Page 86 of Auctioned Surrender

Marenah wouldn’t call this line unless she needed to talk to me personally. She knows we’re on the job and that she could catch the team on the group line. I answer but don’t say a word.

“Dereck. I know you probably can’t talk, but something’s not right. It’s about Layla.”

“What about her,” I ask quietly, as I continue watching the men from the boat make their way toward the men who drove in.

“I tracked her cousin’s whereabouts for the last couple of weeks before her death.”

My jaw tightens with apprehension as the men from the boat and the car shake hands and the men from the van push the group of women toward the men from the vehicle who make them join Layla’s sister, bringing the count to thirteen women whose lives are in my hands.

“You need to know,” Marenah says, but she gets cut off by the reverberating sound of semi-automatic fire cutting through the silence of the night, and the men surrounding Luisa drop like pins at a bowling alley, one after another, leaving her standing all alone in a pool of carnage that only the mafia can bring.

Tommy from the Larussio family comes running out of the woods. I disconnect my call and drop my cell into my pocket. This slaughter was probably orchestrated by the Larussios to ensure Bernatelli’s men know that trafficking in the city is off-limits. Bernatelli may have owned this city for years, but the Larussios seem to have gained a stronghold in the town and made their own set of rules.

I work my way toward the car, determined to get Layla’s sister and the others to safety and at least salvage some part of this night if I can. “Hold your fire,” I say, coming out of the bush. “You and your men have what you want, Tommy, but I need the girls.”

I gesture toward Layla’s sister. “We’ll take Luisa along with the rest of the women and let you deal with Bernatelli’s men however you choose,” I say, wondering what type of message they’ll send back with the bodies.

Tommy shrugs. “I’ve got no beef with that as long as she’s not running the girls, but word on the street says different.”

I look from Tommy to Layla’s sister and back to him. “If you say she’s not part of Bernatelli’s crew,” Tommy says, “then I gotta believe you.”

I glance down at my phone and Marenah’s message. “Luisa is the snatcher.”

“You working for Bernatelli? Did you take those girls?” Tommy asks Luisa, coming toe to toe with Layla’s sister.

“I’m not saying anything against Bernatelli. That would make me crazy.”

“You don’t start talking, sweetheart, and that would make you dead,” Tommy says, grabbing one of the girls by the hair and dragging her in front of Layla’s sister. “How did you end up with her, sweetheart,” Tommy asks the young blonde who’s now sobbing uncontrollably and trying desperately to pull herself away.

She looks at Luisa and then shakes her head, unwilling to talk until Tommy puts a gun to her head, causing her to cry out hysterically. “I met her at the bus station. She said there were good-paying jobs at the bar. I went there for work, and she took me into her office. There were two men, and they…”

Tommy shifts his gun to Luisa’s head. “You’re coming with me, and you’re going to join your boss, sweetheart. I don’t think he’s going to be so glad to see you in this condition, though, is he?” Tommy asks Layla’s sister.

Luisa doesn’t say a word, but I can’t help recognize the slight purse of annoyance on her lips.

I walk toward the young girl, pulling her away from Tommy and Luisa and to safety. “Your sister has been looking everywhere for you. She thought traffickers took you. She’s been working dive bars to get any information she could to find andhelp you. She’s an honorable woman, and you repay her like this?” I ask Luisa.

Her lips look like Layla’s until she turns them into a snarl and laughs right in my face. “My sister thinks upholding the law is honorable. She wears that goddamn police uniform and forgets where she comes from! She forgets the police, her kind, did nothing when thugs overran our community. We had nothing! Where were her and her kind when we had nothing to eat! No, upholding the law is not honorable. It is an old fashioned stupidity. Honor is doing what you need to do to ensure your family rises, that the next generation of children do not go through the struggles that we went through as children, but that’s not what she believes. Layla puts on that stinking police uniform and dares to walk into our family home, flaunting that in front of me! She was the one who should have felt that bullet. It should have ripped through her heart, pierced her with pain just like Layla did to our family, not our cousin! My sister, that traitor, is only alive because the men working with me got the wrong woman, the wrong Layla,” she says, spitting on the ground in front of me.

“She’s all yours, Tommy,” I say, knowing that Layla heard every venomous word of her sister’s tirade through the earpiece and that her soft, feminine side is probably breaking into a million pieces right now. Although, somehow, she’ll probably put on the tough girl exterior she always manages to conjure to protect her heart.

I turn from Luisa to calm the young woman who spoke out and is still sobbing. “I’m Dereck,” I say to her and the rest of the girls. “We’re going to take you somewhere safe for the night, where you can clean up and get something to eat. We’ll help you find your families or whatever else you need tomorrow, okay?” I tell them, looking from one pair of fearful eyes to another. “Come on, ladies,” I say, contemplating how to navigate throughthis turn of events now that I know the part of the story that Layla could never tell me herself.

We’ll need to deal with that later because priority number one is getting her out of here alive after she witnessed Tommy and his men gun down her sister’s associates in cold blood, and we now know she’s on the other side of the law. The family does not leave loose ends or witnesses to their crimes, and unfortunately, Layla is both right now.

“You go ahead with the girls. We’ll be right behind you,” Tommy says.

I start walking with the ladies, knowing that Tommy has things wrapped up, but a shot rings out from a distance. I grab my weapon and spin, dropping to the ground to aim, but Layla’s sister has already taken one of the girls. Luisa’s gun is drawn, and she uses the girl as a shield, and there’s no way to get off a clean shot without getting the innocent girl in the crossfire.

Chapter 23

Layla

I observe from behind the bush, listening to the venomous outpour that’s as clear in my ear as if I was standing right next to the sister I grew up with, willing the tears washing down my face to stop. The police were a beacon of light in an otherwise dim existence, bringing a glimmer of hope and protection to our community when few existed. Luisa and I both remember our childhood so differently, and I sob for the heartbreak my parents would have endured if they were still alive and learned their daughter had turned into someone they did everything to protect us from as children.

Dereck leads the ladies away, walking them towards the vehicles. I watch with sadness as Tommy takes my sister by the arm, turning her, and starts to check for weapons. A shot from my left throws Tommy to the ground with the force of its blow. Dereck hits the ground and pulls his piece, but my sister’s used the distraction to draw her weapon on the young girl closest to her.

I draw my own. Dereck won’t make it unless someone gets to the gun that came from so close by that my ears are still ringing. I snake around the bushes, and Tommy’s partner Marco is justbelow me, scanning the brush, too, looking for the same gun I am, but not before the man with the gun has him in his sites.

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