Saved: a dark romance

by DD Prince

  “Ya man. We’re staying here 3-4 days. You need us, call & we’re wherever you need us to be. I’ll text before we go. Let me know if you want us to bring her to you. Call or text if you need anything. Anything at all, bro.”

  He’s a good fuckin’ guy.

  I text Rocco.

  “Stay here and help look after Holly. Dario’s in charge. Be watchful. If they go back to the U.S, go with them. I’ll text soon. Heading out for a couple days.”

  I get his acknowledgement, get my basics, and she’s curled up in a ball in the bed. I leave without giving her a glance.

  I get in my rental and head toward San Jose. I check into a room, buy a laptop and sit down to get some more shit organized. Late that night, I get a text from Dario.

  “Zack just got here. Pretty sure SR flew to Dallas, TX under alias Pablo Cabrone. He had a female travel companion, surveillance makes it look like Christina Cabrone is your ma. Call when you can. Got further surveillance footage of them in San Antonio. We’re brainstorming.”

  I text back to tell him I’ll be in touch in a few hours to get their ideas. I put my phone back in my pocket and think about how I got where I am.

  Five years ago, I first saw Zack Jacobs.

  I was in a swanky restaurant in Miami for business with my father, and I ran into Wesley Traynor in the men’s room. Coulda knocked me over with a feather. Hadn’t seen him since I was fifteen years old, playing fuckin’ hackey sack behind our shitty low-rent apartment building.

  There we were, face to face. Last he saw me was the day before I disappeared in the middle of the night back to my father’s compound, and suddenly there he was.

  I wanted to pretend I didn’t know him. But that meeting was no coincidence.

  He was a good buddy growing up in Spokane. We got into shit together but he had a good head on his shoulders. He wasn’t involved in the shit with the gang bangers. He refused. He tried to talk me out of the bullshit and I didn’t listen. Had I listened, maybe my life would’ve gone differently. He was my best friend but he knew so little about me back then.

  “I know your life now, bro. Chill, man.” My face must’ve been tipping my hand about how thrown and how tweaked I was to see him.

  “Listen, we gotta talk. I know your life now, brother, and I know it’s not what you want. I can help you. Take my card. Call me as soon as you possibly fucking can. It’s very important.”

  He slipped me the card and slipped out.

  I threw the card in the trash bin after a cursory glance.

  Wesley Traynor, Private Investigator - Jacobs Security & Investigations

  I saw him with Zack at the bar. Neither looked at me, though they both knew I was looking at them. I didn’t meet Zack until later.

  I went home after that trip and tried to put Wes out of my mind. My life was what it was, of my own doing, but the meeting nagged at me.

  He looked good. He looked happy. He gave off an aura of being successful and I knew, despite where we’d grown up that Wes would be successful. He just had that drive in him. What he wanted with me, I didn’t know, didn’t wanna know. I could not afford the headspace it’d take to consider it.

  Five or six months later, my father sent me to New York City for business and it was the first business trip where he didn’t come. It was a test, one I couldn’t fail.

  I ran into Wes and Zack in a bar there. I knew it was no accident. Wes was determined to talk to me, despite my ignoring him after his last approach.

  Wes made this approach with Zack and they convinced me to have a drink with them. Zack told me his story. A jacked-up story that he was out of his mind to share, not knowing where I stood. He full-out admitted that he was on a mission to bring justice to my father’s doorstep. Zack had been a member of a task force that was trying to expose my father’s sex trafficking ring and the girl Zack was fucking, who he’d just started a relationship with, was a girl on that task force. She was a tough bitch, apparently, but didn’t look it, so she had been put forth as bait.

  My father’s men took the bait, kidnapped her, and brought her to a secondary compound twenty miles from our main compound. That was part of the problem. It was the wrong compound.

  Zack and his crew tried to swoop in but they swooped into the wrong place and didn’t get to her in time. Her cover got blown and she was killed. Zack got shot in the back, another colleague got dead, and Zack was lucky to walk after that. The task force didn’t get what they wanted in order to go after him again, so they disbanded with plans to regroup later on.

