Plausibility

Chapter 14

Aquilla tried not to show her impressiveness over the massive movie screen and the surround sound in the theater. She even turned her head a couple of times, looking for a window. The thunderstorm flowing around the cinema felt so real. Wow. She really was sheltered. She couldn’t help but be excited. She may have picked a better movie had she known this one was about a drug cartel. She fought her whirling mind the whole time, trying to keep her attention on the movie while the scenes reminded her of the home she left behind.

The sidewalk was dark by the time the two of them exited the building.

“Want to get ice cream?” Liz asked, as they walked down the sidewalk.

“Sure. You know the last time I had ice cream was the day that our home was raided and my father was killed and Julius ran,” Aquilla shared for whatever reason.

Liz had to bite her bottom lip to keep from reminding her that he wasn’t her father. “I can’t imagine how hard that was for you, Quill. I’m sorry all of this has happened to you. I wish I could change it.”

“My father used to tell me that everything happens for a reason. Do you believe that?” Quill asked, looking over to her mother.

“No. I can’t really say that I do. I spent years thinking that. It drove me nuts. My father too, used to say that same thing. I spent many waken nights trying to figure out what I had done. If things happened the way they did for a reason, than I had to have done something really bad. ‘Cognitive dissonance,’ that’s the only thing I think I took from my own years of therapy.”

“What’s that?” Aquilla asked.

“It’s where an individual’s behavior conflicts with beliefs that are integral to his or her self-identity.”

“Uh?” Aquilla mumbled, not understanding the foreign language.

“Take a smoker. They smoke, which is the behavior, but yet they know that it causes cancer, which is the cognition. I was what you might call a smoker.”

“You have asthma. Why would you smoke?”

“No, not really, I’ve never smoked. I’m just using it as an example. My behavior of some of the things that I did after you were taken, were sort of like that. I knew my actions were causing major turmoil on my family, yet I did it anyway.”

“Like leaving Reese?”

“Monica tell you about

“Yeah, but don’t be mad at her. She’s only trying to help.”

“Yes. Like leaving Reese,” Liz admitted, holding the door for Aquilla to enter the ice cream shop.

“Do you want to eat in here or just keep walking?”

“We can walk. It’s nice out.”

“Hey, I know you. You’re that pretty famous girl that was all over the news last week,” the young man at the counter smiled. “How are you? I hope you are doing okay,” he stated, sincerely.

“Yes. I’m fine. Thank you for asking,” Aquilla smiled back.

“What can I get for you two lovely ladies this evening?”

“I’ll have a small strawberry cone,” Aquilla replied.

“Make that two,” Liz added.

They waited while the cute boy fixed their cones. Aquilla noticed a table of four young people about her age, looking at her as they whispered around the table.

“Here you go. They’re on the house,” the boy said, handing over the cones with a Colgate smile.

“Thank you,” they said simultaneously.

“You know that boy was flirting with you, don’t you?” Liz teased as they walked.

“Shit. I would hurt that little boy_____. Crap. Sorry,” Aquilla said with a skewed face.

Liz couldn’t help but laugh, although she didn’t want to think about what she knew Aquilla was talking about. “It’s okay,” Liz assured her, placing her arm around her shoulder and pulling her in for a hug. She dropped it immediately, remembering Monica’s advice about giving her space.

“You can touch me,” Aquilla offered, catching it too.

Liz didn’t put her arm around her again, and instead, smiled and moved her hair from the front to her back.

“I’m sorry that you had to go through this too,” Aquilla offered, still unable to call her mom. It just didn’t feel right to her.

Liz smiled, happy with the night’s progress.

Aquilla did feel like they had moved a step closer, feeling like maybe some of the weight had been lifted from her shoulders as she crawled into her bed alone that night. She wondered what Seri and Monica were doing, and wished she were there with them.

She dreaded the days ahead, knowing that Seri had to leave her. She wasn’t looking forward to not having her around. She knew it was crazy and didn’t really expect her to just move in with her at her mother’s house. It was still a nice wish though.

