Rafael Martinez

Minutes drag on as Kyle, with a choked voice and unbothered by the tears streaming down his face, explains the recent events to Adônis. With each passing second, the pressure on my heart increases. I promised Brooke that we wouldn’t let anything happen to her. I gave my word, and now she’s… I try to block out images of what the blonde might be enduring, but my memory pulls me back to Kandahar, to the exact moment we reunited with Seth.

His head hung against his chest, and he was filthy, a mix of dried blood and the damn desert sand, but that was to be expected after over three months in captivity. His skin was a mess of bruises at various stages of healing, from the darkest blacks to the greenish hues. One of his arms was bent at an unnatural angle. But it was his eyes that broke me, the complete desolation I found there. I remember vividly the way the fear of us arriving too late was replaced by the relief I felt when I saw him breathing.

I shake my head, returning to the present, but my attention goes to the youngest, who has poured himself a drink of whiskey and stares at our friend, waiting for answers just like I am. I notice the knuckles of his fingers are white from gripping the glass so tightly. I can’t even begin to fathom what he’s feeling—the nightmares his mind is reliving—but his haunted look is enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I see Kyle's cursor moving on the monitor by itself and know that Adônis is controlling it remotely. He opens black pages and windows, typing in codes, and soon an image fills the screen.

“I found the moment she was taken. See if you recognize the guys,” he says over the speakerphone, and I don’t know what to expect as the video starts. At least the building’s surveillance system is very good, as the image appears in high quality.

I watch intently as the elevator doors, in what appears to be the parking garage, open and Brooke steps out, holding her phone. The camera follows her as she walks towards what I assume is her car. I can see a dark figure rushing towards her—the bastard is fast and, in a few moves, has his arms around her.

Brooke drops everything she’s holding, and even after the son of a bitch covers her face with a cloth that probably had chloroform or something similar, she manages to break free from his grasp.

From my peripheral vision, I see Seth nodding, a mix of pride and admiration in his eyes. I turn my full attention back to the screen, my heart pounding in my ears as she begins to run back towards the elevator and fire escape, but the effects of the drug are evident in her movements. Brooke is almost at the elevator when the doors open. I watch in horror as the man extends his hand, and she reaches out only to be pulled and fall to her knees.

“She never had a chance.” Kyle’s punch to the wooden table makes the monitor shake, and I glance at my brother for a moment. A vein in his neck pulses rapidly and seems about to burst. I don’t remember ever seeing him so unsettled in the ten years I’ve known him. When I turn my attention back to the video, I see the second scumbag injecting something into her neck.

The entire sequence is devastating, but the moment that will be etched in my memory forever is the second Brooke realized she had nowhere to go. Her shoulders slumped in defeat, and I swear I can see all hope leaving her body.

He throws her over his shoulder like she’s nothing but a sack of potatoes, and a black SUV with no plates appears. The two bastards who are living on borrowed time get in, and the car disappears from the camera’s view.

“So, do you recognize any of them?”

“No, as you know, they’re none of the three we fired, so they must be mercenaries hired by them.”

“Alright, I’m running their faces through the facial recognition agencies now. I’ll try to track the car and find out where she is,” Adônis declares before ending the call, not waiting for a response.

Not that I had anything to say.

My body feels numb, almost as if my mind no longer controls it, like I’m viewing everything through a veil. I thought that after leaving the Marines, I would never have to feel this again—this helplessness, the fear that chills my blood to the point where I can already feel my toes freezing inside my shoes.

“We can’t lose her. It’s as simple as that. Brooke is such an integral part of our lives that it feels like a part of me has been taken away. I realize that’s exactly what has happened—my heart has been taken, not the organ, obviously, as it’s pounding in my chest, trying to escape the grips of the panic that’s clutching at it. But rather, the reason to wake up every day.”

None of us say anything, or so I thought until I paid attention to my surroundings and realized I’d missed part of the conversation.

“… her car,” Kyle is saying, his tone flat.

