Parole

by Kathy Coopmans

  “If tainting someone’s mind is how you show love, then from this day forward, I’ll make sure you don’t have a thing to do with my daughter. You fucked up a minute ago when you said Luciano wanted me. I bet if I begged him, turned into the wife he wants me to be, that eventually, he’d see you for who you really are. Luciano might be your son, but he’s my husband, and you underestimate the things I’m capable of when I want something. I want my child. So, tell me, Bridget, who died next to your husband in the fire?”

  Luciano is her weakness just as she’s holding mine. My brain struggles for an explanation to all of this. It’s revolting even to allow to guess what her answer will be. I’m dumbfounded yet not surprised that one merciless person could mold another into who they want them to be. Trent’s father did the same thing to him.

  Jesus. Trent. I need to figure out how to get him out of this without him going back to prison. There are too many decisions for me to make. I decide right there that I’ll make the one Trent would want me to make. It’s an easy one for me, the only one I have.

  All the answers slap me in the face. They rain down on me at once. Luciano wants Trent back in prison. If he didn’t, he would have killed him by now. Which means what he told me is the truth. He has him here somewhere.

  These sickly people have a problem, though. The proof Eric made sure to give to his people if anything were to happen to him or me will set Trent free. I have to hold on to that while I take my daughter and run.

  “He is my son, and you, my dear, are not as stupid as we thought. But you are dumb. He will never turn his back on me, because I’m the only one who has never betrayed him. When I first met you, you reminded me of myself years ago. A lost little girl who needed guidance. The difference between you and me is, I loved my husband. But the man had too much power over me. He wanted to take my son away from me when he asked me for a divorce. I’m not going to sit here and bore you with the details as to why he wanted one. That story has long since sailed. Especially since both he and the woman he wanted to leave me for are dead. Is that enough of an answer to your question?”

  I’m honestly beginning to believe that happiness will never exist in my world. As sad as I am. As hard as it is for me to stand here in my pain and sorrow, curse God for what he’s allowed to happen to Nola and me. I can’t afford to be cautious or to let my guard down with these untrustworthy people.

  Except, I’m unable to move. My heart is so fucking broken watching her hold what’s mine.

  “Surely, you must know how I feel. A man threatened to take your child from you, and here you are, the mastermind behind taking mine from me. How noble of a mother you are, Bridget.” My pulse is beating angrily out of my ears hard enough that I feel it course down my face. “I won’t let the two of you steal the purity from her. She is mine. She will not turn out to be like the two of you.”

  A one-sided smile spreads across her mouth. “She will be whoever we make her be. I will raise her the same way I raised my son, and the son you will give Luciano. To rule over everyone, take what they want, and fuck everyone else. Your life would have been so much easier for you if you had listened and done what you're told from the beginning. If we could have trusted you with Bridget, you would have her. You can’t be trusted, and for the life of me, I didn't understand how Luciano would do everything I ask of him except get rid of you. Now, though, after you cheated on him with a piece of filth and fucked him over, I hope I can finally get him to see you for who you are. A woman just like his father was. Everyone knows that when you play with fire, you get burned. You should have never lit the match, Tara. When this is all over, I’m going to enjoy watching you go up in flames. Turn around, your time with your daughter is up.”

  I’ve gone mad. I pounce on her, swipe Nola from her arms, and reach for my weapon. I silently pray for forgiveness for having my daughter in one hand and a gun in the other.

  They say desperate times call for desperate measures. This is a crucial time for Trent, me, and Nola. I do the only thing I can think of. I put my finger on the trigger, aim, and fire.

  And then I run.

  Chapter 11

  TRENT

  The adrenaline rush of murdering someone thrums in my veins as I sit under the shower in the hotel and graze down my marked-up body. The smell of food lingers in the air, the barely warm water erasing the filth on my skin and the steam from letting the hot water run before climbing in helping to clear my head.

