Unbound; The Dominator III Read online

  After Lisa’s truth, I pondered going back, so I could be alone for a bit, but Dare drove us to our childhood home before I had a chance to say otherwise and Luciana followed me inside and we went right to my bedroom.

  We sat on the bed and stared at one another. In near unison, we both threw ourselves back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. And then Luc reached onto my nightstand and said, “This color is fucking awesome.”

  I watched her lift the metallic coral-colored nail polish. She passed it to me. I sat up and painted the color right over her French manicured nails. And then I stripped my pale purple polish off while hers dried and then she painted my nails. We were both uncharacteristically quiet. No, not just quiet, absolutely speechless.

  Me and my sister were close. We always had all kinds to say but we knew each other well and could also sit in absolute quiet while being completely in sync with one another’s thoughts.

  While I blew on my nails, she put on Netflix and we vegged out in there, not talking, under the blankets, watching a few minutes of show after show until Luc would lose patience and switch it, until finally as it got dark she said she had to go home. We hugged it out. She started trembling, but didn’t cry. Neither of us said another word other than, “Talk to you later”.

  When she left, I got my kids from Sarah, who was also uncharacteristically quiet, obviously getting the scoop from someone. I bathed the boys and read bedtime stories and listened to my oldest pray to God to take care of Daddy and say Hello and then I climbed back into bed and immediately slept.

  I dreamt about Jim, about my father, and saw horrible things that night with both Angel and Lisa being whipped bloody by my father in that red room of pain from the Fifty Shades movies.

  ***

  Now, days later, I hadn’t seen Lisa. She’d stayed in her room and I’d mostly stayed in mine or the boys’.

  I’d leaned on Sarah for help with the boys, even more than usual, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was like a mother to me, much more than my own mother, who was useless.

  My mother had sent a card and flowers when she heard about my husband, my father. But she didn’t come. She called but we had nothing to say to one another. I knew her husband was dying, too. And she wouldn’t have helped me even if she had flown here for me and my siblings. She was practically a stranger.

  She was probably relieved Pop was gone. He was a monster to her, her worst nightmare. She didn’t talk about it, not ever, but you saw it in her eyes whenever their paths had to cross after their split.

  She’d tried to be a mother right after their split, but saw us once a year until we were sixteen and seventeen. And then it was every other year for the next few years. I hadn’t seen her since the day Luc married Ed. She’d come to both of our weddings but hadn’t met any of her grandkids. She missed Dare’s wedding.

  What I needed was Sarah right now, anyways, because my boys who were usually angels had both been out of sorts, likely picking up on my mood, so they were both cranky and bickering over toys, skipping naps, napping at the wrong time so not going to bed on time, and thus making my currently complicated life more complicated.

  After dropping them at daycare, which was good because it was routine for them, I was stopped at a light, lost in thought about Leese, thinking about what she must have endured, and thinking that if Jim were here, he’d tell me to talk to her, tell her I loved her. Because I did.

  Lisa was my best friend and yeah, I’d been shocked, but she’d be there for me no matter what. And she’d only done what she had to do all this time. And I had left her to wonder if she had a place in my life for too many days.

  I was missing Jim a lot today, thinking I definitely needed to stop by my house after I helped at the restaurant, just to walk through, go into the master bedroom closet and bury my nose in a row of his suits, see if I could catch a whiff of his scent.

  I missed the way he smelled so much. I missed his lips. His hands, which would hold me and touch me. I missed the way he made the boys giggle. How he’d bite my ass cheek to get me out of bed in the morning so playfully.

  I was having that thought, stopped at a pedestrian crosswalk that had a little old lady ambling across the road with a buggy of groceries, when a teenage girl started hammering her fists on my front passenger window of my SUV screaming, “HELP!” at me with a frantic look on her face.

  She should win an Oscar for that performance; it was that convincing that I hit the button to make the window roll down.

  “Let me in! Please, please! He’s after me!”

