Chad's Chase (Loving All Wrong Book 2) (39 page)

But Chad was done on that topic. The clock was ticking.

Walking over to his wounded father, Chad shoved aside the shooter he’d speared with the fire poker, then told one of Org’s men, “Storage room. Red duffel.”

Rafail was staring up at the ceiling, unblinking, like he was already dead, and Chad knelt down beside him, picked up his right hand, and kissed his knuckles. “I’m so sorry I can’t save you this time, father.”

Eyes still on the ceiling, his father whispered, “You never stop loving, son. It is your weakness.” Then he brought his dewy gaze to him. “Be the best leader The Organization has ever seen. Make new rules. Get rid of the ugly. Save the world from people like me.”

Chad thought those words were prudent, even coming from someone as nefarious as Rafail Niiveux.

The red duffel bag dropped with a thud beside Chad, and Rafail’s chest began rising and falling at the sight of it. “What will you do to me, son?”

“Punish you.” With a swift, deliberate flex, Chad snapped Rafail’s wrist backward, breaking the joint.

Rafail howled at the sudden pain, and his hand dangled uselessly from the wrist like a bobble-head doll.

Taking delight in the sound, Chad turned and opened his duffel he’d parked in Ricardo’s storage room the week before. Everything he thought Ricardo would need to defend himself should trouble strike, a couple of torture tools. But Chad only need two things from it at the moment.

His well-sharpened machete, and his scalpel.

He took out the two items and carefully set them aside.

“Three men,” he said out loud. And within seconds, three men were looming.

To one man, “Pin his feet.” To the other two, “Each of you pin an arm.”

Picking up the machete, Chad stood up and walked slowly around the men and his father. His father was shivering, but not begging. Rafail was foolishly prideful like that. There was tape in the duffel, but Chad wanted to hear his screams.

Stopping next to the man pinning Rafail’s left arm, Chad wagged his head at the sweat breaking out on the man’s forehead. “You don’t have the guts for this,” Chad told him. “Move.”

The male scurried off and another one immediately replaced him, chest high, shoulders squared, trying to impress Chad as he repinned Rafail’s right arm.

Slowly circling them again, Chad began rambling, as he ditched his cool and allowed the Devil to take full control of his mind and body. “It can be as messy as you want it, or as clean as you want it. I like clean. Blood and bone everywhere doesn’t appeal to me.” He stopped at his father’s right hand. “It’s much like cutting up a chicken for Sunday dinner. You find the joints, and you disconnect…like this.”

Whoaap!

That was the sound of the machete slicing through the air and disconnecting his father’s hand from the wrist.

Rafail’s cry rang rich and loud, but it was merely music to Chad’s ear as he circled again, and—
Whoaap!
—off went the other hand.

Smooth. Clean. Easy.

“Chadrick…son, please…” his father cried, head whipping from side to side as he looked disbelievingly at his disconnected hands. “Do not do this. Kill me instead. The legacy, it is to be passed on to you when I die. You…you are my only son. Kill me. Kill me!”

But at that point in time, Chad was out and the Devil was in. One doesn’t beg the Devil mercy. Mercy was associated with heavenly things.

Chad rambled on, moving to his father’s feet. “The ankles are a bit trickier with joints. Painstaking. So to save yourself the time, just go half an inch
above
the ankle, and…”
Whoap!

Even louder cries now from Rafail. Blood gushing now because he didn’t disconnect from the joint. Body jerking. Shouts piercing.

In the next minute, Rafail’s other foot was clean off.

“Pull down his pants.”

As one man hurriedly did this, Org started in a careful, placating tone, “Shadreek—”

“Shut up!” Chad barked, rattling. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

Org shut up.

