Barricade
Presley was sitting in the kitchen directly in front of the door, on a table, watching as the men tended to Odin
as if he were one of their own.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“Not sure. He took a lot of hits to the head.” Rami tossed a bag from under a cabinet to one of the men who opened it and began digging through the bag.
The cook grabbed a pair of scissors from a drawer and began cutting Odin’s clothes off his body. Presley whimpered at the bruises which covered him from head to toe.
“He’s breathing funny.”
“Fractured ribs. Might have punctured a lung. We’re going to check him out but he’s not doing well.” Rami commented quietly.
She watched as Odin’s swollen eyes barely opened fluttered, looked around as if searching for something.
When his eyes landed on her, he gave a loud raspy sigh, made a gurgling noise, and then closed his eyes
again.
“Did he die?” she was horrified.
“He’s still alive.” Rami commented quietly keeping her. “He was up on the deck when you were brought on the
ship. You looked quite unwell. Some of the men, Bartoli’s men, were laughing about how you were tased and
pissed yourself. For someone who says he hates you,” Rami looked at Odin who was now unconscious again,
“the minute he realized the ship was being taken over and you were hurt, he was asking us what was going
- on. Liborio came up to him when he was being tied up and told him he took you because you were going to
marry Cruz. When Liborio walked away, he told me he didn’t like you, but you were still his sister. He asked us
to make sure Liborio didn’t abuse you. I think it wasn’t real for him until he saw you being carried onto this
ship in a bad way.”
“I talked to him when he was tied up and he was awful to me. Told me I deserved everything Liborio was
going to do to me and more.”
The captain, who clearly also spoke English, looked at Presley, “he was under orders by me if he wanted to stay alive then he needed to continue behaving as if he wanted you dead. I watched when you went to speak
with him from the helm and Estrella was with you making sure he didn’t tell you too much about what he
knows about Liborio. If he wanted to live, he needed to play along. He already asked us to intervene by then. I
don’t think he’s admitting actual genuine feelings for you, but he didn’t want you to die.”
A warm feeling settled in her chest. She knew if Odin opened his eyes again and looked at her, it would never be with love and affection but at least, at the very least, he didn’t want her dead.
Loud pounding on the door interrupted their conversation and they all turned to face it.
“Open this f*****g door!” Liborio yelled through the barricade,
Rami lifted Presley up and sat her on the table in front of the door. “Just so you know, you’re beloved is right in front of this door. You shoot and you kill her before the rest of us. No babies for you!” he called out
mockingly.
III
1/4
Baincade
“Let her out.” Liborio’s voice no longer held the controlled measure of the man who came to her hotel room only a few days before to give her ultimatums. This was a man who was not in control, was feeling powerless despite the number of men at his side and was on the verge of losing everything.
It sort of made her very happy despite being terrified of his insanity.
“Presley, do you want to go out there?” Rami asked loudly.
“f**k no.” Presley called out and then giggled as the men all chuckled around her. She made wide eyes at the child in her mother’s arms, “sorry.”
The woman gave a shrug as her husband winked at Presley. The captain commented, “she spends much of her time on a ship with men. She knows more curse words than you.”
Presley smiled and then rolled her eyes when Liborio pounded on the door.
“Presley, open the door.”
“I can’t.”
“Are you unharmed?”
The question from Liborio surprised her and she shrugged, “yes. I’m unharmed. I’m about to have some cookies and tea. Rami is offering a shoulder massage. Nobody is asking me to inject their embryos into my uterus so at this point the company on this side of the door is better than on your side.”
“I admit I may have done things in a backwards manner. Please come out and we will discuss it.” “Yeah, I’m going to take my chances being holed up in here. My biggest concern is where I’m going to pee.” She snickered when one of the guys held up a pot. “Never mind. Seems we have it covered.”
“Liborio, you should be rethinking your approach with women if the woman you allegedly love would rather be tied to a mutinous group of men and a man who sold her than with you. You do realize,” Rami goaded him as he hopped up on the table to sit behind her on the table and rested his hand on her shoulder, “a normal man would have introduced himself, wooed her, courted her, and then made her fall in love with him. Instead, you bought her like a freak.”
“I intended to do exactly this however things needed to escalate because of Cruz Hawley.”
“Donkey Kong!” Rame called out and the group all laughed.
“He is so not going to like the nickname,” Presley giggled.
“Presley, sweetheart, come out and we can talk.”
“No. I’m going to remain right in front of this door to protect my new friends.”
Rami’s phone rang and Liborio heard it.