  I was left alone for hours after hearing the gunshot go off. People started yelling, doors were slammed, and the thud of boots thundered across the floor. Total fucking chaos was happening above me, while I remained lost in my head watching everything unfold until there was nothing. No sound, no squeak, nothing but the commotion running around in my skull.

  The silence in that musky room dropped the temperature of my blood more than the freezing air I hadn’t noticed until I felt the blast of it hit my face and bare feet. It started drafting through the ducts on the floor and ceilings right above and below me. The cold air, freezing the blood coated on my skin and chilling me to the bone.

  My teeth chattered, and the area on my jeans where I had pissed myself froze up and clung to my skin, while the whir of the air conditioner drove me crazy.

  Not sure where the hell I was or how shit went haywire all of a sudden, but I’d bet the warmth flowing through my organs I wasn’t the first man left to die in that room.

  Darkness fell, and the worry of what was occurring with Tara attached itself to the chains and sunk into my skin. I needed to know if they made it out of there alive.

  The longer I sat there, the more I was convinced that life was conspiring once again to have me live in the dark. I prayed the few hours of having her in my arms wasn’t all I was going to get. I held on to that while my muscles cramped up, my brain slowly started to freeze, and my blood turned to slush while I waited for Adrian to show up. I wasn’t giving up. Knew he would find me sooner or later. Believed in the bond we had he would get to me before I froze to death.

  Then I felt his presence, the same way I had felt Tara’s when I first saw her.

  Rushed footsteps and the squeak of a door made my slowed down heart race.

  Lights flashed in my eyes, my head snapped up, and there was Adrian, the freezing air causing tiny white puffs to escape from his lungs.

  I was so damn weak from trying to fight how tired I was. I just knew if I dozed off, I’d wake to relive this nightmare with a clearer head, and it would all be more real. It is so real right now in more ways than I’d like to admit.

  I was relieved, hurting in places I never thought would hurt, and physically drained. Pretty damn positive I gave in and passed out after he picked the lock and loosened the chains.

  And every part of me from the inside out seared with burning pain.

  It’s so fucking excruciating that I feel helpless, which is what I am. I can barely move my limbs.

  “Where are you, Tara?”

  I shut off the shower, wrap the towel around my waist, brush my teeth, and finish up. Time is once again against me. I could give zero fucks about my parole being jeopardized; my only concern is finding Tara and making sure she’s safe.

  “Find out anything?” I ask, rubbing the stiffness out of my neck when I limp into the fancy suite and see my friends gathered around a table. A spread of food in front of them.

  “Take a seat, eat, and let me fill you in. And drink this.” Adrian pulls out the chair next to him, hands me a large glass of water, and shoves a plate of food in front of me.

  I stabilize myself from falling, drain the glass with shaky hands, reach for the pitcher of water, and drain another one. The need to completely flush the shit they gave me out of my system is all I got right now. I’m no good with helping these guys physically; those fuckers made sure of that when they literally beat the piss out of me. All I have to help is my brain, which isn’t fully functioning.

  “We have no idea where they went. Not yet, anywa
y. Here’s what we do know.” I sit there listening to him tell me everything from the photographs of a woman and little girl Simon found in Luciano’s home office, and money being wired to offshore accounts, while I try to gain my strength to shovel this food in my mouth without vomiting it back up. Every word he says gathers tight in the pit of my stomach.

  “We found this and this.” He slides a pink bunny and a gun across the table. “The gun I gave to Tara when I helped her escape.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I push my plate away. It’s the gun I saw in her hands. Luciano’s mother and Tara’s daughter stare back at me in the picture.

  While I’m at a loss for words, Adrian is not. He continues, telling me how she contacted him, how he set everything up for her to leave, called his cousin to meet her and drive her from New York to South Carolina, while my half-drug-induced noggin soaks all the deceit and corruption Luciano has done in.

