Chapter Eleven
Chase
“Don’t come out unless you hear me say the word unicorn,” I said to her before closing the door.
“What?” she asked.
“Listen to me. No matter what you hear, no matter what! You don’t open that door unless you hear me say the word unicorn. Do you understand, Jordan?”
“I understand,” Jordan said.
I shut the safe room door and put the shelf back in front of it. If Jose Escabar had decided to come after me for his book, I was going to make sure that Jordan didn’t get hurt and that she would at least have the book to show the police.
Quickly, I made my way out to the front door, but just as I was about to open it, there was a loud bang of a gun. The door blew open.
I ducked down to the ground and looked up to see the lock had been shot off my door and three men pushed their way into the house. It was Marco and two other guys. They didn’t look like they had come for a regular visit.
Marco stayed in the back and let the two other men come and pick me up off of the ground. They grabbed my arms firmly and held onto me so hard that I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore.
“Chase, you took something from Jose, and I need to get that back,” Marco said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Chase. Jose sent these two to get that book and me to make sure it gets done. We will do whatever we need to in order to get the book.”
I was afraid. More afraid than I could ever imagine being. Although Marco and I were friends from high school, I knew he would do whatever it was that Jose told him to. The problem was, I didn’t think that handing over the book at that point was going to benefit me in any way.
Right after I took the book, I knew I shouldn’t have. There was no assurance I could keep myself or my family safe with that book. It was an impulsive decision that I should have thought through much longer than I did.
But it was too late now. I had the book, and I wasn’t about to give it up. If Jose and his goons knew I had indeed taken it, there would be nothing to stop them from killing me and just going after my father for the money I owed. Or, they might kill me and forget about the money owed, just be done with me and the whole mess.
No! I can’t do it!
The only way I could keep myself and my family safe was to keep the book and use it when I needed to. But I knew that meant I would have to try and convince Marco and his goons that someone else had actually taken the book.
“Marco, you know me. I wouldn’t do something that stupid.”
He looked at me and thought about my words. I knew he didn’t think I would be stupid enough to take such an important item. But yet, it was missing and I had been in the house right around that time. I had to put someone else in the line of fire. It was a horrible thing to do and I knew it, but my own life was in danger.
“You were at the house, Chase,” Marco said.
“You can’t tell me I was the only one at the house the last couple of days. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. What kind of book is it? I’ll buy him a new one if that will make him happy. There was a guy leaving the house when I got there. Did you check with him?”
One of the thugs that had my arm twisted it up behind me while the other led the way into my room. They did not mess around, and I knew it was going to be difficult to get out of the situation alive. The look Marco had in his eyes did not leave me feeling very confident in my future.
“He’s got to have a safe around here. That’s where he put it,” thug number two said.
While thug number one looked through my room and tore it apart, Marco came close to me and whispered in my ear.
“Chase, if you have his book you need to hand it over now. Jose will kill you if he finds out you took it.”
“Marco, I didn’t take it.”
I used all the acting skills I could come up with, and I looked him straight in the eyes. I didn’t want him to think I was lying to him. If he thought about another person who could have taken it, that was my only option.
“No one else had to see Jose in the last two days?” I asked.
“Jose noticed it missing after you left.”
“That doesn’t mean I took it. Who else was there that day? Any one of them could have been the one who actually took it! Marco, you know me. You know I wouldn’t do something like that.”
He looked at me, then at the thug behind me that held my arm. There was a brief moment where I thought Marco might let me go. I knew I had put a slight amount of doubt into his mind about me taking the book. But apparently, that didn’t matter all that much.
“Break it,” Marco said to the guy.
“No. Wait. No,” I said as I looked desperately at Marco.
“Do you have it or not?” he asked.
“Marco, seriously, I don’t have it.”
“Hey, I have something here,” the thug that was destroying my room said from my closet. “It looks like a safe.”
When we walked over to my closet, the shelf had been pulled away from the wall and the door to my safe room was looking back at me. I felt the fear of knowing Jordan was inside there. I couldn’t open the door. I couldn’t put her at risk. And, I certainly couldn’t hand over the black book at this point.
“Open the door, Chase,” Marco said as he pushed me into the closet.
“I don’t even use this thing. I can’t open it.”
Marco looked at me and then at the two thugs. I could tell they quickly came to the consensus that I was lying to them.
“Open the door!” Marco demanded.
One of the thugs thrust his fist into my abdomen, and I felt the shooting pain as it went through my whole body. It was instantly hard for me to breathe, and I suspected his fist had broken one of my ribs. I wasn’t use to all the punching that was going on against my body in the previous days. It wasn’t my cup of tea, and I couldn’t wait to get back to my normal life where no one wanted to hurt me.
I lay on the ground in front of the door and gasped for air. The pain was horrendous until I felt the even worse pain of the man’s shoe kicking me in the exact same area. I closed my eyes as the pain shot through me, and I pictured myself in some sort of movie. Hopefully, my movie would end better than it was going so far.
If my ribs had not been broken from the punch, they were definitely broken from his kick. I gasped for air and couldn’t seem to get enough breath at all. Even trying to pull a tiny bit of air into my lungs hurt.
One of the men held up some of Jordan’s clothes from the other room and stood in the doorway to my closet. My heart sank, but there was no way I was opening the door.
“He’s got a lady in there,” the thug said.
