Fractured Freedom: A Brother’s Best Friend Second Chance Romance (Tarnished Empire)

Delilah

“Izzy, I know you’re in there.” He banged on the door after I looked through the peephole and didn’t answer.

I didn’t know the tall lanky man outside my door, but I knew he must have been a part of Izzy’s undercover work. She didn’t know anyone else here and had only been on the island a few days before she ended up in jail. I’d never seen her with anyone like this.

I took a deep breath. It was answer or throw a wrench in everything.

I did the dumb thing.

I told myself I was smart enough to act like Izzy for as long as we needed.

I swung open the door.

“Hey, sorry. I was in the bathroom.” I cleared my throat and tried not to shrivel when he stepped up to me and then narrowed his eyes.

His pupils were dilated, his breath smelled of alcohol, and the way his body twitched told me it wasn’t the only thing affecting him. “You ready?”

“Um, ready for what?” I tried to hold the door closed to indicate I didn’t want him inside, but he shoved past me and glanced around my room.

“We’re going to the ship now. Fucking agents are onto us. We got word someone’s sniffing around. Probably from you fucking up by getting thrown in jail.”

“I don’t think—”

“No. You don’t think at all.” He turned around, and his words rumbled out so fast that spit flew from his mouth. He pointed a long bony finger at me. “You’re lucky Iago wants to fuck you six ways to Sunday, because otherwise you wouldn’t even be on this boat with us. We got a car out back. Let’s go.”

I didn’t have time to grab anything, and my heart beat so fast that I couldn’t stop the adrenaline from rushing through my veins. I tried to stall. “I need to shower.”

“Shower on the boat.” He smiled, his eyes roving over my body like the slimy scum he was, and he sucked on his yellowed teeth. “We’ll enjoy the show. We have in the past, right?”

He winked at me, like I wanted his advances, like I was into it.

My sister never would have been into this.

And what I had to do became crystal clear at that moment. The shaky ground settled, the quiver in my hand stopped, and my blood ran cold.

Ice cold.

“Let’s go to Iago.” I brushed past him, and he hurried after me like he suddenly couldn’t keep up.

“Remember, I make the rules, Izzy.” He narrowed his beady eyes at me in the elevator. “Iago may want your ass, but it isn’t going to interfere with me getting my cut of that thousand kilos.”

I shrugged. “If you say so.”

The man was fast, so fast I didn’t feel my head ricochet off the side of the elevator wall from his punch to my temple until five seconds later. Maybe I blacked out; maybe I wasn’t exactly used to being hit in the face. Either way, I took my time before responding. And I tried my best to be strategic.

What would an agent do? What would Dante do?

I pointed to one of the cameras. Someone who wasn’t on drugs may not have looked where I was pointing, but this man did. He looked right up at them, and then I murmured, “There’s security at the hotel. Don’t make a scene.”

He nodded, and his brow furrowed as he mumbled, “Good idea. Good idea. Shit, I forgot. Okay, let’s get out of here.”

As the elevator doors opened, I pointed to the back exit. “Less cameras.”

And less Leonardo.

He would be able to tell the difference between me and Izzy and would alert Dante.

I didn’t want anyone alerted. Not until everyone was on that boat with police raiding it, then my baby sister would be safe.

Safe from whatever Iago had done to her.

Safe from these men.

Because I saw from the look in this man’s eyes, something had happened between her and Iago. It wouldn’t happen again.

I was strong enough. Izzy was right about that.

I let the silence descend and didn’t say a word as I folded myself into the black SUV. I took my phone out of my back pocket in front of the idiot of a man, and when he stammered out, “What are you doing?” I lied like I would have if I had been late to a test, to a job, to anything that I knew meant something to my family. This meant the world to Izzy, and I’d always put her and the rest of my family first.

“I’m texting my sister to tell her I’m going out so she doesn’t worry.”

“Your fucking sister,” he mumbled. “She almost cost us this whole damn shipment. They thought her boyfriend was an agent for a minute.” He chuckled like the idea was stupid. “Turns out that guy fucked her more than a few times. We got real nervous when we had someone go check the first time and he turned up dead, but it was a deal gone bad.”

I tried to tune him out as I turned my phone away from him and texted Dante.

Me: Track me. Shipment’s happening tonight. Don’t call. They mistook me for Izzy. We’re going to the cruise ships.

There were three dots. Then they stopped. Then they started again.

“You writing a novel over there?” he sneered. “Let me see that phone.”

My heart was in my throat as I responded, “Fuck off,” and slid it into my pants.

I had to hope my demeanor matched my sister’s. I’d lived with her. I knew how she’d been when she hung with groups like this. But I didn’t know how she was with him.

There was a beat of silence before he chuckled. “Maybe that’s why Iago likes you so much. That fire in you is a turn-on.”

“Want me to tell him you said so?”

His eyes cut to mine as we drove slowly down the darkened cobblestone streets of Old San Juan.

Men and women laughed beyond the car windows, danced right outside the club, enjoying the beautiful night air and the beat of the music that poured from the bar onto the street.

In this car, though, there was nothing beautiful. The push and pull of power, the coiled, unhinged anger in this man, was unpredictable.

“I should fuck you and see if you tell him,” he muttered.

“What? You think I’d like it and just not tell Iago? I haven’t slept with him either.” I hoped that was true.

“Yeah, well according to him, you’re saving it for after this shipment, huh? You think your pussy is that good?”

I rolled my eyes and scoffed, but my palms were sweating, my pulse was going a mile a minute, and the bile rose in my throat. Jesus, these men had been near her all this time. She’d subjected herself to—at the very least—so much sexual harassment in the past years that I couldn’t imagine what secrets she held on to.

