I understood his dilemma. It was exactly the same reason that I had stolen the book in the first place. Protecting ourselves and our families was far more important than anyone else. I understood entirely, but I hoped he also did when I wouldn’t tell him any more information.
“Chase, you know we will come back and kill you if we find out you have the notebook,” Marco said as he stood over me.
“Yes, I know. Don’t you think I would have given it to you by now if I had it?”
“I don’t know if you have it or not. I’m just warning you that it will not end well if it turns out you have it, and I walked away from you.”
I knew very well that things were not going to end well for me if I didn’t come up with a better plan. Marco and Jose were certainly not going to settle for me just saying that I didn’t have the book. Sooner or later, they were going to start torturing me in order to get it from me. They were going to torture anyone and everyone who could possibly have come in contact with that book.
Marco looked so torn between who he wanted to be and who he needed to be at that moment. I never thought working for Escabar had been a choice he wanted to make; it was the first time I realized I was right. Marco looked scared. His face showed more fear than I had ever seen from him. He wasn’t just following some orders from Jose; Marco was stuck in his job and probably had no way of getting out.
Once Jose decided that he liked Marco, Marco was stuck working for him for the rest of his life. I hadn’t heard of anyone who ever stopped working for Jose Escabar. They either worked for him forever or they ended up having some sort of freak “accident.”
Marco didn’t like working for Jose any more than I liked borrowing money from him. But sometimes, circumstances took control of our lives and we had to do things we didn’t want to do. I knew if push came to shove, Marco would take me out to save himself. I just hoped things wouldn’t come to that.
Luckily, Marco and his two thugs finally left, and I closed my eyes for a minute as I tried to catch my breath.
My body was sweaty, and I couldn’t breathe. I also couldn’t get myself to move and get up off of the ground. I wanted to get myself pulled together before I opened the safe and had to talk to Jordan.
“Chase,” I heard her say from the safe room.
I took a couple deep breaths and tried to pull myself up so I could open the door. I knew I couldn’t tell her the whole story. She would run as fast as she could away from me. No woman would want to be with a man who had gotten himself into the kind of trouble I was in. I needed to just tell her as little as possible.
It was weird how connected to Jordan I already felt. I liked her a lot, and I didn’t want her to have to deal with all this stuff. I was going to have to keep the details of everything to myself if I wanted to keep trying to work on things with her.
She was probably
so terrified in that safe during the attack. The gunshots at the front door. The yelling. Me screaming in pain as I had been kicked.
I had to figure out a way to explain things to her without freaking her out. It was going to be pretty hard, though, especially considering I couldn’t even move at that moment.
She hadn’t gotten herself into this mess on purpose. I knew she wasn’t the kind of girl who hung around thugs like these guys. It was more than she would want. I bet she was in the safe room crying and rocking in the corner. I felt so bad, yet I had to open the door and deal with her sadness. I had to wrap my arms around her and try to pretend like everything was fine and I wasn’t hurt at all.
Slowly, I opened the door and was prepared to find her crying in the corner. But instead, as I opened the door, about to say the word unicorn, Jordan swung at me and slapped me across the face. Then, she walked right past me to her room and started to pack her things up.
“Shit, Jordan. Why did you do that?” I said as I hobbled behind her.
“You took that man's book and now he wants it back. Why wouldn’t you give it to him?”
“It’s a long story, Jordan. It’s not as simple as it sounds.”
“You were willing to risk my life over some black book?”
“No. Not at all, that was why I had you go into the safe room. I was protecting you.”
She didn’t seem impressed at all by my statement that I was trying to protect her. Instead, she continued to pack her things into her suitcase.
“What were you protecting me from, Chase?”
I leaned up against the doorway and tried to decide how I should answer her question. I couldn’t exactly tell her the whole story; surely, she would leave me, then. But how much of the story could I tell her and have her still stay?
“I…uh…”
“Forget it. If you’re just going to make something up, I don’t want to hear it,” she said as she put her suitcase on the ground and started toward the door.
I wanted to follow her, but my legs were getting weak and I couldn’t get a breath in. I felt the sweat pouring from my face, and the room started to spin around more than I could handle. I tried to yell out for her, but the pain was so sharp and stabbing that I couldn’t catch my breath.
Slowly, I held onto the wall and made my way to the front room where I saw Jordan looking at the bullet holes in the front door.