CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

SOLOMON

Walking away from Natalie was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life. 

I've killed people in cold blood and even that was easier. Hell, I was twenty-one years old when I changed a diaper for the first time and even that was a cakewalk compared to this. 

Nothing was harder than walking away from the woman I loved and not knowing if it would be the last time I saw her. 

As far as final romantic goodbyes went, it was pretty perfect. 

I saw her face in my mind perfectly, while sitting in the back of the police van racing through country back roads in the dead of night. I saw the love in her eyes no else ever had for me and she never looked so beautiful. 

Making love while knowing full well she could get pregnant was surreal. I'd never intentionally tried to make a baby before. Ari was the best thing in my life next to Natalie, but I definitely wasn't prepared for her. 

Natalie would be an amazing mother. Of that I was certain. I lost religion a long time ago but I prayed silently that I would get past today's events and return to her. I wanted to see her belly grow big and round as our child grew inside her. I wanted to see my daughter become a beautiful, strong, confident young woman. 

But if there was a god up there, everything I'd done in the past had surely already forsaken me. For years I fed addictions, fueled wars, and took lives that weren't mine to take. And today, I’d be doing more of the same. My odds were not in the big man's favor. With my luck, the devil was already waiting for me at the gates of hell. 

On the small, laptop screen before me, I saw Eddie's dashboard lights and dimly lit steering wheel as he drove our delivery van. He was on his way to Antigua's as if it were any other pickup day. 

But unlike any other day, so were we. Me, my best soldiers and several vans full of cops armed to the teeth, including Liam. Thanks to the GPS coordinates from Eddie, we were stealthily heading out to the same place but just taking a different path. 

The country dirt roads soon gave way to tall grass and untamed brush that the vans just plowed through. Cops always gotta be barging in, but this time I was grateful to be among them. Eddie was the one taking the real risks, going alone and trusting my word that this plan would work. 

Natalie, my love. I forgot to ask you what kind of trophy you'd like from Antigua after I kill him. A finger, an eyeball? Maybe even go all psycho-romantic and cut out his heart for you? 

The microphone in Eddie's ear suddenly picked up different noises. The engine suddenly cut and the sound of a driver's door opened. He stopped the car. He had arrived. 

"He's there," I told Liam, who barked orders to the van driver who relayed the message to the other vans that followed.

The footage from the camera showed Eddie's hands visibly shaking as they left the steering wheel and opened his door. Poor guy was nervous as hell and with good reason. He was the one most likely to lose his life in this whole mess.  

The camera bounced as he walked, the microphone picking up sounds of shoes on gravel. Two figures silhouetted by a high light source, probably a streetlight, came into view. 

"Long time no see," greeted one of the figures. "What the fuck's up with that?"

"I should be asking you that question," Eddie replied, his voice calm and steady. "The last batch of product I picked up from you was shit quality. We had to run around like fucking headless chickens making last minute deals to keep our customers happy." 

The two men tensed, holding their weapons close as they approached Eddie until they stood right in front of him. In the camera, all I could see was a hand on the trigger of his semi-automatic.  

"You saying our deal was dirty?" one of them spat, the microphone picking up the audio loud and clear. 

"My boss is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and possibly continue our business," Eddie replied. "He's fair and open to the possibility that it was an honest mistake."

"Where's your proof?" demanded the other soldier. "Show us this so-called low-quality product and you might have a fucking leg to stand on." 

"What and let the cops stumble over it?" Eddie scoffed. "No fucking way. We dumped it. Cost of doing business but it needs to not happen again. Antigua should be aware of that."

The two guards stood in silence for a few moments which felt like hours to us watching and listening from the police van. In the silence, all I could hear was my heart hammering against my ribs. 

Eddie was doing perfectly, saying all the exact lines I told him to. I put my palms together and silently prayed that these soldiers were as predictable as I imagined. 

"Search him," one of them said finally. 

Loud scuffling sounds came over the audio as they patted Eddie down for weapons, drugs, and any hidden surveillance devices. 

That was a good sign. It meant they would let him in but I still held my breath as they searched him.

Liam clapped a hand down on my shoulder in a reassuring, brotherly pat. They shouldn't find our camera and microphone on him and he still seemed confident of that.

Police technology came a long way in recent years. The microphone was a tiny, wireless piece that sat directly inside Eddie's ear and looked like a hearing aid. The camera was also wireless and so tiny it was disguised as one of the buttons on his shirt. The quality was fairly low-resolution but good enough for us to get a layout of the compound once he was inside. 

