by K. T. Tomb
There was another long silence as Will lowered his head back into his hands and thought things through. He would much rather have been able to push the entire affair off onto his father, but his father was stubbornly holding his ground and forcing his son to step up to his new leadership role. Will accepted it uncomfortably, but understood that if he didn’t start taking on the responsibility, then ultimately the company would fail. After several moments of deep thought, he raised his head and addressed the group.
“Rebecca and Zach, I think it is best if the two of you back out of this entire affair completely. It is going to be difficult enough to mend fences with Robin as it is, but anything that either of the two of you do at this point is only going to exacerbate things.”
He looked directly at the youngest brother. “I know how badly you feel about the whole thing, Zach, but I also know you well enough to guess that you were plenty eager to explore your chances with Natalia as it was. You’re going to have one hell of a time regaining his trust. I suggest you let that sink in a while.”
Zach nodded, accepting the gentle rebuke. “I think I need to look after some of our interests in Europe over the next several weeks anyway.”
“Rebecca. I appreciate that you brought this all to light, but I think you could have done it in a more intelligent way and not allowed your jealousy to play a lead role. I appreciate the amount of time you’ve put in studying this and I am certain that Aurora will still need your assistance with some of the resources and knowledge that you have available, but stay out of things at this point.”
“Yes, sir.” There was really nothing more that she could do or say at that point anyway.
“Dad. Do we still have a connection with that retired SEAL commander at Little Creek, Virginia?”
“We do, in fact; he is the person who made the arrangements for the snatch and grab of Natalia and her grandparents,” John replied.
“Aurora, get with Dad and get all of the information that you need from him in order to get a hold of this gentleman and explain our situation.” He looked back at his father. “Will she need you to go with her?”
“I doubt it. She’s more than capable. If I make the call and arrange the meeting, Jim will listen to her.”
“Okay. Aurora.” He couldn’t help smiling whenever he looked at his beautiful new bride. “You handle that and keep tabs on Natalia and her family; bring them in closer to home if you feel that it is safe to do so. I don’t want them feeling like prisoners. They’ve done nothing wrong and they’ve been through enough.”
He considered all of the plans and directives he had given for a few more minutes while all eyes watched him. Finally, he looked up again.
“And, Babe, please make arrangements for me to fly out to Caracas first thing in the morning.”
Will was tired and he was ready to be alone so he could think through how to approach his brother. When he stood, it was a signal to everyone to stand, but they waited for a word from him.
“That will be all for now, I think.”
Each of the members of the group began to shuffle toward the door. Rebecca was first and said her goodbye while Aurora accompanied her to the door, giving her last minute orders concerning items that would need to be taken care of the following morning.
Zach silently shook hands and said his goodbye as well. “See you in a few weeks after this all blows over.”
“Take care, buddy.” Will drew him in for a brief hug and assurance that he was still loved, in spite of the difficult things that he’d had to tell him.
His father lingered a moment and Will expected some sort of critique from the man, but none came.
“Damned fine job, son,” he said, placing his hat on his head and buttoning up his overcoat before making a beeline for the door.
With the room empty, Will refilled his glass and strolled over to the window to look out across the back garden where little more than a few months before, he and Aurora had exchanged vows in front of an enormous crowd of family and friends. He recalled the feelings of love that he had for Aurora in the beginning and how they had grown over time. As he considered that, he thought of how Robin must have been going through those very same feelings. In that moment, he knew exactly how to approach his brother. The irony of it all was that Robin had put his best efforts into ruining things for Will, but to return that favor, Will was going to be working to restore Robin and Natalia’s relationship.
Chapter Thirteen
Altamira Estate,
Caracas, Venezuela
“I’m just saying that I know exactly how you feel.” Will had put in at least two hours of arguments already. It was like discussing the price of hay with a donkey.
“How do you know? Zach nailed Aurora before you and her were together. He’s always gotta have what he wants. And that cockamamie story that he made to cover it up…” Robin threw up his hands in disgust and started pacing again.
It was a repeat of the same argument over again, but Will pressed on. “The story was true, Zach; we uncovered the whole thing.”
“So, you knew about this?”
“No. I didn’t know about this and I wouldn’t have allowed it to happen if I had. I found out the details of the entire thing yesterday; last night, actually.” Will had to try a new tactic. “Have you been able to talk to her?”
“No. She probably ran off with Zach.” The words were bitter as he spit them from his mouth.
“She didn’t run off with Zach. She and her grandparents are somewhere safe. In fact, I would be willing to bet that they will be in Alpharetta or very near there in the next day or so, unless I am totally mistaken about Aurora.”
“You kidnapped my girlfriend and her grandparents?”
“No. I didn’t kidnap them.”
“You had them kidnapped.” He made quotation signs in the air. “I forgot. Now that you’re the CEO, you don’t actually do anything; you have things done for you. You give the order and everybody falls in line. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to go?”
