Page 55 of The Alpha: Part One
"I'm just scared we won't get there in time. There's only two of us. If Flores brings his whole pack, betas and all, and you know he'll bring others, too… The two of us won't be enough. We could call Mateo, but if something happened to one of her brothers, Desie will never forgive us." We really are fucked if we don't get there first.
Ben glances over at me then back at the road, his hands tightening on the wheel. "We can't call Mateo. If something goes wrong, he's the first one the council will question. We'll just have to get there first."
After what feels like an eternity of hell, we finally get to the parking garage at the hospital. It's after hours and the control arms are up, so we are free to squeal our way to the top level where Desie said to meet her. There are four vehicles other than hers parked on this level. I don't see anybody in them or near them, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it because they're far enough away to not be on top of us, but close enough to be a problem if someone happened to be hiding in the back seat.
Desie is sitting in her car making a show of adjusting things and messing around with whatever's in her passenger seat. We made it before Lopez. Now we just have to get our girl and go. We’re sitting ducks up here.
"Okay," I blow out a breath, "I'll help her get her stuff from her car and you stay ready to take off."
Benny nods, keeping his eyes trained on Desie, and I get out of the car.
She gets out and gives me a nervous smile. "Hey. I have a couple things in the trunk. Can we make them fit?"
If my hair was long enough to pull, I'd be yanking it out by the handful. "Yeah, it's fine. Let's just hurry so we can get out of here." She reaches up to stroke down my cheek and pushes the button on the key to pop up the trunk. Thank god, she's only got two more smallish bags to pack into our car. If she had suitcases, I don't think we'd be able to fit them in with all the other stuff.
"I can get one," she says, reaching for the handle of one of the bags.
"I got it, baby. Go get in the car with Benny."
She doesn't make it two steps before Ben starts laying on the horn and everything goes dark as thick material covers my face and head, then I'm being shoved into the trunk of her car. It happens so fast. I didn't hear anything or see anyone. I didn't hear a single footstep or any doors shutting. And now I'm trying to kick the trunk open because I can hear her screaming. Then the muffled sounds of fighting.
Whoever, my ass. It couldn't be anyone but the Flores pack. But how did they know? Desie wouldn't have said anything, and neither me or Ben have been around anybody but us… and Seth.
But Seth didn't know what we were planning. We didn't tell him. We didn't want to implicate him, regardless of the fact that he's on his way back to his council and his family to avoid having to explain himself to everyone here. He wouldn't have sold us out, even if he knew anything, for the same reasons we didn't want to implicate him. We could have easily had a pack bond with Seth, but he didn't tell us the most important and worst thing about himself, and he ran away before we gave him the chance to explain it.
But, what if… fuck…what if he planned his own thing. What if he's behind this? We don't really know that he doesn't have another pack back East. He could have called them in to take Desie and do away with me and my brother. Could Seth really be that shitty? I want to say no, my gut says no, but I'm still beating my knuckles raw on the trunk with a bag over my head. I don't know anything.
I pause my fight against the trunk when I hear the sound of my brother being dragged across the cement.
Then Desie starts begging, sobbing the word please over and over; and Benny's voice, thick with pain, comes. "Don't watch, baby. Turn your head."
The lid doesn't move when I slam my fists into it, and it doesn't move when I push against it as hard as I can with my legs. It's a functional shit box, for fuck sake. It should pop open if anyone looks at it too hard.
"He's right,baby, you don't need to see it." Lopez. Mother fucker. I knew it was them.
I try even harder to beat my way out of the trunk, kicking harder, slamming my knees and fists into the interior and lid, my own screams ringing in my ears. Someone knocks on the top and laughs. "Keep on fighting, Michael. Go ahead, wear yourself out. We don't want you to last too long in the box."
The car lifts all at once and before I can process the fact that I couldn't get out because someone was sitting on the trunk, Desie screams, "NO!", a gunshot vibrates the metal coffin I'm trapped in, and then the car starts and takes off, flinging me against the latch that still won’t give. By the time I start trying to fight my way out of the trunk again, the car has already gone around at least two sharp turns, slinging me around against the interior. By the time I get one corner to lift, I can't hear anything but the tires squealing as they take me farther and farther away from my brother and Desie. He could be dead or dying and she's there watching it happen and I'm trapped in a goddamned, mother fucking, bullshit trunk. By the time I get the corner up enough to feel the air blowing inside, the car isn't throwing me around curves anymore, we're on the main road. If I can get out of this, I can jump out and make a run for it. Maybe get with Mateo, find Desie. Bury my brother. Fuck. The car will have to stop at some point, there will be a traffic light or something, then I'll bust out of here and run.
Except there isn't. Horns blow and people yell. Whoever is driving is blowing through every light and sign, there won't be any stopping. Fine. I'll just jump out. I kick the loose corner again and again, widening the crack in small increments. Jesus god! What is this thing made of? Come on! When I finally get the trunk kicked open, I yank the material off my head and blink into the bright headlights of the vehicle behind the car. I get to my knees, gripping the outside of the car, readying myself to roll out onto the pavement, but the driver slams the breaks, causing the lid to slam down on my back and head, knocking me off balance.
I get back to my knees as the driver from the other car gets out and runs around toward me.
"Hurry," I say. "I need to get help."
But there's no point. I recognize the other driver as one of the Flores pack betas. He's smiling at me while he twirls the souvenir baseball bat I keep on the dashboard. "Sit back down," he sneers, "we don't want you falling out."
The last thing I see is him swinging the bat.
The first thing I register when I wake up is pain. Not my head, not my hands, but in my heart, my soul. I keep my eyes closed, breathing deep and slow, not moving a single muscle as I try to rein in the pain in an effort to regain control of anything I can. This doesn't feel like it did when we lost Rafe. I know I was a kid then, and the memory might be a little muddy, but this doesn't feel like that. It feels like loss, such a soul deep loss.
I've lost everything. I've lost Benny. I've lost Desie. I'm alone.
I open my eyes. I don't know where I am. It would be dark even if my head wasn't covered again. I can't smell much other than the stale stench of the material. I can hear dripping, and talking from a distance, but that's it. The ground is cold and hard under me, I can feel that much. Like a basement… or the floor of an underground fighting ring. I remember the comment now, about the box. Flores took my brother, took my omega, and now he's going to force me to fight to death. I've seen him do it before. That's one of the many reasons me and Benny have been trying so hard to make a clean break from him. His money and influence might have saved us when we were younger, but it hasn't done anything but weigh us down and try to kill us as we've gotten older. He builds you up, then drags you down and uses that desperation to make money off of you while he makes an example of you.
"I can tell you're awake, Michael," the man himself speaks from somewhere in the room. "Go ahead and sit up, I'm not worried about you running off now. I'm not worried about you at all, actually. You wouldn't do anything that might bring harm to Desir'ee. You know she'll pay the price for anything you might be thinking of doing, don't you? Yes, of course you do. Go on now, sit up, we'll get the bag off and then we'll have a conversation."
I rock and maneuver myself into a sitting position and, just like he said, the bag is pulled off and I'm face-to-face with Desie. Her eyes are swollen and red from crying. She isn't tied up, but she doesn't reach for me.
