“Oh, God, oh, God” I cry, unable to prevent the lament from passing through my lips. My breath halts, waiting to hear for the sound of footsteps revealing my location, but there’s nothing or no one around.
And here I am on the cold, hard ground trapped in my own damn body, unable to feel a damn thing!
Why can’t I move? Am I paralyzed? What’s wrong with me? The horrifying questions cut through the shock, making me fear the worst. Horror rises in me, and I know that if I don’t get ahold of my mind that I’ll lose whatever chance I have of getting past this—of getting out of whatever this is alive.
Th–thirteen . . . F–fourteen . . . F–fifteen . . . I count. Maybe if I count the seconds away, I’ll be one second closer to regaining motion, or to someone discovering me.
Sixteen . . . Seventeen . . . Eighteen . . .
SOMEONE WAS SLAPPING me gently on the face. Please, please, let me not be back in the woods I chanted to myself.
“We need a medic in here,” someone yelled, “or better yet, someone call an ambulance.”
“No,” I choked out.
“She’s delusional,” I heard someone whisper.
“What is it, Emerson?” I heard Hendrik ask with panic.
I opened my eyes, and saw Hendrik’s face right in front of me. “H-Hunter,” I gasped out. Sentry was right beside him, but I could tell from the confused look on his face he couldn’t understand, I had to make him understand.
“Jude isn’t the drug lord, he’s second in command,” I breathed out.
“How do you know that?” Sentry barked out.
“Because I remember everything.” I felt the bile rising in my throat, but I pushed it down. “The man you want, the head of the Ichor cartel is Gabriel Hunter,” I breathed out unsteadily.
Sentry jerked back with shock, but Hendrik held me tighter. “Are you sure?” he asked.
I nodded my head and buried it in his throat. “I’m sure. When they took me, Jude was there and he called Hunter ‘boss’.”
“Cuff him and put him in a room,” Sentry said quietly to someone.
“W-what? You can’t be serious. Hunter works for the Justice Department. There’s no way he’s . . .” someone choked out in disbelief.
“Do it or I’ll have your badge,” Sentry overrode with a tone that couldn’t be refused.
“I remember him saying that I was the second girl . . . what if Katia was the first?” I cried out.
“No, the drug wasn’t found in her system,” Sentry protested.
“Wait a minute, when was she admitted into the hospital?” Hendrik asked slowly.
“Oh, God, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before,” I bit out.
“What?” Sentry and Hendrik asked together.
“Katia told me she woke up on the side of a road near a power station. She walked back home. She didn’t tell anyone what had happened to her. The next morning Dahlia found her and forced her to go to the hospital,” I said with horror, slowly piecing it together.
“So, the reason why we never realized she was connected to all this was because by the time she was admitted, the drug had left her system,” Sentry said with wonder.
“Oh, my God, Emerson, are you okay?” I heard Laurina yell from across the room. Lukas was next to her and he looked really pale.
She bent down beside me and tried to hug me, but it was awkward because Hendrik already had me in his arms. “I remember everything,” I told her.
“I’m so sorry,” Lukas said from behind him.
I looked at him in shock not knowing what he was sorry for. Was he sorry for acting like a dick toward me this whole time?
“I’ve been lying to you, but if you remember, then it’s safe to tell you the truth,” he whispered.
“Lukas, what are you trying to say? Is this what you’ve been hiding from me?” Laurina asked.
“Hendrik, can you let go of me,” I whispered. I was pretty sure Laurina needed me right now.
“No, I can’t, because if I do I’m going to go and find Hunter and I’m going to kill him. So you need to let me hold you,” he whispered back.
“Yes,” Lukas said, wringing his hands. “The first thing you need to know is that the surname I have now is my mother’s maiden name. My father is Gabriel Hunter,” he wrenched out.
Hendrik began to release me, but I held onto him. “Wait, let him talk,” I begged.