“Did you hear her story?” Chad ranted, losing it. Totally losing it. “What he did to an
eleven-year-old
girl? No, you didn’t. Do you know what Isabel looks like dead, with blood leaking from her head? No, you don’t. You only remember her beautiful, naked, and riding your dick. I remember her wide-eyed dead! Did you know my aunt? No. She was a good woman. A
really
good woman. Who didn’t deserve having her throat slit from ear to ear for the selfish purpose of getting custody of her fucking daughter. And Clementine, what the fuck did she do to deserve this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Chad pointed his machete at the old man. “So get over your nausea, Org, and watch what happens when a man is pushed until he fucking breaks.”

Switching the machete for the scalpel, Chad knelt down, and with a surgeon’s precision, removed his father’s flaccid cock.

“That’s for Jhay,” Chad announced, then dropped the scalpel along with the dead flesh.

Rafail’s body broke into violent trembles, his cries hoarse, his skin growing paler and paler from all the blood he was losing.

As Chad snatched up a couple of Clorox disinfecting wipes from his duffel to clean his hands, he could practically hear the discordant gulps from all the qualmish men around the room, some looking anywhere but at the bloody scene.

Torture wasn’t The Organization’s style. Clean hits were. But Chad wasn’t The Organization. He was a man who’d been pushed over the edge. A man in love with a tight, twenty-two-year-old, green-eyed girl who needed avenging.

“He will bleed out and die, Shadreek,” Org reminded him. “I thought you said you did not want him dead?”

Chad said a lot of things.

“Well I suggest you call in some medical help and make sure he doesn’t,” Chad icily returned. “In the meantime, Raymond over there has a medical background.”

Org’s eyes shot to the man who’d held Org’s feet. “You do?”

“Ah, Org,” Chad laughed, “don’t tell me I know your men better than you do?” To Raymond, “Left wing, first door on the right. It’s Clementine’s office. She was a registered nurse. You’ll find medical supplies there.”

As Raymond nodded and bounced off, Org blinked at Chad, as though seeing him for the first time.

Chad was done with this episode. He made his way over to Ricardo, retrieved his pocket knife, and freed him of the ropes, then ripped the tape off his mouth.

Due to being shot in the leg by Rafail, Chad had to help Ricardo off the chair and support his weight as he started with him out of the house.

He knew Org would have this place clean like new in less than twenty-four hours, so as he carried a hobbling Ricardo out, he announced, “You haven’t won.”

Translation for
I’m gonna play your game to the end until I find my fucking woman.

When Chad had Ricardo in the car, gearing up to hot-wheel it out of there, Ricardo stunned him by saying, “I don’t feel sorry for him. And you shouldn’t regret it.”

“I despise myself and every bad thing I do, Rick,” Chad said in an extremely quiet voice. “But I never regret anything. From every bad, something good always blooms.”

As Chad started to reverse, Ricardo spoke again. “What did you say to her?”

Braking, Chad paused. “What?”

“My mother,”—
coughcough
—”before you shot her, you whispered something in her ear.” He slashed a fresh set of tears from his eyes. “What was it? What did you say?”

Closing his eyes, Chad inhaled deep, then exhaled, loath to delve back into the memories of that terrible night. “I said, ‘
Isabel, I love you. And I’m sorry I can’t save you. But die in peace knowing Rick and Jhay will be saved, cared for, and live to see a ripe old age. If I don’t keep this promise, then beat the fuck out of me when we meet in Hell.’”

I
woke up with a brain-pounding headache in an unfamiliar place. A crap ton of noise rained in through the windows of a sparse but fairly decent apartment.

I twisted, realizing I was supine on a daybed beneath a crescent of bay windows.

Wherever this place was, I knew it wasn’t San Francisco. The feel was different. The wind was different. The sun wasn’t hot enough.

My eyes scanned the room. Open-plan. Living room, dining room and kitchen in one. Coldly furnished with common furniture, nothing creative or interesting. A three-piece floral print sofa set, with a cherrywood coffee table, a plasma TV in an entertainment center, a four-seater dining table, bare walls, and completely impersonal. It felt like a self-catering guest house.

