Almost.
Admittedly, her progress has been stunted by my own selfish, insatiable need to get her naked the minute she struts into view in a white bikini. My wife doesn’t just wear the clothes I buy for her. She owns them, and then she owns me by aiming that perfect body at my heart and pulling that trigger of a smile.
“Enough,” I roar, crashing my bourbon down on the table and pacing to the edge of the swimming pool.
She reaches for the side right away, her glossy dark head bobbing up in surprise.
“What’s the matter? Is it Ella?” I watch her turn toward the house where Sofía is most likely spoiling the fuck out of our beautiful daughter. She will never know another life, the same as Eve. Nothing will ever be less than perfect for them.
“No, it’s me.” My T-shirt disappears in one fluid movement, and then I’m diving in to join her, drowning in her soft laugh as she wraps her endless legs around my waist and digs her fingers into my hair.
My mouth seeks out hers and we dip and duel like it’s the last fucking kiss on earth. Every moment is cherished. Every moment hits the deepest parts of me and heals another crack and scar.
“Are you still worried about him?” she says, breaking away with a gasp.
“I’m more worried about my dick,” I snarl, pushing her up against the side of the pool and dropping my hand to her breast.
“I mean it, Dante,” she chides, brushing my hand away. “I know that expression. You always act like you don't care, but when Joseph’s not here your mind wanders.”
“Does it look like it’s wandering now?” I take her delicate jaw between my fingers and position her mouth perfectly for me to claim it, all over again.
“You’re blood brothers,” she whispers. “It’s okay to want him to be okay.”
“He’d be fucking fantastic if it wasn’t for your fucked-up friend.”
It’s not fair and it’s not true, and I deserve the anger that flares up in her sapphire-blue eyes.
I drop her jaw and step back, breaking her embrace.
“He loves her,” she says quietly.
“He doesn’t know how to love,” I say irritably.
“Funny.” She cocks her head to the side and gives me that look. “That’s the same thing you used to say to me.”
I grit my teeth and reach the other side of the pool in two savage strokes. My wife appeals to a heart I never knew I had before I stole hers and made it bleed for me.
Draping a towel around my shoulders, I down the rest of my bourbon, pick up my cell and head indoors. I’ve barely crossed the threshold when it starts ringing. I glance at the number and frown.
Speak of the other devil.
“Grayson,” I snap out. “Tell me you have them.”
There’s silence, and then I hear some woman screaming out in terror. “I can't wake him, Vi. I can’t fucking wake him.”
The bourbon starts burning up the back of my throat. Instinct is telling me all kinds of shit I don’t want to hear. My gaze swings back to Eve. She’s busy climbing out of the pool to follow me inside. She catches sight of my expression and freezes.
“What is it?” she mouths.
I turn back to the house, not wanting her to see the true depth of my unease.
“Grayson? What the fuck is going on?”
The next noises I hear are the soundtrack to my life: Explosions. Bullets hitting metal. Glass shattering. Finally, someone speaks.
“Dante?” sobs a voice. “Dante, please don’t hang up on me.”
“Who the fuck is this? And how the fuck did you get this cell?”
“It’s Anna, Anna Williams… Eve’s friend. Joseph’s been shot.”
My stomach hits the floor. You fucking bastard, instinct. I’ll gut you like a fish.
“How bad?” I manage to grit out.
“Bad. Real bad.” She starts crying again. More bullets slam into a metal box a thousand miles away. “He was shot in the chest or shoulder. I can’t stop the bleeding. It’s fucking everywhere! He’s dying in my arms, and I don’t know what to do!”
Joseph doesn't die. I can’t even entertain that fucking scenario. He’s the brick and mortar of my entire operation. He has more bullet holes than I do.
“Is anyone else hurt?”
“No…No, just him. But there are cars chasing us. They’re shooting at us. Fuck!” She screams again as another round of bullets slams into their vehicle.
