The Guzzi Legacy: Vol 1

by Bethany-Kris

  If something happened, he would need to know all the things about this place. Should something cause chaos, and it was his only chance to get Valeria and Maria out, then he wanted to walk it with his fucking eyes closed.

  No questions asked.

  That was why, every single morning, he took an hour-long jog around the property. He went out, took pathways, and sometimes didn’t, and then came back to his house again. To the guards, or the family, it looked like nothing was amiss. He was focusing on his fitness, and little else.

  That was fine.

  It’s what he wanted them to think.

  The ring of a cell phone took Chris’s attention away from the window, and the scenery outside. He didn’t bother to check the caller ID when he reached for the phone on the coffee table behind him, simply picked it up and answered it, thinking it would be his father, or twin.

  Although, Corrado had been careful not to call since Chris was here. So was his brother’s way—always erring on the side of caution, rather than unpredictability. It was something he appreciated about his twin.

  “Chris here,” he murmured into the phone, going back to the window.

  The voice on the other end of the call was not who he expected, and it put him on edge. “Chris, it’s Andino.”

  “Why?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why are you calling me?”

  Andino chuckled. “For an update to give to my wife, who asks about her missing friend nonstop, that’s why. Good enough answer for you, or no?”

  Well ...

  Chris sighed. “You shouldn’t be calling me, it’s risky. You have no idea what I am doing here at any given time, and I usually have someone nearby. What if they saw the name on the phone, or heard me say your name? The Lòpez family are aware Valeria was with your new wife before they grabbed her again, and you want to play that kind of game?”

  “I don’t want to, no, but your father didn’t have news. He thought a call to you—”

  “Don’t do this again.”

  Andino cleared his throat. “All right, noted. What can you tell me if you’re able I mean? Do you have a plan to get the woman and her child out of there?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “How so?”

  “She’s incredibly isolated away from the public,” Chris said, “for fucking starters. Their compound in the middle of nowhere—yeah, that’s where he keeps her. And when she may leave, he has a small army to keep her in line. She’s not treated well here, but she keeps up a good façade. As of now, she knows why I am here, but I don’t think she trusts me yet, which is a problem.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What was that noise for?”

  “Sounds like you should figure out a way to make her trust you, doesn’t it?”

  “Thanks for the memo. Let me jot it down.”

  Andino grunted. “You and your twin ... you are both a lot alike, yes?”

  “We are twins. Identical in many ways.”

  In fact, he and his twin were different, too. The most obvious being the way they lived their lives, things they enjoyed, and what they wanted for their future. On the surface, to people who didn’t know them well—like Andino—the twins seemed more similar than opposite. All people saw first were the things that made Chris and Corrado the same, but they missed the more important bits.

  The shit that made them unique.

  “And what does my twin have to do with this?” Chris asked.

  “I find him as equally bothersome as you.”

  “Sounds like an issue you should handle, no?”

  Andino made another one of those annoyed noises. “Back to Valeria, and her daughter, if you wouldn’t mind. I suspect you don’t have all day to chat.”

  Right.

  “The situation here is not as easy as I hoped it would be, and I don’t have a clear path forward yet. When I do, however, you will be one of the first ones I tell. Also, have you considered what comes after?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Jorge Lòpez came after her once when she ran, Andino,” Chris intoned, wanting the man to hear every single word, “and chances are, when we get her out of here this time, he will hunt her down again. For as horribly as he seems to treat her, he’s obsessed with keeping her at all costs. What then, huh?”

  “We’ll make sure he can’t come after her.”

  “How?”

  Because his focus was getting Valeria and Maria out. Nothing more, and nothing less. If he added the hit of a cartel leader onto this job, then they would have a hell of a lot more problems than they could handle.

  Did he need to spell it out?

  “We’ll figure it out,” Andino was quick to mutter.

  Chris rolled his eyes. “Sure, sure.”

  He didn’t like what ifs.

  He hated unanswered questions.

  Flying by the seat of his pants?

  No fucking thanks.

  He would have to roll with it whether he wanted to or not.

  Great.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a man stepping out of the house on the far left to his that the guards used. One of several. The man headed toward Chris’s home, which meant his day was about to get started. For the last few days, the focus had been on transferring crates of product out of the barns, and onto trucks, all the while, they prepped for the trip to the tunnels this weekend.

  It never stopped here, it seemed.

  “I have to go,” Chris told Andino, “and don’t call again.”

  “I got it—get the job done, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  That was the plan.

  As unknown as it was.

  • • •

  “Right here, amigo,” the Lòpez man said, pulling the back of a Jeep wide open for Chris. “Toss that bag in, we’re just waiting on the boss, and his wife.”

  Chris nodded, pleased that Valeria was coming along for the weekend trip. He knew better than to show that on his face, however. “Thanks.”

  With his weekend bag thrown in the back of the Jeep on top of the other couple of bags piled there, the man closed the hatch with a slam. Chris settled on leaning against the back of the vehicle while the guard—or driver, whatever his designated job was for the day—headed for the house closest to them.