“Where did you get the phone?”
Rami stepped as far back to the room to get the information he needed and was talking in low hushed tones to make sure Liborio wasn’t hearing his conversation.
To cover for Rami, Presley spoke. “Estrella had it. We’ve been in contact with Belkin, and he has our coordinates. Guess why the boat is stalled,” Presley egged Liborio’s rage on with glee.
“Where is Estrella?”
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< Barricade
“She’s safe unless anything happens to us.” Presley responded.
“She has a child at home who needs her.”
“Funny you care about her being a mother to her child, but you were going to let me abandon my children for you.”
He punched the door. “I knew you wouldn’t leave them!” he growled out. “I knew if you birthed our children you would be forced to stay. You couldn’t bear to go, and you would have agreed to marry me. The minute you held our son in your arms you would have begged me to keep you.”
“This was your plan? To make her fall for you after you forced her to have your children? That’s not love. That’s Stockholm’s.” the captain called back.
“I swear, Captain, when I get my hands on you, I won’t be hesitating to put a bullet in your head this time. There will be no negotiation.”
“If you shoot him, it’s going to have to be through me. If he dies, I die.” Presley called out as she looked around the room at all the men who’d put their lives on the line for her. Everything felt very chaotic and insane and yet, she felt at peace as she sat here as their bulletproof shield.
“I promise you Presley, when you come out of this room, you and I are going to have lengthy discussions on our rules. We will be moving to Sicily, and you will be upholding your end of the bargain.”
“Except, there is a whole bunch of people who are angry at you for doing the one thing you’ve spent decades fighting against. You’re exploiting a woman,” the captain called out. “Your friends are now working together to bring you down and remind you of what you once stood for. If they can’t do it, you’ll be put down like all the other traffickers out there.”
“I’m not a f*****g trafficker! I love her. She is going to be my wife.”
“When you need to force a woman by telling her either she f***s you and makes babies or you destroy everyone she’s ever loved,” Rami called out as he hung up the phone, “then this is coercion, and makes you nothing more than a glorified trafficker. You can dress it up anyway you want, Liborio, but putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t change the fact it’s a pig. You’re a pig, a rich, powerful, well–connected, pig.”
Presley looked at Rami, who appeared furious. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Belkin was giving me the rundown on all the things which Liborio threatened you with. I’m f*****g pissed off.” Rami looked at the captain, “also,” he pointed at Odin, “he’s a piece of s**t. Despite him saying he didn’t want her to die, Liborio might have bought her, but this guy is the one who sold her. He laughed when they cornered him and asked him what he’d done. He has been abusing her his entire life. It’s why Liborio thinks she’s better off with him. One devil over another.”
Rami’s fists were clenched as if he wanted to punch Odin despite him being already unconscious.
Presley looked around the room and noted the men working on Odin all stepped back as if they were not wanting to touch him.
“Please,” she whispered. “He’s my brother. We don’t get along. He does hate me but he’s sick. He’s really sick and I know my father and his mother are going to get him help once they figure out what to do with him.”
Rami grunted, “I think we should put him to work on our shipping vessels and teach him what a hard life really is. This guy thinks he’s had it rough because he only gets twenty grand a month in trust fund money. Asshole.”
3/4
Barrigade
“Presley, what is going on in there
Rami grabbed an apple off the counter and lobbed it at the door. “You should get f****d, Liborio We discovered everything. You paid a woman to extort Odin to make it impossible for him to pay you back and then you used his sister as leverage. Slimy motherfucker. All of this because you weren’t man enough to approach a woman and introduce yourself. He stalked your entire family, Presley, looking for a way to get to you. Also, what the f**k were you doing in a b**m bar?”
She looked at Rami and realized he was treating her the way he probably treated his four sisters, and it
warmed her heart.
“I’m a writer, Rami. I write explicit romance stories, and I went to the club to learn about real consent and dominant, submissive relationships. I didn’t participate. I was observing. I learned I don’t even like to watch The sound of helicopters approaching from the distance made everyone look up.
Liborio called out to his men, “go find out what the f**k that is!”
“It’s Belkin and Algernon,” Rami called out, “and they brought Donkey Kong with them and he’s ready to throw barrels while our bratva rounds up your men. You have fifty. He’s bringing full choppers. Get ready to surrender Liborio but unless it’s Cruz banging on this door to find his princess, she stays in here with us.
“Its on like Donkey Kong!” the cook yelled in his stilted English.
Nothing felt more exciting to Presley ever. Not ever.
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