Chapter 32

Nick swallowed visibly and loudly, transfixed. He opened his mouth and closed it a dozen times before simply nodding since words didn't seen to form.
"If you're sure it's what you want" he conceded.
"I need a distraction" she whispered and grabbed his hands, dragging him to fall on the bed and straddling him.
"Fortune Favours The Bold" that was Pete's favourite sayings and for that very Tuesday afternoon, it for perfectly suited.
The trio were gathered in the dinning room of the flat, each nursing a glass of whiskey after emptying the noodles soup in a paper bag before then. Nick had decided to treat the house to breakfast since it seemed no one was eager to cook anything, not even water. He took it upon himself to grab four noodles take out bags from a decent restaurant not too far off and pick up whiskey too on his way in. The rest of the team were wallowing in whatever they could wallow in bit it was obvious that none of them would get their ass of their seats to get anything done, they looked like they would rather just starve than leave their space for a second.
Valeria was slouched on the chair, wearing a bra and a lose elastic trousers, her torso still bandaged up, the bandage was freshly changed and smelled strongly of antiseptic soap. Her hair was tied in a messy ponytail, most strands escaping the bundle, infact, the strands in the bundle weren't as numerous as what managed to find their way out of the elastic band. She held a glass of whiskey in her left hand, drinking slowly after the first two glasses, this was her third and she wanted to savour the finely made whiskey, she was silent, in fact she had said nothing else beyond a "Thank you" after Nick handed her the food.
That morning, she had awoken to a sight that was infact had been her nightmare for days now. Moses was wrapped all over with a gauze, his face bathed with honey, his eyes swollen and his cheeks puffy. He was lying on his side, strapped to the cot and crying softly like he had for the past two days, his voice hoarse and his face red from the exertion.
It had taken all her courage and bravery to not see Moses for two days since he was dipped in hot water - scratch that, boiled - she decided. Pete had boiled the child to prove a point to a couple she was beginning to think had no value for the boy at all. How difficult was it to do as you were told and have your baby back? Valeria was furious with the couple, she had no right to be, no, not when she was literally the one behind the kidnap of the child and the torture was done by her team mate. It didn't matter who did what, Valeria was pissed and for a good reason. She just could not begin to wrap her head around the fact that a couple would leave their precious child in the hands of a kidnapper so long without making any tangible and decent move or step to take him back. Did they really think the child was safe? Did they think they were bluffing? Or was she right and the case was truly that they did not care at the very least about the welfare of the child and if he survived or he didn't. Each day, it was seeming like the latter was the case. She was as mad at them, if and only if they had complied right from the very start then perhaps, just maybe Moses would be home and having a warm milk now rather than go through the hell he was surely going through in the hands of Pete.
She was not only angry but confused, confused at why it didn't bother them as much as it bothered her. She knew for a fact that if she had been given a chance to save her Lily, she would have ensured she lived even if it meant her dying in her very place. It was as simple as that. She couldn't bear to see the child suffer, her child for tht matter and she just seated back and watch. Those few minutes had been the worse minutes of her life, those minutes of hopelessness and anger and helplessness. She wished she could do anything, could have don't anything that day to turn back the hands of time and save her daughter, even then, as she sat drinking her whiskey, she was sure she could do just about anything if her child could be brought back to her. That was the same child that was suffering in her hands and the parent seemed too be nonchalant about. She hissed angrily.
Moses had refused to eat like he always had, Pete had to change his wound dressing daily and on the second day, he had put Nick up to it and Nick had done an amateur job of it, wrapping the bandage inside-out and dressing it anyhow he could. . The baby wasn't complaining, he just couldn't, he didn't know what was happening to him but he was in pain and that tore at Valeria's chest, it eat her up slowly and she could feel her heartbreaking all over again, something she had only experienced once in her life, a pain so fresh it seemed it was just repeat.
