by Shandi Boyes
Conscious our conversation may hit a stalemate, I remove the photograph of Audrey I placed into the breast pocket of my jacket, then pass it to Brandon. I hate the sympathy vote. More times than not, it makes me angrier than recalling how my enemies have played me for a fool the past two years.
I’m not feeling that sentiment today.
Brandon wears his heart on his sleeve. If I can play on it, I’ll have him eating out of the palm of my hand even quicker than my daughter’s upside-down grubby face stole my heart from my chest.
“I paid the ransom they requested.” My jaw tightens to the point of cracking. “They didn’t uphold their side of our agreement.”
It dawns on me that Brandon was closer to Tobias than realized when he asks, “Was Tobias aware you paid the ransom?”
His expression remains neutral when I shake my head. “Tobias approached me a few days after the drop. He said there was a complication securing Audrey.” I can’t admit my wrongdoings in her ransom. If I do, guilt will eat me alive in an instant.
“I told you he’s smarter than he looks,” Smith says down the earpiece lodged in my ear when Brandon gabbles out, “You’re not searching for Audrey. You’re trying to find your child.”
“Tobias was supposed to get her out. He assured me she was safe, and that it would be only a matter of time before she was returned to me.” Those were the exact words Tobias spoke to me the night he called to say they were raiding the Castro compound within the hour. I begged him to wait until I got there. He said he couldn’t. “Then—”
“Tobias was killed during the Castro raid?” Although Brandon sounds as if he’s asking a question, I don’t see it like that. He’s summarizing.
After a couple of minutes of deliberation, he moves our conversation in a direction I never saw coming. “When was your daughter last seen?”
“I didn’t get you out of lockup to investigate my daughter’s disappearance.” Although I appreciate his wish to help, the last time I got a federal agent involved in Fien’s disappearance, I lost her for months on end. I won’t let that happened again. “I did it so you can continue with your ruse to force Castro out of hiding.”
Shock registers on Brandon’s face. It’s quickly swallowed by anger. “You can’t use the Bureau to get revenge on Castro.”
I smile an evil grin. “I’m not getting revenge on Castro. I’m going to kill him as he did my wife.”
Roxanne’s father may have held Fien by her feet after removing her from Audrey’s stomach, but he wasn’t the only man in the room. There were several of them, and I’m confident the ringleader was Rimi Castro.
“I can’t legally help you with this, Dimitri.”
With his resolve strong enough to know words won’t crack it, I get inventive. “You’ll do as I ask, or I’ll release this to the hounds.”
Blood drains from his face when I hand him a drafted bounty for his long-lost girlfriend, Melody Gregg. It hasn’t been lodged, but all it will take is a single push of a button for her bounty to be activated. Unlike the payout on Roxanne’s head, this one will be cashed in because men like Clover don’t back down when they’re on the hunt.
Brandon grips the single sheet of paper enough to crinkle it down the middle before he strays his eyes to mine. I had never really paid their hazel coloring any attention previously. I only switched things up today because they’re filled with so much fury, they appear more green than brown. “How do I know you haven’t already released this?”
“She’s still alive, isn’t she? Living it up in a fancy penthouse apartment in New York City with her billionaire boyfriend.” I show him the video Smith and Ellie downloaded when they discovered Brandon’s ruse to have Isabelle impersonate Melody at a function later this week. It doubles the blatant rage in his eyes. “Even with a wrong set of photographs attached to her file, the real Melody wasn’t hard to find.”
I don’t mention the fact his father led a member of my New York chapter right to his ex. Vincent McGee only owed me one favor, but when you like your women young enough, you’ll face consecutive life sentences if word gets out, you’re a little more generous with your ‘colleagues.’
Vincent’s association with my family is being taken care of as we speak, but I’ll have to save the details for another day since Brandon shifts our exchange from civil to prudishly fun in zero point eight seconds.
He grips the lapels of my jacket before dragging me to his side of the cabin. “If you hurt her—”
“You’ll what? Kill me as I want to slay the man who murdered my wife. He cut our daughter out of her stomach, then left her to die! He treated her like fucking scum, so if I have to use your high school sweetheart as bait because your hero-complex wants to stop a war that started long before you joined the Bureau, I fucking will. I’ll do anything it takes to gut Castro as he did me.”
My rant started with Audrey in my thoughts, but it ended with Roxanne. I’ve told myself time and time again the past two hours that she was breathing in the footage I saw of her, and she looked unharmed, but my gut knows better. She’s hurting. Deep down inside, there’s no denying the truth.
Needing Brandon to go before I forget he isn’t the man I’m chasing, I remember the reason I got him out of lockup. “Do what needs to be done to get Castro out of hiding, then leave the rest up to me.” When I hear Rocco release the lock mechanisms on the door, I lean across Brandon to open his door for him. “And start here as he’ll get your Honey Pot out of lockup even faster than your daddy’s fancy title will.”
Brandon misses my accidental slip-up. He’s too busy staring at the entrance of Isaac Holt’s nightclub, stunned as a mullet that I brought him here.