  I’d heard that story, knew it just vaguely from the other side. It was not infrequent that someone tried to infiltrate my father’s organization. Likely why he always had more than one guard on hand at any given time, even when he was alone with his son. And why he had four places that he used for slave drops, five places for gun drops. We never decided on the drop location until the eleventh hour and we tried not to follow a pattern.

  Zack Jacobs was hell-bent on making him pay. On making the life of any human trafficker he could get near miserable.

  Not only had my father killed his woman but he’d tortured her and she got passed around among his men before she died and my father got pictures sent anonymously to the guy Zack reported to on the assignment. He’s a sick fuck like that. Not only does he want people who cross him to pay, but he also wants them to know exactly what that payment consists of, right down to the penny.

  I wasn’t involved in the payback that time. But I could easily have been. I could easily have been part of a crew that abused that girl. She wouldn’t have been the first one I abused. I made sure Zack knew that about me. He told me it wasn’t news that I had been guilty of more than just being Sandro the Butcher’s son. But he also said that I could turn my life around. He’s far too optimistic and I told him so. I’ve told him so more than once.

  Zack dug around in my father’s business, which led him to the poster with me and my mother on it. He tracked down my old neighborhood on his quest to avenge his dead girlfriend and determined I might be a weak link in my father’s organization.

  “No offence at the terminology,” he’d said.

  The word ‘weak’ was a bit of a sore point for me, but I shrugged it off.

  He found out Wes and I were tight as kids and fortuitously, Wes was in the police academy at the time. He recruited Wes into his company instead and then with what Zack could determine from my story, they approached me with the offer to help me escape my life and take my father down.

  I turned it down. I did not share what I thought of my father’s business. I was as cold as ice and they could not read me.

  Yet, they kept reaching out. Wes meant a lot to me as a kid otherwise I’d have offed him and Zack both. They kept their distance and were cautious so I didn’t have to kill my childhood buddy.

  I looked into Zack Jacobs and found out he was making a name for himself in the private investigations world. He had lots of contacts, could pull lots of strings, and he was good at what he did. He was also a crazy fearless fucker who was good at staying under radar.

  My father didn’t have him on radar but he’d connect the dots if Zack nosed too close. I turned them down and told them to stay out of my way so that I didn’t have to consider them enemies. I told them I wouldn’t tell my father that Zack was out for revenge. I told Zack to feel free to seek it on his own, I’d applaud him if he achieved his goal. But he’d better leave me the fuck alone.

  He approached again, at a time without Wes, when I was on another trip without my father and this time his approach meant more than a chance meeting in a bar. This time I was jumped by six guys and hooded. Not cool. I was pulled into a room where I met Barrington Dresden. Dresden and Zack offered an immunity deal if I helped them catch my father.

  I didn’t commit to anything, but I also didn’t turn him away. They cut me loose and Dresden warned that I was with them or against them. He told me he’d give me time to think, but they’d better not get any inkling I w
as feeding information to my father about their offer. Zack got him outta there and talked to me again, alone.

  “I know this isn’t your choice. A man should have a choice about the way he wants to live his life. This is your chance to take control back. Think on it.”

  I left and thankfully my father did not find out I’d been hooded and taken in. That sort of perceived weakness would not go over well.

  Eventually, the idea of their offer was sweet enough and my hate for my father had fermented enough that the next approach, it was me who approached Zack and Wes. I reached out to Wes after my father took off with my mother.

  He told me he and Zack could and would help me end his reign. Free my mother. Zack should’ve given up trying to get me to flip by that point but he hadn’t. Swore he was a good judge of character and that he knew it would just be a matter of time before I saw an opening and took it. Wes believed that who I was when we were kids was deep down was who I still was.

  I wasn’t. But I let him think that when I realized they might be able to help me get my mother free.