Aquilla pulled the laptop closer and began to read. She didn’t read about anything too emotional and it was mostly happy, memory lane talk. She decided to close out of it when she felt his emotions changing to a deeper topic. She was happy. She had a good day, and she was smiling, remembering the things that they had done together. She didn’t want to go to bed sad.

By eleven o’clock, both Seri and Monica were well on their way to being drunk. They hooked up with a couple of locals, and flirted their asses off while the four of them shot pool tog

“You ladies here on business?” the guy who had introduced himself as Vince asked, as he sent the 3 ball straight into the corner pocket.

“Something like that,” Seri answered.

“Where you staying?” he asked, sending another ball right where he aimed it to go.

“At that little dive down the street, Crimson Inn, I think it was called,” she answered. “You guys live around here?”

“Yup, born and raised,” he answered, missing the next ball and handing the pool stick to Seri. She stood close and purposely touched his hand with hers as he smiled down at her.

Yup, he would do just fine. He was fucking hot and smelled amazing.

By midnight, they were back in their room with the two hot guys tangled in their webs.

“You girls want to burn one?” Vince asked, sitting on one of the queen beds.

“Hell yeah,” Monica answered.

Vince pulled out his bag and twisted a joint. He looked up to Seri, pulling the gun from the back of her jeans and placing it in the hotel safe.

“You carry a gun? You a fucking cop or something?” he asked, alarmed.

“Nope,” she answered with only that, sitting beside him and taking the joint from between his fingers. He held the lighter up and lit it for her.

The four of them sat on the edges of the beds, facing each other, smoking the joint. They exchanged trivial conversation until Vince snuffed the bud out on his beer can. Seri moved back on her elbows and unbuttoned her jeans. His eyes shot up in shock.

“Are we really doing this?” Hot damn, this was his lucky day.

Seri raised her eyebrows as she slipped the zipper down.

“In front of them?” he asked with his thumb.

“Monica’s seen me fuck before. You got a problem with that?”

“Uh-uh,” he replied, moving up her body to kiss her. She turned her head, letting him kiss her on her neck. She wasn’t interested in being intimate with him. She had an agenda and it didn’t involve trading saliva.

She slid her jeans and panties over her hips and closed her eyes as his fingers found her aching nub.

“Hmmm, go down on me,” she moaned.

He looked to see his friend and her friend still sitting on the side of the bed watching. Fuck. This girl was fucking crazy. Yup, she was no doubt crazy, he decided, watching her pull her legs up, opening them and exposing her fucking hot as hell naked pussy. He dazedly moved between her legs. She didn’t even give a shit that they were being watched. And holy shit did she taste as good as she looked.

Seri turned her eyes with a smile when she heard Monica moan from the bed beside them. Her new friend was also between her legs, causing her to squirm.

Thirty minutes later, they were kicking the men out, both satisfied.

“Do you even know what that guy’s name was?” Seri asked as she tossed the condom wrappers to the trash.

“No. Who cares,” Monica replied, pulling on her panties.

“True,” Seri agreed, crawling into her bed.

Seri’s mind went to none other than Quill as she stared at the dingy ceiling. Why was this girl having such an effect on her? She worried about leaving her. It was probably dumb, and she was reading more into it than she needed to. She couldn’t help it. She felt obligated or something.

The next three days were okay. Aquilla continued to talk to Monica about her relationship with her mother, and Aquilla tried to be more open. Seri had spent three days trying to get into Julius’s computer to no avail. It was really starting to piss her off. Aquilla pissed her off even more with her smartass smirks because she couldn’t figure it out.

“Give it up, Seri. You’re just not as smart as I am.”

“Just tell me what it is, Quill.”

“No. That wasn’t the deal. I decrypted it. Just admit that you are not as smart as you think you are.”

“I’ll make you a deal.”

“A deal?”

“Yeah, you tell me what it is and I will give you the story of how Monica and I ended up working for the FBI.”

“You told me you would tell me that anyway. That’s not really a deal.”