She glanced at Pete who was chatting away with Nick on the table, no doubt making whatever other plans they thought necessary. Pete. The monster she had gotten tangled with and Nick, an epitome of a lost boy, lost from boyhood into adulthood and even in his ripe years, he was still lost, looked lost and too carefree to be human at all. Sometimes, she envied him, other times she couldn't find it in herself to. The man didn't have a care in the world and that wasn't a blessing she was gifted with, no, her nights were plagued with nightmares and her days with dark dreams. She had a very unhappy life and she was coming to terms with it. Bit would she trade her life for that of Nick? Well, she didn't quite know the answer to that question, she understood that pain meant she was alive and being alive have her some sense of hope even if that hope always turned out to be false.
The calmness that Nick possesses and exhibited was sometimes what made her weary of him. He didn't get mad, if he snapped then it was something the best of saints could snap about and then the very next minute he would go ahead and watch a cartoon show and still laugh at it. It was amazing truly, an art all in it's own. An art she couldn't learn from him despite the years they'd been together as a gang. Frankly, she didn't know if she wanted to, did not know if at all she was capable of learning such art at the very least. It didn't look easy, being happy always looked like a task and one that would be more draining than staying angry. If she was being logical, anger was an emotion that needed expression and she felt once it wasn't expressed, it would be bottled up and cause even more stress and tension within.
Frankly, she had no idea how he managed it but then, if it had not rubbed off on her and neither had it rubbed off on Pete over the years, then maybe, just maybe it wasn't learnable and she didn't have to bother about doing it, maybe it was something only Nick knew how to do and it had better remain that way.
She decided that perhaps, just like Nick had the gift of being carefree and undisturbed about the worse kind of situations, she had the gift of being unhappy, it only made sense that that was her gift, if she had wanted to be happy, it should have been when she lived in India for a year and a half. The calmness and simplicity was so electric, so infectious that you could simply close your eyes and pretend to be one of them, always merry and carefree and full of life, even their anger was in a way happier than her best state of being happy. Instead, during her stayz she had remained her lonely and unexciting self and had simply taken a very troubled vacation and returned to USA, the same as she left, or even worse, considering she had gone to a really fancy and peaceful place and still, peace eluded her.
Pete had only glanced at her once or twice but hadn't said a word. That was fine, she didn't know what to say to him and frankly nothing she said could reverse the harms done to poor Moses. She was simply trying to forget about the whole ordeal, finish this gig that seemed to take a life time and then move on with her life. She was a constant, she had to remind herself and time would heal everything, if she had healed once then she could surely heal again. She was the one thing that remained in life, in her world, she had to be before anything else was, she existed before pain and people and emotions and whatever else was troubling her and she had to constantly remind herself that she was constant and so had to be strong and remain to.
Valeria sighed softly and closed her eyes for a brief second, inhaling the glass of whiskey and savouring the strong smell of alcohol for a second, then eyes still closed, she took a sip and then moved it around her mouth, sloshing it and moving it around before she swallowed it in the slowest of manners, letting it roll slowly and smoothly down her throat and into her stomach. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel Nick's stare on her, could feel her neck tickling with the sensation of it all. Like a soft caress to her neck and a light whisper on her skin.
Pete was seated across Nick, his eyes glowed to the laptop screen as he typed away, frowning slightly in deep concentration, mumbling to himself, a funny habit of his. His hair was wet and his goatee too and he wore a thin yellow t-shirt and a pair of yoga pants, no doubt after his morning run.
Nick was biting away at a doughnut, one of the twelve he'd brought from the store and stated that it was just for him and no one else. Pete had simply shook his head and told him about diabetes and obesity and left him to his fate. Nick gave his usual reply "Faster metabolism" and went ahead to eat his doughnuts without remorse. He was on the eight one out of the dozen sugared doughnuts when he turned and caught Valeria staring.
"Want some?" He asked
Valeria snorted, Nick never gave out his snacks and everyone who knew him knew that.
"I'm serious" he said and handed her two. Valeria looked sat him like he had gone mad but decided to indulge. She took it from him slowly and took a first bite. She moaned, it was sugary, soft, warm and melted inside her mouth, coating her tongue sweetly.
"It's good, yeah?" Nick asked, proudly as if he had baked it himself.
