Chapter 6

ELLA

“Do you guys have a toilet?” I asked the men standing silently behind me after about an hour.

Andrea hadn’t returned, but he had sent a glass of water, which had, of course, due to the lack of food in my system, traveled straight through me.

“Suck it up,” one replied abruptly.

I waited another half an hour before I was close to wetting myself.

“Seriously need the toilet now,” I said, shaking my leg.

“Tough. Go in your panties.”

“Can you get your fucking boss?”

“He has more important things than taking putas to the toilet.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t want my urine on the floor either. He certainly won’t be clearing it up…”

Just then Andrea marched into the warehouse. He was wearing an irritated expression and came straight in my direction.

“Señor, ella necesita el baño,” one of the men said.

“I know. All I can hear is her fucking whining,” he said gruffly. “Untie her.”

The guards instantly began fumbling with the ropes around me.

When I was freed, he gripped my upper arm and dragged me to a door on the opposite end of the warehouse.

I didn’t mind the unnecessary roughness due to the fact that the sense of relief that I was finally going to the baño was overwhelming all other emotions.

On the other side of the door were more stacks of boxes as high as the ceiling all taped up but obviously filled.

“What is in all of this?” I asked.

“I thought I told you not to ask questions,” he said gruffly, before we reached yet another door. “Do your business quickly so that I can get on with mine,” he added, opening it to reveal a small toilet and even smaller sink.

He pushed me in and closed the door.

“What exactly is your business? You’re the boss, but what do you actually do?” I asked from the toilet as I relieved myself. “You have people to do all your dirty work. Exporting, dealing, guarding, kidnapping—”

“Shut the fuck up, Blanca, or I will kill you,” he said in growly yet oddly light tone as if he was amused.

“Do I entertain you, Andrea?” I asked, pulling my jeans back up and going to wash my hands.

“You are different,” he replied.

“Gee, thanks. I’m flattered,” I said sarcastically, trying to scrub the dirt from my hands. “And your soap is shit.”

“I didn’t know what soap was until I was eight,” he said before I gave up with the crappy attempt at hygiene and opened the door.

“So like last week then?” I asked with a smile.

“Your pretty face will only let you get off with so much, Blanca. Take that as a warning,” he said, the humor in his voice fading.

He then seized my arm again and led me back to my very comfortable hard wooden chair.

“How long do you plan to keep me here for?” I asked as he knelt down and began tying my ankles back to the chair.

“Hmm… I don’t know. Until Juan can walk again perhaps…or maybe until the second coming…”

“That could be tonight for all we know,” I said. “But suppose it isn’t, you can’t keep me tied up here forever.”

“You do not understand… How do you say in English…ugh…you have the wrong end of the stick,” he said, placing his hands on my knees. “The day I let you go will be your death day. You stay with me until then.”

He then stood up and walked around me to tie my hands behind my back.

“How far away is ‘then’? Only I’m twenty-four and was hoping to live another sixty years at a minimum.”

“You have so many questions, Blanca.”

“Are you going to kill me or not?” I said, wincing as he tightened the rope a little too much around my wrists.

He then sauntered back around and crouched down so that we were face-to-face.

“Don’t piss me off and I won’t kill you.”

“So potentially I am going to live out my natural life tied to this chair?” I asked.

He smirked before his eyes flickered down to my chest, which due to the fact that my arms were pulled behind me was sticking out rather a lot.

“Perhaps you’d be a little more fun tied to my bed,” he said with a smirk, before standing up and leaving the warehouse once again.

I shuddered at the thought of being with another man. He wasn’t ugly, quite the opposite actually, but he wasn’t Leo, and Leo was the only one I ever wanted to think of me like that.

LEO

I arrived in Mexico less than twelve hours after Luca called me, and it had been one of the worst half days in my life.

I’d been away from Ella before not knowing where she was, but the difference this time was that there was no question or doubt about it. Her life was in danger.

