The Squad

I reached for her hand and took it before she knew what I was after and damn near lost my fingers. “Ouch, cut it out. I told you, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know, that’s why you still have it. Watch where you put them from now on.” Little shit had the nerve to look at me smugly like she really thought she could take me.

I looked down at my hand, turning it this way and that; she’d damn near bent my fingers back to my wrist. I grabbed her hand again just to show her who’s boss and had to drag her to the door. She pitched a fit in between throwing a few more choice words at me in Korean, which I’m pretty sure she knew I didn’t understand. When she literally dug her feet into the floor, I came up short after almost wrenching my arm out the socket.

“Listen, you can walk, or I can carry you; either way, I’m taking you downstairs to find something to eat. I’m kinda hungry myself since I spent the last few hours hunting your murdering ass down.”

“No one asked you to gae sae, and I still haven’t admitted to anything.” I got her out of the room and considered it progress.

We were halfway to what I was hoping was the kitchen when I heard Mancini’s voice coming from somewhere down the hall. “She was molested from the time they took her at the age of eight until she disappeared five years ago when she turned eighteen. I can only guess that they had other plans for her, and she somehow escaped before they could carry them out.”

“She seems to have just fallen off the grid from the time she went into the system until now, so it’s a good bet that no one is looking for her. Both her mother and father are deceased, and there are no known next of kin that I can find so far. Before she was taken, it appears she had a pretty normal childhood until her dad died in action, then things seemed to go off the rails.”

“She was put into the system apparently because her mom couldn’t handle her dad’s passing, and things started to fall apart at home.” I didn’t have to think too hard about who the she was that he was talking about, and her reaction said she knew it too. She took off running in the direction the sound of his voice was coming from with me hot on her heels only to come up short in the doorway to what appeared to be the home office.

All the others were seated in there, and Mancini was once again speaking from the wall it looked like since there were no screens in sight, just his face hanging in midair. Roxana walked right up to the front of the room and glared at him as every man in the room held silent. “Who are you? What gives you the right?” I’m not sure if anyone else noticed, but I heard the catch in her voice and wanted to go get her. I’d pretty much imagined what her life must’ve been like, but hearing it spelled out like that left me gutted, so imagine how she must feel.

“Hello Roxana, I’m sure you have a lot of questions, which will all be answered in a few hours when you get here.”

“Get here, where? What’re you talking about? I’m not going anywhere with you people.”

She stepped back from the wall and his image as if expecting that to help. It was such a childish move for the woman who’d gutted and castrated someone just a few hours ago that I found it almost laughable. But when I saw the look on her face, all semblance of laughter left me. I didn’t think about what I was doing or how it would look to the others when I walked over and grabbed her hand again, taking her from the room.

She was close to breaking point. I don’t know how I knew, but I saw the signs. Now that I think about it, it was stupid of us to just grab her and expect her to fall in line with whatever we had planned for her. There’s no way I’m leaving her here, but there’s a better way to go about this surely. First, I have to get something hot and nourishing in her since her tummy was trumpeting again.

ROXY

Just what the hell have you gotten yourself into this time, Roxy? I tried to remember where I’d gone wrong when it was that I’d left a clue behind or a trail for them to follow. Nothing came to mind, which made me even more nervous. For all that, the hot one kept reassuring me that I wasn’t in danger. It’s been a long time since I’ve trusted anyone, and I’m not about to start.