“Eyes on the fucking prize,” I snarl at her. “I’ll get you safe. Tell me where you are.”
“Leticia.”
Gomez. I can mobilize his men in minutes. I’ll send in a fleet of fucking helicopters if need be.
“Dante, what’s happened? Is it Joseph?” I don’t feel Eve’s soft touch on my arm. For once, I don’t even feel her soothing presence. The man I call my true brother needs my help and he’ll fucking have it, even if it means calling in every favor, contact and resource I’ve ever made.
“Give me your location coordinates.” I move swiftly toward my office, leaving Eve hanging. She’s used to it. She knows I never explain shit to anyone until I’m good and ready.
“I-I God, I don’t know! He told me to call you before he passed out. No, wait! He tracked the car. There must be a device on it somewhere.”
“I’ll access the data. What else?”
“We’re off-road. Somewhere near Emilio—your brother’s—former estate.”
“You, what?”
“Do you know where that is?”
Damn right, I do. Last time I was there one of his bastard men was torturing me.
Until Grayson saved my life…
Liked he saved it in Afghanistan, two decades ago.
Like he saved it six months ago.
It’s high time I repaid the fucking favor, don't you think?
“Yes. I know where that is. Are you driving?”
“No…”
She stops short of saying who is, but I’ve already made the deduction.
“Is he breathing?”
“Barely.”
“Then keep the pressure on. I’ve seen that bastard shot three times in one night and live to tell the tale. Remember what I told you, Anna?”
“Eyes on the prize,” she whispers.
“Right.”
Hanging up, I break into a run. Storming into my office, I start dialing out two numbers on my cell and desk phone simultaneously.
The desk phone picks up first. It’s Grayson’s lieutenant, the temporary commander of my army base—situated half a mile away to the north of the island.
“Reece. Tell Anderson to get the jet fueled up. I need fifty men, armed and ready. We leave immediately.”
If my assumption is correct and Fernandez fired that shot at Grayson, I’m planning to rip that Colombian cunt apart with my bare hands. The rest of his cartel will follow.
“Where?” Reece doesn’t flinch. He’s worked for me a long time.
“I’ll call you back.” I cut the line as my cell connects. “Gomez.”
“Señor Santiago,” he simpers. “To what do I owe this—?”
“Cut the crap, Gomez, and just listen.” Sycophantic piece of shit. He’s not even half the man his father used to be. “I want the vehicle you lent Joseph Grayson located in the next two minutes. Then, I want you and your entire fucking sicario network deployed in the same direction. Do you understand me?” The line goes quiet, which is just as well. I’m not even partway done yet. “I need a medic, too. The best you have. We have a man down.”
A good man. The best. So much better than me.
“Oh?” He sighs as if it’s a fucking imposition. “I’ll see what I can do.”
There’s a pause as I fight for composure before I do something I’ll never regret.
“Who the FUCK do you think you’re talking to?” I roar, losing my shit anyway. “If you don't want your entire operation under new management by sunset, you’ll raze the Amazon to the ground and find them, do you hear me?” I slam the phone
down to my bonus adieu of, “you useless motherfucker!”
Without taking a breath, I get Reece back on the line.
“Where?” he repeats, dispensing with the chitchat. I knew there was a reason I tolerated him.
I glance at the ocean vista behind me. Eve calls it a carpet of diamonds, but to me the breakers have always glinted like razors blades and temptation. Today, they’re spelling out words I never thought I’d speak again.
“We’re going to fucking war,” I tell him, grinding my knuckles into my desk.
24
Anna
There’s an ugly vulgarity to silence when your heart is going bat-shit crazy inside your chest.
The hallway that I’m pacing is cold and empty, with stark white tiles on the floor and ochre walls. Everything about this mansion is immaculate, but it’s like a mausoleum, stinking of money and disdain. I don't want to be here, but I have no choice. Behind a wooden door to my left there’s a doctor fighting like hell to save my shadow.
