Alex Drakos: Branding Her Again

by Mallory Monroe

  When he pulled out his phone and saw that it was Kari calling, he pressed the button and almost answered before she could say a word. I’m heading back to the ballroom now, he was about to say to her. But a conversation, he realized, was already taking place. A conversation between Kari, DayVon, and Jordan.

  When he could hear Kari saying, “Where are you taking us,” he immediately stopped in his tracks and pulled Oz back too. And Oz began to listen.

  “Where, DayVon?” Kari was asking again. “We’re on Avon Street. Now we’re turning onto Blanchard Road. Where are you taking us, DayVon?”

  As soon as Kari began naming streets, Alex and Oz immediately understood what was happening. They began running through the lobby, through the exit doors, to outside.

  “And why do you have a gun on us?” Kari asked as they ran, and Alex’s heart dropped. He ran even faster!

  One of his automobiles was always on hold, parked just beyond the entrance in case he needed it, and he and Oz jumped into the car, an Audi RS5, and took off.

  Inside the limousine, Kari and Jordan were staring at DayVon. “Why are you doing this?” Jordan asked his father. He had no way of knowing that his mother had dialed in his father. He just knew that DayVon was not the man, in any way, he was hoping he would be.

  “Why do you think I came here?” DayVon asked. “Out of love for your mother? Out of gratitude for having you?”

  “That’s what I thought, yes,” said Jordan.

  “Then you’re a bigger fool than I took you for.”

  Jordan’s face showed its hurt, and Kari pulled him closer. She was hurt too. But Kari knew she had to keep talking. She was looking around. “Now we’re turning onto Marchman. Where are we going? And why is Mikey driving Alex’s limo?”

  Inside the Audi, when Alex and Oz heard Kari pinpoint Mikey as the inside man, they looked at each other angrily. Wait until they got their hands on that bastard, they both thought.

  “He worked for me all along,” DayVon said to Kari. “That’s how good I handled this shit. We gave him such sterling references that there was no way your husband’s security people would turn him down. But they should have,” DayVon said with a grin.

  “Where are we going?” Kari asked again. Then she realized where when he turned onto Pulaski. “Pulaski?” she asked. “We’re going to the airfield? Why are you taking us to the airfield, DayVon?”

  When Alex realized where they were heading, he began driving so fast that he could barely maintain control. But he maintained it. He moved in and out of traffic, swerved to avoid curves, and headed for the airfield. DayVon was attempting to take his family out of the country, probably to his island, and he and Oz both knew it. They wanted to verbalize it, but they knew they had to keep silent.

  Back in the limo, Kari was still talking. “Why are we going to the airfield, DayVon?” she asked him again.

  “Just shut the fuck up with all of those questions,” DayVon said. “Don’t worry about where I’m taking you, bitch!”

  “Don’t you talk to my mother like that!” Jordan said forcefully.

  But DayVon angrily reached over and slapped him across the face with his pistol so hard that it put a gash on Jordan’s hand when he blocked the blow.

  Kari jumped up and began hitting DayVon violently with her fists. “Don’t you ever touch my son!” she cried as she hit. Her goal was more than that. She was trying to get in a certain position to grab his gun, but she couldn’t do it. “Don’t you ever touch my son!”

  When Alex heard what was happening, his heart began to hammer. God, no, he said silently as he sped through the streets. Don’t let him hurt them!

  But DayVon overpowered Kari easily, and shoved her violently back in her seat. “Shut the fuck up,” he yelled, “or I’ll kill his punk ass, and yours, too!”

  Kari couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Don’t you have any feelings for your own son at all, DayVon? Any feelings whatsoever?”

  DayVon shook his head. “Stop calling me that,” he said. “I haven’t been that person in fifteen years. I’m nothing like that person was, and don’t wanna be.”

  “But what about me?” Jordan asked. “I’m still your son.”

  “That’s why you and your mother are still alive. Because you’re my son. My golden payday. And don’t you forget that,” he added, as the limo arrived at the airfield.

  When they arrived, four more men from Cecoya, a part of DayVon’s backup crew, hurried to the limo. DayVon warned them before he allowed his men to open the door.

  “They will kill your mother,” DayVon said to Jordan, “if you make any false moves.” Then he looked at Kari. “If you expect to stay in your son’s new life, you better not try anything at all. Do you understand, Kari?”

  Kari nodded her head. DayVon had her exactly where he wanted her, in defense of her son, and she knew it. “Yes,” she said.

