“Th-that one,” I answered, lifting my hand to point at the one who’d held me.
Valenzuela leaned back. “He hit you too?”
I shook my head.
“So Pedro took you, Carlos hit you,” he stated, all evidence of his fury gone, this was uttered matter-of-factly.
God, he’d been freaking me out but that about-face scared the absolute crap out of me.
Thus, even if it seemed he didn’t intend to hurt me further—in fact, he was pissed way the hell off I’d been taken and hurt at all—I felt it prudent not to relax quite yet because this guy was clearly fucking loco.
I would have no idea how right I was.
I would also have no idea that I shouldn’t confirm his statement even if I didn’t know which was which, Carlos and Pedro.
I shouldn’t have even spoken.
But I did both.
“Yes,” I said.
And right then, right there, he twisted his torso, doing this nodding to the other man in the room.
I looked that way just as the guy reached into his suit jacket and came out with a gun.
Before I could even brace or open my mouth to scream, he lifted it. I heard two strange, loud zings followed instantly by far less welcome sounds at the same time my eyes jerked toward the door. I saw blood and brains spatter against walls and Pedro and Carlos sink to the carpet.
I dropped the ice and shuffled frantically back on the bed, shocked I could move because it felt like my body had frozen right to the bone, terrified at the same time that, because of this, it felt my limbs would crack right off. My brain saturated with images of carnage, I couldn’t gauge where I was going and fell off the side of the bed.
I scrambled to my feet as Valenzuela turned back to me. Mind in turmoil, my only thoughts were escape and the chilling knowledge that there wasn’t one.
“Stop moving. I won’t hurt you,” he ordered.
I kept moving, making preparations in order to take flight.
He reached into his suit jacket, pulled out his own gun, and lifted it my way.
“Stop...?fucking...?moving.”
Automatically, I stopped moving.
He turned his head and dipped his chin at the only other live person in the room.
I stared, shock beginning to overcome me, my body starting to tremble as the guy coolly dipped his chin as well and sauntered to and out the door, closing it behind him.
“You’re at the Mile Hi Motel in room two sixteen,” Valenzuela stated, and my eyes darted back to him. “You call your biker, you tell them where to find you, you tell them that’s for them.” He swung his gun toward the two dead bodies on the floor, then back to me. “You tell them I did not order what happened today. You tell them Carlos and Pedro acted alone. You tell them I was not happy about this and saw to their punishment.”
Punishment?
That was his brand of punishment?
I stared at him, suddenly realizing that I was not only trembling from hair to toenails, my chest was rising and falling with shallow breaths and my fingers felt like they’d been asleep but were coming awake, tingling in a way that skimmed the edge of pain.
But what I saw as I stared at his face was not fear.
He wasn’t scared of Chaos’s retribution for the mistake made by his men that day and taking care of it so they wouldn’t lose their minds.
It was something else.
And right then, I went from scared out of my brain to terrified down to my bones.
“You should leave town,” I blurted.
He dropped the gun, which was a relief, but he also smiled a creepy smile, which wasn’t.
“Thank you for the advice, but I think I’ll stay,” he replied.
Regardless of the fact that he didn’t want my very good advice to penetrate—seeing as I was witness to his minion’s double homicide and an old lady to a member of a band of brothers who took family and the protection of it really fucking seriously, so I knew what I was talking about—I kept going.
“You don’t touch old ladies.”
“I didn’t.”
That was the truth.
“Your men lured Lo...?I mean, High’s daughter to their car,” I shared.
His mouth got tight.
He didn’t know that.
My body got tight too. Or tighter.
Then his mouth relaxed. “Another fail,” he stated. “And as you can see, they won’t do anything like that again.”
Another truth. A big one.
I kept my eyes off the slaughter sharing a room with me so I could keep hold on my mind.
“I mean no offense. I’m sure you know this,” I began. “But you don’t mean anything to me. Still, this plays out like I know it will, people I care about will be forced to do things they don’t wish to do. They’re good men. But this won’t stand.” I carefully indicated the floor beneath my feet. “They won’t let it and you shouldn’t underestimate them. There’s no way you can win.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
I stared at him.
He believed that.
Totally.
A chill crept over my skin and I kept trying.
“You won’t win, Valenzuela. Seriously, believe me. I’ve known them a long time. United, the brotherhood can’t be defeated.”
“Many brotherhoods felt the same and continued to do so until they fell.”
I stared into his eyes and I read everything there.
He wasn’t going to give up. He wasn’t going to go away. He wasn’t going to stop. He was weak, with men misinterpreting his orders, facing a woman who could guarantee his time in prison when he was caught and I testified that he’d ordered the murders of two men.
He still wasn’t going to stop.
Not until it was over however that came about.
There was something scarily wrong about that. He was a man with every chip in the pot holding weak cards in his hand.
But he was acting like he had an ace up his sleeve.
“You need to be careful,” I whispered.
“Ah, Millie, your concern in touching. But don’t you worry. I’m being very careful.”
“No,” I returned. “What I mean is, you hurt him, you hurt High, you hurt any of them, I’ll hurt you.”