  I was about to hit the unlock button to let her in but she reached inside the window and grabbed the button and pulled it up and then opened the door. She did this lightning fast. And then a man squeezed by her and jumped into my passenger seat. He put the barrel of a gun in my ribs and ordered me to drive down the side street after the intersection, pointing the direction he wanted me to take. The girl had already backed away. He must’ve paid her to do that.

  Shit.

  I’d never seen him before. He was about in his late thirties, dark complexion, some sort of European, and the look he gave me told me he meant business.

  My father may have tried to shelter me and Luc, for the most part, but we weren’t stupid. And things were said, at times, designed to give us the skills to survive in this world. Little lessons, little tests. And if we failed, he’d lecture us and tell us how we should have behaved. I still, to this day, heard his voice when I fucked up and it told me the way whatever I’d fucked up should’ve been done.

  “Contessa, how should you have handled that, my precious?”

  We always knew we were in the midst of some dangerous people, people who would take a bullet for us because they were paid to protect us. We also knew that when they had a job, they frequently carried that job out with a gun at the ready and they didn’t hesitate to use it.

  I’d been to more than a few funerals in my life for employees of my father who’d died in the line of duty carrying out orders by Pop or one of my brothers. Heck, I was a widow because my husband died in that line of duty.

  “Pull over. There.” He gestured with his gun towards the curb.

  I wasn’t about to test this guy’s level of seriousness about his job. My phone started to ring from my console and I saw it was Nino.

  My captor took my phone and threw it out the window and then when I stopped the car, on his orders, he leaned over and hit the button to unlock all the locks. I heard the back door of my SUV open and then close as someone got in. The guy in front undid my seatbelt and not-very-gently tossed me into my own back seat where another guy, in a balaclava, caught me and then put a balaclava over my head backwards so that I couldn’t use the eye holes. And then my hands and feet were taped.

  And all I could think about wasn’t regarding my safety or where they’d take me or what they’d do to me. My brain was frozen, mid-thought, on my smashed cell phone, out in the street, and the fact that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d unloaded the pictures on my cell. How many pictures of my husband, the boys’ father, were on there that I hadn’t saved, that they’d never get to see?

  Tommy

  I got to Pop’s house, which it would always be known as, and when I got inside, Tia was sitting in the living room with Sarah, Luc, Lisa and the kids. The kids were on the floor playing with Marley. Sarah had baby Nicky in her arms.

  Tia rushed to me. The dog did, too. So, Serena and Katrina also threw their arms around my legs and gave me hugs with squealing laughter. The dog started jumping up against my legs.

  I patted their heads and clipped, “Marley sit.”

  I lifted Tia off her feet and buried my nose into her hair. I was worried sick about Contessa and relieved that Tia and Luc were all here safe.

  “Hey,” she whispered against my lips.

  “Hey.”

  “What’s happening? Where’s Tess?”

  I put her on her feet and looked to the room, “Sarah, get the kids to the other ro
om, all right?” Sarah immediately scooped up Lucas, who was a year and a half old in her free arm, and Antonio and my twin nieces followed with a promise of cookies.

  When they were out of earshot I said, “Tessa’s missing. Her SUV was found abandoned a few blocks from the daycare. Her purse, locked inside with her keys. Her phone, on the street smashed. We are on lock down.”

  I was fuckin’ relieved that when we called the daycare, the boys were actually there and not gone as well. Sarah would pick them up at their usual pick-up time and would try to keep things as calm and normal for them as possible.

  Lisa gasped. Luc put her hand over her mouth and got to her feet. Tia moved away to make room for my sister. She put her hand on Luc’s back. I moved to her, “I’ve got people on this.” I hesitated and then put my arms around her and gave her a squeeze. My baby sister trembled in my arms.

  Normally, this’d be Dare’s job. I wasn’t touchy feely with the girls, never had been. But since he wasn’t here, she grabbed me and held me tight. I felt a lump form in my throat.

