by DD Prince
He had brought in a phone and let me speak to Dare briefly. Very briefly. And then the day I was to go, a housekeeper took me to a dining room for a quick lunch with a pretty teenaged blonde girl named Holly. Two guards had been in the room the entire time, strangely standing sentry but not holding machine guns, just looking expressionless but watchful.
It was an odd lunch. I tried to ask her questions about who she was and how she’d come to be there but she dodged my questions. She didn’t seem afraid or anything like that but she avoided my questions about why she was there and what the place was. I’d been kept in a comfortable room with a terrace overlooking a lush garden, where I could get fresh air. I’d been fed good food and drink, the room had a television in it. And the doctor had been taking care of the hideous wounds on my arm. But I had no idea who Alessandro was or why I’d sat and had lunch with the pretty blonde girl.
Alessandro spoke to me about her afterwards, on our way to meet Zack.
“Did you have a nice lunch with Holly?”
“Yes, thank you. Thank you for the hospitality. I…appreciate it. She was nice.”
“Holly is the common ground,” Alessandro offered an explanation as he walked me through the halls of his mansion to his office.
“Holly is?”
He nodded, “I found out Holly has a connection to your family and later found out that you had been taken. I intervened in order to use you as a bargaining chip to ensure that your brothers do not attempt to take Holly from me.”
“From you?” I asked.
“She belongs to me. Her sister belongs to your brother. I don’t want him considering an attempt to take Holly from me. He wouldn’t succeed. It’s best for everyone that he knows that.”
I felt sick as I tried to absorb all of this.
“Please tell Dario that you met Holly, that she’s fine, and that I’d prefer not to make enemies with the Ferranos. If anyone tries to take her from me, we will become enemies.”
“Holly is a teenager. She…” I felt sick. I couldn’t continue the sentence.
“She’s mine,” he said, “I haven’t touched her yet. I won’t touch her until she’s old enough. But she is mine. Pass that message on.”
I nodded, “I’ll pass on the message.” I wanted to tell him off. I went into some sort of mother bear mode but I kept my mouth shut. I had to get out of here.
“This door.” He opened a door and waved so I could precede him.
I stepped into the room and saw Zack Jacobs, who I’d met a few times with my brothers, but who I only barely knew. He was giving me a careful smile, assessing my physical state.
“You okay?” He moved to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“I will be when I get home to my family,” I answered softly.
“Let’s go,” He said and shook Alessandro’s hand, “I’ll pass on those messages and thanks again. I’ll call you.”
Alessandro nodded.
“Thank you for helping me,” I said softly. I didn’t know what the deal was with this guy. All I knew was that he’d gotten me away from that auction to get me back to my family. I also knew that by the way that Holly had looked at him when he’d come in to get me from that dining room, that she either had a relationship with him or had feelings for him. I didn’t know anything else.
He was extraordinarily handsome, seemed powerful and mysterious. He also had an air of extreme danger. And he seemed angry and cold. But she was young. And she was obviously Angel’s sister, which made no sense to me.
I couldn’t process any more feelings about Alessandro and about Angel’s sister. I needed to just get home and feel my boys, smell them, cuddle them. And contact a plastic surgeon about the hideousness on my arm so I could forget this horrible experience and never leave the house without bodyguards ever again.
Tommy
I was in the suite with Tia, Dex, Sarah, and my nephews.
Nino had two other guys on site with him here in Vegas and we’d hired some people locally, through a contact I trusted would not be in any way connected to Denarda.
Tino and a few of his guys were back home watching Luc, Lisa, and the kids. Dare and Angel were on the way to Thailand. They didn’t have any cover, which we didn’t like, but Kruna wasn’t yet our enemy --- not that they knew, anyway.
I’d gotten a text from Zack’s burner phone a few hours earlier, telling me all was well and they’d see me soon. That meant he had Tessa and they were on their way to Vegas. I’d texted him back telling him Will, one of our new guys, would meet them at the airport.
