by Nicole Fox
While I was out of the house, they laid their trap.
They turned off the security alarms, killed my guards, and lay in wait.
They could have taken Eve and Milaya while I was gone, but that wouldn’t have been good enough. That revenge wouldn’t have been sweet enough.
I was supposed to come home and see my family safe and sound. They wanted me to relax, to take a deep breath and think everything was fine so that it would hurt all the more when they ripped the rug out from underneath me.
And oh man does it hurt. It hurts like hell.
I clench my fists, squeeze my eyes closed, and try to organize my still-cloudy thoughts into a plan.
I need to get my family back.
The Irish took them, but at the behest of Rian Morrison, no doubt. I could sneak into the New York City FBI field office and demand answers. Rian wouldn’t have the gall to kill me on government property, especially government property where she works.
Except, I don’t know that for sure.
If there is anything I’ve learned throughout my lifetime, it is that a guy like me can’t trust the government. Especially the FBI.
They are supposed to protect and serve, but that doesn’t extend to criminals like me.
They don’t care about my missing family or my heartache. If I waltz back into that building of my own free will, I’ll likely be detained and held indefinitely on a shit ton of charges. And that won’t help me in the search for Eve and Milaya.
Plus, Rian may not even be there. She was at the headquarters when I left, but she could have followed me home to help run this covert attack.
I’m standing outside the security room wishing there was a way to know for sure who carried out the kidnapping, when I realize I’m standing two feet away from a wall of security cameras.
I jump up and, avoiding the puddle of blood, push the door open.
Once again, it catches on one of the bodies inside, but I turn sideways and squeeze into the room.
My guys have been shot in the back of the head. They probably never even saw it coming. One of them is on the floor, blocking the door from opening, and the other is slumped over in his chair, head resting on the table in front of him.
I nudge him sideways off the chair with a whispered apology and then drag the chair away from the majority of the blood.
The small room is thick with the tangy scent of iron and the smell is making me queasy, so I work quickly.
I pull up the cameras for the upstairs hallway and scrub back several hours. Whatever drug they used to knock me out did the job. I was passed out on the side of the bed for almost two hours.
Finally, I see Eve and I walking down the hallway to go downstairs. From there, we talked in the kitchen for several minutes, and then Eve went back upstairs. She walked into our bedroom and out of sight of the camera, and I know that downstairs, I was walking out to the front porch for a smoke.
Then, nothing.
No movement, no sound.
For a minute, I almost think the image is frozen.
And then, I see him.
A shadow in the corner of the frame, creeping down the hallway. He stops outside of Milaya’s room, ear pressed to the door, and I want to throttle him. I want to run up the stairs and shoot him in the back of the head the way he had probably just finished killing my men.
But I know he isn’t there.
This is a recording, so I grit my teeth and watch as he moves slowly towards the bedroom.
Following closely behind him is another man. This one much larger. His shoulders are almost as wide as the hallway itself. Eve wouldn’t have had a chance in a fight against someone that size, even with the training I gave her.
Though, when I see the men reemerge from the bedroom only a few seconds later, I realize there wasn’t a need for a fight. Eve is already unconscious. Probably drugged in the same way I was.
The smaller man breaks away and goes into Milaya’s room. A moment later, he emerges with my sleeping child on his shoulder, and a rage like nothing I’ve ever felt before rushes through me.
I slam my fists on the table and roar.
How was all of this happening while I was only feet away downstairs?
Knowing that I’m out of frame, standing on the porch, makes me feel sick. That I was so close, yet completely unaware. I’ve never felt more useless in all my life.
The small man carries Milaya down the hallway and out of shot, and the larger man carries Eve.
Now that he is walking towards the camera, I recognize him immediately. I should have known who he was as soon as I saw his large stature, but that doesn’t matter. I know who he is now.
Sean O’Hearn.
He’s known as “the Lumberjack” around the city. He’s the main enforcer for the Irish mafia before they disbanded. Or, supposedly disbanded, anyway.
And his presence in my house means that Eve really is with the Irish.
Which means I know exactly where I need to go next.
It takes me an hour to get dressed and guzzle enough coffee to feel confident the drugs are out of my system and I am safe to drive, so by the time I get to the Irish pub it is just after three in the morning.
I haven’t slept in well over twenty-four hours, and exhaustion burns the backs of my eyes, but in every other way that matters, I am wide awake. Adrenaline pumps through me as I approach the bar and pull the door open.
The pub was a favorite hangout of the Irish mafia when they were still in business, and I suspect it is still popular among a lot of them. I can only hope someone will be willing to talk.
Not including the bartender, there are only three people in the small space when I walk inside, and they all turn and stare at me. None of them are Sean O’Hearn. I tip my head and stroll inside, grabbing a seat at the bar.
Two of the men are at the bar chatting loudly with the bartender, laughing about some fight they saw at another bar earlier in the night. The other man is sitting at a table off to my left, drinking alone.
I don’t want to draw much attention to myself, so I avoid looking at him directly, but I feel a tension radiating from him.