  It was funny in that the only vehicles Chris had seen come this far into the ranch were all ones the guards and Jorge used to come in and out. Even the man’s siblings weren’t allowed to take a vehicle in and out of the place.

  He filed that information away for later.

  Vehicles were a no-go.

  The slam of a screen door had Chris pushing off the side of the Jeep to look around the side of the vehicle. Jorge stood on the porch with Valeria where the two talked fast. She tried to remain calm and pleasant. It didn’t matter; her husband was animated and irritated enough for the both of them.

  Chris’s irritation picked up a notch.

  The more he observed the two together, the clearer it became to him that Valeria was neither happy with Jorge, nor safe. She carefully measured her behavior, and words. Even if she hadn’t told him the truth when he asked, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that marriage was a steaming pile of shit.

  It didn’t help he had somehow got into his feelings about Valeria, and whenever he saw her being dismissed or mistreated by the bastard she called a husband ... it took everything in him not to kill Jorge right then and there with his bare hands.

  Chris’s gaze slipped past the two on the porch to the little girl peering out the screen door, watching her parents’ quiet argument. Well, it was only quiet from Valeria’s side of things. Jorge didn’t seem to give a shit, to be honest.

  Maria saw Chris looking her way, and the worry on her features morphed into a bright smile. She waved, and he returned the gesture with a wink. For whatever reason, the girl slipped out of the screen door, and headed past her parents. They didn’t even note her leaving the house or coming down the
stairs.

  Maria came to stand in front of him. Chris kneeled to the ground to be closer to eye-level with her, uncaring that he was dirtying the knees of his slacks. He always thought it ignorant for adults to loom above kids when they talked to them. How would they like it to have someone much larger than them hanging overtop of them while they talked?

  Not well, he bet.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Maria beamed. “Hey. I made you something.”

  Chris blinked. “Did you?”

  “Yes.” Digging in the pocket of her dress, she added, “We’re friends, right? Friends make promises, and you made me a promise.”

  Kids, man.

  They had a way of simplifying everything. Of taking any kind of gesture and turning it into something more, innocent or otherwise. It reminded him of the good in the world when he was surrounded by things others might consider immoral, or even evil, sometimes.

  “We are friends.”

  Maria glanced up at him, her hand stilling in its quest to find whatever item she wanted in her pocket. “Best friends? Like Mamá and me?”

  Chris grinned. “We can be, Maria. But you didn’t have to make me anything to be that, okay? Friends are just friends because they want to be—we don’t have to give anything to our friends to keep them. Just our kindness, and the goodness in our hearts, huh? That’s what counts.”

  She shrugged tiny shoulders. “But I wanted to. You’ll wear it, won’t you?”

  “Wear what?”

  She found the item she had been searching for. Pulling it from her pocket, she held it high for him to admire. A woven bracelet made from a dark, thin leather cord. She smiled, her eyes glimmering with pride as he stared at it.

  “That’s amazing,” he said.

  “Aunt Abril showed me how to braid it. Do you like it?”

  Chris took the bracelet and held it flat in his palm. “So much, thank you.”

  “Put it on!”

  He laughed but did as she said. It was a little too loose, but she showed him how to pull on one of the two end cords to tighten it firm to his wrist.

  “It shouldn’t get wet,” she said.

  “Okay, I’ll make sure it doesn’t.”

  “But you’ll wear it always, anyway, right?”

  Her genuine request had his chest tightening.

  Chris nodded. “Absolutely. Always. I won’t take it off.”

  “Good.”

  Maria darted forward, and gave him a tight hug, her little arms snaking around his neck so hard, he almost lost his breath. He didn’t get the chance to hug her back before she stepped away from him and turned to dart back to the house.

  She didn’t get far.

  Valeria stood two feet behind her daughter, now, surveying the scene with a soft gaze. She gave them a small smile, and then said to Maria, “Better get back in the house. Jorge forgot something and had to go back in to get it. We don’t want him getting angry that you didn’t listen when he told you to stay inside, right?”

  Maria peeked over her shoulder at Chris, but turned back to her mother. “Okay, Mamá.”

  “I’ll see you soon. Love you. Behave.”

  “I will.”

  Once Maria had disappeared back inside the house, Chris stood up straight again. Valeria climbed into the back of the Jeep without a word.

  He followed her lead.

  • • •

  Whenever he saw a Jeep in Toronto, Chris always wondered what in the fuck their purpose was for their owner. They almost always had mud on the tires, too. Where in the hell had they even found mud in a city?

  Now, driving in a Jeep as Jorge’s driver took a sharp turn onto a dirt road that took their vehicle down a winding path, deeper into a forested area with little population, Chris understood the appeal. The Jeep handled the terrain just fine, and with the doors and top pulled off, the wind kept them cool.

  Beside him in the back, Valeria sat quiet and still, her gaze drawn to the blur of trees at their sides, instead of Chris. He would much rather have her gaze on him, but that was perilous territory that neither of them needed to play in at the moment.

  Especially not with her husband sitting in the front.

  “Have they caught up?” Jorge asked, his laughter disappearing into the wind.