  And then the door was opened by Mikey, and DayVon’s men grabbed Kari and Jordan and escorted them, as if they were their bodyguards rather than their captors, to the helipad. A helicopter was waiting.

  But before leaving Mikey’s side, DayVon turned around and looked at him. “Good job,” he said to him, and then put a bullet through his brains. Then he hurried to catch up with mother and son.

  Kari turned to see when she heard the gunfire, but the guards turned her back around. And then DayVon caught up with them.

  But as they were walking toward the helicopter, with DayVon still bringing up the rear, the Audi RS5 entered the airfield and began speeding toward them.

  DayVon was shocked. How in the world did Alex find out that quickly? He looked at Kari, certain she got word to him somehow, but he knew he had no time to punish her ass. Not yet, anyway.

  He, instead, grabbed Jordan and began hurrying toward the helipad. “Take him out now!” he ordered his men, and three of his men backed off of assisting him with Jordan and Kari and hurried toward the oncoming vehicle. The fourth man kept his hands on Kari, and followed DayVon and Jordan toward the helicopter.

  DayVon’s men began running boldly toward the Audi, as if they had it all in the bag. Oz and Alex, both with guns in hand, was surprised by their boldness.

  “Ready?” Alex asked Oz.

  “Ready,” Oz said.

  Alex opened the driver side door of the Audi, and Oz opened the passenger side door. And then both men jumped out firing their weapons as the car continued to careen toward DayVon’s men.

  Alex, on his back, took out the man on the left hand side. Oz, on his back, took out the man on the right hand side. And then they both were firing at the man in the middle even as he was firing so wildly that the car was upon him, and knocking him off of his feet, before he realized it was headed straight for him.

  But Alex and Oz took no chances. They were shooting that motherfucker even as he sailed in the air, and even as he splashed onto the tarmac, back down to earth.

  But Alex and Oz knew they had no time to waste. If that helicopter took off, they might not see Kari nor Jordan alive ever again.

  That was why they began shooting as they ran, not at DayVon and his fourth henchman, but at the pilot of that helicopter.

  DayVon and the fourth man got Jordan and Kari inside of the helicopter just as bullets were ricocheting. One of those bullets, fired by one of the Drakos brothers, caught the pilot in the forehead, and he immediately slumped over.

  “Gotdammit!” DayVon yelled.

  But he knew how to fly a plane, a requirement for the betters on the island. A helicopter was a piece of cake for DayVon.

  “Handle them!” he ordered his last surviving henchman and hurried to the pilot’s seat even as Alex and Oz were still running toward the helicopter. It was already ready for takeoff, and all DayVon had to do was operate the controls.

  But he had to dodge the bullets of the Drakos brothers to reach the controls.

  Kari, understanding better than anybody that if DayVon got that helicopter in the air, Alex and Oz would not be ab
le to fire another shot in fear that they would take the copter down with her and Jordan on board. She realized it was up to her.

  As soon as the henchman threw her and Jordan onto the seat, she bent over as if she was in pain. Jordan, knowing his mother was no weakling person, but had to be up to something, bent over, too, as if he was in pain too. He cried out, knowing that he was the prize they could not afford to lose.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the henchman asked him.

  But as he was asking it, Kari was reaching into the back of her heel and pulling out the knife Alex insisted she always kept on her. She had tried to reach it when they were in the limo, but DayVon was too close.

  Jordan cried out even louder.

  “What’s wrong?” the henchman asked Jordan again.

  But it was enough of a distraction for Kari to take out that knife and jab it right into the henchman’s stomach.

  He held his stomach, shocked, and began falling to his knees. Kari grabbed the gun he still held in his hand and kicked him out of her way with her other heel. And then she grabbed Jordan, and she and he ran off of the helicopter.

  Alex’s heart soared when he saw Kari and Jordan running to safety. “Get them!” he yelled to Oz, even as the helicopter began lifting clumsily off of the tarmac.

  But Alex still had work to do. He held his gun with both hands and began firing at DayVon with a volley of bullets, but DayVon was dodging everyone.

  And then Alex waited, until DayVon was in the air and away from Alex’s family. And then Alex took dead-on aim at the fuselage of the helicopter, and fired one time.

  And DayVon, who had no knowledge that Kari and Jordan were no longer on the copter, and who thought he had pulled it off and was getting away, pumped his fist in the air in triumph. Just as the helicopter he thought was taking him home, became the bomb Alex’s shot turned it into, and it exploded in his face. Him and his henchmen were both blown apart, into smithereens.