Will felt his own anger rising. “That’s not the way it works and you know it.” He paused, took several deep breaths to calm himself and then continued in an even tone. “Look, Robin, I know there has been some tension between us lately. To be honest, it was pretty damned rough there for a while. I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass, but you haven’t actually been high on my list of people I can trust…”
“So, we’re going to rehash this old argument again? How many times do I have to apologize? How many times do I have to prove that I’m back on board and following the plan? What more do you want from me?” The emotion in Robin’s voice had brought him to the point of shouting.
“I’m trying to be honest and talk straight to you, if you’ll just hear me out.” Will had known that what he was attempting to do wasn’t going to be easy, but it was turning out to be twice as hard as he’d thought it would be. He started again. “Love is a wonderful thing, Robin. I didn’t know it. You didn’t know it. You can’t know it until you experience it for the first time. We didn’t really know love growing up. With Mom gone, Dad did the best he could and he tried damned hard, but he came up short. Look. I know what you and Natalia had – have – is real. I saw it in your eyes and I saw it in hers. I couldn’t have been happier the first time I saw the two of you standing there together in my office. I told you what a nice couple you were. Do you remember that?”
Robin nodded his head. Will had gotten on the right track, but he still felt that he needed to go back to the blackmail scheme and the Chinese fiasco; somehow, he knew that wound, though it had scabbed over before, had been picked at until it was bleeding again. While he had Robin in a more docile mood, he started there again.
“Look, I believed your apology concerning the Chinese thing and the accusations against Aurora.” He saw Robin look up at him and start to protest. “Wait. Let me finish. Please, let me finish. That’s why I let my assistant take the fall for the whole thing and why I sent you down here where we needed
a good, cool head and you needed a chance to get your feet back under you. You’ve done that. I think you had already made up your mind to do it before you left, but when Natalia came along, it just improved your resolve and made you do it better.
“Robin, I couldn’t be more proud of you and how you’ve turned this whole thing around. Let me go back to what I started to say before. You weren’t high on my list of people that I could trust, but you’ve proven that you are trustworthy.”
With Robin listening to him quietly, Will just let things rest for a moment. Their childhood had been rough. With no mother to kiss their wounds and put a Band Aid on them, they’d had to learn how to heal their own wounds and settle their own scores. Their father had tried the best he could for them, even sent them to church with Mrs. Hardee, hoping they might catch hold of something that would guide their way. Somehow, in spite of it all, they had found their way. Sure, they still had some struggles between them; envy and strife would raise their ugly heads at times and get the better of them, but in the end, they had learned how to forgive, forget and move on. He thought back to one of those occasions when they’d been dragged into Sunday school.
“Hey. You remember how Dad used to have Mrs. Hardee drag us into Sunday school?”
A half-smile broke on Robin’s lips. That was at least a sign that he was listening.
“God, we used to hate that.” Will chuckled. “But we did learn a thing or two. Most of it was how to get in trouble in church, but maybe a little bit of it sunk in.”
“Oh, God. Remember catching Zach in the broom closet with the preacher’s daughter, Barbara Lynn… one of those I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you’ll-show-me-yours things.” Robin was warming up a little bit or he wouldn’t be joking that way. “Son of a bitch has always been that way. He hasn’t changed a bit.” He’d quickly turned bitter again.
That last line had already disrupted where Will was going, but he plunged ahead anyway. “Well. Like the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors, what had started out to be something bad, has turned into good. As much as all of this hurt, it did bring it all out in the open and reveal something that was going on behind the scenes. Had Natalia not been shaken up so much by all of this, she wouldn’t have called Aurora and…”
“She talked to Aurora?” Robin grasped onto that one tiny bit of hope.
“Yes, Natalia explained the whole situation to her. It’s because of her that we were able to put the last pieces together and get a line on exactly what was going on.”
“So it’s true? Natalia was fulfilling a contract by going out with me, sleeping with me, pretending to be in love with me?” The pain in his eyes was nearly unbearable to watch.
“She wasn’t pretending, Robin. They kidnapped her and didn’t give her much choice. If she hadn’t cooperated, they would have harmed her grandparents or even worse.”
“But she had a contract and she took money for…” The sentence trailed off as he began to struggle with what it all meant.
“That is what it started out to be, but she fell in love with you, Robin. Really fell in love with you.” He was searching for another way to prove it. “Even when Zach threw himself at her, she didn’t budge. That’s a real challenge for most women. When he delivered his line, all she could think about was you.”
Robin seemed to have regressed into the dull stupor that had been there before. They had talked for several hours and Will thought he’d finally gotten somewhere, but it all seemed to be for not. It was time to wrap it up and head back to Georgia. It would be better if Robin returned with him; safer too, but Will doubted that was going to be possible.
“Look. We’ve got some people that are going to clean this mess up for us. Aurora is talking to them right now. In the meantime, it isn’t safe for you here. Why don’t you come back to Alpharetta with me? You can see Natalia and talk things through. I think you’ll discover that she hasn’t betrayed you in any way.”