In a rush, the memories of all that had happened returned with a brain-freezing bang. And I remembered coming to from my unconsciousness, only to discover I was 35,000 feet up high with Sambo. He’d offered me something to drink and I’d accepted because I was hella arid. Then that was it. The fucker had drugged me and sent me back to a world of oblivion.

Now here I was, in a strange place, by myself. Fully clothed, in my boots and all.

What else is new?

Sitting up in the daybed, I turned to face the windows and folded my arms on the sill, propping my chin on the back of my hands.

A courtyard about ten stories below, and far outside the gates was like a fanfare. An intriguing vibrancy and sprightliness from the people milling along the narrow streets. The glare and position of the sun told me it was around noon, yet people were gallivanting about like it was midnight in Vegas.

Carriages rolled by with tourists, a group of men in black and white suspender get-ups gaily blaring trumpets and saxophones, people dancing, money exchanging, cameras snapping, colorful buildings, blinking neon signs…

I smiled wide.

Beyond those gates was life. Forgetting for a minute the maelstrom that was my life, I breathed in the life outside those gates. Envious of every soul alive who could be this carefree, letting go, stress-free, not constantly shooting glances over their shoulders or scanning rooftops for hints of a rifle aiming to blow their heads off.

I wanted to be like that. Like one of those trumpet blowers. I wanted to get on that street. I wanted to be carefree.

For about an hour, I sat there and watched the activities beyond the court gates, dreaming of a life different from the shitty one I was cursed with.

I heard the apartment door open. But I didn’t look around. Not yet ready to climb back into the stinking, dark asshole that was my home.

Heavy footfalls echoed across the wooden floors. Movements at the dining table. Rustling of plastic bags. Footfalls moving in my direction. Then the daybed concaved from the person’s lead weight.

The sickening scent of tobacco wafted on the air as he said, “I brought you Chinese.”

Tugging my weary gaze away from the vibrant life beyond the gates, I turned it on the person beside me. Sambo.

He was watching me with a cautious squint, either afraid of me, or wanting to apologize for his actions but knowing that would be a pussy move.

I blamed him for nothing, though. People played dirty sometimes, depending on how badly they needed the prize. He fought, I respected that.

Chad, he gave me up.

If there was anyone who deserved my aversion, it was Chad. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the betrayer who’d locked me in a sleeper hold to stop Sambo’s death. I wouldn’t even bother seeking confirmation on it.

We could have fought together and taken Rafail down. I knew Chad. And I knew if he wanted to, things would have gone differently and we would have come out on the other side smelling like lilies. But that wasn’t what he wanted.

I
wasn’t what he wanted.

I hate you, Jhay.

Well, fuck him.

“Is it laced like the drink you gave me on the plane?”

Sambo winced. “No.”

Believing him—because I was starved—I took the food box from him and dug in.

He sat there and watched me eat for a few minutes before saying, “You didn’t try to escape.” He sounded surprised by this, like he’d been watching me from somewhere unseen, fully expecting me to let down my hair and Rapunzel it out the window or something.

Honestly, though, I didn’t feel like running anymore. Whatever happened happened.

The two people I’d had left in this world were possibly dead. So if I was safe with Sambo by his deal made with Rafail, then I’d stay with him. Wherever the wind blew, I’d float with it.

Not like I could make any sensible moves anyway. My cash and passports were at Chad’s. And if I went there to get them, the minute Ronnie saw me return without his boss he would assume I killed Chad and put a bullet in my head without asking questions. He never trusted me to begin with and his antipathy towards me was lost on no one, so he would never believe a thing I say.

I wouldn’t fight. This was what my life was.

My shoulders rose and fell in an indolent shrug. “I’m not interested in escaping.”

Sambo eyed me with unhidden skepticism, probably thinking I was playing him. “I don’t understand.”

I speared a piece of sweet and sour chicken with the plastic fork as I explained, “You fought
with
me
for
me.” I bit the chicken off the fork. “He gave his life up without a cause.” I chewed. “Stupid fucking coward.”