To my surprise, the front door opened, and a wheelchair was pushed through. Kodee was the one doing the pushing, and Ryan was in the chair.
I was happy to see them, but seeing Ryan back in a wheelchair sent a spike of worry through me. From the dismayed expression on Rue’s face, I thought she felt the same way.
“Dillon,” Kodee said. “Rue! Are you both all right?”
I didn’t answer him and instead nodded to the chair. “What happened?”
Ryan must have seen the look on both our faces, and he lifted a hand. “It’s okay, don’t panic. It’s not permanent. I just have to keep the leg off for a while to let it heal.”
It felt strange having this conversation while Frankie and his men looked on, but we didn’t have any choice.
Rue frowned. “Heal?”
“The hike didn’t do the stump much good,” Ryan said, “but try not to worry, all right? There are more important things going on.”
Rue’s gaze flicked to Kodee. “I miss you.”
He gave her a sad smile. “We miss you, too.” Then he looked to me. “Both of you. We’ve just got to hang in there. This will all be over soon.”
Frankie Capello laughed. “Sure, you keep telling yourselves that.”
He nodded to Meathead, who grabbed me again then re-addressed Kodee.
“You got what you wanted. This was never supposed to be a cozy chit-chat.” He jerked his chin. “Get them out of here.”
Rue jerked forward. “No, please! Just a little longer!”
I struggled against Meathead’s hold. “Hang on. What the fuck is going on here? What was this all about?”
“Your friends needed proof I hadn’t killed you before they did some work for us,” Frankie said. “Now shut up and behave yourself before I change my mind about letting you live.”
I didn’t want to go back down into that room. Seeing the others, and freedom just beyond them, hadn’t been a blessing. It was torture. I’d caught a glimpse of what life had been like and what had been taken away from us.
I roared in anger and thrashed against Meathead. “Get the fuck off me!”
Cold, hard metal pressed against my temple. “I suggest you behave yourself before your friends have to witness your brains exploding all over the floor.”
Rue’s scream of horror shattered through the restaurant, combined with Kodee’s and Ryan’s exclamations to stop.
I froze in his grip, preferring my brains to remain inside my head. I also didn’t want to traumatize the others with that image. It must have been hard enough for them the first time after I’d been knocked unconscious.
“Aye, I’m behaving.”
“Glad to hear it.” He jammed the gun harder against my skull, as though to remind me it was there. “Now, move.”
I wanted to say so many things to the others. To tell Rue I loved her, and Ryan and Kodee that if they had the opportunity to grab Rue and run, they should do it. The last thing I wanted was for them to hold back because of me. I was the one who’d caused this whole mess in the first place, and I didn’t deserve any special treatment. I’d rather know they were all safe and living happily together than still under the Capellos’ thumb just because of me.
But there wasn’t time to say anything else.
Meathead pushed me back through the swinging doors and into the kitchen. This place was full of weapons—cleavers the size of my head—but I had both hands taped behind my back and a gun jammed against my skull.
No, I wasn’t fighting back, not like this. Not yet.
But that didn’t mean my time wouldn’t come.
Chapter Thirteen
Ryan
I HATED BEING IN THIS chair.
I hated it even more when the people I loved were being held against their will and there was nothing I could do about it.
Dillon was yanked away from us, the gun still jammed to his head. The massive guy who had hold of him shoved him through a set of swinging doors at the rear of the restaurant, into what I assumed was the kitchen. I wondered where they were taking him. We’d arrived at the front of the building, so perhaps there was a way out the back? I wished I could go after him, but I didn’t want to risk him being hurt again, and besides, there wasn’t much I could do while I was in this fucking chair.
I didn’t miss the different way in which people treated me when I was in the wheelchair either. It was as though I became less of a man by being unable to walk. When I wore my prosthesis, people didn’t know I was an amputee, and they treated me just like everyone else, but the moment they knew, an uneasiness appeared in their faces. An uncertainty to their smile. It marked me out as being different, and I hated that. One of the things I’d enjoyed about being in the Army was that we were all on an equal playing field. We dressed the same, we ate the same, we slept and shit the same.
The civilian world was nothing like that. Everyone was always comparing themselves to everyone else. A constant one-upmanship to see who had the best car, or house, or who was fucking the prettiest girl... or guy.
It was as if they thought my disability affected the rest of me as well, including my brain. There was no doubt they viewed me as less of a man, and it made me furious. If any of them had seen half of the things I had while I’d been serving, they’d be crumbling messes.
“Get her out of here, too,” Frankie said, nodding to his men.
Rue looked, wide-eyed, between the two men then back to us.
“It’ll be okay,” Kodee assured her. “We’ll figure this out.”
She gave a brief smile, and my heart broke. She trusted us, but right now, we had nothing to offer her. We might not be locked up anywhere, but we were as much the Capellos’ slaves and prisoners as she and Dillon were.