“I was there the night you were . . . hurt,” Lukas gulped. “But I wasn’t meant to be. At the time my parents were still together, and my father had become increasingly violent, out of nowhere he began to change. He kept on leaving at odd times. So, one night I put a GPS tracker on his phone and I followed him. When I realized he was heading out deep into the woods I stayed back and parked my car off the road so it wouldn’t be found. I decided to follow his coordinates on foot. When I got there, no one was there, but I saw footprints on the ground, and an off-beaten walking track so I decided to follow it. And at the end of it, that’s where I found you.
“You were lying on the ground, broken. I didn’t want to touch you in case I made you worse. I knew you were still breathing, I tried to wake you up but you didn’t,” Lukas whispered, his eyes honing in on mine. And the horror in his made me flinch.
And then it hit me. The disembodied voice urging me to wake up . . . that had been him! “I heard you telling me to wake up! But when I did you weren’t there,” I said.
“I had no cell service, so I left you and I ran back to my car. I called the police from the nearest pay phone,” he said with self-disgust. “I didn’t want to risk calling them from my phone in case they tracked me down.”
“She could have died,” Laurina yelled, flying at him.
Sentry put his arms around her and separated them.
“I’m sorry, Laurina. I was scared, I wasn’t thinking straight,” Lukas defended. “I’ll testify against him, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“You’re an accessory after the fact to Emerson’s rape and assault,” Hendrik spat out.
“No,” I got out. “Don’t punish him. He could have left me there to die but he didn’t. The sins of the father are not the sins of the son. If he testifies I don’t want you to charge him,” I said, turning to Sentry.
He nodded his head, “Fine, I can make that deal but if he goes back on his word I won’t hold back,” he said to me. Then he turned to Lukas. “Colton will take you to another room and take down your statements.” Lukas took a look at Laurina but she refused to meet his eyes, and then followed Colton out of the room.
“I’m going to go and personally interrogate Hunter,” Sentry said, also leaving the room.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, Emerson, I swear,” Laurina said, holding onto my hand very tightly.
“I know, it’s not your fault,” I said squeezing her hand gently.
The live feed changed, showing Sentry entering the interrogation room.
“You shouldn’t watch this,” Hendrik said.
“No, I need to,” I refused, not taking my eyes off the screen.
“Stubborn,” I heard Hendrik whisper beneath his breath but I ignored it.
“We know you’re the head of the Ichor cartel,” Sentry opened.
“Was it my son who told you?” Hunter replied.
“Yes and no,” Sentry replied mysteriously.
“You see, I knew he followed me that night, I confronted him about it and he said he would keep quiet if I divorced his mother. So, I did. As much as I don’t like leaving things up to fate I couldn’t kill my own son. And since the dead don’t talk, that means that there’s only one other person it could be,” Hunter said.
“And who’s that?” Sentry said, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair.
Hunter chuckled. “That leaves Miss Monsoon, she’s here, I presume?”
My breath escaped me, in a big whoosh and I heard Laurina gasp beside me.
“She regained her memory, didn’t she? Doctor Fleur told me she could
n’t remember a thing. I stupidly believed her, and Jude told me that when he had lunch with her that she didn’t recognize his face at all. So, that means that I was the trigger. She saw me when I went in to interrogate Jude, didn’t she?” Hunter asked, but really he wasn’t asking because he knew the answer.
God, I felt physically sick. Doctor Fleur was in on this? I’d opened up to her and she had betrayed me the whole time.
“You don’t get answers. Your job is to answer each and every question I pose to you. Tell me about how you took the Ichor cartel out from under Senator Cayne.”
“It was all too easy,” Hunter said, smiling darkly. “He was reckless, he had power, but what he didn’t know is that real power is having people fear you when they don’t even know your identity. His wife came to me in confidence, she told me she wanted out, and I told her the only way she wouldn’t be hunted down is if he died. I told her I was willing to help her if she helped me in return. She turned Jude, got him to work for me. He was Senator Cayne’s most trusted adviser. He betrayed him. I convinced him to get the drug shipment to come in earlier; we hid it away in a warehouse. I knew all about how the FBI was going to ambush the Ichor cartel so I let it happen. You see, it helped me because I didn’t have to lift a finger, your men killed those who were loyal to Senator Caynes, and those who were loyal to Jude laid in wait and slaughtered your men. Senator Caynes was called away due to an important meeting because I didn’t want him to die just yet.”