  “Who---” Tia started to ask. I gave her a look and she shut her mouth.

  “We know who it is. You girls don’t need details. All that matters is that you’re all safe while we find her. I want us all under one roof tonight. Here makes the most sense with the security system.”

  I was thinking about buying the house a few doors down and I needed to upgrade that security system, stat. I didn’t like the idea of being in this house overnight. It’d fucked with my head when we’d stayed here after coming back from Costa Rica. But I’d deal; it had to be done.

  I let go of Luc and kissed Tia again, “Gotta make more calls.”

  I walked down the hall and found myself in my father’s office.

  After I shut the door, my blood chilled and acid rose in my throat.

  It was exactly the same.

  I could feel his presence, caught the faint scent of him. It was his aftershave, his expensive cigars. I half-expected to see him sitting in that chair, eyes that were just like mine on me.

  I stared at the empty chair a beat but then I grabbed the phone and moved to the conference table, sitting where I usually sat during the many meetings we’d had there. Directly in my line of vision was a photo on the wall. Pop, me, Dare, and the girls all around a Christmas tree taken just last year.

  Lisa had taken that picture. Pop was looking at the camera, joy in his eyes. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck and I clenched my jaw and dialed Dare’s number. He needed to get his ass home.

  A Week Later

  Tessa was still missing. No sign of her. And so was Denarda. His people were saying he was out of the country on business. Against my initial wishes, Dare involved Zack and he picked up a trail that followed Denarda to Canada.

  He landed in Vancouver. Alone. Drove up to Whistler with one of his girlfriends, who checked in at a swanky Whistler hotel. We had a PI on Zack’s team tailing him but nothing was giving us leads regarding my sister.

  Dare involving Zack? I wasn’t thrilled about it at first, but Zack was still running his PI agency, telling us it was his main gig, still, and would continue to be. And the guy was good. Fucking asshole. And his agency was responsible for a lot of our security for the last few months so we’d have been stuck without him. Didn’t mean I trusted him, though.

  Dare did cut his honeymoon short. He and Angel would do the Iceland leg of their tour when things were settled down. He hadn’t told Annette, his ma, that Tessa was missing; she was wrapped up in her husband Tony, whose death was reportedly imminent.

  Luc, Eddy, and the kids were staying at Pop’s house. Dare and Angel stayed at their place because he had decent security but whenever he wasn’t home, he’d been dropping Angel off with the other girls.

  I’d had my house’s security system upgraded so Tia and I were back home at our place. It was a pain in the ass and a few things about the security of the place didn’t sit well, so I decided I wasn’t buying it. I’d find or build us something later.

  She was still suffering with morning sickness but all fucking day in between trying to help out with the boys over at my Pop’s. The girls had pulled together.

  On day six after my sister’s disappearance, me and Dare were in Pop’s office at the conference table with Nino and Tino, reviewing options about what to do next, reviewing details about Denarda’s top guys and what they were all up to. We had eyes on the ground in Vegas and were getting regular reports from people.

  The house phone rang with an unknown number. I answered.

  “Yeah?”

  “This Tommy Ferrano?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “Leo Denarda here. I understand you been looking for me.”

  This fucking guy. Acting casual and nonchalant.

  He continued.

  “There was disrespect and it was not acceptable. That said, I believe there’s no reason why we can’t move forward. Provided that stuff don’t happen again, of course. I’m finished with my vacation and I’m ready to discuss movin’ forward. When and where should we meet?”

  “Where’s my sister?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  Fuck. Bullshit.

  “Then what is it you wanna discuss?”

  “A way for us to move forward as partners on Fete. I’ll need my share of the business to be equal to yours and Lewis’s.”

  “If that were to happen, you telling me my sister might magically re-appear?”