“What happened to the money?”
It wasn’t exactly the response that Will was expecting. “The money?”
“The money they paid Natalia for seducing me.”
“She gave it to some church orphanage in El Hatillo. I can have it verified if that really makes a difference to you.”
“No. That’s okay. I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway.”
“So. Are you coming back with me?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself. It would be better if you didn’t go out though. And stay away from the office for a few days, too. If they were sharp enough and well-organized enough to set all of this up, then they probably have eyes and ears everywhere.”
Will was finished. He’d done his best and Robin had basically rejected it. He could only hope that the action behind the words would have its healing effect. He got up to leave. “I’m headed out. One last chance to come with me.” He knew what the answer would be.
“You go on. I’ll be alri… I’ll get by here.”
Will gave Robin’s shoulder a squeeze as he passed him on his way out. He could feel Robin’s deep pain and knew that if the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t be doing any better. He continued on out to the car and took his seat for the drive back to the airport. As badly as the discussion had gone, Will couldn’t help but believe that it was the beginning of helping Robin pull things back together.
Chapter Fourteen
Macaracuay Sector,
Caracas, Venezuela
“Where is the little bitch!” Andres shouted as his men came into the office without Natalia for the third time. “Did I not send you to go get her and bring her in here? We need to get some information out of her. Have I not made myself clear on that?”
“Yes, jefe, you’ve been very clear, but we can’t find her.” The large man who doubled as a bodyguard and a lackey was growing frustrated with having to come to Andres empty-handed.
“I’m getting tired of hearing that line and I’m growing impatient. Did you grab the grandparents, her Nana and Buelo? Maybe that will draw her out of hiding.”
“They aren’t there either.” Things weren’t going well and the big man didn’t know if he would live to see the end of the day if he didn’t get any results for his boss.
“Where the hell did they go?”
“We don’t know, jefe.”
“Then ask around.”
“We did ask around. The only thing that anyone could tell us was that some men came, got them and took them away during the night. Some of them even thought that they were angels or maybe demons; they couldn’t tell for sure.”
“That is bullshit and you know it.”
“I’m just telling you what we have been hearing.”
Andres considered what he was hearing. He didn’t like it. If they had been snatched away, then they were probably being protected. If they were protected, then someone must have discovered what Andres and his cohorts were up to. He had paid his contact inside the Venezuelan government very well; certainly he wouldn’t have betrayed them. But somehow they had found out.
He ran back through the events that had transpired in the last several days. He’d gotten word that the younger brother had come for a visit, that Natalia had been at the compound in Altamira, but had been taken home in one of the American’s cars. The younger brother had left some hours later in the darkness and had been taken to the airport.
Initially, he thought Natalia had run off with the younger brother and had ordered them to keep an eye on the home of the girl’s grandparents. Somehow the men he had sent to watch them had missed their disappearance entirely and all he had were rumors of men dressed in black showing up and snatching them away under the cover of darkness.
Someone was onto him and that wasn’t going to sit well with the leadership in Cucuta. He could feel the eyes of the two men watching him as he considered his next move. It would need to be a strong move. No doubt they were already mocking him and looking forward to shifting their loyalties to someone else.
“And
the American?” he finally asked, looking up at them.
“In the compound in Altamira. He hasn’t left in several days, ever since the older brother who used to live there came in for a short visit.”
“I don’t like this. Someone has betrayed us. Maybe it was that little bitch, but we don’t have any idea where she is so we could extract that information out of her, do we?” His voice had started in a low tone and built until he spit out the last two words with a shout.
The two men shifted nervously at his outburst, but wisely didn’t respond.
Andres was beginning to be suspicious of the fact that the three Ortiz family members had so easily been removed from Caracas without a trace and by the recent meetings with each of the other two brothers. The Americans had caught on and had snatched his only bargaining tool. He was becoming more paranoid and his anger was boiling over. He suddenly hit upon a very bold idea.
“Bring me the American,” he snapped.
“Sir. That compound is impenetrable. It is nearly impossible to get in there. Even if we were able to get in, we will have drawn so much attention that the authorities…”
The big man cut off the last sentence when he heard the slide being pulled back and snapped in place on Andres’ semi-auto 9mm, the muzzle of which was leveled directly at his heart. Everyone in the room froze for a moment. There was no other sound following that sharp metal click.
“Don’t come back again without the American.” He spoke through clenched teeth. He held the pistol on the man until he turned and walked out the door, closing it softly behind him. It was a bold move and a dangerous one. It would be difficult even for his contact in the government to turn his head away from it, but he was dead anyway, by SLG standards, if he didn’t do something. At least he could hold him for ransom and extract enough to make up for what they were going to lose because he had screwed up the deal.
He’d built a powerful network around himself in Caracas and had been given a great deal of authority to operate by SLG. He’d been given the money to keep the government official happy and keep them from looking into SLG activities or harassing its members. It had all been working, even the brilliant stroke that had placed Natalia with the American.
