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Estrella
Estrella
Presley fell asleep in the room with the mechanic watching over her unaware the twelve men on the ship not associated with Liborio were planning a fight of their own. As they stood in the kitchen eating cookies, they agreed their boss would not go lightly on them if they didn’t do everything they could to help a woman in trouble
When Presley woke in the early morning, in the darkened room, she was aware of two things. One. The mechanic was standing by the door of his room, his face set in an angry mask and a weapon at his chest as if ready to use it. Two. Estrella’s voice was on the other side of the door yelling at someone in the kitchen about breakfast not being ready for her boss.
Presley sat up in bed and watched as Rami clutched his firearm as if struggling not to shoot through the door into the woman. Interesting. Nobody else liked Estrella either. While she’d never hurt a fly, Presley wasn’t opposed to someone giving the snappy b***h in the next room a good smackdown.
“Why is she such a b***h?” Presley whispered and flung herself back on the pillow.
Rami looked at her with a half grin.
“Seriously, she should disappear. I mean not permanently because I know she has a kid at home waiting for her, but can’t someone tie her up and hide her in the engine room or something? Gag her and keep her mouth shut while we figure out how to get command of a ship where you are all outnumbered three to one?”
Rami’s half–grin turned into a full one. Slowly he opened the door to his room and with the light coming from the kitchen, Presley was able to see him sneak into the room and deliver a solid smack with his handgun to the back of the woman’s head and she fell in a heap. Presley listened to the startled and hissed conversations between the cook and the mechanic and then they were dragging the unconscious Estrella into the room where Presley was swinging her legs off the bed.
“Holy s**t you did it.”
“It was your idea,” Rami responded. “Her mouth,never stops flapping.” He said something in Russian to his counterpart who took off at a brisk pace.
“Where is he going?”
“To get rope and the engineer. You saw the engineer yesterday when you were running from your room. We will get her hidden away where nobody will find her. It won’t be comfortable, but she won’t die and nobody will
hear her. We will keep her safe until Belkin gets here.”
“You really think he’ll come?”
“I am a thousand percent positive he’ll come.”
“Nobody came looking for me again while I slept?” she asked as Rami tucked his weapon back in his
waistband.
“No. They kept men stationed at the top of the stairs and outside your room. If you even try to leave this room
and go up on the deck, you’ll be seen.”
“How are you going to get her out of here?”
He shrugged. “We will distract them. We are not bratva for looks. We can confuse a couple of mafiosos quite
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easily. You must be desperate for some fresh air. We will get you up on deck soon to breathe a bit and then we’ll get you into your new hiding space.”
“New hiding space?”
“Yes. Liborio is intending to pull all these rooms apart when he’s done breakfast. We need to hide you elsewhere. We don’t know how long it will take for Belkin and our men to get here.”
“Do you know if my brother is still tied to the mast up there?” she asked quietly.
“The fool tied up there is your brother?” Rami was surprised. “Is this how Liborio convinced you to have his
child?”
“My fool brother borrowed a lot of money from Liborio to pay off an extortionist. He couldn’t pay it back and Liborio offered to wipe the debt clean if Odin, my brother, turned a blind eye to him taking me. Liborio threatened to use some lies Odin told multiple people to destroy my parents. Odin is a giant asshole and according to his own mother, a sociopath, but I don’t want him dead. His mother is my father’s first wife, and I like her, and she’ll be sad if he dies.”
“He sold you to Liborio.”
“I guess.”
“He deserves to die.” Rami folded his arms over his chest angrily. “Who does such a thing to his sister?”
“He blames me for his parents getting divorced. My mom was his father’s mistress. She got pregnant and they got caught. His mom though is gay and didn’t like it when my dad touched her and,” she sighed and slapped her hands on the mattress, “it’s a complicated story but my mom and Odin’s mom became best friends. Everyone forgave each other for all their s**t except Odin who because blaming the adults for their decisions wasn’t possible, took all his anger out on me. Liborio seems to think he is saving me from all their abuse because they couldn’t protect me all the time from Odin’s s**t. Odin bullied me a lot growing up. The thing is, Liborio thinks my parents just let him hurt me but it’s not the case. My parents didn’t give up on him and showed me what unconditional love for a child is supposed to be. They protected me and when he hurt me, which inevitably happened, they were there to pick up the pieces, give him s**t and make sure I was safe. They put me in therapy which helped me deal with my own emotions. They never blinked when I fought back. My mom and dad spent a lot of one–on–one time with me. Odin was only with us every other weekend and every Tuesday night, but we went to all his sporting activities and stuff.” She was babbling now. “I wasn’t around him all that much. Odin was too angry with our dad all the time and would refuse to come to the house unless it was on court–mandated visits.”