He flicked a piece of lint off the dark slacks that were much too baggy for him. He probably used to have more weight on him, but drugs would do that to a person. “Maybe to him. You ain’t worth the work to me. I don’t like the fight like he does. You do put up a good one, though.” He smacked his knee and laughed like he was recalling a specific time. “Damn, when you got Iago in the balls after he grabbed your ass and tried to get your shirt off that one time …” He cackled and cackled as I turned my face toward the window to try to hide how my throat seemed to close, how pulling in air felt impossible.

What Izzy and I had squabbled over just hours before felt so small. Heartbreak, miscarriages, jail time … none of it seemed relevant if my sister was a shell of a human because a man was planning to assault her or had been trying to for years.

Unwanted attention could wreck a soul just like drugs.

She had to know that.

She had to know she couldn’t keep going undercover if this was what the work entailed.

When he sobered from his laughing fit, he pulled a pipe from his pocket, held a lighter to the bowl, and sucked in the smoke. “Want a hit?”

The driver, who had a dark beard and round face, turned around, “Fuck, man, we’re almost there. You show up high, smelling like that, and we’re all going to be in trouble. We got to be on the ball with this one. It’s the biggest one we’ve done in a year.”

“Oh, fuck off. I’m just as Albanian as any of them. They couldn’t get rid of me if they tried. Plus, we got this in the bag. It’s supposed to start raining in a minute, and we’ll be hidden from cameras too.”

I tried to keep breathing in and out. Seven breaths, seven times, over and over.

I’d count to seven seven million times if it kept me calm enough to live through this.

As the rain started to fall on the SUV, the driver turned our headlights off, and we crept down an alley, the vehicle rising and falling over each cobblestone. “Ship’s just down the street. We ditch the car here.”

We filed out, and it seemed silently agreed upon that we’d walk quietly down the street. Neither of the men made eye contact with anyone, and we swerved around a couple talking animatedly on the sidewalk. She held her partner’s hand and rejoiced over the deal she’d got at the store up the street.

They looked as happy as I had a few days ago with Dante, and I found myself holding back tears, holding back fear.

Would I die in a crop top and shorts that I now knew had probably contributed to this guy thinking I was Izzy?

Would Izzy and Dante get here in time? Would they know how to find me?

The cruise ship was larger than life. I’d seen them out on the water from the beach and knew they were grand, magnificent in the way they seemed to glide over the waves.

This ship was no less magnificent inside. Chandeliers hung from the lobby ceiling, sparkling and greeting us like we were on vacation.

The two men I was with nodded to the captain and concierge. No greetings were exchanged, no questioning of our identities or tickets. This was a planned operation.

“I want to get down to see that everything’s there.”

The driver shook his head and kept walking toward an elevator. “We go to Iago’s room. We stick to the plan.”

“Fuck the plan,” he grumbled but followed us.

One foot in front of the other. I didn’t scream out to the other passengers, didn’t even look at them. I walked to what would be my death or my sister’s salvation.

I’d find a way to make that man pay, and then I’d drag her out of this profession kicking and screaming.

She’d done this to prove a point, and maybe I’d done the same. Maybe I’d flown to Puerto Rico and made a stupid list to prove the point to myself that I could be happy, that I could live outside the frame everybody had set for me.

Izzy was doing that too in her own way. We wanted out of the box everyone put us in.

But we’d climb out of it together and we’d move on together.

And it wouldn’t be by dangling drugs in her face. Hard times would no longer push her to her limits. I wouldn’t avoid everything I loved in the hopes of never experiencing loss again.

The door to Iago’s room was oak with a gold door knocker and beautiful carvings swirling toward the handle.

“Do the honors, Izzy.” The man next to me smiled, and his yellow teeth glowed. It was like he knew this was the end. He didn’t realize it wasn’t the end he’d hoped for, though.

The man who swung open the door met us with a smile. He had blue eyes and dark, dark wavy hair. His face was soft, no real hard lines, but he was big enough to throw someone around, even if his muscles looked as soft as his face. He towered over us, and the smile on his face dropped off as he stared at me. “What the fuck is going on? Why would you bring Izzy’s sister here?”

“I brought …” The man stuttered before his head whipped around to stare at me.

All of their eyes widened as I stood there without denying that I was Izzy’s sister. They were hoping for a correction, one I was sure I no longer needed to give them. My phone was still in my back pocket, and I could only hope Dante and my sister were coming in hot with a fucking cavalry.

“Well, should I say surprise?” I quirked a brow as I said it, feeling the fear leave my body and the anger washing in as Iago advanced on me.

Good, I thought to myself. Let him come. Better me than my sister.

His large, meaty hands grabbed my hair and my neck, and he threw me into the wall. He wanted to cause pain as he said, “I was so excited to tell your sister that we finally had all night for me to fuck her. That she wouldn’t be able to fight me off. That we’d finally done it together. And we would be together forever. You know, I think I’ll do all that to you instead. Will you fight as well as she does?”

I clawed at his face. I went for his eyes, and I screamed as much as I could before he squeezed my windpipe shut, all while holding a ball of my hair at the top of my scalp. Over and over again, I hit that wall.

I didn’t shut my eyes, though. I stared at him long enough to spit right in his face.

That got him to let my neck go so he could rear back and punch me square in the cheek.

I really wished I’d taken Dante up on those self-defense classes, because my world went black so fast.

The last thing I remember thinking was we were going to have one hell of a story to tell if I got out of this alive.