by C. Lymari
“Shit,” he cursed as he pulled a cigarette from his pockets. “That explains a lot.”
My head turned toward his. “Explain yourself?”
He ignored me while he lit his cigarette and then opened the window to ash it. “After my fight, there wasn’t anything Ignacio could do for me.” Ignacio was Franco’s younger brother who held down the front in New York. “So we made an arrangement. They helped me with a little problem, and in return, I owed him three markers, no questions asked.”
“Okay, and I care…”
“The last marker was two weeks ago,” he said.
My knuckles tightened around the steering wheel. Two weeks ago was when Gideon took Rebeca. A part of me wasn’t reasoning because my first thought was if they connected the link between Falcon and Gideon since you could say they were friends. But then that made no sense since Falcon was here and his heart was still beating.
“It’d do you well to remember that you owe me a life debt,” I told him.
He let out a dry chuckle.
“Two weeks ago, I got called to do a cleanup at one of the Estacados’ locations. I don’t know what went down, but I do know it was sketchy as shit. It was their own kin that I had to clean up. And there are rumors Ignacio disowned one of his sons.”
Ignacio had twins. Rafe and Rafa, who were as different as night and day.
“Do you think this is a power play?”
From my peripheral vision, I saw him exhale smoke.
“I don’t know, but I do know that the bitch is now with the other brother.”
This was not what I wanted to hear when I was on my way to Franco’s house, but it was less severe than what I had imagined happened. I needed the brothers united if I stood a chance at having them back my war. If they were fighting amongst themselves, then I was back to square one—with nothing.
The gates to the Estacado vineyard glowed under the Tuscany sun. I parked at the entrance, aware of all the men who guarded the location. One of them walked up to me, and I took a deep breath because it was showtime.
Today’s outfit was carefully picked, something alluring, yet disarming and sophisticated. As usual, I was in all black. Instead of combat boots, I wore stiletto boots. Looking down at them, they reminded me of the night in London. Inside the heel was a blade, and on the other, darts with a tranquilizer strong enough to bring down a horse. Coiled around my hand was a snake charm that if you removed and opened, it doubled as a little chainsaw, and webbed between a sleeve of my shirt was a plastic pick in case I got handcuffed. I came as prepared as I could with such short notice.
I honestly didn’t know what Falcon would do if I went MIA. I would probably be one less of his worries. When the man was at my window, I pulled it down.
“You’re on private property. I suggest you turn around and leave.” The man’s voice was harsh. He looked at me, aware that I wasn’t a native of this country.
“Di ‘a Franco che ho trovato ciò che è stato rubato.” Tell Franco I have found what was stolen.
His body went taut, and his glare intensified.
“Out. Of. The. Car.” He said as he pulled a gun on me.
I pulled open the door slowly and rose out of my car with my hands in the air. As soon as I was out, more men came. They grabbed me by my arms and led me to a blacked-out SUV. The ride to the main house was silent but laced with rage from all around me.
When we pulled up to the main house, I thought they would have stopped, but they kept going deep into the vines, until we arrived at a little cottage away from prying eyes. The cabin was covered by trees all around, and a little stable that hadn’t been used in years was next to it.
They dragged me out of the SUV and put a gun to my back. When I made it inside of the cabin, Franco Estacado was sitting down, surrounded by his men.
“I will speak to Franco and Franco only,” I said as soon as the door to the cabin shut. Men started yelling, and Franco’s right-hand man was telling him how it was a stupid idea.
Meanwhile, the man I had only heard about looked like he was barely holding it together. His jaw was set, and he had dark circles under his eyes.
“lasciaci soli,” he said, and his men looked pissed but left us alone.
My shoulders were straight, and I didn’t flinch, nor did I move. He watched me with keen interest. He was about fifty, I’d say. He had aged gracefully. He was tan, with dark eyes that had a lethal edge to them.
“Make no mistake, girl, you say something I don’t like and I won’t hesitate to kill you.” He leaned back on his chair and pulled up the sleeves of his shirt.
“Those unfortunate enough to know me call me Daphne. Just as I’ve heard of you, I am sure you have heard of me.”
Franco raised one brow, not amused but interested to see where I was going with this. I needed to make my point clear before he ran out of patience and demanded to know where his daughter was.
“I belong to an organization known as Sekten.” As soon as I said the words, his body stiffened only just for a fraction of a second.
“We live by a code,” he spat. “Kids and wives are not to be touched.”
I smiled sadly at him. I pointed to the chair across from him so he would know I was going to sit down.
“No offense, but no one holds anything sacred anymore. Everyone is too drunk on power to obey the law of thieves.” I sat on the chair and crossed my legs just in case I had to move fast and deliver a kick.
“I will tell you everything you want to know about your daughter. All I ask is that you give me twenty minutes of your time.” I took a deep breath, aware that for him to help me, he had to know everything. All the things no one knew, all the things that could bring me and my empire down. I was gambling it all on the line with the hopes that his revenge would outweigh rationality.
“Everyone calls me Daphne, but my real name is…” And so I told him everything, and he listened without interruptions.
Location: Unknown
Hell was a bitch.