The two men dragged her in the opposite direction from where Dillon had been taken. I ached inside as she vanished out of the front door, and, moments later, car doors slammed. The roar of an engine started and then grew fainter as the vehicle drove away with Rue in it.
Frankie Capello turned his attention to us. “You got what you wanted. Now it’s your turn to do something for me.”
Kodee nodded. “Fair enough.”
I didn’t know how he was staying so calm, not after having both Rue and Dillon dangled right in front of our noses, only to be whisked away again. He’d always been more level-headed than me.
“I have two girls for you,” Frankie said. “They both need full passports. We’ll bring them around to you within the hour.”
The Capellos had done their part of the deal by allowing us to see Rue and Dillon. Now we had little choice but to go through with our side of things.
“Fine,” Kodee agreed. “We’ll be there.”
Our minders were waiting for us outside.
We left the restaurant, and Kodee helped me into the back of the car then folded the chair to go in the trunk. Neither of us spoke, knowing anything we said would be passed back to Frankie, but I knew Kodee felt the same as I did.
Powerless and furious, and determined to do anything it took to make things change.
JUST AS FRANKIE HAD promised, we were back in the apartment for a little less than an hour before the buzzer sounded. It was the middle of the night now, but we no longer lived the normal routine of the rest of society. We were outlaws, and we worked when we were needed, not simply because it was regular business hours.
Kodee went to answer it.
Two girls stepped through the door, herded in by the men Capello had put in charge of watching us. Both girls had the same body language—heads down, so their hair fell over their faces, shoulders rounded, hands clutched in front of their bodies.
I threw a glance to Kodee.
His full lips were tight, his nostrils flared. He was staring at the two girls, and I knew exactly what he was thinking, because I was thinking the same.
These girls could be Rue.
Of course, physically, they looked nothing like her—one was blonde and curvy, and the other was tall with light
brown hair—but the way they held themselves was identical to when Rue had first been brought to our apartment.
My heart twisted with pain.
“Do whatever you want with them,” one of the men said. Then he exchanged a smirk with his colleague. “If you can manage it.”
I didn’t know if he was talking about the fact I was in a wheelchair, or if it was because we were two men living together. I guessed it didn’t really matter either way.
They backed out and shut the door behind them, though I doubted they would be going far. We’d proven we weren’t to be trusted, since we took off with the last girl they’d left with us, and they wouldn’t want the same thing happening twice.
“Don’t worry,” Kodee told the two young women, “we’re not going to lay a finger on you.”
The girls glanced at each other but could barely bring themselves to look at us.
We didn’t need to touch them to hurt them. Just creating passports for them to be transported with would be hurting them enough. They wouldn’t be allowed to keep the passports when they got wherever they ended up. They would be taken away, so the girls would be stranded in a strange country, with no identification or place to go.
I pulled Kodee to one side, jerking my chin toward the kitchen and wheeling myself enough of a distance away to ensure we wouldn’t be overheard. “We can’t allow these girls to be taken to another country. They’ll be lost.”
Kodee nodded. “We stick to our plan and make a mistake with the passports, something that won’t be noticeable from just looking at them. Passport control should pick up on it and not let them into the country.”
“What if they miss it? Something not being right with the passports might not be enough.”
“That’s all we’ve got, for the moment, anyway.”
“It’ll come back on us that we didn’t do our job right. The Capellos won’t let us get away with it.”
“Hopefully, we’ll have Rue and Dillon back by then and be long gone.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Hopefully? We’re making plans based on hopefully. And how are we going to get Rue and Dillon back? The Capellos aren’t going to just hand Rue back over. Once she’s played her role in court and done what they needed to get Nettie sent down, she’ll be sold on, just like these two.”
“We’ll figure it out. One step at a time. Let’s do what we planned with the passports, then we’ll figure out what to do about Rue and Dillon. We know Rue is going to be in court in a matter of days now, and that might give us options.”
“And Dillon?” I asked.
“I think he must be being held at the Capellos’ restaurant. Did you notice how, when they took them away again, they were each led in opposite directions? That tells me they’re not being held together.”
“We don’t even know where Rue is being held, though.”
“No, we don’t.” He glanced over at the two girls. “But they might.”
“You think they’ll tell us anything?”
“It’s worth a try.”
He was right. I’d learned over my time with him, Kodee normally was.
The two girls were still standing together, not even daring to look at us. I imagined how they’d been treated before, when coming into contact with strange men, and they clearly thought we would be the same.
“It’s okay,” I told them. “You can relax. We’re not going to hurt you, I promise.”
Again, I was brought back to that time when Rue had first arrived. She’d assumed we’d all want her for sex. It had left me uneasy when that was exactly what had ended up happening, but then it had become apparent that sex wasn’t the only thing Rue had wanted. She’d also wanted love and kindness, and a place she could call home, and, for a short while, we had been able to give that to her.
“What are your names?” Kodee asked the girls.
Neither of them answered.