Tia was sitting on the floor with Antonio and Lucas, all three of them coloring in a Spiderman coloring book, when there was a knock on the door. Dex’s phone beeped. He looked at it, moved to the door, looked out the peep hole and then he looked to me, nodded, and then answered it.
Zack and Tessa stepped in and Tia jumped to her feet. The kids ran for my sister, my younger nephew tripping on his pantlegs but rushing back to his feet. Tess fell to her knees and pulled the boys against her and she choked on a huge sob.
Her cheek was bruised, her left arm had a bandage that went from wrist to elbow, and the look on her face? I’ll never forget it. I’d seen her grieve lots in the past few months, losing James, then Pop. But my sister was barely recognizable to me. It was as if the light in her eyes had gone out. It hit me that it was very similar to the look I’d made Tia get the last time she was in Vegas. Tessa was pale, looked frail, and she cried into her kids’ little bodies, her whole body trembling. I moved to her and did something very uncharacteristic of myself. I crouched and pulled her tight to me and she started to wail.
Both boys started to cry in reaction to their mother crying. They’d hugged me while hugging their mother. I swallowed past a lump, feeling all that emotion coming from her, from them.
“Mommy just missed you boys so much,” Tia told them and squatted to join our huddle as Tess fell apart against me.
“Sometimes mommies just love their babies so much that they get weepy. It’s okay.” Tia said this through her own tears and opened her arms and the boys scrambled toward her. Sarah was standing behind us, wiping her eyes.
“I’m not a baby!” Antonio argued, “I’m a big boy!”
“You are, little man.” I ruffled his hair, “And one day you’re gonna be bigger and take care of this family, aren’t you?”
He nodded big and smiled at me, “As big as you! You’re even bigger than my Daddy and he was way big. Before he went to heaven.”
“You’ll be big and strong, buddy. Give us the room, everyone.” I said and Tia and Sarah took the boys into the bedroom. Zack and Dex stepped out.
“What happened to your arm, Tessa?” I whispered, trying to appear calm.
“He carved some letters. The guy…”
“What guy?” I no longer had any idea what the word calm even meant.
“The guy in charge. I don’t know his name.”
“What did he look like?”
“Big ears, stocky, kind of ape-like clumsy. His clothes were too big. I saw when Jimena, the doctor at Alessandro’s changed the dressing. It says LD on my arm in big ugly letters. He did that with a box cutter and then he… he…rape…” she choked on the word and buried her face into my neck, “me. And he sent me to an auction and I was put up for bid. But Alessandro sent that guy Rocco to get me outta there and…”
I was going to blow my fucking top.
“Tia!” I roared, making Tess jump.
Tia rushed out of the bedroom, eyes wide.
“Look after her!”
I let my sister go and Tia moved in and grabbed hold of her.
I stormed into my and Tia’s room in the suite and got into the safe, unlocked it, and grabbed my fucking gun.
Tia
It had been hours since Tommy had left. He left right after Tessa had come back, in an absolutely feral, ferocious rage. Tess didn’t want to talk about any of it. I didn’t push. Sarah didn’t either. We knew it was bad by looking
at her and by seeing how Tommy left.
She curled up with the boys as it was their bedtime and when I looked in a while later, she was asleep with them, in the big bed.
Sarah was gone a while but then came back in from the hallway, where I assume she was talking to Dex and the other guards. Her mouth was set in a tight line.
I shuddered as I closed the door of the mini fridge and sat down on a big white leather sectional sofa with Sarah. She looked at me with a hardness in her eyes that made me think of a mama bear about to rip someone apart for messing with one of her cubs.
“She’s asleep with the boys. She’ll probably sleep the night,” I said.
“She was raped, wasn’t she?” Sarah said, through gritted teeth.
I closed my eyes and blew out a breath, “Looking that way. I’m guessing that’s what sent Tommy out of here like that. I don’t know exactly but by the look on her face?” I let that hang. There was no need to continue that sentence. We both knew.
