Chapter 2

MIA

“Don’t test me, Mia. You either get on the bed or I make you. The latter won’t be so pretty”, he declared with so much trepidation that my body shook with fear.

Then again when had I never not been scared? This was my life, living in constant fear that the man in front of me would one day end my life at any second.

His eyes like a storm brewing so fiercely, he charged forward and I took two steps back. His lush brown hair fell on his forehead as he tugged on his belt trying to do what he’d done to me for years.

“You think you can run, huh? Don’t make this hard than it already is”

“Than it already is? My life’s a living hell because of you!” I shouted carrying all the emotions I had stashed away since my dear old dad gave me to him.

“Little bird has grown a back bone huh? Little birdie has a mouth now”, he mocked and I hated him and his bullshit nickname for me.

“This is the last straw, Bryant. You are never going to hurt me again. You are never going to do as much as touch me because from now on…I’m no longer yours”

He guffawed and normally that would have scared me to the depths. Instead, it boosted my morale that in a couple of seconds, the bastard would be out cold on the floor and I would finally escape this shit of a place.

The suvorexant in his blood stream would work any time now. Looming towards me, his teeth gritted with so much force they would break, his calloused hand squeezed my neck-hard.

“You little Tonelli bitch. You know how much I paid for you, huh? You fucking breath because I let-let-because I- “, he stuttered moving away from me as his uneven breaths scraped life from inside of him.

Gulping much needed breath and calming the hard pitter patter of my heart, I gazed at him with so much disdain before he fell on the ground like a shriveled weed.

“I’m no longer yours,” I said tears choking my throat with unpleasantness.

I wished I had a cold heart. I wished I was just as cynical as Bryant Knox because then, I would have spiked his drink with rat’s poison instead of an overdose of suvorexant.

Hurriedly taking the rucksack I had hidden behind the closet since Turo put this whole plan together, I dashed to the window taking a look down the height I was supposed to conquer.

It didn’t look like a five foot drop. No. It looked much more than that. Much more in the sense that I was on the fourth floor of Bryant’s mansion and his architect had done a great job in ensuring no one tried escaping through the fucking windows.

My heart in my mouth, I glanced down once more eyeing the man who’d appeared from the eerie darkness like a saving knight.

Jump, just like I taught you, he mouthed and I gulped saliva harder than I had before.

Right, this wasn’t the time to back down. I was tasting freedom, freedom in the form of me jumping off a building that might as well have been a cliff.

With nothing left to lose, the rucksack on my back, I trusted gravity and Turo’s training. Holding the edge of the concrete, one foot out the window, I prayed that just this once the Lord heard my prayers.

I took a leap of faith—literally and metaphorically.

I soared through the air.

I embraced gravity.

I let Turo’s training sink in. Hands in, legs apart.

I overcame.

“Good job,” came Turo’s unimpressed voice.

“We don’t have time to waste, you got everything?”

I nodded clutching my knapsack as everything I owned.

His gun holstered by his waist, he held my hand and together we ran.

I was getting out.

I was being set free from the cruelty the world had inflicted upon me.

“This is it, Mia. My buddy here will take you to this man of yours. If things don’t work out, I have a cabin in East Coast he’ll give you the address”, he voiced giving the taxi driver a nod.

“What about you? They’ll know you drugged them. Come with me, Arturo. We’ll escape together-“, I mumbled incoherently and he reached out for a loose tendril tucking it behind my ear.

“I chose this life, you didn’t. You have to get away, Mia. I’ll be fine, I’ll make some shit so that Bryant believes you are dead. Carlos, make sure she gets there okay”

The car took off and I sobbed wanting to tell him so much. I’d never forget him. He was the only one of Bryant’s men who’d shown me mercy. Who’d snuck me bread and water whenever Bryant locked me up in his psychotic prison.

“He’ll be fine”, the taxi driver named Carlos said and I believed him because the thought that Turo wasn’t going to be okay shattered me.

