Page 104 of The Devil's Pawn

“He’s so beautiful.” Joelle sighs mournfully. “I’m so grateful he looks exactly like me and not his—”

Her face turns hard.

“Not his father?” Chiara finishes, eyeing her curiously.

She nods.

“Who’s his father, Joelle?” I ask.

A sinking feeling hits the pit of my stomach. Like when you know something dreadful is about to happen before it actually does.

Her hazy gaze tosses from Chiara to me.

A cold shudder breaks over both of my arms and my skin tingles.

She sucks in a breath, her features drowning in pain. “I never wanted to speak of this ugliness before, but I think it’s time. Anything to help find my son.”

“Time for what?” Enzo appears from behind us, the other guys with him. “What’s wrong, baby? Why are you crying?”

He walks over to her, clasping her cheek in his palm with his brows pinched.

“They asked me who Robby’s father is.” Her hand falls over his as she stares up at him, getting to her feet. “I think it’s time I tell you. All of you.”

Enzo only stares, unable to move, probably clutched in the same trepidation that’s coursing through me. She gives him a sad smile before edging his hand off of her, then turns her attention to everyone as he now lowers to where she sat.

“Enzo already knows some of this, but not everything.” She briefly darts her eyes to him, then scans each of our faces. “When I was nineteen, I was traveling with some friends across the country. It was just the three of us in my Jeep. Elsie, Kayla, and I all went to high school together and decided to take time off from college, wanting to experience the world before becoming doctors. That was always our plan. I was going to be a pediatrician, Elsie wanted to be a heart surgeon, and Kayla’s dream was to become an oncologist.”

A trembling hand runs up to her mouth.

“We had no idea that two days into our adventure, we’d never see each other again.” She walks over to Enzo, sitting on his lap while his large hand rests over her knee protectively. “After getting dinner at one of the restaurants where this man, probably in his thirties, wouldn’t leave us alone, we hopped back on the road. But once we were on a long stretch on an empty highway, the engine died. We tried to call for help, but there was no reception. We thought we’d be stranded there. We waited for what felt like an hour until we saw a single car.”

She runs a hand past her face, dropping a sharp exhale.

“The three of us were so excited. We jumped onto the road, waving our hands, until the large, white SUV stopped. We thought we were finally safe. How wrong we were.” Her eyes brim with tears. “The man who stepped out was none other than the one from the restaurant. I didn’t think anything of it at first, until two others stepped out with him.”

Her breaths come faster now, and her knee shakes as she tries to find the rest of her words.

“Here,” Dom says, handing her a bottle of water.

Enzo grabs it and opens it for her before she drinks almost half the bottle.

“I…I’m sorry,” she stammers, her eyes glazed. “This is really hard to relive, even after all this time.”

“You don’t ever have to apologize to us.” Enzo wraps her in his arms, tucking her into his body.

“Yeah, don’t be sorry, Joelle,” Chiara adds. “You don’t have to do this if you can’t.”

“I want to.”

She nods before telling us the rest of what I know will be a horror.

“I never saw those other two men before. But they looked older than the other man. They approached us, asking what happened, and when we told them, they pretended to help at first, and one of them even examined my car. But suddenly, the other older man grabbed Kayla, knocking her on the side of the head with a gun. Elsie and I screamed for help and started to run away, but we had nowhere to go. As Elsie ran, the man from the restaurant shot her leg and dragged her back while she cried. I stopped running then. I knew they’d take me anyway, dead or alive.”

Tears are running down her face now, and mine. My heart clenches, feeling her agony.

“They knocked me out too, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in a dark cage with voices whimpering all around me. I called for my friends, but they weren’t there.”

She uncaps the bottle and drinks some more, then hands the rest to Enzo, whose face is hard as the fist on his thigh rattles with the force of his anger.

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