Page 24 of Reckless Forever (Jennings Mafia Family #3)
My phone vibrated underneath my head as I tried to go to sleep for the third time.
In the time that I had been at the safe house, I hadn’t heard from Judah since he walked out the door.
I grabbed the phone quickly and hoped that it was him, but it wasn’t.
It was Emilio. I ignored it. He had been asking me for my whereabouts for the last three days, and I refused to open his messages or respond to him.
It vibrated again, and I looked just for good measure. Another message from Emilio.
This time, I caught a glimpse of a video image. My heart raced as I clicked on it, my hands shaky, barely able to hold it straight. I pressed play, and what I saw made me damn near get out of bed and run for the hills.
Judah, Jaxon, and Trouble were walking through Padrino’s house with the biggest guns I had ever seen.
They had the man who was on guard in the control tower at gunpoint.
They walked through slowly, with militant precision, as Jaxon and Trouble had him sit on the couch, and Judah walked through the house as if he were taking a stroll in the park.
When he finally came out, he had Yenny, dragging her across the floor on her knees.
“Go sit on the couch,” He barked.
She didn’t move. Jaxon repeated what he had said in Spanish, and she hurried to go sit, crying the entire way.
He reached down into a duffle bag and pulled out a set of collars, while the other two had their guns trained on their hostages.
She tried to run away. Judah yanked her back by her hair and shot her right in the forehead.
The blast made me gasp from the other end of the phone.
I covered my mouth as I watched in disbelief.
“I ain’t tussling with no fucking body today,” he argued more to himself than anyone else.
Trouble stepped to the side nonchalantly and looked down at his shoes like he couldn’t be bothered with having blood on him.
Judah crouched over the soldier, adjusting the collar, his hands moved almost surgically.
He pulled out a tablet, and the LED lights on the device glowed softly at first. Like a heartbeat, but then, the glow intensified.
The man whimpered, his eyes widened, and Judah’s head tilted slightly, studying the reaction with a smile on his face.
A fast flick of his finger on the tablet, and his body arched violently.
The scream ripped through the room, piercing and raw, echoing off the walls.
I could hear the crackle of energy through the speakers on my phone, even when the camera was angled at such a far distance.
It wasn’t just electricity; it was burning, screaming, making him contort and throw up in a way that made me want to claw my own skin off.
Another quick tap on the keyboard made him convulse violently.
The muscles in his arms and legs stretched and then tightened like rubber bands.
Judah’s face remained unreadable, like an evil genius conducting a science experiment.
Trouble’s gun never wavered, and Jaxon’s eyes were sharp, and his head never stopped scanning the room for potential danger, but Judah controlled everything. Every twitch, every spasm, every scream was done by his hands. He typed, swiped, tapped until he got the reaction he wanted.
For minutes, he let it go on until the body went completely still. I could see faint smoke coming from the collar.
He stood, straightened his jacket, and walked between the two bodies as if it were nothing, then he pressed a button on the tablet that made the collar stop glowing at once. His eyes flicked toward the camera, cold and sharp, and I sat back in my bed, as if he were looking directly at me.
Jaxon walked to the camera and spoke in Spanish.
“Santos, we respected you. But disrespect is met with disrespect. You give countdowns, we don’t. We just proved to you that you’re not untouchable. This is a war you won’t win.”
Judah put his tablet back in the duffle bag and walked through the living room.
“G, how do you say checkmate in Spanish?” He called out.
Jaxon responded. Then Judah walked into the camera, aimed the rifle, and said “?Fin del juego!” (game over). Before they walked out like they didn’t just leave a burned body on the floor.
The video ended. My hands were shaking so hard, I nearly dropped the phone.
The living room of Padrino’s house was empty, silent, with nothing but the picture of electricity, smoke, and vomit so vivid, I could almost taste it through the screen.
I wasn’t surprised or shocked by the element of death.
I was shocked to see a different side of a man who had made me feel nothing but butterflies.
Judah had turned the war into something that was almost inhumane.
Emilio’s message after that video was a plea for me to help him.
He had been contacting me around the clock and begging me to return to Bolivia with him.
He knew that he couldn’t set foot in the country without me, but I wasn’t going back.
Well, I hadn’t planned to anyway. After what I saw, I had no idea how far this was going to go.
It made sense when all the women laughed at me earlier today. This was a family full of psychopaths, and I thought I had seen it all, but this was something straight from a movie scene.
My phone vibrated again, and it was a message from Padrino. He hadn’t reached out to me this entire time, and my heart fell to the pit of my stomach.
Padrino: I am disappointed in you, Ivy. I trusted you, and you lied to my face.
You went behind my back and disobeyed my wishes.
You are nothing like your father. You are disloyal.
You stood by while strangers came into my home.
If you don’t want them to suffer the fate that you know is coming. Come home.
Tears fell down my face as I read the message from my godfather.
I was in the biggest battle of my life. Trying to decide whether I should follow my gut or go back home.
I got up and paced the room, thinking. I exhaled and called Judah.
He didn’t answer the phone, so I sent him a message and waited.
It was delivered, but after waiting for a while, it went unanswered as well.
I was worried, and my mind was racing a mile a minute. I needed to know that they had left Bolivia in one piece. I saw what happened in the video, but that could have been a trap.
Padrino: I have their jet, Ivy. They aren’t coming back until you return to Bolivian soil.
“Shit!” I screamed as I hurried to call Judah again but got no answer. It was almost three in the morning, and I wanted to ask one of the other women if they had spoken to Trouble or Jaxon, but I didn’t want to wake either of them up.
Still, I slid out of bed, and I went to put on my slippers. Then I pulled open the door so that I could see who was awake. The only movement in the house was security. Sanchez sat up straight while Zo slept. I had seen them alternate shifts of sleeping.
“Can you take me to the store?” I asked softly as he glanced at the clock.
“What do you need?” He asked as he leaned up and looked at me.
“Pads,” I said quietly.
“I’ll bring you some,” he countered.
“Um, I’d rather you not. Can you just run me there really quickly? Free bleeding is not really my thing,” I said as I faked looking between my legs.
He scoffed and grabbed the keys from his belt loop and nodded toward the door. I walked out behind him.
After I slid into the backseat of the truck, we were out of the tunnel and onto the main road. I went back to the thread that Emilio had been contacting me from. I tried to send him my location but couldn’t.
Me: Meet me in 15 minutes at the pharmacy on the corner of Broadway.
My leg shook as I called Judah’s phone again and got no answer, and then my phone went dead. I threw it down in the back seat of the car and scoffed. I don’t know if Emilio got the message, but if he didn’t, I would buy the pads and pretend nothing happened.
I bit my lip nervously as we went in and out of traffic, as I watched the street signs go by.
Then we pulled up in front of the store, and I slowly opened the door and got out.
He walked in with me, as I scanned the store, like I didn’t know which aisle the pads would be on.
Then I pretended to find it, and I still had to scan them for the best brand.
“Do you know which one is best in the States?” I asked him.
“Nah,” he said.
I nodded as I found one and walked to the register with it, trying to buy time. I went into my wallet, fished for my card, and paid for my things.
Once we walked back into the parking lot, I could see two sets of headlights, both at opposite sides of the light. The only two on the street. One of those had to be Emilio.
“Let me just go back and grab a snack while I’m here,” I said as I turned around and tried to give him time for the light to change.
He didn’t argue, just stopped midstride and followed me back inside.
My heart felt like it weighed a ton in my chest, and I struggled to keep it together.
Not only had I started an entire war, but I had also gotten Judah and his brothers kidnapped by the Cartel.
And I was going to put an end to it tonight.