It takes him a handful of attempts to get his legs to follow the prompts of his brain. I assume because his knees are knocking about meeting the man who pipped him at the post but am proven wrong when he pops his head back into the cabin of The Tank. “If you do this, you’ll be hunted as fiercely as you’ve been chasing Castro the past two years. What kind of life will that be for your daughter? Hasn’t she been through enough? You’re her father. You are supposed to protect her, not put her in more danger.”
When he slams the door in my face, oblivious to the fact I’m seconds from removing his insides via his bellybutton, Rocco locks his eyes with mine in the rearview mirror. “We need him.”
“We don’t fucking need him.” I want to add that I don’t need anyone, but since Rocco will see straight through that lie, I keep my mouth shut.
Just like my pain is my motivation, so is my wish not to be alone. It takes courage to wage a battle by yourself, but it is even more courageous to admit you need help.
After climbing over the partition separating Rocco and me, I switch on the state-of-the-art GPS system. “Send through Rico’s last known location to The Tank’s mainframe.” As Smith hums out an acknowledging murmur, I swing my eyes to Rocco. “It’s better to fight for something than live for nothing, right?”
Rocco’s smirk reveals he understands where I’m going with this, much less what he says next, “They say you should never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake. They don’t say anything about helping them make it.”
13
Roxanne
“This will only take a couple of minutes, then you can rest up.”
The drugs the dark-haired goon jabbed into my thigh must be top-shelf because he almost sounded sincere while assuring me I’ll only be at his mercy for a few more minutes. Even the way he folds up the nightie the women upstairs lent me is gentle. He takes his time like he isn’t in the process of stripping me of the only thing I’ve felt a part of wholeheartedly.
My ranch was my grandparents, my bed was bought on credit, even the shoes I was wearing earlier today weren’t mine. They were from Alice’s vast collection of pretty things. My child is the only thing I have of any value, and it’s about to be taken away from me.
I don’t know where my strength comes from when I gather it to shove t
he man away from me, but it’s surprisingly robust. My push sends him crashing into the stainless-steel trolley he dragged closer to my bedside while waiting for me to succumb to his mind-numbing concoction. It reveals that only the lower half of my body is paralyzed. My arms, although heavy, can still protect my child and me.
“Now look what you’ve gone and done.” His earlier niceties are now a thing of the past. He’s back to the maniac who held me captive for hours on end without bathroom privileges.
While gabbling out about this being the reason he isn’t nice, he bends down to gather up the instruments my push knocked to the floor. Forgetting my legs are numb, I use his distraction to my advantage. I fall to the floor with a clatter, bruising both my backside and my ego.
“Seriously?” the man chokes out, laughing. “Do you truly think you can crawl to safety? We’re in the middle of nowhere, it will be below freezing as soon as the sun disappears, and you have nowhere to hide. You won’t last five minutes out there.”
When he folds his thick arms in front of his chest, it seems as if he wants to test his theory. He doesn’t shadow my snail-like creep across the filthy floor. He watches my retreat with a smirk etched on his face and his brow arched, only jumping into action when I add a frantic scream into the mix.
“Help me! Please! I’m down here!” I bang and bang and bang my fists against the tiled floor when he hooks his arm around my waist and hoists me back, then I smack them into his chest. “He’s going to kill my baby! Please help me!”
I fight him with everything I have—teeth, nails, and the brutal pounds of my fists. I whack into him on repeat, my fight only lessening when the violent crack of a skull being punished sounds through my ears.
I brace, anticipating impact.
The pain never comes because the man didn’t strike me.
He was hit.
“Quickly.”
A flurry of red and white circles me when my savior hoists me off the bed. With the drugs in my system finally displaying their full effect, my legs aren’t the only things out of action. My head is as heavy as my limbs. I can barely see through the curtain of red in front of my eyes, and I’m not going to mention the slur of my words.
“I can’t…” I stop, swallow, then try again. “I can’t move my legs.”
“It’s okay, lean on me, we only have a few steps to take,” whispers a soft female voice full of sorrow and distress.
With all my weight on her shoulders, she moves us through the residence still plunged into darkness even with it being late in the afternoon. She weaves us through narrow corridors like she intimately knows the floorplan, and within seconds, I’m once again at the bottom of the stairs.
“Help me, please,” my rescuer begs to the shadows my cloudy head is confusing as demons dancing in the dark. They prance above my head, all impish and fiend-like. I’m so convinced they’re Satan’s urchins come to collect me for my transgressions when they finally relent to my savior’s pleas, I pull back, undogged on my wish to live.
“No!” I scream at them as I did the man, certain they’re destined to hurt me.
“It’s okay. They will help you,” assures the lady still glued to my side. “I promise.”
When she strays her eyes to mine, assuring I can see the pledge in them, I’m certain my life is coming to an end.
My savior isn’t an angel sent from above to protect me.
She is the very thing I’m scared about the most.
She is Dimitri’s wife, Audrey.
14
Dimitri
Rocco strays his eyes from Rico to me. “Do you think he’ll tell her?”
His distrust is understandable. We just told a mobster the Feds are going to use his big sister as bait. If we shared the intel with anyone but Rico, worry would be the last thing we’d feel. Regretfully, Rico values his family more than his counterparts. It was risky of me to disclose my plans, but as I said days ago, as long as we continue working toward a common objective, I have no problem pretending we’re on the same team.
