Salem gulped as the technician sent an encouraging smile back at them. “Everything sounds perfect. Would you like to know the sex?”
“Yes,” Carlo insisted as he hovered over the side of where Salem lay.
“A girl…and a boy.”
His pride ballooned bigger than the rest. He turned to take Salem’s face in his hands, and he looked at her as if he adored her. “You did it. I knew you would give me an heir. A man to carry on my family name. A son to follow my path.”
Salem forced a trembling smile, tears blurring her sight and running down the sides of her face.
Carlo leaned in and kissed them. “Good girl,” he whispered before he turned and left.
They were parked at the curb on the quiet neighborhood street, and Salem struggled to breathe as she peered out at the unassuming single-story house that sat behind a white-picket fence.
Oaks grew proud and tall, their thick, full leaves dappling the ground in shadows as rays of sunlight shimmered through the branches. Birds flitted through, and the sound of children laughing and playing in the distance echoed in her ears.
The peace felt at complete odds with the barrage of fear and second guesses that filled her mind.
Was she really going to do this?
Was she brave enough?
Strong enough to see it through?
Was it a mistake?
She curled her hand tighter on the door handle as if it could keep her grounded.
Centered.
Reminding her of her purpose. The truth that she had no other choice.
Salem shifted to look at the detective who sat behind the wheel of the gray sedan. “You’re sure we will be safe here? That we will be protected?”
Salem’s mangled jaw was lifted in a challenge, desperate for the woman to give her reassurance. It didn’t matter they’d gone over the plan a thousand times. She needed to hear it again.
Detective Whitacre reached out and squeezed Salem’s hand. “I know you’re scared right now, but you’ve done the right thing. And I promise you, you are under our protection. No one will get close to you, not before the trial or after. You and your children will be safe.”
Salem spread a hand over her stomach that was so large she could hardly sit. Their time to come into this world was only four weeks away.
Love and hope blossomed. Bloomed against the dread that felt like a millstone that threatened to drag her to the bottom of the sea.
She knew…she knew the detective was right.
Putting Carlo behind bars for the rest of his life was her responsibility.
She needed to rid this world of his depravity. Of his viciousness. To get justice for her best friend. Justice for the rest he had hurt. For the families that had been destroyed.
But most of all, she had to protect her children. Shelter them from that life. Keep them from being molded in his design.
But once she went into protective custody, there would be no turning back. She wouldn’t be able to check on her brother or grandmother.
This morning when Salem had gone to say goodbye, to confess what she was doing, she’d almost changed her mind. But Mimi had hugged her tight as she cried, as she’d whispered in her ear, “I’m willing, sweet child, to face whatever is to come. I have no regrets. But you must go. I have already lived my life. Now it is time for you to live yours.”
Salem had to walk away.
Forever.
But for her children? To give them a good life?
She had no other choice than to leave this life behind.
THIRTY-THREE
JUD
Guiding his bike along the deserted path, Jud eased up behind the car that stopped along the backside of an abandoned warehouse. It was well beyond midnight, and a thick, murky darkness hung low on the city.
A dull glow pushed against it, rising up from the eternal lights that glinted from this place that was nothing but a festering cesspool.
He hated it there—hated it because he’d sworn he would never return to walk these cursed streets, and there he was, doing the bidding of the perverted.
Jud killed the rumbling engine of his motorcycle and kicked the stand.
His nerves rattled. An unsettled feeling that wafted through the cool night air as he swung off his bike at the same moment Marcello and two of his men, Tony and Kolin, climbed from the car.
They were quiet.
Too quiet. Too guarded.
Intuition lifted the hairs at the back of Jud’s neck. His fingers twitched as he was hit with the uneasy awareness that had kept him alive for years. A sense of foreboding that told him he had walked into an ambush.
Something was off.
Tony and Kolin went to the trunk where they pulled out four cans of gasoline, their seedy guilt clear as they scanned the area.
That feeling writhed, tendrils climbing through Jud’s nerves and winding around his neck.
His heavy boots barely made a sound as he edged forward. The short-barrel rifle strapped to his back burned like a brand as he strode their way. Every step ensured he was walking straight into a trap.
This was bad.
Really fuckin’ bad.
He could feel it.
Marcello angled his head in silent communication for them to follow. The four of them slinked along the dense foliage that broke open to the edges of a park. They kept low as they prowled along the short fence that ran the backside of a neighborhood.
Alarm swept through his bloodstream, a pound, pound, pound that drummed as he followed Marcello and his men farther along the backside of the sleeping houses. Marcello looked at them, his eyes dim as he indicated for them to ease up the side of the cover of trees. They paused about five yards beyond the back fence line of a small house.
Anxiety wound through Jud. Those tendrils of alarm closed off his throat as they all knelt within the cover of night beneath the shelter of those trees.
“Just who are we pressin’， Marcello?” Jud’s teeth gritted as he hissed the question below his breath.
Marcello cracked a smug smile. “There’s been a small change of plans. We are now on a retrieval mission. We are here to return a boy child to his rightful place.”
Confusion stormed while rage spiked. That disquieted anger pumped through his veins and sizzled across his flesh.
He’d anticipated bullshit.
But this?
What exactly did that mean?
A recovery mission of a child?
Whatever it was, it didn’t sit right.
It was all off.
All wrong.
Marcello knelt lower, dropped his voice quieter. “There will be two officers standing guard. One inside and one out. Jud, you are here to ensure clear passage into the house. Do it quiet and quick. I will get the child. Kolin and Tony, you ensure no one else gets out.”
They nodded as if they had already been prepped for their roles.
While venom burned on Jud’s tongue, the world starting to spin, the truth that he’d indeed walked straight into a trap.
Coerced into deviance.
“Why am I here? Why would you come all the way to Redemption Hills to drag me back here?” he demanded, attention flicking around, trying to figure the score. What the fuck this was about.
Marcello had hundreds of men at his disposal.
“This mission is of the utmost importance. One in which failure will not be tolerated. Under the dire circumstances, I was charged to find the best. You are the best, no?”
It was pure provocation.
“Who is the target?” Jud demanded, angst lining his bones.