The bartender slides closer to me and raises an eyebrow in question. I order a beer and shift on the stool, glancing back over my shoulder.
When my eyes land on the thin man behind me, his grip tightens on his glass, and he sits up taller. He is clearly nervous.
The bartender slides my beer down to me, and I can feel him assessing me, trying to figure out where he may know me from.
I want to be out of here by the time he figures it out.
Whether the Irish mafia is really disbanded or not, there is a lot of animosity towards me, and I’m not in any mood to get in a four-versus-one fight tonight.
I sip the beer, not wanting to dull my senses any more than they already are, and look back at the table again. The man has turned away from me. He is hunched forward and hiding his face behind his glass.
But then, he peeks around the glass to see if I’m still looking at him. When he sees that I am, he darts back into hiding like a scared animal.
Whoever he is, he knows something.
I drop ten dollars on the bar and stand up, but as soon as I make a move towards the man’s table, he runs—a full-out sprint towards the back door of the bar with no regard for being obvious or looking suspicious. The man is running for his life, which means he must have a good reason to be afraid of me.
The bartender yells after the man, “Hey! That back door is staff only!” But the runner doesn’t care and neither do I.
I chase after him, jumping over an overturned chair and pushing aside a table that gets in my way.
The bar is narrow and the hallway in the back is a straight shot to the back door. I see it swing shut and lower my head, pushing as hard as I can to catch up.
The man might not know exactly what happened at my house tonight, but at the very least, he is an Irish mafia member and might be able to help me figure out where my wife
and child are.
There are no lights in the alley, so I have to squint into the darkness to see the small man’s shape hurtling through the dark alley towards the road beyond. I chase after him.
He is small but not fast, and my long strides have me right on his heels in a matter of seconds.
The end of the alley is coming up, but right before he can make it to the sidewalk, I lunge forward, tangle my hand in the back of his shirt, and yank him backwards.
A large huff of air bursts out of him when his spine hits the concrete. He collapses into a whimpering puddle.
I walk around him and press my foot into his chest.
“Why are you running?”
“Because you are chasing me,” he says, trying to roll away.
I press into his chest harder until I’m sure another centimeter will crush his rib cage. The man strains for a second and then crumples back onto the pavement, gasping for breath.
“Let up, for fuck’s sake,” he says, weakly pushing at my shoe to no avail.
“I will let you up when you tell me where my family is.”
He wrinkles his forehead, doing his best to look confused, but I can see the panic in his eyes. Like a wild animal searching for an escape route, I can tell I’ve cornered him. He knows he is fucked.
I flex, threatening to put more pressure on his chest. “Where are they?”
He winces and then lays his hands out on the pavement in surrender. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know who you are or what you are talking about. I was just in the bar having a drink and—”
I pull my knife and plunge it into his side before he even knows what happened.
His eyes widen and then his jaw goes unhinged. “You fucking stabbed me.”
He clutches at his side and then lifts his hand up to see the blood on his fingers. A sob bursts out of his chest. “Shit. You stabbed me.”
“Tell me what I need to know or I’ll let you bleed out.” I wipe my knife on the man’s jeans and put it back in my pocket. “Where is my family?”
He blubbers, shaking his head. “Come on, man. I’m bleeding too much.”
“Then talk fast!” I growl, driving my heel into his sternum. “The faster you tell me what you know, the faster you can find help.”
The man is pathetic. He is almost crying on the ground, lower lip shaking like a small child’s, and all of it makes me sick. Really, it makes me want to put the sad sack out of his misery.
“Did you just come to this bar from my house?” I ask.
His eyes snap to me, and I know I’ve hit the mark.
I grit my teeth and press my boot harder into his chest until I swear I can feel his heartbeat in the bottom of my foot. “Did you help kidnap my family?”
He shakes his head. “No. No. That wasn’t my job.”
“What was your job?” I tip my head down to the wound at his side. “Better talk quick. You’re losing a lot of blood.”
The man’s face was going pale. Even in the dark, his skin seems to be glowing.
“Your wife was being kidnapped for an auction. It’s a sale put on by the LeClerc Cartel. They deal with human trafficking. That is all I know.”
My heart feels like it is lodged in my throat. The thought of sex-hungry men bidding on my wife. Touching her.
My hands are shaking.
“Bullshit,” I bark. “Tell me more.”
He sobs and shakes his head. “I don’t know more. If I did, I’d tell you.”
I know about the LeClerc Cartel. Rather than serving lowlifes with junkie girls and runaways, they cater to the immoral elite. Men with cash to spare who don’t mind buying sex or slave labor. The Cartel has a large gathering every year where they show off their best merchandise. It is the biggest event they put on all year, and, if my memory serves, it is coming up on a year since the last event.
“When is the auction?”
“I don’t know,” the man says, slapping the pavement with his palms. His hand splashes in his own warm blood, and he groans. “Can I get up? Please?”
His voice is weak. Even if I do let him up, I’m not sure he’ll make it to the end of the alley.