  “I started digging around. Searching in drawers; every nook and cranny of that house was not left untouched. These people are insane, and this woman in the photograph is his mother. She didn’t die in a Goddamn fire,” Simon informs me.

  With shaky fingers, I lift the picture, my heart pounding faster than it did when I thought I saw my brother.

  “I know all this,” I tell them and elaborate on what I saw.

  Thoughts of the only adult conversation I’ve had with Turner rise in my mind.

  It was the day he came to visit me in the hospital.

  “I wondered how long it would be before you showed up here,” I said to him, my face turned away from his. I couldn’t look at my twin. Couldn’t see the hurt I had caused in his expression, but I felt it right in the middle of my chest.

  I stiffened slightly, tried to take my head to another place. The only place I could go where I felt happy was the time I spent with Clove. For some reason, I wouldn’t allow myself to go there. I had to let her go. Turner, though, my bond with him would never be. But I had to face him. Had to step up for once in my life and be a man, whether I wanted to hear what he had to say or not.

  He wanted me to listen and suffer for the rest of my pitiful life, and at the time, I deserved it. “My intentions were to choke the life out of you slowly, just like you tried to do to my wife.”

  I flinched, his words sunk deep, and when I shifted my gaze his way, I nearly broke down. I gutted my own flesh and blood. Tore his soul out of him. And I’d be damned if it didn’t gut me, too. This man who looked like me was drowning in guilt for something he should have never had to feel guilty about.

  Those circumstances are entirely different from what’s happening here, but as I sit clenching my hands around the frame, knowing what I might have to do will fuck with my parole even more, I can’t help but feel the way he did. The amount of worry he felt if Clove was alright. The torturous things our father must have said to him. The beatdown he received. All of it circles around my brain and squeezes the muscle until it throbs in my skull.

  “Is she alright?” I asked, our gazes locked and loaded.

  “She is not, and never was, any of your concern. She’s mine. She always has been, and I won’t tell you a thing about her,” he threw at me. He was right; she wasn’t mine.

  “She hates you, and you love her. How does that make you feel, brother?” he prodded and kept digging at me until there was nothing left of me. “Hell is too good for you, but wherever you end up, I hope you suffer eternally. There will be no penance for what you have done.” I stared at him hard, frustrated, and died a little at a time because he was dying, too, and for the first time in my cold-hearted life, I did not want to be him.

  She should hate me. The same way Tara should hate Luciano.

  “You could have had it all, man. All you would have had to do was knock on my door, and you could have had it all, but instead, you stalked my wife, me, and my entire family over money, money you will never have. Left me for dead and then helped drug and hold her hostage for a year. Do you know how fucked up that shit is? How deranged?” I did know. He had no idea how much.

  Turner’s eyes constricted sharply. He wasn’t the weak twin; I was. “Instead, you fucked my wife. Tried to make her fall in love with you. How did it feel every time you fucked her knowing it was me she was thinking about? Every time you were buried deep inside her, it was my cock she wished for, dreamed about. Every orgasm was mine! Every kiss was mine. Her entire world is me, motherfucker!” he roared. “Let me tell you what it must have felt like. It must have felt damn good to be inside a woman like her. Sweet and innocent and so damn pure. She feels like heaven, doesn’t she?”

  I let out a yell that could wake the dead. If Luciano touches her again, Tara will dissolve into nothing unless she holds on to the love she and I share. Clove must have done that. She must have grasped her love for Trent and clutched it to her chest. Goddamn it.

  I’m trying to suck in air. My body is starving for it. It all seems to evaporate as I stare at the little girl in this woman’s arms. She is beautiful. Chubby cheeks, eyes shaped and shining as blue as her mother’s, pink bunny in her tiny hand.

  “Tara must have walked in on something, possibly his mother and her daughter. I think she tried to shoot this bitch and missed. There was one bullet missing out of the chamber. Found it lodged in the wall. There were no signs of a struggle, no blood. By the way, we’re in Vermont. Luciano had you at one of his homes. Trent, we can talk about this tomorrow if you want. Dude, you need to get a grip on reality before things settle in. I promise we won’t stop searching for her.” I look up at the only true friend I have and shake my head.