“He wanted the man responsible for brutalizing Isabelle during her arrest. I handed them to him. It’ll do him best to remember that, or we will no longer play nice.”
Rocco waits for the tail lights of Rico’s car to disappear out of the marina’s lot before he slides into the driver’s seat of The Tank. “What do you want to do about him?”
He nudges his head to the left. Agent Grayson Rogers doesn’t even attempt to shield his face with the shadows of the night. He wants me to know he’s watching, and I’m more than happy for him to do exactly that.
“Nothing. He isn’t after me… this time.” Rocco chuckles at the slow deliverance of my last two words. Grayson has been hot on my tail for years. I only got him off when I proved I wasn’t the one who sold Katie Bryne to Kirill Bobrov. He still hangs around every now and then, but not enough for me to respond to it. We played nice when we needed to. When we didn’t, our work ‘relationship’ ended.
“Have you heard anything from Smith?”
Rocco didn’t join Rico and me in blowing off steam on the three officers who tossed Isabelle around like she was a ragdoll. He’s usually all about punishing men who use their size and strength against women but keeping tabs on Roxanne’s disappearance was more important to him. It’s mine too. I just needed to put steps into place to ensure I’m covered when I go in hard and brutal to get her and Fien out.
My last two hours with Rico were well spent. Although the Castros were once umbrellaed under an entity strangled by rules I’ve been forced to follow since birth, their ‘protection’ became null and void a few years back. Rico didn’t go into details on what transpired, but the Popovs no longer work with the Castros. They’re a completely separate entity, meaning the rules no longer apply. I can take down the king of their realm without the slightest fear of retaliation.
It’s a glorious day to be a gangster.
Some of the air in my swollen chest deflates when Rocco shakes his head. “Not since you grabbed your bat out of the trunk. He’s working on triangulating the location the video clip was sent from, but he said he had some bureaucratic tape to get through first.”
“Isaac?” My jaw is so tight, my one word sounds like an entire sentence since it was strained through my clenched teeth.
Rocco fires up the engine before he once again shakes his head. “Not even Isaac has jurisdiction in this town, and from what I’ve heard, he’s one of Henry’s favorites.”
“Henry Gottle is blocking Smith’s inquiries?”
“Mm-hmm,” Rocco murmurs in response to the shock in my tone. “He’s making Smith real fuckin’ twitchy.”
He isn’t the only one feeling tense. “Rico just disclosed the Castros aren’t umbrellaed under the Popov entity anymore, so is Henry throwing up barriers because he took them under his wing?” When Rocco shrugs, truly unsure, I try another angle. “Smith…”
Like always, he chimes in with a hum.
“What else was on Agent Moses’s computer when you hacked in?”
His voice is groggy when he replies, “You mean other than porn?”
Rocco laughs. My response to Smith’s gall is nowhere near as polite. For a man who just spent two hours teaching insolent men what happens when you fuck with family, my growl is almost bloodthirsty.
After catching his breath with a quick gulp, Smith discloses, “There were some files about a money-laundering syndicate on the West Coast, a couple of borderline kiddie-porn write-ups, and an old home-invasion case from two decades ago. Why? What are you looking for?”
“A link between the Gottles and the Castros,” I answer without pause.
Smith’s fingers give his keyboard a workout before he sighs. “Up until a couple of years ago, there wasn’t a link.”
“But there is now?” I ask, my interests piqued.
Air whizzes from his nose, indicating I’m very much on the money. “It isn’t close to the relationship Isaac has with Henry, but there are definite b
enefits being shared.”
That’s unusual. You’ve got to give Henry something big to be in his favor. He now runs the city my family built from the ground up, yet we’re still not shared more than common courtesies for the past decade.
“Dig deeper into the files. There’s something we’re missing.”
“On it,” Smith replies before he disconnects our connection with a clank.
Rocco gives me a couple of minutes to shake off my confusion before asking, “Back to the compound?”
I shake my head without pause for thought. “Head to Roxanne’s ranch. I want to grab a couple of her things for when she’s back. She’ll feel more comfortable being surrounded by her belongings.”
I didn’t mean to say my last sentence, but I’m glad I couldn’t hold back when Rocco murmurs, “She doesn’t need things, Dimi. She just needs you.”
15
Roxanne
I wake up startled and confused. I’m in a room similar to the one I escaped from yesterday afternoon, but the sky is no longer moody with a low-hanging sun and ominous clouds. Light is beaming through the cracks in the bordered-up windows, and its bright rays alert it is well past dawn.
As I cradle my thumping head, I try to recall what happened between yesterday afternoon and now. I remember my stepless dash through a rundown ranch, the scary shadows above my head, and my near coronary upon discovering Audrey is alive, but other than that, my mind is blank. I don’t remember entering this room at all. It’s as if a good sixteen hours of my life just up and vanished.
Was I drugged again? Is that why I feel hungover?
While I seek answers to my questions, I swish my tongue around my mouth. My throat is drier than a desert. I wish I could say the same thing about the area between my legs.