I catch glimpses of him when the door opens and closes. Fresh medical supplies seem to be arriving on a constant loop. He’s hooked up to clear drips and draped in blue surgical sheets… He’s a picture of vulnerability that shakes my foundations. Shadows aren’t meant to be still: they wax and wane with the light.
The stag never got up again.
This time he will… He has to.
I hear snatches of words between the doctor and Vi’s aunt, Gabriela, a stoic, kind-faced woman in her late fifties who took on our carnage with the quiet grace of wisdom and familiarity—issuing instructions for Joseph to be brought inside immediately, and attending to him as best she could before Gomez’ private physician arrived.
By some miracle, the bullet missed his heart and lungs, but there’s damage to other parts I can’t translate with my high school Spanish, and I have no idea where Vi’s gone, so she can’t help me out. As soon as I called Dante—as soon as I blew myself wide open—she shut down all communication with me.
It has been three hours since we crashed through the wrought-iron gates of this place, and were sealed inside by a protective wall of Gomez’s men. The three explosions that followed led me to believe that the men who had been shooting at us were nothing but ash and dust. The devil had kept his word, but had I sold my soul to receive it?
There’s only so much adrenaline I can handle, and my reserve tanks are empty. I come over all light-headed suddenly, reaching out for the wall, and then slithering down it in an exhausted, filthy heap. I can't stop the tears now, either. I don't know if I’m crying more for me or for him, or for the nameless thing we lost that never spread its wings in the first place.
For so long I hated the arms of safety he threw around me. I believed I didn’t deserve them so I pushed them away. He forced that feeling onto me until I had no choice to embrace it. Now it’s been amputated, and I feel more exposed than ever.
“Anna, child.”
I feel a gentle touch on my shoulder. It’s Gabriela reaching down to comfort me.
“Is there any news?” I demand, wiping my face. “Will he be okay?”
“We will know more soon.” She holds her hand out to me. “Come.”
“I can’t,” I say, shaking my head at her. “What if he dies?”
“What if he wakes up?” she counters, a smile twitching at her mouth. “I give you my word; you will be the first to know the outcome of all scenarios. But you must eat... You cannot find subsistence from sitting on a hallway floor.”
It sounds like something my mother would have said to me. Perhaps that’s why I find myself scrambling to my feet.
“Your English is amazing,” I tell her as we descend an extravagant white marble staircase together. Everything about this house is insane, like billion-dollar insane. It’s like the Palace of Versailles has been dismantled and rebuilt in the middle of the Amazon. In contrast, there’s a neat, understated elegance to Gabriela, from the long gray hair swept into a neat chignon at the nape of her neck, to her linen pants and shirt that fit her willowy figure like black linen bark.
“It was a necessity to learn,” she tells me.
“Vi said you were a nurse?”
“Viviana likes to play hide and seek with the truth when it suits.” Her eyes start twinkling at me. “I have no formal medical training, but I’ve been required to familiarize myself with the rudiments over the years. Not everyone wishes to visit hospitals for treatment.”
“People like Joseph Grayson, you mean.” I’m fighting the urge to run back upstairs, and curl up outside the wooden door like an animal shut out in the cold.
“Quite.” It’s her lips that are dancing with all the ambiguity now.
“You have a beautiful house,” I lie, glancing about.
“There is no need for such insincere flattery,” she says, with a laugh that sounds like love as she slips her arm through mine. “It is as monstrous and obnoxious as the man who built it.”
“Then why do you live here?” I say, frowning at her.
She shrugs. “Because it is discreet. Because no one bothers me or my girls… There are no ridiculous cartel taxes to pay, no inquisitive authorities demanding access. It is just us and the wildlife, although the bellbirds and cicadas can be quite raucous at this time of year.” She gives my arm a squeeze.
Girls? “What do you do here?” I ask her, as she gently guides me down another white and ochre hallway toward a set of gilded double doors. There’s a loud chorus of chatter coming from the other side.
