30
I jolt upright in bed when a shrilling, angry scream rips through the house. It’s mirrored by lightning strikes, flashes of silver illuminating the room.
“Agh,” I hiss, grabbing my stomach as it cramps under the sudden movement. I gaze through puffy, wary eyes, wondering what the hell is going on, but I can’t quite get my bearings at first.
Rain hammers at the balcony doors, sounding over the low, rumbling thunder. I think it’s nighttime which is odd because the last I remember, Charlie and I were making love far past dawn—his apology for abandoning me the past week and equally his reward for opening up to him about my life with Maksim. He then woke me with breakfast. We made love again. I took a bath at sunrise, and then we watched a movie. Did I fall asleep?
Turning my head in every direction, I take note that the balcony curtains are open, but it’s still dark in the bedroom. Definitely nighttime.
I heard someone scream.
My eyes bulge like saucers, and my heart goes like a jackhammer, panic setting in.
Maybe it was the lightning? Or maybe I was dreaming? I could have been dreaming.
Charlie.
On instinct, I reach out for him in bed, unexplainably uneasy, though I can’t feel his warmth in the crumpled sheets. There’s a scrap of paper on his pillow. I flick on a side lamp and lift the paper to my eyes, squinting to read the handwritten note.
I had to go to work, baby, but I’ll be back when I can. Don’t worry. Everything is okay.
I miss you already, Charlie. X
He’s gone to work?
My eyes dart to the electric clock on the bedside cabinet, blinking that it’s zero two hundred hours. I’ve slept a whole day away, but that isn’t what’s making me feel...I can’t put my finger on it...something feels off. Something feels wrong.
I grab my mobile from the nightstand to call Charlie, to make sure he’s okay, but I notice there are notifications on my Dark Web profile. It’s a string of messages from Oliver—James’ old associate. He’s informing me there’s been a week-long terrorist attack on France, mass bombings and bloody shootouts, wiping out an entire human trafficking organization: the Albanians.
James. The first thing I think about is my brother, and what’s possibly happened to him. If the Albanians are gone, then where the hell is he?
Oliver has sent a link to a video that’s been floating around The Dark Web. Frowning, I click on the link, and a fuzzy image focuses to a visual of a Los Zetas hidden behind a black mask. I know it’s a Los Zetas by the combat attire he’s wearing: the red Zs printed on the chest of his bulletproof vest. He talks of successfully punishing those who have wronged his leader in a robotic voice-over, and how their syndicate has seized the Albanian affairs. Tonight, their last enemy will die a painful, slow death. That’s the last thing he says before saluting a strange symbol, and the screen switches back to a fuzzy visual.
Charlie said exactly those words to me when he first saw the needle marks on my arms: “Whoever did this will die a painful, slow death.”
What the fuck is happening?
“Blaire,” Luna’s voice whispers over the storm outside as she clicks open Charlie’s bedroom door to let herself in, “Blaire, you have to help me.”
Help her?
Sparking with panic, I drop my mobile and lunge across the bed, digging into Charlie’s side cabinet drawer for a gun. I pull one out, snap in a magazine, and aim past Luna.
“Whoa!” she squeaks, cringing in her shimmery, red robe. “Don’t shoot! Please, don’t shoot!”
I clasp the heavy gun in both hands, finger hovering on the trigger. My eyes scan past Luna for signs of danger as I know she would never enter Charlie’s room without reason.
Her shadow streaks up the buffed floors and up the walls, emphasized by the light on my nightstand.
One shadow.
One person.
Just Luna.
“Please don’t shoot!” she cries, lifting one leg in an act of protection. “Please, please don’t shoot!”
“What’s going on?” I croak to clear my throat, lowering the heavy gun on the bed. “Are you hurt or something? Where is Char—”
“No,” she wheezes, gripping her slender neck. “I-I’m fine.”
My features coil with confusion, and then I raise my eyebrows as she settles on the bed, causing the mattress to dip near my feet. “I’m not hurt,” she wheezes again, patting her chest. “I-I’m fine.”
“Are you lost, then?” I ask, blinking at her like she’s grown a second head.
I don’t get a reply.
I study her body language, how she’s hunched over, shivering. Water is dripping off the ends of her dark hair onto the bedspread, her nose is a plush shade of pink, and the silky material of her robe clings to her pimpled body.
“You’ve been outside in the rain?” I ask. “It’s two in the morning...what’s happened, Luna?”