At least I thought I was in hell because for the last fucking days or years, I had been burning up. It was an endless cycle of shivers to feel like my skin was about to crawl out of my body, to feel like I was going to disintegrate. So, if I died and there was an afterlife, I was now in the fiery pits living it.
Sometimes I heard noises: animals, cursing, and then people.
“No se esta mejorando,” I heard a somewhat familiar voice say.
No shit, I wasn’t getting better. It was fucking hot and dark. My body ached, and my throat was sore, my eye burned, everything fucking hurt. At least my mother wasn’t haunting me anymore, and in my delirium, I could pinpoint the exact moment my life went to shit.
She dislocated her fucking thumbs.
I heard the noise before I saw it. Heard the cracking of the joints and the clunking of the metal cuffs hitting the table. My head snapped her way, and Daphne was standing up tall, unflinching with her thumbs bent at weird angles.
Looking at her, I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt for fucking her, then betraying her. I wasn’t a good man, but I was a wise one. When I got the intel about her being connected to Ivan’s alias, the Russian Dragon, I knew I couldn’t just bring her with me. If I had this information, I was pretty sure whoever had been with us in the room at Sinestre was piecing it together too. They would alert Homeland Security, and there would be no way out of this damn country. So, I weighed my options and called her in myself, trying to negotiate on her behalf.
Nothing went as expected, and I was infuriated, yet fucking turned on at her defiance.
When she said Adrian was a double agent, I figured that much, but in all honesty, I thought he had switched on us, but something was still missing, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.
She was so much more, a slave, but at the same time, not at all. Her father was one fucked-up piece of shit that if he weren’t dead like she claimed, I would be doing the job myself.
At least Yorovich was alive.
/> Now I looked at her and the way she glared at the camera with her arm raised in the air, the same arm that had the S tattoo, and she pointed it at the lens.
Parker Hayes stalked in seething, his anger directed toward the woman in front of me. She pulled down her sleeves and fixed her thumbs.
“I want to speak to Smith or Walsh. You have twelve hours before they come for me,” Daphne told us as she sat down with her hands outstretched, waiting to be cuffed again.
If I was angry before, I was now livid at her dropping the name of the head of MI6 as if it was nothing. Judging by Hayes’s murderous look, we were on the same page. We both stormed out of the room, both of us making calls.
“I told you to turn the girl in,” Walsh barked.
He had said that once I got the intel of her with Ivan, but I was going to try and spin it all in my favor even though right now, I was failing miserably. Since I stayed quiet, he kept on talking. “Do what Hayes tells you, and if you’re not on the first flight back to London, consider yourself terminated.”
The word hung in the air as I ended the call. Would they end my life over this? My thoughts were interrupted by Parker yelling angrily over the phone.
“Does she have some sort of fucking diplomatic immunity?”
It was evident he didn’t get an answer because he threw his phone across the room. Someone sure had anger issues.
“Let me guess, we’re letting her go?” I added dryly as I looked at Daphne through the mirror. She’d been in the same position since I came here. She was staring at the wall blankly, waiting for us to succumb to her fucking demands.
“We have to take her to Midway Airport where a jet will be waiting for her. We are not to engage. We are not allowed to follow; we are just escorting her out of here.”
“Do you know why? What’s with the tattoo?”
He looked at Daphne, his shoulders stiff, and the air in the room went lethal. “They’re an organization that has way too much power. They have their fingers dipped in everything shady—humans, drugs, biological weapons, arms deals—anything heinous you can think of they—she is behind it. A few years ago, we had a run-in with someone like her. We were told to drop it. Something makes them untouchable…” He pushed a chair out of the way before he went back into the room to tell Daphne she was going to be set free.
It was at that fucking moment I knew I wanted her more than I had before. I wanted to know every fucking secret and guard it as my own. So, I followed orders, I asked about her organization, and then I betrayed my own government.
Something poked my face. The burning was now gone, but I still felt sweaty, and my body ached. My eyes sprang open—well, one of them; the other kind of hurt and was shut by some oil. I came face-to-face with a dark-skinned older man with cotton hair. He smiled at me; he had a lot of wrinkles under his eyes and a knife to my eye.
What the fuck.
Not how I pictured Satan looking.
“Oh look, sleeping beauty has awoken,” a deep voice said on my left.
I pulled back my face from the old man and was ready to face Bastian, but Bas put his hand to my face, holding me in place for the old man to keep doing God knows what to me.
“What the hell happened?” I barked.
Once he saw I wasn’t going to move, Bas moved so I could see him better. He was wearing black commando jeans with a black muscle shirt. He smiled at me, making his oily eyes shine and his dimples pop.
“You don’t remember what happened?”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but I thought it wouldn’t be wise. “Please enlighten me, love.”
He sagged his shoulders in mock defeat. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news…” Bas was a dick; he looked happy about whatever he was going to tell me. “Robinson didn’t go for your trachea. Instead, he chopped off your dick, but don’t worry, the natives gave you a pussy.”
At that moment, I spurred my hand to life and moved it to touch my groin. “Fuck you,” I spat at Bas.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he added.
