by J. C. Allen
“Simon,” Jaxson said, and I had a bad feeling of the direction this was going in. “I have sympathy for you, but how the fuck would we ever have done that? Forget just having the manpower. We haven’t done any recon on them. The only reason we even know of their existence is because of Rosella. And—”
“Don’t you fucking pin this on her,” Simon snapped, slamming his fists on the table. “Swear to God, Jaxson—”
“I’m not doing anything like that!” Jaxson roared, and before I knew it, the two of them had engaged in a shouting match, where seemingly nothing was off limits and everything could be broached. I just sat there, stewing, realizing that nothing was getting done. If we kept arguing like this, if we kept being like fucking babies…
“Alright, that’s enough!”
I don’t think I had ever shouted more loudly in my life. My throat burned from having produced such a loud noise. But it was necessary for the sake of making my point.
“I don’t fucking care whose fault it was or why we don’t have information on the Cavaros before this,” I said, continuing to pound the table. “The woman I love and my future child are being held hostage by someone we know isn’t afraid to kill. I’m really not concerned with how we got here. I just give a fuck about how we can get her safe.”
“And Rosella. And Michael.”
“Obviously,” I said, though I recognized I should have said their names. “So. What the fuck do we know? And how can we go from this?”
The awkward silence that followed was horrifying. It was like we didn’t know a goddamn thing—like we had just assumed that once Uncle Nic and Rosella’s parents had kicked the bucket, we had nothing to fear. How could we be so stupid?
“Are you fucking telling me all we have is a prisoner who’s passed out, a handwritten note, and a goddamn bloody photo?”
Jaxson couldn’t even say yes. He just nodded his head in confirmation.
“Fucking hell,” I grumbled. “Alright. Fine. Just… can you pull up the photo? Maybe it has clues. I don’t fucking know, but I don’t think some divine fucking miracle is going to give us anything.”
Jaxson barely uttered “yeah” as he pulled up the email on his computer while connecting it to a projector. All of the other officers hadn’t yet seen the photo yet—and, come to think of it, we hadn’t even ever found the body. This wasn’t like trying to find a needle in a haystack—this was like not even knowing where the goddamn haystack was.
When the photo came up on the screen, a few of the officers grumbled. Beast snorted, his sign that he was disgusted. I was used to the photo now, and… at the risk of sounding dispassionate, I really wasn’t worried about what some gory photo showed if my loved ones’ lives were still in the balance. I might have been the only one in the room, besides maybe Simon, who could look past the gore in the photo.
“Not much to see,” Jaxson said.
“Too much to see,” Zeke said.
It was probably the closest he was going to come to making a smartass joke. Which was just for the better, because what he had said was about as far as I was willing to let him go before I smacked him around a bit.
But then I studied the photo closer. There wasn’t much in the way of details, that much was true. Unfortunately, whoever had done this had not exactly done it in a very public location for obvious reasons.
But I recognized the layout of where they were. I recognized the placement of the outlets—weird as that sounds—and a few other features of the room.
“They’re somewhere at the Quad,” I said, the thought becoming more true the more that I saw.
“How?” Jaxson asked. “How do you know?”
I explained everything, my mind racing a thousand miles per hour. Even if she wasn’t at the quad, what else did we have to go on? We had literally no other evidence.
“She has to be there,” I said. “Has to be.”
“Matthew…”
“No, I’m going,” I said, standing up. “Is anyone else joining me?”
Jaxson sighed.
“It’s the best we got,” he said with a sigh. “Kinsmen, Beast, let’s go. The rest of you—dig through every little bit of things you can to find out more about the Cavaros. If one of them got interviewed in their middle school paper, I want to fucking know about it. We have to act fast if we want to have any hope of rescuing them.”
I didn’t wait for the rest of the officers to respond. I was already out the door and running to my bike.
It didn’t matter what had happened so far. It didn’t matter how many fights we got in. It didn’t matter how weird Grace was or how much of a temper I could have.
All that mattered, right now, was that I had to get her, no matter what it took.
18
Grace
When Matthew texted me to ask to pick a place to hang out, my instinctive response was to say almost immediately.
I wanted to see him to try and make things better. Admittedly, I knew my emotions were getting the better of me, and that was why I wanted to see him right there. If I was being really honest, I probably needed to have sex with him again really badly.
But it was that very reason that I needed to make him wait. If I was going to take him back, it wasn’t going to just be as a boy toy or a sex machine—it was going to be as a real boyfriend and a future father. I had to do everything in my power to ensure that whatever we built toward, it included that.
And that meant saying that I wouldn’t be ready until the late afternoon, until at least four. Of course, that meant that unless I said anything else, he would be right at my door at four, but by then, I’d have a better control of myself.
That was the idea, at least.
For now, I was just reduced to staying at Rosella’s house, playing the part of partial mother to Michael all over again. Rosella was home for the day, off from her nursing shift, but she was fighting a little bit of a flu—nothing serious, but enough that I wanted to help her. Michael, of course, prevented me from taking a nap for as long as he could in the effort to get me to hang out.