Does she know what the Los Zetas have been doing? Has trouble made it back to the house?
“Señor Charlie is at the guardhouse”—she cups her mouth to hold back a heave, and I’m half expecting her to say he’s dead by the way she’s acting—“he’s preparing to torture...”
Hackles stab the back of my neck while my eyes widen in the shadows, waiting on her to elaborate.
“It’s going to be bloody,” she whispers word for word, “so, so bloody.” She rambles in her own language, speaking to herself in a state of numb shock.
“Radi boga,” I gasp, for God’s sake, desperate to know what she knows, “spit it out, will you? Why are you so anxious?”
“I’m sorry,” she suddenly weeps in her hand, shoulders hiccupping. “I need your help. It’s Andres—”
Andres?
Fuck, trouble has reached the house.
My attention snaps into focus a second time, and I dash out of bed in one of Charlie’s baggy t-shirts. I struggle to pull on my joggers with the gun in hand, knowing if Charlie isn’t here, it’s my job to make sure his family is safe. I follow protocol, to extract information before acting. I ask for Andres’ location, if he’s hurt, and how many enemies there are.
“No, no!” Luna tenses her fists over her stomach, stressing her frustration. “Andres is okay! It’s just...”
I wait, and wait, and wait, and my heart is roaring. I watch her with intense observation, but she doesn’t elaborate on our danger.
“Andres, por favor,” She gasps, still muttering to herself. “I need your help, Blaire, so badly.”
“For what? Iisus Khristos, lady!” I slap her face hard enough to turn her head, causing a loud wa-tch! to cut through the room. “Pull yourself together, dammit, and tell me what the hell is going on! Where is Andres?”
She curves a trembling hand around her reddening cheek, staring deadpan at the floor, at her naked feet. “He-he’s at the guardhouse, too, with Nic and Charlie.”
“Okay...so, why are you in such a state?”
“They’re torturing that man who had your brother.”
My heart plummets, and I’m suddenly so light someone could knock me over with a feather.
“It’s going to be so bloody. Andres is going to lose his mind again!”
“Robert?” I say in a dry murmur, gaping at her. I gulp to wet my heavy tongue but nearly swallow it down. “Do you mean, Robert, the Albanian?”
Luna nods, tiny robotic movements. “Yes. I mean, Robert, the Albanian.”
The second she confirms my suspicions, I spiral in awed panic. I crouch at her feet with my head arched back, eyes locked on her unusually white face, and my mind rushes with questions that I say without thinking, at what feels like a million miles per hour. “Is James there? A tall, slender guy with dark red, almost brownish hair—did you see him, Luna? Or did anyone mention a James or Blaire’s brother? Is he harmed? Do you know if he’s alive?” I shake Luna half to death, demanding answers. “For crying out loud, talk to me!”
She shakes her head, lifting her lashy, watery brown eyes to mine. “You don’t understand, cariño. Your brother and that man, Robert, have been on Los Zetas lockdown for just over a week now. Charlie hid the fact from you.”
———
While thunder crackles through the night, Luna explains what’s been happening, how Charlie has had Robert and my brother captive for over a week.
“The morning we had coffee, when I first met you,” she says, sniffing back her tears, “I overheard Andres tell one of the men it was Robert who attacked the house. He brought your brother as collateral; threatened to shoot him on the spot if Charlie didn’t give back his daughters. But the Los Zetas had him outnumbered—that Albanian cabrón didn’t stand a chance against Charlie’s arsenal.”
She doesn’t stop talking for a single breath, divulging every fact, and I don’t interrupt her. The gun weighing heavy in my hand, I stare down on her with reserved anger. I soak up every word she says, absorbing every shred of information before I act.
“Robert attacked in a stupid panic,” she waffles on, shrugging with her hands, “but he knew it was now or never to bargain for his daughters. You see, Blaire, he was warned by someone that the Los Zetas had found violating footage of you in one of his daughter’s dorms in France, and he knew Charlie was going to go wild.”
I take note that Charlie lied to me. I asked if the footage was of me—because I saw the way Rico looked at me when he told us they’d found violating footage—and Charlie said no.
He must have had his reasons. Charlie wouldn’t lie to me over something petty. He stressed to me that if we’re going to work, we have to trust each other. And I do trust him—I think.