  Many thought Sandro Romero was dead, there was even a Wikipedia page about him and it listed him as dead with four separate theories about how he got dead, including a story I had circulated about a freak accident on a fishing trip. I wasn’t on that page as his offspring. Jesse was. Probably by design. He wanted notoriety and woulda wanted to be known.

  Jesse thought Papa actually was dead and aligned himself with Uncle Juan Carlos, who also thought my father was dead. And Jesse’s loyalty to that sick old fucker after Tommy Ferrano killed our uncle? It got Jesse dead, too, by the talented bomb-making hands of Dario Ferrano.

  Zack and the people Zack answered to in Dresden’s org structure suspected he wasn’t dead. Pablo Alejandro Romero, aka Sandro Romero, was alive and hiding somewhere. And he was pulling his firstborn son’s strings in order that the son’s mother remained alive.

  But that son wasn’t innocent. He wasn’t like some confidential informant or some undercover agent trying to take down his father.

  He was a fucked up broken man who kept moving women, who kept moving guns while wanting his father taken out, in a way that meant he’d answer for his crimes and rot in jail, maybe even face lethal injection in front of an audience of victims after a long time on Death Row.

  And that would mean that the names of his victims might come to light and Allegra Christina Catelli’s family, among others, might finally find out what happened to her when she went on a school trip to study the Aztecs.

  Maybe Allegra Christina Catelli-Romero could drop the Romero part of her identity and go home to Italy to be with her sisters, her brothers, her parents, who were all still alive.

  I already knew I wouldn’t go to Italy. I won’t continue to taint my mother’s life, be a reminder of what she’s endured. I certainly won’t make her keep looking into the eyes of the madman her husband is by looking into those same eyes on her son.

  I’ll set her free and disappear with my little flower. Like the selfish man I am. I’ll keep Holly until I can’t use her to soothe the pain anymore because the light finally died out of her eyes.

  Holly Noelle Mooney-Romero. Stolen, like Allegra. But she hadn’t broken. I couldn’t bring myself to break her because she was a fucking miracle.

  Ten times I’d thought about putting her in full-on slave training, so that I could break her. Break her to protect her from ongoing disappointment. Show her for once and for all how it really is. And it would break her. But I’ve been too selfish to do it. If I was in my right mind where she was concerned, I’d have done it rather than saving her for myself, keeping her hopeful.

  And she was right. My little Holly. Even after taking her virginity, she was a perennial flower who continued to bloom. Just like hollyhocks. But it wouldn’t last forever. It couldn’t. Eventually she’d see that I took her youth, her light, her freedom just like my father did to my mama. And then the light would die in her eyes and she’d be used all up. Withered petals on the floor.

  But I’d never find a new flower like her. She’s one of a kind.

  ***

  I took a few days driving back toward Mexico, staying in hotels or motels, to not only try to get my head together but put some wheels in motion. It was time to nudge my father into action. And the things I did, they should do the trick. Hopefully soon.

  Landing in Mexico City and getting my dead phone plugged in after two days of it being dead proved that my efforts were bearing fruit. Three missed calls from Rocco, two missed calls from Jimena, four voicemails, and several texts.

  The first text visible was from my father. It was the newest.

  “Home sweet home. Come home. And bring your wife home with you so she can meet your parents. By the way, had a nice chat with Paulo.”

  Fucking fuck. Paulo worked for Delgado before Delgado went up in flames.

  I wasn’t surprised my father showed up at home. The shit I’d pulled in the past few days would mean a reaction if he had eyes of any sort on the place. But Paulo. Fuck.

  Paulo oversaw transportation for Delgado and might’ve even been part of the crew that picked Holly up from Alaska. He could’ve quite easily known about the gift, about Holly being picked up and about Delgado sending me a message to buy her at auction.

  Delgado was a friend in my teens, one of my father’s soldiers. A bit older than me. But we got along. We partied. He liked to get wasted and I was drinking and fucking my anger away not very successfully. We fucked our way through the basement regularly, sometimes doing a slave at the same time, one on either end, him fucking her from behind while she sucked me off, passing a bottle of top-shelf Scotch between ourselves.