Miami felt different tonight, maybe because I didn’t have maids accompanying me or I didn’t have fear gnawing on my sides about Bryant’s foul moods when I got home.

Home.

I had to laugh that.

I had no home. I never had a home.

Sure, I had escaped but that didn’t mean I was escaping to a lavish hotel with food and spare clothes.

I was running towards the man I hated most than Bryant. The man who owed me everything I lost.

When I saw him at the market the other day, I hardly believed it was him. He was supposed to be dead.

It was a mere minute but I drank in all his features at a go.

It was him clad in a black polo shirt branded with a logo B&A. His boyish features were gone and instead, I was staring at a man with tattoos on his arms and a body hardened and toughened by years of gym membership and war.

I’d been so spooked that the maids immediately called Bryant and well he didn’t react too well to being disturbed at work. From then on, Arturo had dug all the details I had given him and found him.

Called himself Flames. Joined the Marines at the tender age of nineteen right after he’d…

I pushed the past behind me.

He owed me. He had to help me.

“We are here”, Carlos gave me a heads up.

He pulled the car into the vast parking lot in front of the building and I all but stared at the colossal building. Twenty story high if I wasn’t wrong and judging by the numerous lights on each floor, it was a booming business.

“I’ll wait for you incase things go south”, Carlos uttered.

“Thank you. For everything”

“I owed Turo one”, he simply said giving me a tight smile.

Turning around, my heart in my mouth, I advanced to the B&A BUILDING.

“I need to see some ID ma’am?”

“I-I don’t have an ID but if you could please allow me to-“

“No ID, no entry”, the tank of a man barked so icily my toes felt it.

“Please I’m looking for Andro. If you could call him for a sec that would really-“

His eyes stormy he leveled me with a look,

“Just fucking leave, ma’am. I’ve had a shit of a day and dragging beggars from the compound will add to more shit”

I ground my teeth harshly. Sure, I was dressed in the lamest clothes ever but calling me a beggar was being unnecessarily harsh.

“Call Alessandro, tell him I’m outside-“

“Did you just say Alessandro?”

Someone spoke behind us and I turned around. Six feet tall, blonde hair, dreamy eyes and a ripped body, the man behind us would have landed Brad Pitt movie roles without lifting a finger.

“I got this one, Tank”, he told the security guard his eyes never leaving mine.

“We have security for a reason, Ja-“

He’d barely finished talking when shots resonated the air like hail.

The blonde guy told me to get down before he whisked a fully loaded gun from his back.

“Come in. ten four, you copy? Fuckers shooting like they don’t know how to use guns. You see ‘em up there? How many? They what?”

Something exploded and my ears rung with sharp pain.

I didn’t know what was going on because the next thing I knew I was being escorted inside the building. They spoke to me but I couldn’t hear shit. They told me to sit down and I sat terrified to the core.

“Miss. Miss?”

“You sure this was the right call, Jason?”

“She brought trouble with her. To HQ, no less!”

“She knows Flames”

“A lot of women know Flames! He fucks them every single fucking hour”

“She knows his real name, Blaze”

My head snapped to the two men in front of me. We were in a small room with two settees, a small flat screen tv and CCTVs at the edge of the white as fuck ceiling.

“Hi, remember me? We met earlier. What’s your name?”

“Andro, please get me Andro”

“How do you know Flames?” the slightly taller gruffy guy behind the blonde one asked with a voice so hard it scared me.

“Hey loosen up Blaze”, the guy called Jason spoke and I thanked God for his sweetness.

“A taxi got blown up right in front of our eyes. The taxi that she came with so don’t tell me fucking nothing. She might be a spy or something”

Taxi? Blown up? Oh no, Carlos? He was—dead?

“Don’t listen to him but you really owe us an explanation darling. Who-“

The door flung open. Jason stood up from where he knelt on the floor as we all jolted our gazes to the door.

“Mia?”