“We’re going to have to know for the passports, so you might as well tell us.”
“I’m Skye.” The blonde lifted her blue eyes to us and gestured to the other girl. “She’s called May.”
“Any surnames?” he enquired.
The girls shook their heads. They had surnames—of course they did—but they’d probably been threatened by the Capellos never to speak them. Hell, even their first names probably weren’t right, but they were less important. If we knew their surnames, we could run checks to see if any missing girls by those names had been reported and get in touch with the families to let them know of their missing loved ones’ locations. Getting in touch with the cops wouldn’t work—you never knew which of them was on the Capellos’ payroll. Inform the wrong one, and you’d most likely end up dead.
“We’re going to need to give you surnames for the passports, though, okay?”
Both girls nodded.
“Come with us.”
Though the doorway of my bedroom had been widened to allow for a wheelchair, the doorway to the office hadn’t been. To move around in there, I needed my crutches. Kodee retrieved them for me without me even needing to ask, and I hoisted myself up on them. It felt good to be standing, though I could never do it for long. Even with padding, the crutches dug in under my arms. It was hard work getting around like this.
We got to work, taking photographs and uploading biometric data onto the RFID—radio frequency identification—chips that were in the covers of the new style passports. Plenty of people had no idea these microchips were even part of their passports, but they carried all the data of the photograph page of the passport, including the biometrics of the photograph. The data on the chip needed to match that of the contents of the passport.
“Are there any other girls where you’re staying?” I asked the blonde, trying to sound casual.
She pressed her lips together and kept her gaze on some fixed point on the floor. “We’re not supposed to talk to you about anything that doesn’t involve getting the passports.”
“How about if you don’t talk?”
She frowned at me and I elaborated.
“I mean, I could just say something, and you could either nod or shake your head. You wouldn’t actually be saying anything.”
The brunette jabbed the blonde in the side and shot her a warning glare. I understood why they were being cautious. They’d probably been treated with nothing but disrespect and contempt since they’d ended up in this position—especially at the hands of men—and why should they think we were any different? In their minds, we were simply more of the same, working to get them out of the country in return for a hefty jump in our bank balances.
“Those men who brought you here have our friend,” I continued. “Her name is Rue. She has lots of silky dark hair and a small build. Do you know her? Or might you have seen her?”
The brunette, May, didn’t even look at us, but the blonde quickly nodded.
“You know her?” I said, encouraged. “Is she being held at the same place as you?”
Again, that same nod.
“Are you being held at the restaurant? The pizza place?”
This time Skye shook her head.
“One of the Capello’s residences instead?”
A nod. Yes.
“Frankie’s or Manuel’s?”
She lifted her gaze to mine, and I realized I hadn’t given her a yes or no question.
“Sorry.” I tried again. “Manuel?”
She shook her head.
“Frankie?”
She nodded.
I assumed the short amount of time it had taken for them to bring the girls to the apartment meant she was talking about a property in the city. So that meant Rue was there, too. I didn’t know how that helped us at all. There was little chance we’d just be able to walk in there and take her.
“And is there another man there as well? Dark, messy hair. Irish accent?”
Her eyes narrowed, lines forming between her eyebrows as she thought. Then she twisted her lips and shook her head.
So, Dillon wasn�
�t being held in the same place as Rue. Or, if he was, he was being kept well away from everyone else. But he’d been taken from the restaurant in a different direction. Why would they do that if they were being held together?
Frankie was most likely using Dillon as a way of controlling Rue as well. If he could threaten to have Dillon hurt, she would do what he wanted instead of trying to escape or fight back.
Maybe Dillon hadn’t been taken anywhere. I’d just assumed he had been. I didn’t want to say anything while we were within earshot of the girls, unsure what they would take back to Frankie, but I made a mental note to speak with Kodee once we were done.
We uploaded everything onto the computers. They would need some manipulation before they were ready, which was what took the time and skill. I also remembered our promise to one another that we would make a mistake with these passports, so the girls didn’t get where they were intended. They would be picked up at passport control, and hopefully given an opportunity to tell their side of the story. I wished we could let the girls know they still had hope, but I didn’t want there to be any possibility of them letting it slip to Frankie. Not only would it put us in a massive pile of shit, it would also ruin their one chance at rescue.
The door buzzed. Frankie’s men were back to collect the girls.
The two women had relaxed a fraction in our presence, but the moment Frankie’s men walked through the door, they shrank back into themselves again. I hated to see it. It reminded me of Rue and how she must be feeling back under the Capellos’ ownership.
“All done?” one of the men asked.
“Yes,” Kodee said, “we have what we need to make the passports, but we still need another twenty-four hours to work on them. We’ll drop them off to Frankie when they’re done.”
“No need. We’ll send someone back to collect them.”
“We’re happy to come to Frankie’s. Save him the trouble.”
Captivated with Them (Dirty Twisted Love, #3) Page 7