The scuffling stopped. 

"He's clean." 

I exhaled my breath after feeling I would nearly pass out from anxiety. Relief swept through as I hung my head low in my hands. If one of them noticed our devices, Eddie would be a dead man right now. 

"Told you, man!" Liam slapped me on the back victoriously while several hoots and cheers rang throughout the crowded van. He was in! Now our time to move was coming up fast. 

"Come with us," said one of the guards and the camera resumed bouncing as Eddie walked forward. 

Another guard raised a large garage door to reveal a massive warehouse. It looked much bigger than the outside showed. 

Shipping pallets stacked with various product and crates lined the walls, nearly reaching the incredibly tall ceiling. Some of the walls had doors in them, but mainly massive holes had been cut out of the walls and led to more warehouse space packed with products. An eighteen-wheeler could easily drive through one of those cutouts and that was probably how they shipped most of it out. 

It was impossible to tell how many separate warehouse units were connected but it looked like a massive maze. Antigua's operation was easily worth millions, if not billions of illegal, dirty dollars.

However, the place looked sparsely guarded. There were two armed men posted at every doorway, even the large cut outs. Maybe it was just the massive space that made it looked like not many people were around. 

And definitely no women. Wherever Antigua kept them was definitely out of sight. No wonder Natalie's feet were bloody when I found her. Who knew how long she must have run throughout this labyrinth to finally escape to the outside. 

I clenched my fists at the thought of her in that place. She already was so different from when I first found her in that truck. No longer scared shitless and ready to die. But that same strength and determination in her never wavered. 

We're close, my love. Your revenge is about to be carried out. 

Eddie walked through for several minutes, escorted by the two guards. The camera bobbed steadily with his footsteps. It seemed like he was heading toward the very back of the complex. 

"You mapping this out?" Liam asked one of the investigators. 

"Yes, sir," he replied, not looking up from his laptop. "We're syncing up the camera footage with the satellite data right now." 

I didn't understand all of the surveillance technology they were using, but the more we knew about the complex before going in, the better off we would be.

"Check out this layout, Sol." 

Liam handed me another device which looked like a small tablet. It showed a blueprint of the entire complex, complete with a moving dot heading toward the east end that could only be Eddie. 

"Pretty nifty spy shit," I observed. 

Liam grinned. "Let's start moving. He's going to run into Antigua soon. We gotta be ready to back him up." 

The van started up and started driving slowly as I continued to watch Eddie's camera footage. He stopped in front of two doors that looked completely out of place in an industrial warehouse. 

The doors were made of a dark, polished wood that was intricately carved with animals like tigers, herons, and dragons. It looked expensive and gaudy against the plain warehouse wall. 

One of the guards grabbed the heavy iron handles and pulled the doors open. On the other side laid out a scene that looked plucked from some eighties gangster movie. 

Fur pelts of various exotic animals lined the floor. Dead tigers, lions, bears, and leopards looked up at me with snarling jaws and glassy eyes.

The walls were covered with an assortment of silk tapestries with no particular theme. Some looked hundreds of years old and like priceless museum items, others had rich colors and looked brand new. 

Ivory statues, carvings, and more taxidermied animals stared at us from the edges of the room. All of which were undoubtedly endangered, exorbitantly expensive and highly illegal. 

But the worst sight was the obscenely fat man sitting in the middle of the room on a hideously ornate dais. Gold and platinum rings glittered on each of his sausage fingers which gripped the armrests of his matching gold throne.

He was balding but that didn't stop him from growing curly, greasy hair down past his shoulders. A silky kimono type of robe with gold thread and a porn star mustache completed his look. 

What made me want to punch the screen in front of me though, were the two naked girls sitting on either side of his chair. They were painfully thin and not even the caked-on makeup could hide the bruises on their limbs or the stoned, sedated look in their eyes. 

To think that was once my Natalie set my blood aflame and broke my heart. 

My hand floated to the grip of my gun and I curled my fingers around the cool, comforting metal as I looked at Antigua, the richest drug lord in all of northern California and the most vile human being on the planet. 

Right then I knew I couldn't make his death quick and merciful. He would suffer just as he made Natalie and those other girls suffered. 

And I would let her joyfully listen to every agonizing sound he made as life left his body.