“Please, Quill. It’s my job. I have to get on this laptop. I didn’t tell Houston about it, did I? He would have already had it in his hands if he knew you had it.”

“And I would never talk to you again. It’s personal, Seri, stuff that Julius wrote to me.”

“Quill, don’t you think the two of us have been through enough together for you to trust that I would never judge you, and I already know how you feel about him?”

“I don’t think you do, not really.”

“Then let me read it, and try to understand.”

“I haven’t read it all yet. I’m afraid there is something in there that will tell you where he is, and you’ll go after him.”

How did she reply to that? She was right. She would go after him, in a heartbeat. There was no doubt that she wanted to bring Julius Chavez to his knees.

“Okay. How about this; I will read it with you and if you feel as though he is about to reveal that information, you can move ahead to where I can’t read that part.”

“There is some pretty fucked up shit in there,” Aquilla warned.

“My whole life has been pretty fucked up. I’m sure I can keep up.”

“And you still have to tell me your story,” Aquilla required, giving in.

“I will.”

Aquilla took the laptop and typed the two passwords to let her on. “I have to go over to my grandparents and meet a bunch of aunts and uncles or some shit. I have a book mark where I left off. I doubt you will get that far. I’m not going to be gone that long, but if you get there, you have to stop.”

“I promise,” Seri said, taking the laptop.

“And this is between you and me? Not Monica, my mom, Houston, nobody, just you and me,” Aquilla advised.

“Okay, Quill. I get it. Go eat hotdogs with your family.”

“Yuck. I’m not eating a hotdog.”

Seri spent two full hours reading the words of Julius. She wiped tears more than once, laughed at the innocent way he loved Quill, and had her heart ripped to shreds when she read about some of the things Julius had been through. She couldn’t imagine seeing her mother and sister crushed beneath a car, and then leaving them.

The thought of a 12 year old boy being forced to train grown women was sick. It twisted her stomach in knots. When she read about the way he took care of Quill, and how he nurtured her, she felt her original perception of him was skewed. He was thrown into the life of drugs and chattels at a very young age. He really didn’t have a choice on the way he turned out or the things that he did. She also knew that even though he was somewhat of a pervert, he fought his feelings for Quill extremely hard and tried to keep them in check. He lost. He loved her and Seri could now see that without blinders.

“Are you still reading?” Quill asked after her very long, annoying introduction to the rest of the family.

“Yeah,” Seri said in a sad tone, closing the laptop.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Quill, I won’t go after him. I promise.”

Aquilla smiled. “He’s not the bad guy that you thought he was, is he?”

“No, Quill. He’s not. He was just as much a victim as you were.”

“Can you understand now why I am so determined to find him?”

“I can, but I still don’t know if that is such a good idea. He’s always going to be on the radar, Quill. I want you to have a normal life. You deserve that.”

“I don’t want that, Seri,” Quill explained, sitting on the end of the bed with her head down. “I’ve never had a normal life. We’ve always lived on the radar. It’s what I know. It’s what I’m used to. Can you understand that?” she asked, lifting her eyes to Seri’s.

“I’m trying, Quill.”

“Will you help me, Seri?”

“Quill, I___,”

“You don’t have to go with me, just help me track him down. You did it once,” Quill interrupted.

“And it took me almost a year.”

“I have almost a year before I will really be 18.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

“Promises about what?” Monica asked, walking in.

“That I will talk to her mom about her coming to stay with me for a week before school starts,” Seri lied.

“Whoa, I’m still not going to some fucking high school with a bunch of drama infested teenagers,” Aquilla assured them both.

“You’re a teenager, Quill,” Monica reminded her, plopping beside her.

“But, I’m more like a 25 year old teenager. Reese and Lil drive me crazy.”

Monica and Seri laughed, but knew she spoke the truth. She was way beyond her age of 17.

“Hey! Let’s smoke a joint!” Aquilla exclaimed excited.

“NO!!!” Monica and Seri both yelled at the exact same moment.

“Geesh, alright, alright, I get it.”

“Come on. We have to go sit by the fire with your family,” Monica lured the two.