“Chase, whoever it is, we don’t care. Just open the door so we can search the safe.”
“Seriously, that’s just clothes some girl left here. She sleeps over sometimes and has her stuff here. I don’t know how to get into the safe.”
Again, I tried to be as convincing as possible. But my voice shook as the pain of the moment overwhelmed me. I couldn’t breathe. With each breath I took, I felt more and more like I was going to pass out.
I looked up at Marco and tried my best to look him in the eyes. Something had changed in him when he thought I was lying to him, though. He didn’t look at me as the friends we use to be. Instead, he looked at me like a man he wanted to destroy in order to save himself.
Perhaps, Jose thought that Marco had stolen the notebook?
If that was the case, then Marco was desperate to find the person who really took it. He probably didn’t care at all what he had to do to me or anyone else if it meant that he wouldn’t be killed by Jose.
I understood his dilemma. It was exactly the same reason that I had stolen the book in the first place. Protecting ourselves and our families was far more important than anyone else. I understood entirely, but I hoped he also did when I wouldn’t tell him any more information.
“Chase, you know we will come back and kill you if we find out you have the notebook,” Marco said as he stood over me.
“Yes, I know. Don’t you think I would have given it to you by now if I had it?”
“I don’t know if you have it or not. I’m just warning you that it will not end well if it turns out you have it, and I walked away from you.”
I knew very well that things were not going to end well for me if I didn’t come up with a better plan. Marco and Jose were certainly not going to settle for me just saying that I didn’t have the book. Sooner or later, they were going to start torturing me in order to get it from me. They were going to torture anyone and everyone who could possibly have come in contact with that book.
Marco looked so torn between who he wanted to be and who he needed to be at that moment. I never thought working for Escabar had been a choice he wanted to make; it was the first time I realized I was right. Marco looked scared. His face showed more fear than I had ever seen from him. He wasn’t just following some orders from Jose; Marco was stuck in his job and probably had no way of getting out.
Once Jose decided that he liked Marco, Marco was stuck working for him for the rest of his life. I hadn’t heard of anyone who ever stopped working for Jose Escabar. They either worked for him forever or they ended up having some sort of freak “accident.”
Marco didn’t like working for Jose any more than I liked borrowing money from him. But sometimes, circumstances took control of our lives and we had to do things we didn’t want to do. I knew if push came to shove, Marco would take me out to save himself. I just hoped things wouldn’t come to that.
Luckily, Marco and his two thugs finally left, and I closed my eyes for a minute as I tried to catch my breath.
My body was sweaty, and I couldn’t breathe. I also couldn’t get myself to move and get up off of the ground. I wanted to get myself pulled together before I opened the safe and had to talk to Jordan.
“Chase,” I heard her say from the safe room.
I took a couple deep breaths and tried to pull myself up so I could open the door. I knew I couldn’t tell her the whole story. She would run as fast as she could away from me. No woman would want to be with a man who had gotten himself into the kind of trouble I was in. I needed to just tell her as little as possible.
It was weird how connected to Jordan I already felt. I liked her a lot, and I didn’t want her to have to deal with all this stuff. I was going to have to keep the details of everything to myself if I wanted to keep trying to work on things with her.
She was probably so terrified in that safe during the attack. The gunshots at the front door. The yelling. Me screaming in pain as I had been kicked.
I had to figure out a way to explain things to her without freaking her out. It was going to be pretty hard, though, especially considering I couldn’t even move at that moment.
She hadn’t gotten herself into this mess on purpose. I knew she wasn’t the kind of girl who hung around thugs like these guys. It was more than she would want. I bet she was in the safe room crying and rocking in the corner. I felt so bad, yet I had to open the door and deal with her sadness. I had to wrap my arms around her and try to pretend like everything was fine and I wasn’t hurt at all.
Slowly, I opened the door and was prepared to find her crying in the corner. But instead, as I opened the door, about to say the word unicorn, Jordan swung at me and slapped me across the face. Then, she walked right past me to her room and started to pack her things up.
“Shit, Jordan. Why did you do that?” I said as I hobbled behind her.
“You took that man's book and now he wants it back. Why wouldn’t you give it to him?”
“It’s a long story, Jordan. It’s not as simple as it sounds.”
“You were willing to risk my life over some black book?”
“No. Not at all, that was why I had you go into the safe room. I was protecting you.”
She didn’t seem impressed at all by my statement that I was trying to protect her. Instead, she continued to pack her things into her suitcase.
“What were you protecting me from, Chase?”
I leaned up against the doorway and tried to decide how I should answer her question. I couldn’t exactly tell her the whole story; surely, she would leave me, then. But how much of the story could I tell her and have her still stay?
“I…uh…”
“Forget it. If you’re just going to make something up, I don’t want to hear it,” she said as she put her suitcase on the ground and started toward the door.
I wanted to follow her, but my legs were getting weak and I couldn’t get a breath in. I felt the sweat pouring from my face, and the room started to spin around more than I could handle. I tried to yell out for her, but the pain was so sharp and stabbing that I couldn’t catch my breath.
Slowly, I held onto the wall and made my way to the front room where I saw Jordan looking at the bullet holes in the front door.
I tried to talk, but the words just wouldn’t come. The room was spinning, and I finally closed my eyes to avoid getting sick from the dizziness.
I felt myself falling. It seemed like some sort of dream or nightmare, and I couldn’t feel anything anymore.