  “Not sure if I can sleep until you tell me everything and I fill you in on some things, Adrian. I need to hear this.” I wouldn’t know what Tara walked into, because the second she slipped through the bedroom door, I lost sight of her. All I could do was drift, sit there, and suffer through more agony, more worry, and eventually become so lost I wasn’t sure what was real or made up in my head anymore.

  “If you’re sure, ‘cause, Trent, you’re sitting in that chair, but I’m holding you up.” At first, his words confuse me until his hand tightens on my arm. I glance down to see my body slouched in the chair, my ass on the edge. “Go ahead and tell him the rest. Make it quick.”

  “I searched a bedroom and discovered all kinds of incriminating evidence stuffed in a shoebox in the back of a closet. There’s enough to send Luciano and his mother to prison for the rest of their lives. He’s a drug dealer, man. A big one. Here’s where the shit gets dicey, though. He took off running somewhere for a reason. Not sure why he’s running or from whom, because the way I see it, he had you all set up to lay your parole on the line.” I’m so exhausted all I can do is nod my thanks to Simon for risking his life.

  “There’s one more thing you need to know before I force your stubborn ass to get some rest. I don’t think he has Tara. I think she got the hell out of there with her daughter before he reached them, but she isn’t alone. She would have called one of us if she were, so either he has her or someone else does.” He’s right. My body might be losing control of itself, but my mind seems to be working fine now. There goes the little bit of hope I had that she could be with the FBI.

  The agony of her being hurt or dead drives me crazy. My brother must have been crazed, too. The not knowing is enough to drive anyone insane.

  The need to find her is my will to hang on and fight.

  Except, I have a big fucking problem. I can’t be seen. If I am, I won’t be any good to Tara. The cops around here won’t listen to a word I have to say. I’ll be shipped back home, thrown in jail, and forced to wait until she’s either found alive to collaborate my story or found dead.

  “I have no idea where to look or what Luciano could be doing or who he’s told about me. People could be out looking for me right now. Hell, if the man deals drugs, it’s quite possible some of his clients are within the law. Which means cops could be searching for me, too, if they know I’m gone. Was there a dead body in th
e room with me?” My memory is still hazy. The only thing real to me was what I saw on the screen.

  “Yeah. Left him there. Why?”

  I close my eyes and tell them what I can remember about the beating and the murder, all the while wishing I could completely check out while at the same time thanking God for Tara’s bravery. I wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for her.

  She’s safe with her daughter. I know she is.

  Now, if we can just figure out who took her and let the FBI find Luciano, then maybe our lives can go according to plan.

  Deadly silence is an unnerving bastard, always hated it. When this kind of silence hits, all you can do is think of the worst. It seeps into your skin and washes away the good from your brain. It consumes your inner thoughts and fucks you over simply because it can.

  That’s how it is for several drawn-out minutes when I get up from the table without saying another word. I need to sleep because for one, my body needs it, and for two, when tomorrow comes, I won’t be any good trying to help find her.

  As I fall into the depths of sleep, I allow my thoughts to linger one last time on Tara and her daughter.

  “I’m coming, Tara. Hold on just a little bit longer.”

  Chapter 12

  TARA

  Nola closes her eyes, drifting sound asleep. Her scared little body has stopped shaking. She’s picture perfect. This precious little girl is the only thing keeping the static out of my head while I wait for my capturer to come back. I know he’s coming. The sick prick that he is.

  It’s just my luck one of Luciano’s men would be waiting outside the door when I tried to run. I wouldn’t be wherever here is if I hadn’t dropped the gun. Bianchi Cadorna has been Luciano’s personal bodyguard, right-hand man, and the dirt underneath my twisted husband's fingernails for a long time. One of the few who does what he should before he’s told to do it.