Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
I looked at him with a hurt and betrayed look on my face. This guy had been assigned by Tommy to keep me safe. It was a joke, of course, because I hadn’t been safe since I’d been given to Tommy, but this whole thing had just been so ugly and so, so confusing.
From the other morning when Tommy had been tender with me to the incident with his sister and seeing her babies in the car, to running, calling my father, Tommy finding me and being so angry, and then all of this.
I wanted…I didn’t know what I wanted. I felt like I was on the verge of a complete breakdown.
“Let’s go,” Earl said.
I looked at him beseechingly.
“You’re going home.”
Relief flooded through me. Home?
“To Tommy,” he clarified.
He must’ve seen the look of hope on my face. I knew my expression dropped. Was home with him? I hated what he’d put me through so far, but I hated myself, too, because my actions, my running away had probably made it easy for Earl to kidnap me.
As we headed for the front door, I saw Juan Carlos again. He was in a robe, smoking a cigar. He walked up to us and nodded at Earl. “You hand her off to Ricky and his crew and stay. We don’t want the Ferrano boys to see you. Athena, your fiancé has been told if he ever gets tired of you to send you back to me.” He winked. I just stared at him blankly.
Earl walked me outside and put me in the back of an old cargo van. I sat on the dirty, carpeted floor and a different, tall Mexican guy tied my hands and feet and put duct tape over my mouth.
“I’m sorry. Good luck,” Earl said softly to me and then shut the van doors.
This bad guy had a guilty conscience. I was grateful that he’d at least stopped that filthy pig from finishing with me but he’d been the one who helped bring me here.
Two guys sat in the back with me with gun holsters on them and there were two in the front. The only one I recognized was the slim Black guy who’d done the first aid on Earl’s shoulder. I sat and trembled. I couldn’t make my body stop.
One of the guys answered a phone, spoke in Spanish, then looked back and said, “Change of plans. You been sold, bitch!” Then he said something else in Spanish and they all started laughing hysterically.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!
Was Earl lying, or had someone double-crossed someone? Where was I going? What would happen to me?
The van drove for what felt like a long time, maybe an hour, but I don’t know if I had a realistic concept of time, only the concept of horror. I felt like I was rapidly falling apart at the seams, stitch by stitch, and there may not be much thread left.
Abruptly, the van screeched to a halt and the two in the front got out. The two in the back sat and kept their gazes focused on me. A long time seemed to pass when finally, the back door opened and I was yanked out, dropped carelessly on the road, and then the men jumped back into the van and squealed away.
For at least a minute or two I just lay there in the dust, in the dark, totally freaking out, immobile because I was still bound and gagged. Then I saw headlights coming at me, heard brakes squeal, and heard multiple sets of feet running. I squinted at the high beams in my face.
Oh no, what next? Who had I gotten sold to?
I was scooped up into the air in strong arms. I knew that scent. It was leather, it was musk, a bit of sweat, some stale coffee, but it was Tommy. When it hit me, at that second it was the best scent I’d ever smelled in my life.
My heart leapt forward with jubilation but then at the same instant I felt fear prickle like spikes through my scalp. How mad was he going to be at me for this?
And then I was in the back seat of a car; I was on his lap and he was breathing hard, getting my hands untied, getting my feet untied, and then he got the tape off my mouth. It was dark and we weren’t alone in the car, which was now speeding away. There were three heads in the front bench seat and just us in the back.
I felt barely more than catatonic. I had my bottom lip in my mouth, reeling from the sting of the tape being pulled off. My feet and hands were numb from having been tied too long and too tight.
“Are you hurt?” he breathed, examining me in the near darkness of the car with just the tiny interior light on. I shook my head no but at the sight of his eyes, the concern on his face, the reality of where I was and what I was in the middle of, a giant sob tore out of me.