  “I know nothing about your sister’s whereabouts,” he said and there was ice in his voice, “I’m simply givin’ you an option to reconsider keepin’ me out of the Fete action. I can offer a lot of benefits as part of the project. I think you know this.”

  “In the middle of something. I’ll call you back when I’m ready to discuss,” I said and ended the call before he could get another word out.

  “Motherfucker,” I said aloud, “We have no time for these fuckin’ games.” I shook my head, my eyes on Dare.

  My phone started ringing immediately and it was fucking Zack calling me.

  I declined it. A text came through immediately afterwards from him.

  “Call pls. About Tessa.”

  “Call him,” Dare said, glancing at my screen.

  I glared. Dare and I nearly came to blows over involving Zack. Dare argued that Zack had resources, was already in our business, so we’d might as well make use of him. We’d scaled down our security team before Pop died because we were using a few of Zack’s resources as it was, so Dare was kinda right.

  But I didn’t fuckin’ like it.

  Zack had earned my trust and betrayed me. And now what? He thought he had us under his thumb?

  No one fucked me over and didn’t feel my displeasure. I wasn’t about to make it easy on Zack, let him off the hook. Not a fucking chance. I still had no idea what his end game with me was.

  “I’ll do it. Fuck,” Dare grumbled, swiping at his own phone, and then put it on the table and leaned over.

  “Dario?” was how Zack answered.

  “Yeah, Zack. I got Tommy here. You’re on speaker.”

  Zack’s voice was low, by his tone I knew immediately that things were not good.

  “We found Tessa. Or, I should say, the person who has her reached out to me. She’s okay. She’s safe.”

  “Fuck,” Dare breathed out and ran his hands through his hair. I let out a big breath of my own. Thank God.

  Zack continued, “Alessandro Romero has her. He did not abduct her but intercepted those who had her and made a deal. He’ll forgive you both for Juan Carlos and for Jesse. No retribution. He’ll give us back Tessa, unharmed.”

  “What the fuck?” Dare’s eyes darted to me. His face looked as baffled as I was feeling.

  “Say that again?” Dare asked.

  Zack kept talking, “Denarda sold Tessa to a known flesh peddler in Tijuana. As you might know, Juan Carlos Castillo’s business was heavily into heroin but the
Romero side of that family are peddlers of flesh as their primary business. He knows who you are and knows who Angelica is. He purchased Tessa and doesn’t want the money back. He’s willing to release Tessa to you on just one condition.”

  Dare’s face went stone cold and angry at the mention of his wife.

  “What?” I asked.

  Zack blew out a breath and then said, “You won’t try to take Holly from him.”

  My jaw went tight and then I glanced at my brother.

  Dare’s eyes closed and pain slashed across his features.

  Zack continued, “Denarda had no intention of you ever getting Tessa back. He thinks he covered his trail and he made bank by selling the sister of connected guys to one of the bigger cartels, a cartel that did not like Tom Ferrano Sr. Shows his thinking, he’d rather do that to someone than take them out with a bullet because he knows this way will hurt more, even if you never found out what happened. Picking people with a beef with your father, it was also a power play, him showing you he’s got the means to make people you love disappear. He didn’t think you’d find her, I’m guessing, but probably thinkin’ that even if you did, you’d have a fight on your hands and make enemies tryin’ to get her back. We got almost enough to nail him for the kidnapping, though we think we know how to make him get put away for even longer for child pornography possession, so we’ll hold off. Need to interview your sister. And more on all that later. For now, we get her back, get him arrested.”

  Not if I could help it. Leo Denarda wouldn’t see a jail cell.

  “How does Romero factor into all of this?” I asked.

  “Romero keeps his ear to the ground as a rule anyway but knowing about the connection between Holly and Mrs. Dario Ferrano? He’s probably paying even more attention, knew Denarda had put her up for auction, and paid through the nose to buy her. In other words, he did this because he found out you boys were nosing around for Holly Mooney and he wanted leverage.”

  “How did he know that?” Dare asked.