Page 15 of Brazilian Revenge

Chapter Five

“Do we trust this guy?” Satyanna asked as the three of them slid out of the Town Car. The driver had suggested parking a couple streets away from the favela, so they’d walk their way on the dirt road.

He lifted his index finger and gestured for her to be quiet. The last thing he needed was for the folks around them to hear someone speaking English. Satyanna’s fiery red hair was a dead giveaway she could be a gringa, or maybe they’d assume she was the Brazilian daughter of European immigrants. Either way, he couldn’t risk it, not when the future of his daughter was at stake.

Satyanna made a face and rolled her eyes to tell him silently he still hadn’t answered her. Did they trust Luiz, who was taking them to the nurse’s house in the slums?

The cleaning guy had a lot to lose—his work, which wasn’t high paying or anything, but with the recent dip in the Brazilian economy, there was no way someone would make up a story like that. If Luiz tried to do any kind of scheme, he’d be sorry.

Besides, since when was there a “we?” Leonardo leaned forward to whisper, “For now, he’s the only clue we have. I told you, you could have waited with my driver in my car,” he said, adding inwardly he would have locked the doors and ensured his driver didn’t let her out. He still didn’t trust her. Just because she actually gave birth like she said she did, that didn’t make her a saint overnight.

Hell. There was a baby girl somewhere in the world with his DNA, with maybe his eye color or skin tone. And he would never forgive himself if he didn’t find her.

“I know, I’m just—”

“It’s safer if you don’t speak English here, remember?” He covered her lips with his finger and shushed her. Luiz talked to the couple of thugs who stood by an old Volkswagen Beetle at the entrance of the community. Satyanna glanced down like he had suggested, and finally she was following his advice.

He hadn’t had time to hire a security team or even tell his brother what he was doing. Hell, he was his own person. He had helped raise his younger siblings, and he had taken care of his sick mother, and later on in life, his father. Problem solving wasn’t simply a way of life, it had been his survival technique for most of his existence.

Without his suit and with sleeves rolled up and top buttons opened, he hoped he’d come across a lot less stuffy than before. He glanced around and saw a woman balancing a huge ball of fabric—the poor man’s load of laundry—on her head, while she carried a baby on her lap and two barefoot children followed, his heart shrank. He quirked up his lip and offered her a sympathetic half smile and she strolled by them. She nodded and kept walking with the kids.

During his childhood he’d seen that scene far too many times. Underprivileged women balancing their clothes as they took them to wash in a river, and sometimes they worked as laundresses and washed other people’s outfits for money. Change money.

“Senhor?”Luiz called him.

He blinked and stretched to his full weight. The two men sized him up, and Leonardo narrowed his eyes. If it came to that, he could take them. They were average height and build, although their cargo shorts and T-shirts probably concealed handguns or knives.

Luiz took off his ratty baseball hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I was telling them how we’re visiting my friend Jacinta Carla.”

One of them snickered. “Well, you need to turn around, because Jacinta Carla moved.”

“She moved?” Luiz asked.

Leonardo gave Satyanna a light squeeze of her hand, and hoped she wouldn’t speak. The last thing they needed was a tourist caught up in the middle of the operation to find the nurse. A missing nurse. His heart skipped a beat. “How long ago?”

“About three months,” said the other, smoking a cigarette.

“Where did she go?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” the non-smoker said.

Luiz flashed him an apologetic look, then said, “She lived with her mother. Is her mother still here?”

The guy leaned against the bug and smoked some more. “Yes. Lucky bitch left her annoying mom behind.”

“Then we’d like to talk to her,” Leonardo said, impatience washing over him. He knew what this was all about.

“Hold up. You’re not a cop, are you?”

Reaching to his wallet in his back pocket, he sighed. “No. We need to find her, and there are two thousand reais in my wallet that say you will let us through.”

“Well, who am I to argue with cold hard cash?” one of them said, and stuck out his hand while the other laughed. “Just be quick.”

“I remember the way,” Luiz said to the men.

“Good, because we weren’t about to take you all on a grand tour, princess,” one of them said, and the other laughed.

They walked through several small houses. He could see the brick and cement on some of them, while others had fading paint. Stray, skinny dogs wandered the streets, a couple of them sleeping lazily on porches.

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