“I gather the right time was when you sent him to me in pieces,” Sentry said in disgust. But I could see the flickering vein in on his forehead. Hunter was getting to him.
Hunter laughed. “I would have sent him to you just dead, but his wife wanted her revenge against him. I couldn’t deprive her of that pleasure. So, you see, Jude took over in the eyes of the Ichor cartel, but really from the shadows I was the one pulling the strings,” he said with glee. The pride in his voice was unmistakable.
“Tell me about this new experimental drug,” Sentry ordered.
“I got a tip from an unknown source about an organization producing the drug. It was in its experimental stages, and the side effects were horrific, but its possibilities were endless. I looked into it and found that its side effects were what I was most interested in. Its short-term effects were reported as temporary paralysis of the body but retaining consciousness of the mind, and its long-term effects were memory loss. I saw the opportunity for this drug to be used to expand the Ichor cartel’s empire. I wanted to provide a sex trade business in which only the elite clientele could fulfill their darkest, sexual fantasies with whomever they wanted, at no risk of being caught because the victim wouldn’t remember a thing. So publicly, I made a show of shutting down the organization, while in private its employees began to work for the Ichor cartel.”
My mind thought back to my assault and I began to shake uncontrollably. Hendrik tightened his arms. “We should go,” he encouraged.
“No, I’m okay,” I said, even though I burrowed deeper into him.
“So, Miss Monsoon, was she one of your experiments?” Sentry spat out.
“Yes, but she wasn’t the first. Katia Smith was,” he shared smugly. “Her sister offered her in exchange for drugs. She was a drug runner for me, she knew all about my expansion plans. She knew I wanted subjects, so she gave me her own sister, said no one would miss her if she went missing. But then she started feeling guilty, I couldn’t have her ruining my operation, so I had her drugs poisoned,” he said conversationally.
I jolted, my head slumping forward. I gagged but nothing came out.
“Emerson, we’re leaving,” Hendrik yelled at me.
“No, I have to know what happened to Katia,” I yelled back.
“But the experiment went wrong, didn’t it? Because she began to remember, her death was ruled a suicide, but that was a lie, wasn’t it? You said Doctor Fleur worked for you, that she was your eyes and ears,” Sentry whispered ugly.
“Yes, she was very, very loyal to me. She even installed these practically invisible to the eye cameras in both Katia and Emerson’s room, which was how she knew Katia had remembered everything. I asked her to get rid of Katia and to make it look like an accident and she did. She pushed Katia off the roof,” he delivered calmly, like a knife to my chest.
I had to get out of here. I didn’t want to listen anymore. “Okay, I’ve heard enough, let’s go,” I said. I stood up with Hendrik at my back and Laurina on my side. The exit was in sight and each step closer, made it easier for me to breathe.
“Cressida Sask didn’t just happen to accidentally fall in love with Jude three weeks ago,” Hunter taunted.
I paused, and Laurina and Hunter stopped, too.
“Did you know that Henry Monsoon kicked her out from his own home because he found her doing drugs? You see, that’s how it started out. Then when she couldn’t pay her debts, she became a drug runner. After that she rose up the ranks, working right under Jude. When I took over, I trusted Jude, but I didn’t trust her. I said she needed to prove her worth. At the time I believed that the drug was working on Katia. She hadn’t shown any signs of regaining her memory. I had a client lined up. He wanted me to find a woman who looked like his wife. And I found that Emerson looked just like her. I told Cressida that if she wanted to prove her loyalty to me then she had to give her daughter up. And she did.”
“He’s lying,” Laurina said. “Ignore him.”
No. He wasn’t, because Liliana had told me that it was my mother who had suggested to her that we got to Salazar’s. And that was where I’d been taken.