“Where the fuck is that bitch?” I spat, not caring about the man or why I was listening to the fucking bastard in front of me. I was in a shit mood now that the memories were coming back.
“I don’t know, mate,” he mocked me. “It’s just you and me and the lonely jungle.”
“Stop.” I put a hand up and sat up despite the pain in my chest. I was naked, nothing but a quilt covering my dick.
“Start talking or I’ll fucking kill you, and believe me, I am going to enjoy the feel of your blood coating my skin, the way your oily eyes will dim, and after that, I’ll send you in fucking pieces to the bitch that holds your leash.”
The fucker didn’t even bat an eyelash. He brought a stool and sat on it. “Let the man finish his job. Your eye was getting infected, so he had to scrape the pus around it.”
Now that he mentioned my eye, I brought one of my hands up to feel where the man was prodding. The bottom was fine, but my eye itself felt weird, wrinkled. It burned the moment I touched the eyelid, and I flinched. A chunk of hair was missing from my brow.
“And now you probably infected your eye more. Good job, asshole.” Bas pulled out a water bottle and drank from it.
I brought my hand down and turned to the old man. I looked at him and then remembered what Bas said about natives. He looked indigenous. Then I looked around and noticed we were, in fact, in the jungle but in some kind of tribe land.
Tilting my head down, I gave the okay for the man to finish doing whatever he was going to do. Now that my body was becoming aware, I noticed the discomfort in my throat. I brought my hand there next and felt the gash that covered me.
Bas stretched his hand, offering me some of his water. Hesitantly, I reached for it.
He smiled at me, revealing his dimples once more. “Don’t worry, I’m STD-free.”
“You’re fucking demented,” I murmured.
“Aw, is this your way of thanking me for saving your life?” He brought his hands to his chest.
As I drank my water, the man got to work on whatever was left of my infection.
“Tell me what happened,” I demanded.
“Let’s see.” Bas started to think it over. “If your ass is sore, that’s probably because Daphne fucked you over.”
Rage coursed through my body as he laughed at his stupid fucking joke.
“I’m going to kill her. Warn her, I don’t give a fuck; she’s dead to me.”
“Boo-fucking-hoo.” He rolled his eyes. “You played with fire and got burned.”
The only thing I could do was glare at him.
“I’m not saying you asked for this but—”
“Is there a point to this conversation?” I barked, making Grandpa next to me jump.
“That is no way to talk to the person who dragged your ass out of the line of fire. You’re not easy cargo, and you think I enjoyed basically waterboarding you so you could drink water to get your fever down?”
Well, that explained why my throat wasn’t like sandpaper had rubbed it raw. Although his smug face said he enjoyed every second of it.
“Gee, thanks for raping my throat,” I mumbled. “So, you saved me from Robinson? Did she send you?” I held my breath and got angry at myself for hoping he’d answer yes. He was right. I had practically asked for this.
Bas’s face became serious. Dropping all traces of a smile, he leaned forward, his eyes staring straight at me. “No, she didn’t send me. She would never ask that of me, of anyone.”
Well, there was my fucking answer. She’d said the words. She might as well be the one to stab my face, ’cause right then I felt an invisible knife lodged between my fifth and sixth rib.
“She wouldn’t ask that of anyone because doing so would expose a weakness,” Bas said gravely. I looked at him once more now that the bile had spread down my throat. “Daphne can’t have a weakness; none of us can.”
“What does that mean?”
“Twice, I saved
your life. I was outside the camp, waiting to attack. I saw Daphne come out of your tent, so I knew when Robinson went in there with another of his men, you were in trouble. It was chaos, but I managed to shoot his guy right before the grenade went off, and the whole thing went tumbling down.”
The man who had been working on my eye left us, after patting something over my eye and patching it so I could only see from one side.
“When Daph left with the Estacado girl, I went back to camp. I had to kill the sergeant from the enemy paramilitary group so nothing could be traced back to—”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said as I shook my head. “You had this whole thing planned to a T, didn’t you?”
He ignored me and kept talking. “While I took care of business, I lost you, and I could have left… Look, I get it, you’re mad.”
I let out a dry chuckle.
“It’s not easy living as we do. As I said, we can’t have weaknesses, not when we have eyes on us.”
I glared at him, wanting to know more, but like hell if I’d ask.
“Is there a point to this?”
“With my night goggles, it was easy to find you. I was a little late since Robinson had already done some damage to your eye, but I killed him before he could do more damage to your throat.”
Bas got up and looked around the trees and then at the sky. “You’ve been out for five days.” Fuck. Me. That was a long time. I owed him, and the bastard knew it. “I had a choice to make, leave or save you, and I saved your ass. Now you owe me a life debt.”
“At the first chance I get, I’ll take a bullet for you; don’t you worry, I don’t want you hanging over my head.”
“I don’t need you to be my knight in shining armor. Thanks for the offer though.” He smirked at me. “All I ask is that you don’t kill her.”
I scoffed. “You’re fucking crazy.”
Bas pulled a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. “No, crazy is me killing all the men who had you surrounded. Crazy is dragging your ass to one of the jeeps that were stashed in the trees, and crazy is driving through the jungle to Ecuador all so I could get you out of Colombia alive.”