Luna stoops at the shoulders with her face in cupped hands, shaking and falling apart with sobs. “I don’t know what the footage shows, exactly—Charlie won’t discuss it with anyone—but I know it’s dark, Blaire. Really, really dark. Andres and Nic were discussing what it could be in the lounge when they thought I was napping, when you went to Dover. And, you know why you went to Dover, right?”
I don’t reply. I knew we were collecting a package of some sort—Charlie told me before we left the house. He also told me he was sending a bomb across the English Channel, after the explosion went off in the Dover Port area.
“You went to Dover to deliver a bomb,” Luna confirms. “It was supposed to cross the English Channel to France, to kill an entire village of Albanians nested there. And Charlie had to collect the laptop containing the violating footage, too, because it couldn’t be emailed...Nic said the software was embedded or something.”
I blink away from her, remembering the dimensions of the package we collected. It was laptop sized.
Everything makes sense now. All the clues were there, I just didn’t notice.
“When you came back from Dover, after Dr. Shyam checked you over,” Luna snivels, “Charlie must’ve watched the footage because he went crazy saying Robert and his entire family will pay. You weren’t there—you were in bed, asleep.” A cold shiver chases down her spine, and she shakily grabs her throat. “Los Zetas brought a man here to the house, to the office, and his head was stabbed in needles—he could barely walk, covered in blood and gore! Then you came down after your nap and argued with Charlie, and he went missing for a week, you remember?”
“James,” I gulp his name, trying to stay on point because she’s rambling. “How do you know Charlie has got James?”
“The day I met you—when Robert attacked the house—I saw him from my bedroom window,” she confesses, and my eyes widen. “He looks like you, though without freckles, and he’s a lot taller... Once Robert’s men were dead, and once Robert was under Los Zetas arrest, James was cuffed and taken away”—she points out on the word away—“they were going to kill Robert that day, too, but Nic called another meeting; asked Charlie what he thought about eradicating the Albanians.”
“Eradicating them?” I whisper before I realize, digesting things.
She shrugs, as if she could do nothing to stop what was happening. “Nic wants to abandon the idea of ever returning to Mexico, and he wants to take over the Albanian syndicate here in Europe. You see, Blaire, his life in Mexico is strained because of his wife, Mariana. He’s not allowed to divorce her and move on with his new toy,” she practically spits toy. “It’s Charlie’s number one rule when it comes to family: no divorce.”
“The terror attacks on France,” I say to stray away from her consistent rambling, and she seems to understand where my thoughts are going.
She explains that Charlie agreed to Nic’s idea to eradicate the Albanians, and ever since, they’ve been torturing Robert for information, locations, and Albanian secrets. “They’ve been threatening to do horrible things to his daughters should he withhold any intelligence.” Her voice sharpens, as she lists the many ways they were threatening to hurt the girls. “The Albanians are all dead now—I mean, you’ve obviously heard the news? So now, Charlie is ready to kill Robert—that’s what he’s doing right now! Right this very moment!”
I want to be glad Robert is going to die a brutal, measured death for what he did to me, but I can barely process a thought on what’s happening let alone bask in gratification and relief.
“Why has Charlie kept James locked up?”
“He was highly addicted to heroin,” Luna says without remorse, and my heart sinks to the deepest depths of me. “Charlie locked him up to get him clean—or, so I assume.”
I gawk at her, disturbed, mentally vacant for a second. Of course James was hooked on heroin. Why didn’t I guess? The Arabs drugged me to subdue me, so why wouldn’t they subdue James in the same fashion? And Charlie requested two weeks of no questions asked, the same amount of time it takes to flush heroin out of one’s system.
I should have realized. He kept promising James was okay, and he always sounded so certain.
The memory of my own withdrawals flood tsunami high: the paranoia, cold sweats, sneezes, angry outbursts, puking, burning diarrhea... I can’t handle the idea that James has suffered through the same. He’s been through enough. Ten years of rape and hidings, and now this?
And it hasn’t been two weeks yet... I calculate timeframes in my mind from the coffee morning, certain it’s been eight days. That means James is possibly still withdrawing.
“He’s been spouting some crazy stuff about being in love with you,” Luna says, referring to James, “swearing he’s going to take you far, far away from Charlie. I snuck a peak at the live CCTV footage on Andres’ cell phone, of James locked up withdrawing, going insane about you. My, my, your brother really is insane! He said, by the time I’m done, Decena, you and Blaire will be finished.” She mimics James deep Russian voice, like this is a huge fucking joke. “If you kill me, she will find out, and she will leave you. If you free me, I will beg her to come with me, and she will leave you. If you keep me locked up, she will find out, and guess what, Charlie Decena? She. Will. Still. Leave. You. His iniquity knows no bounds,” she says. “He didn’t care that Charlie had a twenty-four hour medical team assisting him during the withdrawals. He didn’t care that Charlie had been trying to help him recover.”