Whatever little control I had left slipped away. My head ached brutally, the pain so intense like a staccato drum in my head. I was struggling to breathe and even though Hendrik and Laurina were trying to calm me. I couldn’t calm down because I didn’t want to fight it. My own mother had done this to me. I closed my eyes, completely and utterly broken, and let myself fade away.
THE DOCTORS TOLD me that Emerson wouldn’t wake up for another hour, so here I was at Mikhail’s door. I couldn’t put off telling him any longer. And I couldn’t tell him about his brother over the phone.
Before I could even open the door it was pulled open.
“What’s taking you so long to knock on the door? I was watching you on my security feed,” Mikhail said laughingly.
“We need to talk, and it’s not good,” I said. I watched the smile fall from his face, and the lights in his eyes diminished.
“Come in,” he said apprehensively.
I walked past him and went straight for his liquor. I took off the lid of the decanter, and poured some scotch for him in a glass and filled another for myself.
“So, it’s really bad,” Mikhail said, taking the glass from my hand and downing it in one go. I followed suit.
“It’s about your brother,” I said, hissing from the intensity of the scotch. “Four months ago he told me he wanted out of the Valentijin mob. And while he did this he wanted me to make sure you stayed away from him.”
“I got the message when he put a gun to my head,” Mikhail said with a scowl. “And I don’t believe you,” he said with disbelief.
“Well, it’s true. I came to him with a plan to help him get out, and it involved the FBI. I negotiated his freedom for his cooperation. He knew the only way he could get out was if he got rid of the Valentijin board. So, I proposed a way for him to take out them and the Ichor cartel at the same time. They had a meeting, the FBI turned up and ambushed it as planned. But your brother . . . he didn’t make it. He died in the crossfire,” I explained.
“No,” Mikhail said, shaking his head, “I don’t believe you.”
“Nikolai told me that if he didn’t make it that he wanted me to tell you that he was proud of you, and that he was going to clean up his act so he could be the kind of brother you’d look up to.”
Mikhail fell back against the wall and slid down. His head fell onto his knees and his shoulders shook. I bent down beside hi
m and put my hand on his shoulder. I stayed with him until the tears stopped, and then I messaged Jarek and Sev to come over.
When they came I let them in and we all huddled on the floor around Mikhail. We drank shots and toasted to the memory of Nikolai.
When the hour was almost up, I stood up. There was one more thing I had to do. “We came together for a cause, to help out people for a price they were willing to pay. But I can’t be the Leverager anymore. Emerson needs me and so does Micah. So, from now on I’m out. The mantle falls to the three of you,” I said.
“We knew this was coming,” Jarek murmured.
“It’s not the end of us, it’s just the end of you giving us anymore orders,” Mikhail added, with mock relief.
“We understand,” Sev said.
“Helvete!” Mikhail said, mocking me, “this is getting too sappy for my liking!” I looked at him, he looked at me and then we both burst out laughing.
I OPENED MY eyes, wincing at the pain in my head. The first thing I laid eyes on was the white wall opposite me. I remembered about my mother and what she’d done to me and the pain radiated through me.
I closed my eyes, trying to focus on my breathing, when I felt a little hand take mine. I opened them again and saw it was Micah.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “There are sixty seconds in a minute. Count them down and you’ll feel better. One, two . . .” he began. By count four I’d joined and, and by the time we got to sixty my breath had evened out.
“Micah, where am I? And what are you doing here?” I asked, sitting up.
“You’re at Hale Institution. And a nurse let me in, she told me you were here,” Micah said with worried eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said squeezing his hand.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up, Älskling,” I heard Hendrik say as he walked in. My heart stopped when he noticed Micah was in the room with us.
Micah froze, and he blinked his eyes. Then he let go of my hand and ran toward Hendrik. He hugged Hendrik’s knees so hard he went back a step. Hendrik looked at me with wet eyes and his relief was staggering. He bent down and hugged Micah to him.
The Leverager Page 24