“Grace! I want to play!”
That line must have gotten uttered more than any other line over the course of our morning. It was a line that more or less lost its meaning, but I always answered the same way.
“I’ll watch you play, buddy. And I’ll cheer you on!”
Of course, he didn’t like that. I would get him distracted somewhat by playing games on his phone and some video games, but there was only so much I could do to keep the little guy away.
It wasn’t all him, of course. That wasn’t fair to Michael. Some of it was the internal dialogue in my head about Matthew and if it was even smart to be giving him this second chance. It was a huge gamble, and while I had been hormonal… there was an element of truth in everything that had happened. It wasn’t like I had just shouted those things out of body and out of character.
And by some of it, I mean most of it.
Around noon, though, the doorbell rang to Rosella’s place. I waited for a few moments, thinking that Rosella was waiting on someone—a coworker, a doctor, maybe even a package delivery—but when she didn’t come out of her room, I shrugged, figuring that this was something else she was dumping on me.
“Stay here, Michael,” I said in reference to his room. “Grace is going to go answer the door.”
The doorbell rang again.
“You better hurry!” Michael shouted. “I don’t think they like waiting!”
I rolled my eyes as I hurried down the stairs, taking them rapidly in a near flight. When I landed, I turned left, went to the door, and unlocked it. Just… don’t let it be Matthew. I’m not going to be able to resist if it is.
I’m not sure if I’d be able to resist at any point. Damnit, Grace, come on.
I opened the door.
A hand went to my mouth and pulled me against a rough body. I tried to scream and kick my legs, but the man had a firm grip on me.
“It’s absolutely true,” he
growled in something of an accent I couldn’t place. “I don’t like waiting.”
With that, about five other men roared into the house, immediately trashing the place. Two of them went upstairs in a hurry, and seconds later, I heard the shrill screams of Rosella and Michael crying. I did everything in my power to break free, but I was quite puny in comparison. There was going to be no getting out of this; there was nothing I could do.
What the fuck is going on?!?
Rosella’s family followed her here… they’ve come for revenge.
“We got them,” one of the men said. “Should we kill them?”
My eyes went wide and I started to cry as I feared the worst. Would they really kill Rosella in front of Michael or, God forbid, the other way around?
“Not yet,” the man holding me said. “They are not the prime targets. We use them as bait for who we really want. We use them to lure out the Kinsmen, and then we kill them all.”
Matthew…
No…
I didn’t know what to do. I ended up just crying in response to the insanity of the situation, but in my head, I feared the worst. Matthew and his brothers were going to come to wherever we were… right into a trap. All four of them would get shot dead. The father of my child, the man that I… that I cared for so much would be shot. Rosella’s husband would be shot. Isabelle’s husband would be shot. Even Zeke would face certain death.
And then, laughing, the men would take us for ourselves. They would kill Michael right in front of Rosella, shattering her forever. Her family wouldn’t do that, would they?
But I knew the cold truth. This wasn’t Rosella’s family. Her family had been murdered by her Uncle Nic, who in turn had been murdered by the Kinsmen. These were distant cousins who either didn’t know Rosella or did but had no regard for her anyways. There was nothing about this situation that was good.
There was no silver lining here. There was no possibility for hope.
The only way that the Kinsmen had a chance was if they killed all six of these men here, but that just seemed… if a trap was laid out, there was little that could be done.
“In the meantime,” the man said, holding me. “Destroy this place. It belongs to one of the Kinsmen, and I’m not going to let them come home to a peaceful house.”
“No!”
Rosella had somehow squirmed free of her captor momentarily, but all it resulted in was her getting punched in the gut by another man. Michael cried some more. I tried to be the strong one, but it wasn’t doing much good.
“Take them to the van!” the man snapped. “Marco! Tie them up and tape their mouths. I don’t want any of these bitches to say a word.”
“You got it, sir!”
With that, one of the men took me from the leader and led the three of us to a white van parked just by the house. They threw us in there, then held us at gunpoint as a big, beefy man—bigger than even Uncle Nic—bound our hands and feet and gagged our mouth. I looked over to Rosella and Michael, tears streaming down their eyes. Rosella put her head on Michael’s, trying to comfort her, but there was little that either of us could do to comfort him.
We’d been kidnapped in the most violent way possible, and it was going to take a miracle from the Kinsmen to get us out.
After a few minutes, the van started up. It was much too dark to see anything that was going on, and the van didn’t seem to be interested in slowing down. If anything, it had a keen interest in speeding up, as if it wanted to make our bumps harder and rougher.
I feared the worst for my baby and tried to lie on my back as much as I could so I wouldn’t fall on it, but I was terrified that this car ride was going to produce so much rustling and jostling that the baby wouldn’t make it through. What was even worse was that it wasn’t like I had anything connected to the child to tell me if it was going to make it through—I wouldn’t know until either my belly continued to expand or I had a miscarriage of some kind.
I was terrified. I couldn’t stop crying. Rosella tried to reassure me by reaching out and gently rubbing me with her legs, but with the bumping that we experienced, all it did was make it so we kept hitting each other. She eventually gave up, choosing to remain by the side of Michael, and I just prayed for this car ride to end.