“Great, are you sure we can’t smoke some of that first?”

“You stay away from weed. I think you’re allergic to it or something,” Seri teased, ruffling her hair. She felt even more compelled to be there for her now after reading her secrets. Nobody could understand Julius without reading that, let alone comprehend Quill’s feelings for him.

Aquilla liked her Aunt Kerri, and her Uncle Jake was funnier than shit. It wasn’t near as bad as she thought it was going to be. Of course, she did have Monica and Seri there for refuge too. That probably helped.

“You should go get your flute and play something for us, Kerri,” her grandpa urged.

“You play the flute?” Quill asked.

“Yeah, a little,” she replied modestly.

“She plays more than a little. She played for the New York Philharmonic for three years,” her Uncle Jake boasted.

“You did?!” Aquilla asked, excited. She would love to see the New York Philharmonic in concert.

“Do you like orchestra?” Keri asked surprised.

“Yeah, and I love to hear the flute. Play something for us,” Quill begged.

Aquilla’s cousin Samantha ran to her car and got the flute. Aquilla was astounded. Her Aunt was amazing. It was beautiful. Seri and Monica watched Quill get lost in the melodramatic melody. Neither of them pictured Quill to be into that sort of music, let alone the flute.

“That was beautiful,” Aquilla proclaimed when she modestly dropped the flute. “Can I see it?” Aquilla asked.

Kerri handed it over with a smile, happy that someone in her family finally appreciated the sophistication of the flute.

“May I?” she asked, dying to play. She couldn’t remember the last time she played. She missed it.

“Absolutely, do you play?” Kerri asked.

“A little,” Aquilla replied, just as unassertive as her aunt.

Aquilla brought the flute to her mouth and positioned her fingers. She closed her eyes and played, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from the movie “The Lion King.” It was breathtaking. Even Reese had tears in her eyes.

Aquilla was a little embarrassed when she blew the last long note. She hadn’t realized she had lost herself so deeply into the music.

“Aquilla, that was beautiful,” Liz exclaimed, wiping a tear.

“Thanks,” Aquilla said, handing the flute back to her Aunt Kerri.

“How did you learn to play like that?” Kerri asked.

“I had a teacher since I was seven. Have you ever heard of Randy Durban? I was taught by a nephew of his.”

“Randy Durban’s nephew taught you to play? It wasn’t Johnathan Durban, was it?”

“Yes. You know him?”

Kerri sat down with her hand over her heart. “Are you seriously telling me that Johnathan Durban taught you to play the flute?”

“Who’s Johnathan Durban?” Reese was the one to ask.

“Oh My God! He is the most amazing flute player in the world. I think he was even better than his uncle Randy.”

“Oh, me too, without a doubt,” Aquilla agreed with all eyes on her and Kerri, having no idea who they were so excited about.

“How in the world did you luck out?” she wanted to know.

Aquilla shrugged her shoulders. “I was only seven. I don’t really know how my father acquired him. He taught me from the time I was seven until I was fourteen. When we moved, I had another teacher, but he wasn’t near as talented as Johnathan was.”

“I cannot believe that Johnathan Durban was your teacher. This is crazy. That must have cost your ____ somebody a lot of money.”

“Yeah, probably,” Aquilla agreed with a sad tone. She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It made her miss her father and Julius. She wanted to be back there. She wanted everything to go back to the way it was. She would never complain about being isolated, if only she could go back.

“I’m kind of tired. I think I’m going to turn in,” she announced and walked back toward the cabin alone.

Seri showered and joined her already in bed. “Do you want to read some of Julius’s writing?” she asked, crawling into bed beside Quill.

“No. I don’t want to think about that anymore. I want you to tell me about you. Make me think about something else.”

Seri took a deep breath. She wasn’t overly excited about going down memory lane either. “What do you want to know, Quill?”

“Where did you grow up?”

“In New York.”

“Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“I had a sister, Lakota. She died seven years ago.”

“I’m sorry, Seri. Where you close to her?”

“Very. We were raised by my Grandma Violet.”

“Where were your parents?”

