. Within seconds the explosion was deafening, setting off car alarms nearby. The front door was completely shattered, and men began pouring inside, to a hail of automatic gunfire.
Chapter 28
‡
COOP AND ARMANDO escorted Fredo from the airport while Kyle and several others brought their own vehicles. Though they tried to talk him out of it, Fredo insisted on driving his own truck. The whole group headed to Fredo’s home, running red lights discretely. It was a short freeway hop and then down into the neighborhood where so many of them lived.
As they came upon the street, the whole area was blocked off with flashing red lights. A large SWAT van was the first thing Fredo noticed. Two red rescue vehicles were standing idly by. Smoke was coming from the interior of his home and the front door had been blown off, residue from the blast still wafting up into the early evening sky.
Fredo ran right past the first police guard, a woman, who had been preoccupied. But she stopped Cooper, Kyle and T.J. and wouldn’t let them pass, even summoning backup. Fredo continued running through the maze of vehicles and came around the rear of one of the red rescue trucks. A yellow jacket was hanging in the back of the open van, and Fredo grabbed it as he heard a “Hey” coming from his left. He didn’t have time to check out who might be trying to stop him.
The jacket was huge on him, the sleeves extending two inches past his fingers, but he didn’t care. He wove his way around groups of police and paramedics, scanning the crime scene for a stretcher, for someone injured and being treated. He stopped one of the paramedics.
“Are they all still inside?”
“Yes. No one’s come out yet.”
“Casualties?”
“One, that we know of.”
“A hostage or—?”
“We don’t know. They said to be prepared for one.”
Fredo continued to scoot closer to the front door’s opening. He slowed down, took a deep breath, and started to cough. He heard Ricardo wailing, and was never so grateful for the sound of his distress.
He’s alive!
He slipped inside, walking slow and deliberately. The jacket had a clipboard in the large pocket on his right side, so he took it out as if he was examining something. As he entered his living room, a body lay to the left, having taken several rounds to the chest. It was an older man he didn’t recognize. Sitting on the couch, in handcuffs, was the landscape helper, Joel. Fredo wanted to run over and up the body count to two. The kid’s eyes got wide.
“I told you, kid,” Fredo blurted out.
The uniformed officer guarding Joel—if that was his name—objected.
“Hey, you’re not authorized to be here.”
“Fredo!” He heard Mia’s scream. “Oh.
My. God. It’s Fredo!”
He ran in the direction of the back bedroom pushing past two navy-uniformed paramedics. At last he saw his beautiful wife break through a crowd of people surrounding her. She was in his arms before anyone could stop her.
“Oh, Fredo. Thank God you’re here. It was awful, mi amore.”
All he could do was soak up the moment he feared would never happen. He loved this woman more than he loved his own life. Her shaking body clung to him, her hair wild and her scent filling his chest as he inhaled the beauty that was Mia. It was the answer to everything he’d hoped for and dared to believe.
She kept trying to explain, and he just wanted to hold her.
“Shhh. Shhh. Enough. We’ll talk about all of it later. You need to relax, Mia. I’ve got you. Never letting you go, sweetheart. I’m here.”
Oblivious to the discussions going on around them, he buried his nose in her hair. His fingers found the back of her neck, stroking her and holding her against him as tight as he could. He could feel her soften to him. He knew she wanted to talk, to get something out, so he asked her.
“Tell me what happened.”
“You were right. You were right about all of this.”
Detective Clark Riverton appeared seconds before several large officers restrained Fredo, which began a struggle that drew attention quickly. The two were separated and Mia screamed. “I want my husband. That’s my husband!”
Riverton nodded, and both Fredo and Mia were released. They were instantly in each other’s arms again. Felicia Guzman was holding Ricardo, who was crying and reaching out for Fredo, shouting, “Papa!”
Fredo's Dream: SEAL Brotherhood: Fredo Page 19