“I’ll go get it,” Seth responds, in the same emotionless tone. “I want to have a word with the head of security of that place.”

“Seth, it’s not like they could have stopped professionals,” the blond one asserts, wiping his face with the back of his hand. The sound of glass breaking is alarming; I look for its source and see blood trickling between the younger one’s fingers and shards of glass falling to the floor.

“I know,” the younger one says with a cold voice. “But I need to do something.” He stands up, agitation in all his movements, as if he’s vibrating, a stretched elastic ready to snap at the slightest pressure. “We need to get her back.”

“We will,” I say, and the two of them look at me. “And we’ll remind them what happens when they mess with those we love.”

My brothers’ smiles promise violence, even though their eyes are still filled with pain.

These miserable worms think they can blackmail us into giving up everything we’ve worked for. It’s not that Brooke isn’t worth it; she is. She’s worth the entire world, and for her, I would watch it burn. Their mistake was touching her and forgetting who we are. We weren’t known as the Hades men for nothing.

***

I remember getting into the car with the intention of going home, but it feels as though I'm on autopilot. So, I’m momentarily confused when I realize I’m at the shooting range where I taught Brooke. Standing in front of the cabinets filled with countless pistols, my attention immediately goes to the SIG Sauer P320 she chose that first day.

My fingers wrap around the cold grip of the pistol, and after checking its magazine, I grab an extra and a box of ammunition before walking to a shooting lane. I can’t force myself to stay in the same lane we shared that afternoon, not when it holds so many happy memories.

The process of loading each magazine with bullets is methodical, requiring no concentration, which is, of course, problematic as it leaves my mind free to conjure increasingly grotesque images of what Brooke might be enduring right now.

The first shot is a release. The paper target becomes the face of every bastard who touched her, and I hit them continuously. Emptying magazine after magazine, firing until the muffled echo of each shot becomes a prayer in my mind, repeating endlessly.

Hang in there, Babygirl. We’re going to find you.

***

It's past 10 p.m. when I park and realize I'm the last to arrive home. Apollo is the first to reach me at the door, with his brothers soon following. I pet their ears for a few minutes, giving them some attention, before heading to the kitchen. The three dogs remain fixed at the door, and I realize they’re waiting for Brooke.

“She’ll be back, boys,” I murmur, unsure if I’m comforting them or myself more.

I don’t see Kyle or Seth as I grab a quick sandwich. The house is eerily silent, as if the very foundations are holding their breath, waiting for the return of the blonde.

I didn’t expect to sleep when I went upstairs, took a shower, and lay down. But as soon as my head hit the pillow, it felt like I’d been knocked out with a tranquilizer for bears.

Brooke’s scream still echoes in my ears when I sit up abruptly in bed. I check my phone; it’s the middle of the night. Determined to do something to shake off the traces of the nightmare that vividly illustrated various types of torture, I head to my closet, retrieve the two pistols from the safe, and take out the tools I need to clean them. I head down to the living room, lay everything out on the table, and focus on the meticulous task of disassembling the guns.

“Can’t sleep either?” Seth asks, lifting his gaze to meet mine.

“I managed to shut down for a couple of hours, but my subconscious wouldn’t let me forget what’s at stake,” I reply.

“Didn’t even get half an hour,” he admits, sitting down across from me. “Every second is excruciating. How did you guys endure three months of this...?” He struggles to find the word. “Helplessness? I want to go get her, find answers, and all I can do is sit here, waiting for Adônis to find her while she suffers in those bastards’ hands.”

“We didn’t. It was different back then.” It feels strange, not remembering if we ever openly talked about those cursed three months. “We were tasked with finding you, fighting every day to ensure the search wasn’t interrupted, defying orders when they suggested it was too late. But every day was filled with that anguish, a paralyzing fear and the need to keep moving.”

Without saying more, Seth grabs the other pistol and begins to clean it. A shared silence falls between us until the first whining from the hallway echoes through the house, and soon the other two dogs join in.

“We need to find her,” Seth says.

“We will,” I reply, hoping to keep that promise.