Nobody knew much about Andrea Martinez. He was a master at hiding and secrecy, which only made him more dangerous and this situation more difficult.

How do you find and rescue your mate when she’s with a man that can’t be found?

Most of his men only knew him as the boss and had never actually seen his face.

Everything we knew about him in the Stella Pack was through what Luca had learned from Guillermo, one of his most trusted, yet surprisingly easily paid off employees.

And even his knowledge of who he was working for was incredibly limited. And just to tick it all off, Mexico was a huge country, and we didn’t even know where to start.

I stepped out of the airport into the bitter, dry air and scanned for Luca’s car. The sun was beating down onto the dusty road and radiating back up in a most unpleasant way.

Besides the odd limp weed or scuttling beetle, there was hardly any life, and when you looked out beyond the runways of the airport, there was only sand and desert for miles.

“I fucking hate the south,” I said to myself as I thought back to the deep-green forests and glistening blue lakes of my pack lands in the north.

A few moments later, a dusty gray car pulled up in front of me.

“Morning, Alpha,” Luca’s voice said as he rolled down the window.

I blocked the sun from my eyes with my hand and looked in at him, instantly noticing the dark circles under his eyes and his unbrushed hair.

“You look like shit,” I told him.

“And you look hot and sweaty. Get in, I have the AC on,” he replied.

Luckily for him and his vital organs, since he informed me that he had gotten my mate involved in a drug gang, I had had a long flight to cool off. But that didn’t mean he was safe to test me.

“Shut the fuck up,” I snapped, before getting into his car.

It was cool, but there was a suffocating smell of musty corn and unchanged socks.

“I’m so sorry, Alpha,” he said. “For all of this.”

“Apology not accepted,” I said bluntly, rolling down the window as he began to drive, letting a breeze of fresh air in. “Have you got anywhere with this Pedro Hernandez guy?”

“No, the guy’s either untraceable or that man lied to you,” he replied.

“He wasn’t lying,” I said confidently. “This man exists, and he will know where Martinez is keeping Ella.”

“I contacted the IT guys in the pack, and there’s nothing on the database, and they can’t find anything about him on the internet. Nobody around here seems to recognize the name either.

“You’ve got to give it to them, Alpha. They’ve got everything covered.”

“Out of all the people you could have gotten my mate involved with?!” I growled. “Andrea Martinez: the one man that I don’t know how to defeat.”

“I’m sorry, Alpha,” he said again. “I really am because I care about her too. But we can defeat him. All we have to do is find him.”

“And therein lies the problem.”

We sat for a moment in silence before the first idea in twelve hours harboring any chance of success came to me.

“What if we don’t need to find him? Martinez has made a living out of destroying other alphas,” I began.

“What better way to lure him out of hiding than with the chance of taking down Alpha Leonardo Loren? Then we can capture him and get him to tell us where Ella is and then kill him.”

“Alpha, that’s too risky,” Luca said. “What if he kills you instead? How is that going to help get Ella back?”

“I’m not gonna let him kill me,” I replied.

“They have guns.”

“And I noticed you do too,” I said, picking up the metal item I had spotted in the cupholder of his car.

“Alpha…,” he said with a concerned look on his face. “That thing only has one round in it, and we’re not exactly experienced with guns.”

“I am willing to risk it for my mate,” I replied. “This isn’t to say that I’m letting you off the hook, but I blame myself for this too. She wouldn’t have left at all if I didn’t kill her brother.”

Luca sighed. “What if we lure the rat out, don’t let him find the bait, and then just watch where he scurries back to? No one risks dying that way, but we still find out where he’s keeping Ella.

“Then we can bring the army down here and get her out of there.”

“Nice analogy.”

“So?” Luca asked. “Do you agree that is the safer option?”

I leaned back and sighed. Luca was right, and his plan was more feasible, and I couldn’t let my anger for Martinez get in the way of what was important here: saving Ella.

“Fine,” I agreed. “But he’s messed with my mate, the one I love the most, and I am going to kill him when this is over. Mark my words.”