“Wow, you really should do that more often.”
“What?”
“That smile. Damn, you must have been a real heart breaker in your day,” I said to Nate.
“Hey! I’m not that old. I can still be a heartbreaker,” he said as he tossed me a smile again. “But you should smile more often also. You could knock a guy off his chair with that grin of yours.”
But Nate was right: I hadn’t really smiled much in a very long time. It felt good to feel carefree for that moment. It felt like I was myself again, even if only for a few seconds of time. Then I heard something moving outside the window and dropped my fork as I swung around in my chair in utter terror.
The noise wasn’t particularly scary, so I didn’t know why I had done that. But after turning around, I saw out the window that there were two squirrels running around a tree, certainly nothing to be fearful of.
“That will calm down, you know, the reaction to things like that,” Nate said. “You’re lucky it wasn’t one of the crazy raccoons that live out here. They will jump right up on the porch and go through all my things like they own the place.”
“What?” I asked as I turned back toward my plate.
“The hyper vigilance. You’ll learn to calm down again, I promise.”
His words felt like they were coming from someone who really understood what I was going through. I trusted him. I didn’t know him, but I trusted Nate very much. If he said the constant fear I was feeling was going to calm down, I couldn’t wait to prove him right. It was exhausting to always feel like someone was coming to murder you.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, anything,” Nate said as he turned toward
me.
“Do you think Stephano and his men are looking for me?”
My question caught him off guard, and I knew he wasn’t going to answer me even if he knew the answer. Especially after seeing me freak out over the last few days, Nate wasn’t about to do anything that would add more fear into my life. I appreciated that very much, but I did want to know if I was still in danger.
“I honestly don’t know. I thought he died that night, but we don’t really have proof of that.”
“If he is alive, he’s going to want me dead, isn’t he?”
Nate thought for a long time before he answered me. His eyes looked serious and he made a point to look deep into my eyes as he talked, and then he winked at me.
“Well, that would be damn stupid of him, since we’re going to teach you how to kill a man.”
I had to laugh at the notion that I would actually be strong enough to kill a man. I couldn’t imagine I would ever feel strong again at all. But having Nate around and believing in me did give me hope that I would be able to work toward something stronger in my future. And who knows? Maybe someday I would feel like I was powerful and in control again.
Chapter Eight
NATE
It was a lie. I knew that Stephano was alive, and I knew he wanted to kill Ana. But the truth was that he had no idea where she was. He didn’t know who any of us were so he really didn’t know where to start looking for her. We were lucky that no one in the Miami scene really knew us. But I wouldn’t put my guard down too much when it came to Stephano. He was a slippery guy and could find out what he wanted to know by spending a few hundred thousand dollars. It just depended on how much he wanted to get revenge.
I suspected a man like Stephano probably wanted revenge though. We let all his women go, which had to of cost him millions of dollars. Not to mention the fact that we made him look like a fool by taking the women right out of his home. Stephano Copal was going to come after us for revenge, I was positive of that; I just didn’t know how long he would wait. It was entirely possible that he would wait years.
There were many options to take care of a man like Stephano, but none of them were legal, and I didn’t feel like getting into any sort of trouble before I started my own business. For the time being, I was content to wait and see what Stephano brought out in his search for Ana and the other women.
“Do you have workout clothes with you?” I asked as I remembered she probably didn’t have many things of her own.
I felt horrible for Ana. She had traveled all the way to the United States thinking she was in love, but instead found a heartless man who wanted to sell her to the highest bidder. I wasn’t a big fan of romance, but I knew that the ladies liked it and it was sad that things had turned so horribly wrong for Ana in her search for Prince Charming.
“That’s about all I have. Jordan brought me some while I was at the treatment center when I asked her for a pair of tennis shoes.”
“Let me guess, she brought you three pairs of tennis shoes too,” I joked.
I didn’t know Jordan very well yet, but what I did know was that she and Ana were like sisters. Jordan loved Ana and had done absolutely everything in her power to find her friend and bring her to safety. Without Jordan, Ana would have forever been lost in the dark market of sex trafficking. I also knew that Jordan didn’t do anything half-assed; she liked to go overboard for sure. When I first met Jordan, I said I liked drinking Vodka instead of beer. When we got back from rescuing Ana, there were eight cases of Russian vodka on my porch. Jordan went all out, and I suspected when Ana was back to herself, she probably would go all the way with whatever it was she decided to do with her life.