  He was ambitious. He was the son of a soldier who my father had given free rein to start his own side business working for us in the slave trade dealing with transportation.

  Joaquin Delgado’s mother was also a slave, but he looked at it differently than I did. He had no qualms about the slave trade at all. He was a cold as fuck snake. He took over for his father, who retired a few years back, and while doing that bought his way into Kruna, the Thai sex resort. He offered me a stake after word started traveling that my father might be dead. I turned it down.

  He wasn’t happy about the refusal. He wanted to be in business together. I didn’t like the idea of putting my fate in the hands of a bunch of partners. In fact, I didn’t want my fate in anyone’s hands. I had enough problems with my father’s expectations. I didn’t need to add anybody else into that mix.

  Delgado undercut us on a deal for some guns and then things went south with that shipment and he accused me of trying to get revenge for undercutting me.

  It was stupidity and it was something he’d never have gotten away with if I didn’t settle my father down. My father was staying in the know from an unknown place. Surveillance. That was why I had my own house built on the property and moved there, keeping my activities out of his reach.

  I settled him down, met with Joaquin in Miami and talked things out. He was doing a lot of blow. He pulled a gun on me when I confronted him for his bullshit and I wrestled it away but I didn’t put him down. I should’ve. I really fucking should’ve. But he cried about the drugs and the pressure and the addiction and blathered on about all these memories of us together. I was a friend and let it all go.

  A week later, he sent the tip-off about the little blonde virgin that he said he’d gotten for me. She was going up for auction, would be number nineteen, and he’d even kick in to pay for her. It was a gift from him, to make peace.

  I had Rocco bid first and bid high in a way that the other bidders would know that if they bid against him, they’d be putting their lives at risk. This was how it was in the trade. There was an understanding among everyone and they knew by the figure for the starting bid not to bid. I almost didn’t bother, but Delgado would’ve seen it as an insult.

  I didn’t allow Delgado to kick in for Holly after I laid eyes on her. I didn’t know why a
t the time but I refused to allow anyone to have any claim on her.

  But after that, he was frequently going to associates and planting seeds of doubt about me. Shit was getting back to me, including him saying I might be even crazier than my father. He didn’t know my father was still alive. He was getting bold, way bolder than he’d be if he knew Sandro the Butcher was still holding power.

  Joaquin wasn’t getting the monkey of addiction off his back. He was getting worse. He was an egotistical power-hungry junkie and any seeds planted in the wrong place could put me in a precarious position with my father and I would not take that chance. He had to be taken down.

  But Paulo? Fucking Paulo telling my father about the little blonde gift that Delgado gave me? My father could take a bit of info and dig back and find shit out and he wasn’t the type to bluff. The fact that he was home, out of hiding? He’d probably talked to many people by now. And he’d have seen, in person, what I’d done to the main compound and that would get a reaction. The reaction I wanted. But demanding I bring home my wife? Fuck my life.

  I checked my voicemails.

  Rocco’s role for me was head of security and his message told me he’d heard from his assistant, who was in charge of manning things in Mexico.

  My father was home and had taken no time getting back into the throne. But he was in my house, not his, since I’d had his house leveled and sent all the remaining inhabitants somewhere safe for now, until all this shit was done, which had pissed him off in a big way.

  Rocco’s assistant was taking off and Rocco was flying back immediately. The only resource my father would have there would be one maid, until I got home and let her leave.

  Jimena’s voicemail said she was in Paris, but she’d called the house and said my mama answered the phone. She asked if I also knew that Casa de Romero was leveled.

  She wanted me to call and said it was urgent. Her call surprised me. She hates my guts and has made that known since I wrecked her Little Mermaid tape when I was four, her seven. I finally released her from her duties to the family as the physician on site and was surprised to hear the end of her voicemail when she said, “Congrats on your marriage. I hope you and Holly find happiness with one another.”