“I never knew who my father was and my mother is serving a life sentence.”

“WHY!?!” Aquilla asked, shocked. She was expecting to hear how perfect her family was.

“She was a heroin addict. I was only two and Lakota was four. She gave birth to a baby boy and dumped him in an alley, wrapped in a trash bag.”

“Oh My God, Seri, are you serious?” Quill asked, sitting up with chills running down her spine and arms.

“I am,” Seri replied sitting up too. “Want to burn one?”

“Uh… Yeah,” Quill replied.

“Lock the door, and don’t you dare tell Monica on me,” Seri demanded as she moved to her bag. She instantly regretted her decision to let Quill smoke weed. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew she was enabling her. Just because she used it as an escape didn’t mean she should be teaching Quill her bad habits. She knew exactly why she did it. She thought of Quill like she thought of Monica. She didn’t see her as a 17 year old child. See saw her as a friend, a very good friend.

“Tell me what happened next,” Aquilla requested, taking the joint from Seri.

Seri laughed. “I don’t know what happened next. I told you I was two. I don’t remember any of that. I wouldn’t remember my mother had my grandma not had pictures. We went to live with her and she raised us.”

“How old was Lakota when she died?”

“She was twenty two,” Seri answered, hitting the joint.

“I have a feeling this is the part where you are going to tell me how you got involved with the FBI,” Quill assumed.

“I had just gotten my two year degree in criminal justice and was in police academy for maybe two weeks. I knew she was messing with drugs a little. I wasn’t too worried; I didn’t think she was into anything too dangerous. It was the people she was hanging with that should have had me worried.”

“Why?” Quill asked, intrigued with Seri’s story.

“They used her to pay off a debt.”

“What do you mean?”

“The leader of the pack, Felix Lopez, he owed a bunch of money for some cocaine that had gotten seized before he had a chance to disburse it and get the money. Lakota was beautiful. I swear that girl didn’t have one flaw.”

“You’re kind of beautiful,” Quill offered, still smoking on the joint.

Seri smiled over at her. “Thanks. Anyway, Lopez didn’t have the money to pay and offered my sister in exchange for half the payment.” Seri stood and walked to the window. “They fucking gang raped her and left her for dead. The authorities didn’t give a shit. They probably thought the world was better off. They made her out to be some street walking whore. She wasn’t, Quill. She was in college to be a nurse. She just ran into the wrong guy at the wrong time.”

“And you went after them?”

Seri nodded, hiding the roach in her bag. “Monica and I, both. I continued to go to police academy and she continued to work on her phycology degree. We spent every free minute we had learning these guy’s every move. Lopez was into more shit than either of us thought, kind of the same thing your father was into. He had mass quantities of drugs being brought into New York on an almost weekly basis.”

“When we finally had enough to go to the authorities, they laughed at us and sent us on our way. I wasn’t giving up. I wanted the little fucker to pay.”

“Is that what the vengeance means on your tattoo?”

Seri nodded and sat back on the bed with her.

“Did you kill someone, Seri?”

“Lots of someone’s, Quill, and I didn’t care. I didn’t and still don’t feel one ounce of remorse for what I did. I was going to make sure they never did to another girl what they did to my sister.”

“But how did you get Lopez? Did you kill him too?”

“No. I didn’t want him dead. I wanted him ass fucked in prison for the rest of his life. It only took a little over four months to get inside his apartment. That was crazy too. The guy lived in the hood. His apartment building looked like it needed to be demolished, but when you got to his eight floor apartment, it was fucking amazing, like you walked into a different world.”

“But how did you get to him? How did you end up in his apartment? I know how those guys work, remember? I lived with two of them. They don’t do the dirty work. They have lots of little gatekeepers keeping people like you away.”

“Aquilla…You just told me I was beautiful,” Seri said, batting her eyes.

Aquilla laughed. “And you used it,” she replied with more of a statement than a question.

