Blackjack appeared in the doorway, pale and slim as a beam of light in the already sun-drenched room. The thin blade in his right hand sparkled as he stalked toward my dad with it.
I tried to shout behind my gag but the sound was muffled and ineffective.
Still, my dad heard it and turned to look at me just in time to see Blackjack clock him on the head with the butt of the knife.
Ace kicked Dad in the face hard with his motorcycle boot and spat on his prone body. “Tie this motherfucker up.”
My stomach clenched into a hard fist as I watched Blackjack strip him down and tape him up just as he’d done me.
Ace paced the room, running his fingers over his thinning, grease-smeared hair like a man who’d been high every day of his life.
And he ranted.
“Gonna get that fuckin’ prick. Gonna get ’im, gonna get ’im, gonna get ’im and string ’im up like a great old bear and skin ’im alive. Yeah, gonna skin ’im alive and take it slow so he can watch his pretty little bitch die slowly first. He’s gonna suffer, yeah, finally he’s gonna suffer.”
I’d never had any experience with craziness. I’d been sheltered until a few months ago and then what I had been exposed to was violence, sex and greed, but never full-blown whacked-out craziness.
That’s what Ace was.
Pure crazy.
I was so distracted by the two Munfords that I didn’t notice the dark man in the beautifully styled suit come up the stairs and into the doorway until he said my name.
“Louise.”
Javier Ventura stood in the doorframe flanked by two enormous bodyguards. He looked so incongruent in the modest home with two junky bikers before him that at first, I wondered if my mind was playing tricks on me.
He walked toward me on his beautiful hand-tooled Italian leather loafers and pinched his slacks at the thighs so that he could settle into a comfortable crouch before me.
“Such a shame, zorra, to see such a pretty woman in such an ugly place. I wish I could help you out of this situation but alas, we make our beds and we must lie in them. It was your decision to lie in that bed with Zeus Garro and so it was your decision to die for him too, if it came to that.”
I tried to say something but the tape at my mouth muffled it.
Javier sighed and indicated for one of his hovering bodyguards to rip the tape off even though he could have done it easily himself. I was beginning to understand that Javier was the kind of man that did nothing if he could get someone else to do it for him first.
The tape left my mouth stinging as if I suffered third degree burn.
“What is it you were trying to say?” he asked me with mild curiosity, as if we were having one of our dinner party conversations.
“Any bed would be better than one you were in,” I repeated with a beatific smile.
He blinked at me before a lazy smile spread over his dark face like spilled molasses. “Such fire. I can see why you would appeal to a dark man like Garro. Such a burning flame you are, even in the darkest of times.”
He carefully replaced the tape over my mouth, drawing the shape of my lips through the material after he did so.
My father started to rouse as Blackjack finished his ministrations and pushed him up against the wall beside me.
“Ah,” Javier said, turning his attention from me to him. “I’m so happy he learned of you being here, Louise. Mr. Mayor has become a rather large pain in my side.”
My dad blinked open his eyes, saw Javier and immediately began to struggle.
Javier laughed, stood up and went to loom over him as he explained to me, “Did you know your daddy was involved in my plans, sweet Louise? He was so angry with Zeus Garro and the MC for ruining his town and ruining you. It made him so blind and ridiculously easy to manipulate.” He reached out to run a finger down Benjamin’s anger-reddened cheek. “I needed him to set me up with the right people, to help me get all those lovely legal problems out of the way so I could set up shop right here in pretty little coastal Entrance. And he did it so beautifully. I honestly thought I’d keep him around but”—he frowned and shook a finger in his face—“when you were hurt in that fire, he got so…protective. It was almost like he’d started to care for someone other than himself.”
Javier laughed gently, like the idea greatly amused him.
It was obvious he knew my father well.
Benjamin Lafayette cared for no one more than himself.
Dad turned his head to look at me, his eyes the exact same shade of blue as my own. They were filled with worry, fear and loathing. One for me, one for him and one for Javier.
“It’s such a shame but you have to understand from a business perceptive, I can’t have liabilities,” Javier said. “And Benjamin has outlived both his usefulness and his loyalty.”
He smiled kindly at my dad as he crouched down before him and leaned close. Benjamin shook his head frantically and then whimpered when Javier produced a gun and pressed it to his temple.
My breath froze in my lungs, crystallizing into an acute burn.
No.
“It’s nice this way,” Javier mused. “You two can go together.”
My dad stared at me with huge eyes, my eyes, as they filled with tears and spilled over. I struggled to yell under the tape, to wriggle out of my bonds but the tape only cut into my flesh and burned.
No.
I may have hated him, but no one wanted their father to die.
Javier leaned forward to press a chaste kiss to my dad’s forehead and murmured, “Be well on the other side.”
And then he pulled the trigger.
I screamed, long and rough in my throat as I squeezed my eyes shut against the flying blood and brain matter that sprayed across the wall, across me.
Dad’s blood dripped down my face, stuck in my eyelashes. I screamed again, when his dead body slumped over and into my side.
Oh my God.
My thoughts arrested in my head, suspended in shock. This couldn’t be happening. Numb and reeling, I watched with blind eyes as Javier handed the gun to one of his lackeys then turned to smile blandly at me, grab my bloodied face in his hands and press a gentle kiss to my duct-taped mouth.
“I won’t see you again, zorra, as I promised these gentlemen they could kill you for sport, but I hope you know that I enjoyed our time together immensely. You were a worthy player.”
I blinked at him because all I had left was minimal body functions.
My mind was on lockdown.
There was no dead Dad pressed to my shoulder.
None of his blood dripping from my chin to my shoulder.
No more death.
No more anything.
I blinked and I breathed and I did not think.
Javier spoke with Ace and Blackjack then left with his lackeys.
Ace ranted some more about retribution, but Blackjack was surprisingly quiet, doing a few lines of coke off the windowsill then retreating to the corner. There were other bikers from the Nightstalkers in the house. They came into the room sometimes to check in with Ace, knives in their boots and guns tucked into pockets and waistbands.
The sun sank so low in the sky that long shadows shaped like ghouls floated through the room.
I didn’t know what they were waiting for, why they’d even taken me, and obviously, Ace was growing impatient because at one point, he came to kneel before me and poked at my forehead.
“You said she was pretty,” Ace accused as he kept poking me. “She looks like a dumb Barbie to me. Look, no life in her at all. Probably lies there while Garro plows ’er and pretends she likes it.”