“Where is Milaya?”
He screws up his face and shakes his head. “Who?”
“My daughter!” I roar, furious that this piece of shit who helped kidnap my daughter doesn’t even know her name.
She meant nothing to him. Just another job.
“I never saw her,” he says. “My job was to take out the guards. That is it. Once the job was done, a separate car dropped me off here. I didn’t see where they were taken.”
I shift the weight on my foot, digging the toe of my boot into the soft flesh of his windpipe above his collarbone.
The man’s eyes pop out and his lips go blue around the edges. He claws at my foot, panicked, but just as his eyes start to roll back in his head, I lift my foot and back away.
He gasps for air, but the breaths are shallow. His coughs sound wet and phlegmy.
He doesn’t have long.
I want to stay and end him myself. I never had any intention of letting him live. Mess with my family, and you won’t live to see another day.
But based on how much blood is in the alley, this man is dead anyway. And I don’t have the time to spare. I need to find my family.
So, I walk down the alley and leave the man to bleed out.
3
Eve
Things come to me in flashes.
Brief moments of light so bright and quick that I don’t know what is real and imagined.
My head hurts, but the sensation ebbs and flows, coming and going in waves until I can’t pinpoint the source of the pain.
I open my eyes and see black leather right next to my face. I see my own arm draped over the edge of a car seat. I see the glowing knob for the radio on a car stereo.
Then, I see Luka.
He is in bed next to me, his strong arm wrapped around my waist. The woodsy smell of him curls around me like a blanket, and I take deep breaths.
Then, Milaya begins to cry.
I move to get up, but Luka kisses my shoulder and nuzzles his face against the back of my neck. His body is warm against me, and his hips circle against my backside. “Don’t move. I’ll get her.”
I turn around and catch his lips with mine, sucking on his lower lip until he groans. “I’ll be waiting.”
Luka leaves, and I roll back on the bed and throw my arms over my head, sinking into the mattress.
There are few feelings as good as the after-sex glow. The warm, sated ease that seeps into every muscle, taking with it any worries I may have had prior. The best part of that glow, however, is snuggling into Luka’s broad chest and wrapping myself in his warmth.
So, after he is gone a few minutes, I slip to the side of the bed, wrap the sheet around my body, and pad into the hallway to see if there was some kind of diaper explosion that is holding him up.
I stop outside the partially opened door to Milaya’s room. The lights are off in her room except for a small cloud nightlight in the corner, and Luka is talking quietly.
“Everyone gets scared sometimes,” he whispers. “When you get scared, you can just cry out for Mommy and Daddy, and we’ll always come check on you.”
I press my hand to my heart, afraid it might actually melt and drip down my rib cage.
“We love you so much, Milaya. More than we can say,” Luka says. “Which is why I will do anything I can to ensure you are happy and safe.”
Tears burn at the back of my eyes, and I swallow back a lump in my throat.
Luka isn’t putting on a show for anyone. He isn’t trying to impress anyone or prove that he is a good father.
He is simply being a good father.
Even when he thinks no one is looking, he loves our daughter so fiercely, and I have never felt so lucky in my entire life.
Still, flowing underneath the love and admiration, there is a touch of jealousy.
Not of Milaya or he
r close relationship with Luka, but a jealousy that stems from the fact that I never had that kind of relationship with my own father.
Before Luka, I never had a man look at me and swear to protect me. I never had a father figure who would have done anything to make sure I was safe.
Instead, I had a father who thought I was no good to anyone unless I was cooking and cleaning and popping out babies.
I had a father who tried to whore me out on multiple occasions and was willing to put my life at risk to reach his own ends.
I try to push the thought away, but I remember sitting in the chair at the warehouse where my father was holding me. I can see people standing around me, watching me like I’m a new exhibit at the zoo and they want to be entertained. I can practically feel their eyes on me, watching my every move, waiting for a sign of weakness.
Unlike the first time I woke up—dazed and unsure—I start awake this time.
I know where I am. Or, rather, where I’m not.
I’m not at home.
I’m not with Luka.
I’m not with my daughter.
My body jerks forward, and pain cuts into my wrists and ankles. I look down and see that my legs are zip-tied to the legs of a wooden kitchen chair. My hands, too, are secured to the armrests. I pull against the restraints, but the chair is sturdy, and I feel weak.
I look around the room and am surprised to see that I’m not in a dingy warehouse or a basement, but rather, an extravagant dining room.
A solid wood table runs the length of the room, plush carpet beneath it, and a large glass-fronted china cabinet runs the length of the right wall. Fine dinnerware and teacups line the shelves.
The left wall is all windows that look out over a rolling green lawn. I see a tree line and the sky beyond, but no sign of another house. No road with cars passing by. No visible connection to the outside world.
There is a swinging door to my right that looks like it could lead into a kitchen and a set of French double doors straight ahead. They are opened wide onto a sitting room. The furniture is modern—a blue, tufted velvet—with massive framed oil paintings covering the wall I can see.