“We save and we heal,” she says, pushing them open, and then standing aside to let me enter. “I do not mean to be so enigmatic, but sometimes the eyes explain better than words.”
Intrigued, I step forward. The room is like some kind of dining hall or canteen, but it’s unlike any I’ve ever seen before. Firstly, it’s the size of a soccer field, with life-sized golden cherubs presiding over the architrave and Michelangelo-inspired paintings spanning the entire length of the domed ceiling, studded with a perfect central line of crystal chandeliers.
Making up for the car crash of pretension are the twenty or so women—the same age or younger than me—sitting in regular clothes and eating their lunch like regular people at a long wooden table in the middle of the room. They all turn to stare when they hear me enter.
“I love my country very much, Anna,” I hear Gabriela say, following me inside. “But some of our laws hurt us more than they serve us.” She leads me over to an empty space at the head of a table and motions for me to sit.
Right away, a bowl of piping hot soup and bread is placed in front of me. Gabriela sits down opposite and flashes her motherly smile again. “Please eat, and I will do my best to explain. It’s Ajiaco,” she says motioning to my bowl. “It’s a traditional chicken and potato soup that I think you might enjoy.”
I glance toward the open door, a familiar knot tightening in my stomach. “I really don’t think I should leave—”
“I insist,” she says firmly, pouring me a glass of water from the jug on the table and then wetting a napkin with it. Taking each of my hands in turn, she wipes away the worst of the blood and dirt from my skin. “There is no judgement here for the rules that you and Viviana have broken these past few days, but I do take offence to a starving woman refusing my food.”
Her steely gaze doesn’t let up until I’m shoveling chunks of bread into my mouth. It’s still warm and crusty on the outside and as soft as a marshmallow on the inside. Shit. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted, and I can’t help letting out a moan of pleasure. Food has been such a chore these past few months, and now my taste buds are coming back to life as well.
“You’ve hurt yourself,” she exclaims suddenly, noting the deep cut on my arm. “I hadn’t noticed with all that man’s blood on you. Let me take a look at it once you’ve eaten.”
I smile at her gratefully. I’d almost forgotten about the wound. The dull ache had somehow merged with the one in the area where my heart used to be
.
Swallowing down the bread, I take a sip of water. “Who are these women?”
“Another consequence of the cartel way of life,” she says, following my gaze. “Prostitution in this country is legal in so-called government “tolerance zones”, but, like everything, the cartels found a way to corrupt the law for their own gratification. Brothels in the larger cities such as Cartagena and Bogotá are heavily monitored with regular sexual health screenings, but out on the cocaine processing plants where many of these girls were forced to work, the same practices don’t exist. Many of them were raped, abused, held against their will… Trafficked. We found them; we negotiated for them. Here, they are safe. Here we can heal their scars—the ones you can see and the ones not so visible.” Her eyes are burning a hole in my face. It’s as if she knows I have my own horror story to tell.
The spoon slips from my fingers and hits the table with a clatter. “Why don’t they just go home to their families?” I say, setting it to one side, my appetite now gone.
“Colombia is a very traditional place, Anna.” Her hand closes around mine and I feel her warmth and acceptance seeping into me. “Our society can be cruel… Unforgiving. There are stigmas that these women will carry around for the rest of their lives.” She sighs heavily, wearily, impressing on me her feelings about the matter without the need for more explanation.
“How long do they stay for?”
“Weeks… years. There are no time limits. No restrictions. Our charity is available to them for as long as they need it.”
“Is Vi one of these—?”
“No.” Gabriela shakes her head. “She is exactly who she says she is. I brought that wild flower up all by myself. For a time, it was just myself, my two sons, Viviana and… one other.”
“She told me about your sons… I’m so sorry.”
She nods, accepting my sympathy graciously. “Viviana carries that grief so deeply inside of her.”
Shadow Man: Grayson Duet: Book One Page 14