“Yeah, it was cheesy as hell. I couldn’t get to the guy to save my ass. I knew his every move. I knew what times, what days, where he ate, when women came and left his place. Hell, I even knew when and where his shipments were coming from, but I couldn’t get to him. I couldn’t go through any of his followers, they never really got to him either, and I had already disposed of most of them.”

“I feel like I’m watching a movie. My nerves are going crazy waiting to find out how you got to Lopez.”

Seri smiled at her. She freaking loved that girl. WHY? That was the question she couldn’t answer. “One afternoon, I was on his turf, wearing a hoody and dark sunglasses. I was leaned against a pole, pretending to be on my phone right in front of the bistro table that I knew he sat at every day. I listened as he made a call.

“Yo, bring me some pussy later on.”

“Seven.”

“I don’t give a fuck as long as she’s hot. I don’t want no skanks.”

“He was smart. He never stayed on the phone long enough to trace a call. Monica and I were smarter, well Tina was the smart one.”

“Tina?”

“Yeah, she was another friend that wanted no part of Monica’s and my revenge. She used my laptop at a public library and got into more records and illegal shit than I’m sure anyone could. She was the one that got the call trace down to forty five seconds. That is unheard of. She’s a freaking computer genius. If anyone can split atoms, it would be Tina.”

“Does Tina work for the FBI now too?”

“Yes, behind the scenes of course.”

“Did she help find my father?”

“She did,” Seri answered truthfully, wishing for the first time that she was never involved in finding Romano Chavez.

“If you’re so good at investigating, why didn’t you know about me?”

“I couldn’t get in that house to save my ass. I didn’t know about your father’s little chattel business. You didn’t come out of that house, or if you did, I never saw you.”

“How long were you there before it all went down? How long were you watching my house?”

“I was only there a couple of week’s right before we closed in.”

“I probably never came out then. When my father was nervous about something, he wouldn’t let me leave. That was the first day I was out of the house in weeks. He thought whatever was going on had died down and let me go.”

“Tina was the one to find about the chattel industry. She took some pictures of me and sent the application in from a small village in Romania.”

“Are you Romanian?”

“I have no fucking clue. My grandmother is Mexican and who knows what my father is.”

“Sorry, finish,” Aquilla said, wanting the rest of the story.

“Finish the story about Lopez or getting into being a chattel for your father?”

“I want to hear about Lopez, but I have one more question about that.”

“Okay.”

“How did Agent Dick Face get in there to be the one to pick you up?”

“Tina.” Seri offered. “He just magically appeared on there to be the one to buy me for three months. Julius didn’t like it. He ran him through a million questions in your father’s office. He was pissed that your father let an outsider come to your house. Of course, we knew where your father was and he wasn’t taking any calls. We knew Julius wouldn’t be able to talk to him and ask him about the man that he had no clue was in his home.”

“Did you fuck Agent Dick Face too?”

“No way, that’s fucking disgusting.”

Aquilla laughed. “So you were the pussy that was taken to Lopez’s that night?”

“Yes, that was the night it was all going to go down. Tina had traced the guy’s phone and Monica and I showed up at some nasty ass bar that afternoon. He thought he was going to get laid and then just about shit his pants when we flashed our fake FBI badges.”

Monica held him at gun point in a back room while I showed him the evidence of him being involved in the drug run. He was scared shitless. The guy even cried, telling us how disappointed his mama was going to be. We kept him in that room until it was time for Lopez’s pussy to arrive.”

“Which was going to be you?”

“Yup, but in the meantime, Tina had been working on a new wire device that was totally undetectable, something she found in China. Told you she was smart, anyway, I was wired the whole time I was talking to this loser and Tina had everything that was being said transmitted to my boss now, Houston.

We had no clue if it was going to work or not. He could have very well blown it off as some smart kids playing a sick joke. He knew that I would be in that apartment at seven o’clock that night. Whether he was going to show up with a team was the question.”

“Why didn’t you send it to the NYPD?”

“We were afraid they wouldn’t care. We had been to them several times. They wouldn’t help us, even after we discovered his drug cartel. They blew us off.”

“Okay, so you show up at his apartment with this thug.”