I gave my head a shake, trying to shake off everything in my brain.
“That girl hasn’t been through enough?” Sarah asked, glaring at the carpet, and then a string of what I’d imagine were Spanish cusswords flew from her mouth as she flew out of her seat and went to the wet bar area and mixed a drink for herself. She took a big swig, “Tommy will get that bastard who did this. That’s something at least.”
I sipped my water.
“You okay, Chiquita?” Sarah asked.
I shrugged, “I’m worried. He’s out there angry and with a gun. He’s upset. I’m upset, too, I mean… I love Tess, she’s awesome. I’m disgusted.”
Dex came in.
“Sorry girls. Tommy wants one of us in here with you all.”
“That’s okay,” I said, “Want something to drink?”
“I can get it,” he gave me a smile. He’d always teased me about treating him like a guest instead of a guard. I always tried to treat the guards like friends. They were keeping us safe. And Dex was someone Tommy obviously trusted, judging by how often Dex was around.
Sarah then ranted for a good while and it did not one good thing for my peace of mind. Dex let her rant, saying nothing, just sitting with us. When she’d finally burned it out, she said goodnight, hugged me, and went to one of the half a dozen bedrooms in our massive lavish hotel suite.
I said goodnight and headed to my and Tommy’s room at the opposite end of the suite (ours was the only room on that side) and curled up in bed. But, I couldn’t find sleep.
I hated Las Vegas last time. It nearly destroyed me. Us. And I didn’t feel any better about it this time so far. The only good thing was that Tessa was back with us, safe; her kids had their Mom.
I tossed and turned and spent way too much time in my head thinking about our baby, about our life, thinking about the tangled web of mess Tom Ferrano Sr. had left for his kids.
My husband and I’d had a tough tangled up road towards love and it was a bumpy path we were both still traveling on. We’d only been together six months and had faced so many obstacles so far.
I tried to stop my head from backtracking to when we’d met, when he’d forced himself on me, when we were here in Sin City, what he’d done to me after I ran from him because of his stupid tests and games.
But, I couldn’t stop it, all of it, from drifting through my mind as I thought about his reaction to someone kidnapping and raping his sister. How angry he got at someone raping Tess? In any normal situation, that would be a normal reaction for a badass like Tommy.
But with all he’d done to me? I couldn’t help but dissect it. Being here, in Vegas, maybe it just brought it all back. The hypocrisy.
I felt my ears get hot and anger bubbled up in me. I tried to tell myself it was different, he and I were married, I knew what was in his heart, how hard he fights his demons. I love him.
But it nagged at me, all of it. He was changing, right? Was he? Or, had I just changed to accommodate him?
The bad kept seeping through, despite my trying to push it away.
***
I heard noise outside the bedroom door at about 3:00 in the morning. I was about to go investigate, since I was awake anyway, in case it was Tessa and she wanted to talk, but the door to our room opened. I bolted up. It was Tommy.
“Baby girl,” he said, sounding tired and frustrated.
“Hi. You okay?” I asked.
“Couldn’t find the little fuck,” he dropped to a squat and twisted the dial on the wall safe and put his gun back inside and then shut it.
“I’d sleep with that if there weren’t kids around,” He mumbled.
I shuddered.
He started to undo his shirt.
“Tess went to sleep early,” I said quietly.
He took his shirt off and dropped it on an armchair by the safe and went for his belt. I could see by his body language that he was fuming. As he undid it, I had a flashback to him snapping his halved belt to frighten me last time we were in Vegas. I’d seen him undo his belt a thousand times without remembering that awful moment but right now? It was as if I were back in that moment, about to face his wrath.
I tried to redirect my brain.
“What’s gonna happen, Tommy? Tomorrow? This party?” If I couldn’t distract myself I’d blurt every awful thing I was thinking.