How were we going to get out of this alive? This wasn’t a one-man run of Uncle Nic acting crazy—these were the Cavaros in full, coming at us. Granted, it could have been a separate rival motorcycle club, but that possibility seemed even more terrifying. I was already horrified and scarred by what was going on; if I knew that two clubs were interested in the demise of the Kinsmen, then…
It wouldn’t matter how apologetic and how contrite Matthew was. For the sake of my child, I could never let him come near me. Too many people would use me or our child as bait to drag him out.
Why did I ever leave my parent’s lives? Why did I let myself get to that point? I’m so fucking stupid! I should never…
Dad, I’m sorry. Mom… yes, I’m sorry. As soon as this is over, I’ll reach out to you. I’ll get the hell out of here. I’ll come home. I don’t know what I’ll do after this, but I’ll come home.
Being stubborn is just stupid when your safety is at risk.
And then, as if out of nowhere, the van braked to an abrupt halt. The engine even got killed. Had we arrived at our destination? Do I want us to have arrived at our destination?
The doors swung open, and the light blinded me. I quickly adjusted to see that we had backed up to some sort of door near an apartment—but not just any apartment.
The Quad apartments.
Matthew was right. I shouldn’t have ever stayed here. This place is beyond sketchy.
“Get them inside,” the main man, the one who had grabbed me, said.
He had white hair, a thick, bushy beard, sunglassess, and arms that looked equal parts bulky and fat. He looked like someone who, in his prime, had been a champion at wrestling and weightlifting, and while he still had some signs of it, age had largely diminished what he once was.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of killing us. That didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of killing the Kinsmen.
I felt a pair of hands grab me by the feet and drag me. I quickly flipped on my back before someone hoisted me on their shoulders, took me in an apartment, and dragged me to a corner. A terrible stench hit me immediately, one so bad that I immediately felt nauseous.
It got no better when I hit the floor and saw what the cause of the smell was—a decomposing corpse with the Kinsmen cut on it. They killed one of them. Though the body was mutilated and severely… just, I couldn’t even find the words, it was so fucking gross. But, nevertheless, there was just enough left that I could tell it wasn’t one of the Kinsmen. Thankfully, the brothers were likely still alive, just not here.
Hopefully they are. Don’t think they would have brought us here to show us. They could have just brought the body to the house if they wanted to make that point.
Wow, that’s pretty fucking morbid, huh?
Seconds later, Michael and Rosella came down. Michael screamed through his tape when he saw the corpse, while Rosella continued to cry. I shuddered to think of what this would mean for them in the future—how badly they would be affected by it, what sort of PTSD they would have a result of all of this. It wasn’t pleasant to think about, and it was something I tried not to think about.
Unfortunately, with the tapes over our mouths and our feet and hands bound, there wasn’t much else we could do to distract ourselves from it. Furthermore, that smell was just so overwhelming and so powerful, there was no way we could not notice it. We could close our eyes, sure, but we couldn’t close our nostrils.
The six men came in the room and shut the door. The big one, the one who had kidnapped them, stared at us.
“My name is Rocco,” he said. “I am a cousin of Uncle Nic’s and, because of the action of your little lovers, the current vice president and sergeant in arms of the Cavaro MC.”
I shudd
ered. This was the second-in-command, the big shot of the club. This was someone who only needed permission from one person, from one man to cause us hell—and I suspected that he already had it. My guess was that he didn’t need it to kill us.
“So far, the Kinsmen have been a mighty fucking pain in our ass,” he growled. “Your boys should have died long ago. And you, daughter of Drago, you should have known better than to ever fucking go near the son of a rival gang.”
Rosella looked up in fear. Her eyes narrowed to determined, but that just led Rocco to laugh at her. I prayed that none of us did anything that would piss off these guys, because even something as small as narrowed eyes could lead to our deaths.
“So, here’s the deal,” Rocco said. “In about four hours, we are going to send a little notice to your gentlemen that we have you. We are going to tell them that they need to send us one million dollars to ensure your lives. If they don’t, you die. Three million dollars, three lives. Frankly, I think that we’re valuing you too high, but when you have leverage, why not?”
He laughed some more.
“The clock begins in four hours. In the meantime, why don’t you get comfortable? It’s not like you have anything else to do.”
The four hours that passed felt like the equivalent of torture.
They never removed our tape and never removed our ropes. We were bound and gagged to the point that even breathing was difficult. I was fearful of falling asleep, worried that doing so would not give me enough oxygen to reach my child or just me, period.
Rosella and Michael eventually fell asleep, probably because they had exhausted themselves so much that they couldn’t help but fall asleep. I was kind of jealous, to be honest.
A lot went through my head in those four hours. In alternating thoughts, I could go from blaming Matthew to begging for him back to swearing I could do it on my own. The one hope I had was that Rocco was going to inform the boys of our condition—that raised the possibility that we could be found. Even if we were found and there was nothing they could do, at least I would get one last look at Matthew.