“Yes, Lopez buzzed us up and the guy turned and left. I was glad that he wanted me to come alone. I didn’t know if this guy would give me away. So, he left and I took the elevator to his floor. As soon as the doors were opened, I was met by two guys there to pat me down. I was fucking shitting my pants. I was terrified that they were going to find the wire hidden in a cheesy headband that I had worn. I didn’t have a gun, I knew better than that; it was the wire I was worried about.”

“You went in there without any protection? Weren’t you afraid of getting yourself killed?”

“I wasn’t afraid of that. I was willing to do what I had to do to get justice for Lakota. I had already accepted the fact that I may not come out alive.”

“Did you have to fuck him?”

Seri blew out a puff of air and shook her head. “Yeah, I did, Quill. I thought I was going to be sick. That was the worse fuck I have ever had in my life.”

“Have you fucked a lot?”

“Are we talking about my sex life or Lopez here?” Seri asked.

Aquilla laughed. “Sorry, were talking about Lopez.”

“By that time, I knew the feds weren’t coming. I wanted them to be there before I had to do that. Unbeknownst to me, they were there. Monica had talked them out of raiding the place just yet. She knew that I would get him talking. Don’t ask me how she knew that, I didn’t even know that.”

“How did she talk them out of raiding the place right then?”

Seri shrugged her shoulders. “Monica can talk a dog into fucking a cat.”

“Yeah, I get that. I swore I wasn’t talking to her and she had me talking about feelings”

“You have those?” Seri teased.

“Fuck you. What happened next?”

“Luck, we were in his room getting it on and he wanted me to bend over the back of a chair in his room when I saw the gun. He laughed and told me that it wasn’t loaded when I pointed it at his head. I was never so scared in my life. I stood naked in front of him shaking like a fucking earthquake.

I moved the gun and shot him in the foot. He dropped to the floor, giving me the opportunity check the chamber. I had three bullets, enough to make it out alive. That’s when I relaxed and remembered what I was there for. My nerves shifted gears and I was pissed, thinking about Lakota and what he put her through.

“Do you remember Lakota Strokes, you maggot?”

“Nope, don’t know any Lakota Strokes,” he smirked, holding his foot.

“Let me remind you,” Seri said, pointing the gun at his head.

He tried to grab it and I kicked him in the face.

“You used her to pay off a debt. You watched while she was gang raped by nine men. You shot her in the head when they were done with her. Ring any bells, fucker?”

“Oh, yeah, I do remember her. Hmmm, fine piece of ass, she was. You didn’t want her back after that. She would have been too fucked up. She was better off. It makes my dick hard thinking about those scared fucking eyes, looking up, and begging me not to kill her.”

“Oh, my God, Quill. Hearing him say that was like watching a tsunami coming toward me with nowhere to go. The thought of her lying naked on that cold, concrete floor in that dark warehouse flooded me like a mother fucker. I started shaking again, and he knew I was breaking. Thank God Houston burst in with his men once he had heard the gunshot through my wire.

He took the gun from my shaking hands and someone covered me with a trench coat. I spent the next three days locked in a room while being interrogated by none other than Houston himself.”

“And let me guess. He was so impressed with your work, he wanted you?”

“Yes. That pretty much sums it up. They had been after this guy for three years straight, and one little 20 year old kid brought him down for vengeance. I’ve been chasing bad guys ever since. I never even finished my schooling.”

“Do you like what you do?”

“No. Not so much. This wasn’t what I had in mind. I wanted to work with kids who were trending down the wrong path and help steer them in a better direction. I wanted to be a juvenile probation officer.”

Aquilla lay down and Seri followed right behind her.

“Seri?” Aquilla quietly said in the dark.

“Yeah?”

“You’re going to leave me in one more day.”

“Yeah, but I’m always going to be your girl. You’re stuck with me for life now.”

Aquilla fell asleep with a smile and a new sense of respect for Seri. She wasn’t the spoiled little rich kid that she had presumed her to be. She had a rough life without a mother or a father. She lost her only sister to a horrific murderer. She was as fucked up as Quill.