“Tomorrow night, we go to the Fete opening. You and my sister dressed to the nines and we act like life is good. Drink, smile, live it up. We snuck Tess in so he doesn’t know yet we got her back. That little slimy fuck is either gonna hear about it or he’s gonna show. I’ve arranged for him to get an invite. And then I’ll put you two with Dex and Nino and then I get him to hold his dick while I get it sawed off with a dull knife before I put a fucking bullet in his goddamn smarmy fuckin’ face.”
My stomach flip-flopped.
“He carved his initials into her fucking arm, Tia. He raped her, sold her to a slave auction house. She would never have gotten back to her boys, to us if that goof had his way. If Romero hadn’t stepped in? Fuck. And that’s a whole other fuckin’ story because Romero is a human trafficker who has Angel’s 17 year old sister that he used as a bargaining chip. We get Tess but Holly stays with him.”
“Wh-what?” I tried to push away memories of Tommy threatening to sell me to a pimp in Mexico or Thailand back when we’d first met. I tried hard but I was having trouble with his ‘sold to a slave auction house’ comment, along with all the other stuff he’d said.
Tommy sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands, his elbows to his knees. He was slumped in what looked like defeat.
“Dare’s beside himself. Gone to Thailand with his wife, taking her back to that sex slave shithole so he can rat and get us out of this shit with the Feds. Tia, I’m this fucking close to packing up the whole family and us all fucking off.”
I was trembling.
Normally, I’d reach for him, comfort him, take comfort from him, but I couldn’t. I just sat there, still caught up in the events of the day, thinking about how mad his sister’s rape made him, when he’d done those things to me.
I was thinking about looking out this window all night at the Vegas strip, almost directly across the street from the last hotel we’d stayed at so looking at, essentially, the same view from the other side of the street.
It was what I’d looked at when he and I were here a few months before we got married, when he lost control, when he bruised my throat, when he’d broken my heart after I’d let him in.
My hand went to my throat reflexively. I stared at his back. My other hand went to my stomach. I was carrying his baby. I loved him. I loved him desperately. But was my love for him wrong? Was I fucked up and delusional because of all that had happened?
Was this really what I wanted for my life?
Did I even have any choice?
This world I was about to bring a baby into, where our loved ones were kidnapped and raped, where one sister was being traded for another one?
Where
the man I’d promised to love, honor, obey, and cherish for the rest of my life had a whole lot of skeletons in his closet? Skeletons? Demons? Both. I’d promised him unconditional love. But at what cost?
His hand reached toward my face and I flinched. I flinched hard enough for him to notice.
“Hey,” he said. His voice sounded funny.
His thumb moved across my cheek sweetly. But a tear rolled out of my eye and hit his thumb.
He moved to me and pulled me tight against him and it took everything inside of me to not recoil.
This was my husband. Being in his arms was my most favorite place in the world. Why was I feeling like this?
“You shook up? I shouldn’t vent at you. Sorry, baby. I don’t want you to be scared. We got this. It’s all gonna be okay. Some way. We’ll get Holly safe. We’ll all be safe. Don’t say anything to Angel. Dare has to handle that delicately with her while we figure out what to do.”
I nodded and tried to pull away, “Gotta go to the bathroom.”
He watched me scoot out of the bed with a strange look on his face.
Tommy
“You feel all right, Tia?”
“Yep.”
“I scare you tonight?” I asked when she was climbing back into the bed. She’d been in the bathroom a long while.
I moved over closer to her. She was tense, apprehensive.
“What is it?” I pulled her right against me.
She was acting weird.
“You shook up?”
“I guess. I’m sleepy. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I cocked her leg, pulling her knee up so that her leg draped over me.
“I need you, baby.” I put my lips to her jaw and moved them to her ear, “Just need to lose myself in you for a bit.” I hadn’t been inside her in what felt like forever.
“Sorry, I…” she pulled back, “I can’t.”
“Queasy?” I asked.
She nodded. But she was lying to me; I could feel it in her body language.
I twisted the dial for the lamp and looked at her. Her eyes were swollen and her face was blotchy like she’d spent the night crying.