  Shocked and awed, Kari, Jordan, and Oz looked in the sky.

  Alex looked at his family, to make sure none of the wreckage blew back on them, and then he leaned over, with his hands on his knees. It was just that close.

  But Kari and Jordan broke away from Oz, who had been shielding them with his own body, and ran to Alex.

  “Alex!” Kari cried.

  “Dad!” Jordan cried.

  And this time, when they ran into Alex’s arms, he had the joy, but he didn’t have the strength. They didn’t almost stumble and fall this time. They fell this time, causing Oz to laugh hilariously.

  Although they all fell, Alex kept them in his arms.

  EPILOGUE

  The yacht sailed across the calm waters in the river Thames, and Alex steered the ship. Kari sat beside him, and Jordan and Oz sat behind them, leaned back and relaxed, as they saw London, England up close and personal from the river view.

  Alex had taken his entire family to London when the Brits agreed to continue negotiations despite his absence, and although it took four long, grueling days, a deal was struck and finalized.

  A deal he desperately needed.

  Now, they were tourists only, taking in the sights and the sounds, and enjoying themselves the entire time. Oz, in fact, was telling Jordan all there was to know about seafaring, as if the fact that he was Greek gave him an advantage. “You have heard of Aristotle Onassis, haven’t you?” Oz asked his pupil. But even though Oz was a horrible teacher, Jordan was enjoying the lesson.

  “I called Tonya today,” Kari said to Alex as she sipped wine and watched the world go by. Tonya was her bodyguard, the one who had been shot in that restaurant in New York.

  “How is she?” Alex asked.

  “Better. She hope to be released in another few days.”

  Alex nodded. “That’s good.” He was dressed like some rich yachtsman, complete with blue blazer, white pants, and blue-and-white hat, and Kari liked how it looked on him.

  “What about Governor Berringer?” Kari asked. “His wife gave that press conference, where she accused him of being a drug dealer and not loving his daughter, a daughter, she admitted, that wasn’t even his. But it seems to me that more should be done to him than just public humiliation.”

  “Oh, it will be,” Alex said. “I have it on good authority that he will be indicted on fraud and money laundering charges, with more drug charges to come, within the next few months.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” said Alex. “They have their bullseye on him, don’t worry.”

  “What about DayVon’s mother and his family?” Kari asked. “What are the authorities going to do about them?”

  “Legally, they can’t do very much,” Alex said. “Our government has no extradition treaties with Cecoya. But because they were transporting drugs into the United States, they felt justified in secretly raiding the Clarke compound anyway.”

  Kari looked at Alex. “But?” she asked. “What did your sources tell you?”

  “That Selinda Clarke, DayVon’s mother, was nowhere to be found. His brothers either.”

  Kari shook her head. “She’s a slick one.”

  “That she is,” Alex agreed, “but I have my men searching for her. Something will turn up on her eventually.”

  “And then?”

  “And then she’ll get her reward. She was as much in on DayVon’s scheme as he was. I’m convinced of that.”

  Kari nodded. “So am I,” she said.

  Alex looked at Kari. Kari, feeling his stare, looked at him. It had been a tough road, they both were thinking, but it only brought them closer together.

  But when Alex looked down, at Kari’s body, and then back into her beautiful eyes, he was thinking about getting even closer to her.

  Kari rubbed his hand softly, to let him know she was thinking the same way.

  “Oz?” Alex called out.

  “Yes, brother?”

  “You and Jordan come and take the reins,” he said, and Oz gladly agreed.

  Jordan hurried up front with him, too. “You gonna let me drive, Uncle Oz?” he asked him.

  Although Alex and Kari were heading below deck, to get closer to each other, they both stopped in their tracks to see what Oz would say to Jordan.

  “I’m on this vessel,” Oz said, “and I like my life. You will not be driving this!” he added.

  And Alex and Kari relaxed, and smiled. And then Alex took Kari’s hand, and led her below deck, to his private quarters.

  Jordan looked back, as his parents disappeared, and then smiled too.

  Oz removed his cigar from between his teeth and looked at him. “You know what they’re going to do, right?” he asked him.

  “Sure,” said Jordan. “They’re going to take a nap.”

  Oz looked at his nephew. Was he that naive, he wondered?

  But then Jordan laughed, and Oz, knowing his swift-thinking best boy had pulled his leg again, pushed Jordan upside his head playfully. And then affectionately ruffled his hair.

  “Smart ass,” he said with a grin, and a bright twinkle in his eye.

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