Billionaire Baby Daddy

“What the hell is going on?” Baller asked over the radio. “Answer, Rake; we need to confirm your direction.”

Again, there was no answer. We couldn’t hear any interference. There was no faint sound of him trying to say something and we just couldn’t hear him. We heard absolutely nothing. Sandbag and I both looked at each other and knew we would have to go back. We couldn’t leave the women and children there to fend for themselves if something had happened to Rake. There was no other option; we had to help them.

Chapter Twenty-One

ANA

There were five rounds of fire that rang out after we turned down the alternate road. I instantly looked out the window to see where the shots had been fired from, but I couldn’t tell. The children in the back seat initially yelled out, but the women calmed them quickly and as I turned to Rake I saw that we were in a whole hell of a lot of trouble.

“Rake, let’s get out of here,” I said before I realized the extent of his injuries.

He was totally unresponsive, and I saw the single gunshot hole that was in the driver’s side window. Then I saw the blood pouring out of Rake’s left temple. My heart sank at the realization that I was alone with an SUV full of vulnerable women and we were in the middle of a firefight.

I could still hear shots ringing out where Nate’s SUV was at and I knew I had to get our vehicle out of there while the rebels were distracted. I didn’t know what I was doing, but all I could think about was what Nate might be telling me to do if he was there.

Oh, how I wished Nate was in our vehicle with us. But then I realized if he had been in the SUV driving, then he would be the one who was dead instead of Rake. There would be no more wishing things were different; I didn’t have time for that. I didn’t have time for anything except to get us out of that area.

I slid onto Rake’s lap and pressed the vehicle into drive while I floored the gas. The SUV smoked and made a lot of noise, but it drove so I kept us moving as far away from the gunfight as I could get us.

“Hang on, ladies,” I yelled out as we took a couple turns going at least fifty miles per hour.

I didn’t know how much longer our vehicle was going to last, and I needed to get us as close to the airport as possible. We were probably ten miles away and it would be a very long and dangerous walk with the 17 women and teenage children I had in the vehicle. We made it about a mile away from the gunfight, but I had turned back and forth through the streets so I wasn’t really sure how far we had made it.

“Does anyone speak English?” I yelled out as the SUV started to smoke.

“I do,” a teenage girl yelled out from the back.

“Tell everyone to get ready to run. Stay together and we are going west.”

“Okay,” she said and then started to translate what I had said.

I reached to Rake’s side and grabbed his gun as I stopped the vehicle and everyone started to get out. I felt around his jacket and found a couple extra clips before I slid out of the SUV and motioned for the group to follow me. I didn’t know for sure where we were going, but I saw a faint light in the distance behind us that was the sun getting ready to rise, so at least I knew we were heading west.

We were in bad shape, there was no denying it. I had forgotten to grab the radio from the car and only had about twenty to thirty bullets between what was in the gun and in the extra magazines. None of the women or children were armed and the sun was coming up. The second the sun came up, we would be totally exposed and in desperate need of a place to hide out until help could arrive.

There was no way to know for sure if all the women and teenagers were behind us, but every time I looked back, there was still a large group of women behind me. There were a couple teenage boys who looked like they were bringing up the rear and I was pretty impressed with their willingness to help keep their mothers and sisters safe. Even boys as young as thirteen and fourteen were ready to fight to keep the women in their lives safe.

I had never had that in my life—well, not until I met Nate. Before Nate, I searched for a man who would love and protect me and I went with Stephano because I so desperately wanted that love. I knew that was how Stephano got women like me; he simply promised to love them and we were caught in his web of lies. But I wasn’t that little girl anymore, and as much as I

still wanted to have Nate in my life, I didn’t need him in order to feel like I was a full person. Every step I took on the run through Damascus was a step I took towards my own freedom and strength.

“It’s getting light out; we need to find shelter,” I said to Danita.

We stopped and I quickly started to check the buildings around us to see if any of the doors were unlocked. It was risky to just enter an unlocked home, but we didn’t have a choice. The rebels were going to get the word out that we got away and everyone was going to be looking for us soon. We couldn’t be out in the daylight or we would risk getting captured.

There was one thing I knew for sure about the rebels in Syria; they didn’t treat women captives very well at all. Before killing the women, they raped them and often made their children watch. The rebels would then kill the children and force their mothers to watch. Sometimes they wouldn’t even kill the mothers and instead let them live with the horror of watching their children be tortured and murdered.

I wasn’t going to let that happen to any of the women and children I had with me. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to make sure they were safe. I wasn’t trained in everything that Nate and his friends were, but I had dealt with Stephano for weeks and I wouldn’t allow the women in my care to be tortured like I had been.

“We have a phone,” Danita said as she brought a phone up to me from one of the teenaged boys. “It’s likely being monitored, though.”

“Thanks, now let’s get in here,” I said as I pushed open a door to an old apartment building.

Danita and the rest of the women and teenagers didn’t hesitate at all as they piled into the building. Once inside though, it was clear that the building was barely standing after it had been bombed. The stairs were gone and there was no way to get to the upper floors; staying on the lower level was obviously the most dangerous spot for us, but we had no other choice.

I started to gather furniture that was left in the house and pushed it up against the front door. Danita and a couple of the teenage boys helped me, and before long, we had a huge pile in front of the door and the front window to the building. If someone was going to try coming in through that door, it was going to take them a very long time, and hopefully would allow us enough time to escape.

I moved everyone into a room at the back of the building and sat them down while I took Danita and the boys to check out the rest of the building. We had to know what we were dealing with and where our weak points might be if we were going to use the place as our hideout for the day.