  Chris peered over his shoulder, seeing the front of another Jeep coming over the hill behind them as they reached the end. “Almost.”

  “Ah, have to make this fun for them. It’s a long drive, amigo.”

  Apparently.

  They had been driving for two hours now.

  “You will enjoy this tunnel we’ll show you,” Jorge explained, his attention going back to the dirt road ahead of them. “My father had the tunnel built in first, but when the authorities became suspicious over the activity out this way, he had a permit made for a house.”

  Chris blinked. “A house?”

  Jorge smirked over his shoulder. “Yes.”

  Valeria sighed beside Chris, as though she had heard this story a million and one times before. If Jorge took note of her annoyance, he said nothing. The sunhat in her lap hid the clenching of her fists from her husband’s view, but Chris saw the action given she had to hold on to the item to keep it from flying away.

  Was there something else on her mind?

  Something other than her husband’s conversation?

  “And so,” Jorge continued, his voice bringing Chris back to the present, although he didn’t think he had missed much from the conversation, “my father had the tunnels built into the basement. Or rather, he built the home around the tunnel with no one any wiser. They simply assumed the work we had been doing before was us digging the basement out of the rock and then pouring cement. Brilliant, hmm?”

  “Smart, yes,” Chris agreed. “And they have never found the tunnel.”

  “Once, almost. We had to dynamite a connecting tunnel when aerial surveillance found the entrance, and we didn’t want it leading back to the house a few miles away. The vacation home tunnel is still the closest one we have to the border, and while we don’t use it as much as we used to, well ...”

  “It’s good to have.”

  “Just in case,” Jorge said, nodding.

  The man’s attention went back to the road ahead of them, but he continued talking. Chris had no interest in a lot of things Jorge had to say, but he listened because the man gave details that sometimes helped him along here in this plan to get Valeria and her daughter out.

  “I brought Val along for the weekend,” Jorge said, even though no one had asked, “because it’s good for her to get out of the house, and she needs a break occasionally. Isn’t that right, hermosa?”

  Valeria’s jaw tensed, but she forced a smile—a fake one—on her face when she turned to nod at Chris. “Sí, that’s what they told me.”

  Told, he noted.

  Not wanted.

  “And our daughter gets to stay at home with the nanny, to keep her out of trouble,” Jorge added after a moment.

  Chris kept an eye on Valeria out of the corner of his eye, and that’s how he witnessed the flash of sadness and worry that passed over her features before she hid it by looking away. That was it, then. Not Jorge’s story, or the fact Chris sat beside her in the backseat.

  Had Jorge made Maria stay home?

  Was this purposeful beyond what the man said?

  Chris wouldn’t put it past him.

  “Almost there,” Jorge said. “Another twenty minutes, or so. The men I sent ahead of us will already have the generators up and running. This will be a good weekend away for us all, even if you are here for the tunnels, Chris. We all need a break, no?”

  “A break is good for the soul,” Chris replied.

  His attention was still on Valeria though.

  Reaching over, he placed his hand on her jean-covered thigh. She tensed from the sudden touch and then relax. He swept his thumb over the denim, her shiver reverberating through her body, and into his palm.

  Someth
ing else he shouldn’t be doing.

  Still, he wanted her to be aware.

  It would be okay.

  It would.

  He would make sure.

  Even if it killed him.

  11.

  The vacation home, as Jorge dubbed it, sat tucked away in isolation, as much as their ranch did. Perhaps, more so. Dry, desert land surrounded the ostentatious house from all directions, with no neighbor or civilization in sight.

  Valeria had never understood the draw of the vacation home—could it really be that when it was in the same country as their usual home? It was the same size as her father-in-law’s mansion, except out in the middle of nowhere, and without power unless all six generators were running, which caused a racket when one was trying to sleep.

  Besides that, the house was just ... big. Three levels, reaching toward the sky, a separate wing for whatever men Jorge brought along, and the servants that kept the house running when no one was around to live within its walls. There was no guest house like the ones at the ranch. That meant everyone would sleep in the same house, walking the same halls, and eating at the same table all weekend.

  Didn’t that sound fun?

  Valeria thought not.

  A large pool in the back stretched across dry land, and while landscapers had come out to decorate, Valeria still felt the place was ugly, and lonely. Or maybe that was the projection because of her own emotions, and current situation. She couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t like it here.

  Valeria walked through the home—watching servants scatter into the closest room whenever they heard Jorge’s boots coming down the hallway—at her husband’s side while he gave Chris a tour. She had other things to do, like hide away in her room, and go back to her daughter at the end of the weekend.

  Jorge made it clear this weekend was nonnegotiable for her. Valeria was coming along whether she wanted to, and Maria wouldn’t. Simple as that. It put her on edge to think of her daughter alone with that nanny all weekend.

  Although, she knew Maria was also safe because nothing would save the woman from Jorge—certainly not his affection for her—if she thought to put her hands on their child. That didn’t mean she liked her daughter spending more time with Carla than was necessary. Not that she cared to explain it to Jorge because this was just another way for the bastard to keep Valeria in line.