“He still sounds like an asshole.”
“He was but my parents did the best they could and I’m not angry with either of them. I mean I get pissed off at my father a lot because he loves money and sometimes he makes decisions about money before family.”
“I get that.” Rami said with a shrug. “Men like to make sure we have money in the bank to provide for c
family.”
“Yeah but Dad has put the money before the love a couple of times, but I know he loves me. Liborio is trying to manipulate my emotions by making me believe my parents were bad parents who prized Odin over me and didn’t protect me but he’s wrong. I think I’m partly to blame for him thinking this way.”
“Why is this?”
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“I complain all the time about how Odin, Cruz and Anderson bullied me so much they destroyed my childhood, and they did. I’m not going to say they didn’t bully me to excess. These are the guys who embarrassed me in front of my entire school by putting a spotlight on me during my first kiss.”
“Oh,” Rami made a face.
“Right? So embarrassing.” She sighed, “but I get so caught up in all the bad memories I forgot all the really great ones. Cruz and I were talking about them the other day before I was taken. My parents did a lot with us. We did family vacations at least once a quarter which lasted at least a week and more often than not, they brought our friends with them. We spent entire summers at the lake house. I learned how to skate, ski, surf, and swim from an early age. We were outdoors all the time. My parents never missed a single soccer game or field hockey game. They were always there. Always. I’ve been so wrapped up in my angst I’ve been forgetting the good stuff.”
“You are realizing it now. This is good.” Rami stared at the woman on the floor who was starting to come around. “She is waking up. I hope he gets back soon. If I hit her again it might cause damage, and Belkin will be angry if I truly hurt a woman.”
“I’ll do it.” Presley snorted. “I really hate her. She was going off–about how lucky I am to be the one who gets to carry Liborio’s baby. I think she wants him for herself. I feel bad for her husband. I bet when they have s*x, she’s pretending it’s Liborio in her bed.”
“That is disgusting.” Rami said with his nose scrunched up.
A single knock on the door and then two men came in. One carrying a lot of rope and a blanket and the other some duct tape and blue coveralls and a ballcap.
Rami took the coveralls and tossed them to her. “Put those on. You can come and help us take her to her new room. It is dark enough still with the sun barely up your hair can get tucked up and they will think you’re one of us. One of the crew is about your size. He’s small but he’s very strong and sneaky.”
She grinned as she pulled the coveralls over her pajamas while the men made quick work of getting Estrella tied up. The woman’s eyes were open now and she appeared terrified to be surrounded by three large men. Her eyes flicked to Presley’s and Presley gave a wave.
“Hi. I made friends. You’re not one of them. They promised not to hurt you too much but we’re all really sick of your mouth, so you need to be removed from the equation for a bit. Now, I should warn you, there aren’t many people who like you on this boat because nobody likes a kiss ass, and your lips are so firmly attached to Liborio’s buttocks it’s like barnacles on the bottom of this ship. Mostly everyone wants to throw you overboard. We’re going to put you somewhere safe but if you make even a little bit of noise or draw attention to us, we’re throwing you into the water. It’s our plan. You’re going overboard. Do you really think in the grand scheme of things, Liborio is going to turn the ship around to collect you from the water? No. He’s going to call it an expense of doing business. So shut up, do as your told and for the love of f*****g god, do not draw attention to yourself because the only thing keeping you alive right now is me and if you put my life a. k, I’ll let them kill you.”
When Rami translated for the other two men exactly what she said they all laughed and gave her thumbs up. She hoped they knew she was bluffing. She did not want them to throw the girl overboard. Estrella for her part seemed to believe her and it was enough.
The men were talking amongst themselves as she maintained eye contact with Estrella. She moved to squat in front of her.
Estrella
“I don’t like you Estrella. I hope when Belkin and his men get here to rescue me and deal with Liborio, you get to go home to your daughter after. Please don’t make her grow up without her mommy.”
Presley felt all kinds of badass as she got back up and then followed Rami’s instructions to keep her head down and to stay close between him and the cook. This felt extremely exciting and dangerous, and she admitted exhilarating to be feeling like she was in control a bit. Mutiny never felt so good.
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