“Who gives a fuck about what he’s been saying?” I snort at her, at her mighty high morals. “How is this even relevant, Luna?”
“You-you must understand Charlie’s dilemma”—she cuddles herself, creating a false state of safety in her own arms—“you must understand that he has no other choice...”
“What?” I say, face screwing tight with confusion. “Understand what?”
“Charlie is going to kill James,” she declares, and her eyes wander off across the room. “He won’t allow James to take you a second time, so he’s going to kill him tonight and make it look like Robert did it.”
My world narrows, hairs all over my body rising. She’s still speaking, but I don’t hear a word she says. I lower onto the bed at her side, trying to convince myself that she’s either lying or maybe she’s got it wrong. Charlie wouldn’t kill James. He wouldn’t! He knows how James tried to protect me from Maksim, and he’s been looking for him... He swore he’d get him back for me alive and well. And why the hell would he waste resources trying to get him off heroin, just to kill him?
No. I won’t believe this until I hear facts. I need to know who told her. I ask who told her, demanding information right fucking now. Her hesitation holds my full, undying attention. I stare at her from the side, watching her squirm. “How. Do. You. Know, Luna?” I hiss every word. “Who told you Charlie is going to kill James and make it look like Robert did?”
“I can’t,” she says, with her eyes flittering about all over the place, avoiding mine, “I can’t tell you how I know.”
I think she’s lying, as no matter how hard I scrutinize her, she just can’t seem to look at me.
I stare onward, a part of me wanting to climb back into bed and wait for Charlie to come back, so I can ask him myself. But how can I risk ignoring my gut instinct screaming at me to get James out of here? My ignorance could cost James his life.
“Why did you need my help?” It’s the next logical question. She’s disclosed many secrets but hasn’t accentuated why.
“Tonight, they’re murdering that man, Robert.” She twists at the waist to face me, dashing tears from her cheeks. “They’re going to do it slowly,” she says, “and Andres has been ordered to participate.” She begs me to ask Charlie to spare Andres being there, tugging on my arm to emphasize her desperation. “He’s an ex-drug addict, Blaire. He cannot stomach the guilt of murder. Not like this! It’ll set him back ten steps—he’ll use again. My children and I can’t go through that again!”
I laugh with sarcasm, hardly believing her request. “So, my brother is rotting in a Los Zetas’ jail, mere moments from his death—as you claim—and you want me to go ask Charlie to spare Andres’ presence while they murder a man I want to murder myself? Have I got that right?”
She glances away in what could be mistaken for mild shame. “I should have told you that your brother was here. I know that now.”
“And yet, you didn’t?” I scoff in disgust, snatching her hands off my arm. I stand from the bed, leveling my emotions. I can’t afford emotions right now. Emotions get people killed.
James is the target. Find him, free him, and help him run.
Target one and two...it hits me then, like lightning. Robert and James were target one and two.
“Blaire, please,” Luna whimpers, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about your brother sooner, cariño. You must believe me! You have to help me!”
“Where is James?”
“The guardhouse cells.” She sniffs. “Why?”
“Where are the guardhouse cells?” I demand to know, and she gapes at me, her dark, water-glazed eyes scorching in fear. “Where is the access, Luna?” I bark through clenched teeth, repeating myself more times than I care too.
“You’re not going to ask Charlie to spare Andres’ presence tonight?”
I hunch to her, glaring, and she sinks into her shoulders. “I couldn’t give two fucks about Andres right now,” I growl. “Where are the guardhouse cells? I suggest you tell me before I paint this house in your blood.” I click back the hammer on my gun and press the barrel to her temple, making her cringe and cry with desperation. “How about I count down for you, Luna, yes? Five...four...three...two...”
“It’s in the fields!” she squeals before I get to one, and the exact location pours out of her.
I nod, satisfied by her answer, and rummage through Charlie’s bedside drawer for a silencer to my gun.
“Los Zetas guards are all over the cells!” she sobs, tears streaming down her face. “You won’t get past them!”
I glare at her, kicking the drawer shut. “I don’t need to get past them if they’re dead.”