Say Yes, Senator

I didn’t miss home; I didn’t miss Papi. The only thing I missed, was Jesus…but he had soon become a distant memory too. A fragment of another life, the kind of guy I would never find again, and I wished him well.

I led an ordinary life in Connecticut now. I was renting a small one-bedroom apartment, going to work and coming home to the television and pre-cooked meals. It was a boring life, in black and white, but it gave me the peace I’d been searching for ever since I turned eleven. When I saw Papi beat one of his men to a pulp, and throw his limp body off a bridge.

I had looked up to Papi until then; I had been shielded from his work, so to me…just like to every other little girl, my father was my hero. He was a hero until I saw what he did on the bridge that night. I started asking questions, and I realized what he was doing to Jesus and other boys like him.

I was happy for Jesus when he was recruited by the Rogue Rebels MC. I couldn’t have asked for anything better for him, then to escape the life that Papi had carved out for him. But once Jesus left the gang, I knew we would have no future. Papi nor the gang would ever let us be together. Not while we lived in the same city, not while he rode with the Rogue Rebels.

I wanted him to go, but that would mean that I would have to leave too. So, I ran. I escaped and came to Connecticut, to a small sleepy town where nobody knew my name and where I knew Papi nor his goons would ever find me.

It was difficult to be away from Jesus, to be away from the love that I had just discovered, but this was the only way we could both survive in this world. I made my peace with it a long time ago, but now I was back, and I had no idea where he was. Chances were that Jesus wasn’t even with the Rogue Rebels anymore, that he wasn’t even in the city.

And now, I was a prisoner, and my life was at stake. As was Papi’s.

I wished Papi hadn’t written to me; I wished I hadn’t found out that he was sick. Then, I wouldn’t have got on that flight, and I wouldn’t have stepped foot in this messed up city again. That way, the Muerte Viviente, would never have found me or kidnapped me.

xxx

I knew the men were Muerte Viviente because of their tattoos. They were all of the skulls of the dead. They were covered in them, and I noticed them the moment the group of three men walked towards me at the airport. I had been trying to stuff my bags into the trunk of the cab I had hailed, and before I could react, two of them had grabbed me, while the third lifted me up by my feet. The people around us just stood there watching. They didn’t even move a muscle to try and help.

Within seconds a screeching car had pulled up, and the men threw me in.

I screamed and struggled in the car, while the men pinned me down to tie up my wrists.

“Your father owes us money,” one of them had growled, while another stuffed rag into my mouth so that my cries would muffle. I wanted to say something, to plead with them to let me go so that I could see Papi. What kind of debt had he run into?

“He’s owed us for four months now,” another one chimed in, with a devilish grin on his face while the third ran a finger up and down my left cheek. I screamed, my throat chaffing from my cries.

“He’s not going to be able to pay,” he said, right into my ear and I could smell his beer-breath, and it made me nearly choke.

I didn’t stop struggling, even though my wrists were tied up. How did they know I was coming? How did they know to keep a watch on the airport? But the Muerte Viviente knew everything. If they believed that debt was owed to them, then they were going to make damn sure that it was paid. Even if it meant by taking my life.

When my muffled screams grew too tiresome for them, they stopped in the middle of the highway and dragged me out of the car. I tried to run when they pulled me out, but I was no match for the three Muerte Viviente men plus the driver. They grabbed me and stuffed me into the trunk, while my mascara ran in a heavy dark stream down my cheeks.

I hadn’t eaten in several hours, and I was beginning to feel weak. Instinctually, I continued to kick at the walls of the trunk, even though I knew that there was no escape. In those moments of utter terror, instead of thinking of Papi, only Jesus’ face floated in front of my eyes. Even though I hadn’t seen him in ten years, it was his face that I was reminded of. The guy who had made me feel safe, the one who had made me feel special. I felt like he was the only one who could save me now.

When they stopped at the motel and pulled me out of the trunk, I fell unconscious in their arms. After that, there was only darkness until I woke up on the motel bed.

Did Papi even know I

was missing? How could he know? I hadn’t even told him I was coming. When I received the letter from him, telling me that he was very sick, I still couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted to come back here. I was still in shock that he had tracked me down after all those years.

At the last minute, just hours before the fight I eventually took, I decided that I couldn’t just let him die before saying our goodbyes. I hadn’t written to him or called to say that I was on my way. So, he didn’t know to expect me, which meant that he wouldn’t know that I had been kidnapped.

And now I wasn’t sure what would happen to him if I did manage to escape from here, even though the chances of that happening were minimal. Would they kill him if I left? They most certainly would.

As much as I was afraid of Papi, as much as I had hated him for the things I had seen him doing…he was still my father. I couldn’t just forget about all those years of my childhood when I had looked up to him before I had met Jesus, and Papi was the only man in my life. I had run away from home without leaving him a note, without keeping in touch…in my mind, he had already paid his dues to me. It was why I had returned.

I lay back down on the bed now, staring up at the ceiling blankly. What were these men going to do to me? How were they going to avenge Papi's debt? I had been away from the gang and MC world for so long, but it didn’t mean that I wasn’t aware of what they were capable of.

The fact that they had kidnapped me meant that they had something planned. The Muerte Viviente wasn't the kind of gang that would kidnap me just to scare my father. They were going to teach him a lesson. They were going to use me as bait, or make sure that Papi never got to see me again. Either one of those two options were bad news for me.

I shivered and tossed and turned on the bed, and every time I pressed my eyes closed, I thought of Jesus and where he might be. No other man had even come close to the young love that we had shared as teenagers. For all I knew, he had left the MC and gotten married and started a family. I smiled at the thought of Jesus with a wife, with a kid…was he happy?

I felt the tears trickling down my cheeks as I lay there. Even in the worst moments of my life, when I had no hope of getting out of this place alive, all I could think about was the man I ran away from.

Chapter 3

King