"Let he'll freeze over, Nick gave out his treasure snack today. What could have hanhed?" Pete asked, his eyes wide with surprise. It may have seemed a joke but the team had lived by the rule of steering clear of Nick's snack for the past 7 years, it was shock to see him share it now.
"Shut up" Nick replied with a soft smile and watched as Valeria bit into the second one, tongue darting out wipe the syrup off her lips. He could feel the swell of his erection at that act alone.
Truth is, he hadn't quite gotten his fill of her and didn't know when he actually would. Evey night, when he wasn't sleeping, he was thinking what it would be like to be with Valeria, inside her and fucking her senseless. The lady hadn't said as much as a word concerning their last time and this had a way of putting a damper on his moods. As much as he hated that she could imply use him at will and then discard him the very next second, that didn't stop his groin from swelling anytime she as much as smiled in his direction or anytime she bent to pick up a stray cushion from the floor. She was a very attractive lady and he would be damned to lie about that.
Pete too had been following her with his eyes all day. Her cute pink bra didn't help anyone in the house. It was obviously an innocent effort to avoid hurting her already injured torso anymore than it was hurt, she left the whole area unclothed and had once pranced about the house without any top on. Their stares had made her throw on a loose t-shirt that shaped oh her breasts and puckered out her nipples, she had complained the whole evening that the cotton was stinging her sides.
"Hey! Nick!" Pete snapped his two fingers in Nick's face and he snapped out of hi reverie.
"What's up lover boy?" Pete joked, making Nick roll his eyes and Valeria shoot him a glare.
"I said take a look at this" Pete said and slid him the laptop.
Nick turned it and looked at the screen for a few minutes with a deep frown.
"Really? How?" Nick answered.
"It's simply actually, we show him that the boy is still fine, we must have scared the life out of them" he laughed and looked at Valeria who hadn't said one word since breakfast.
"That can be done" Nick agreed.
"The papers will be sent to us after that. Once we can reach out to our men in Asia then we turn in the child" Pete decided.
"Turn him in from Asia?" That was Valeria's first word to Pete since that day and it was an accusing question.
"Does....well...look... they'll come get him" he replied.
"Clearly you hadn't thought twice about that, Mr. genuis" she replied in a deceptively calm tone.
"I thought you'd gone mute, Vee, I'm glad you can still talk" he replied mockingly.
"I'm glad you're still making plans without thinking them through, just like you always have" she replied in like manner.
"Those plans got us to where we are today" he stated.
"Here? Hidden in a low budget apartment in Oregon? I know"
"We're getting results Vee, that's all that matters"
"You got the $1,000,000,000, why are you being greedy Pete? I've learnt nothing gives a thief away like greed. It will be your end, your Achilles's heel" she said softly to him with a damning smile.
"I'll worry about that sweety" he mocked and went back to
working on the laptop.
"What else is it you want? The authorization? What if it never comes? Huh?" She asked.
"It is coming, I'm sure of it. He's responded to the text and says he's doing all he can. He sent the money earlier today and if you weren't in such a pity haze then I'd have shown it to you, Nick saw it"
"You must be so proud of yourself. Getting a $1,000,000,000 and still having your bargaining chip to suck more" she sneered.
"He embezzles public funds, our taxes and the state's money, none of that money is his hard earned wealth, none of it, You are seriously pitying Brownson? They have all their money from corruption and frankly I am glad to get a fair share of it, it's a national cake, may as well get my piece" he replied with a shrug
"So the authorization then? That's what we're waiting for?" She asked
"Yes, as soon as we send him videos of the boy being alive still, he will send us all legal documents of the list we sent to him, our stack will he clean, mission accomplished" he replied proudly.
"Really? You will send him a video of Moses looking like that? They might just think he'd dead already" Valeria said with a bitter laugh.
"Nothing a little concealer can't mask up" he shrugged.
"What's the next plan? Frying him in hot oil?" Valeria asked with a frown.
"Stop, we had to do what we__" Nick began but was briskly cut in.
"Had to do, I get the drift Nick, I do. It's just foolish" she replied and slammed her fist on the table.
"I've always loved your temper Valeria. It turns me on" Pete stated from his seat without as much as glancing at her.
"I know what else turns you on. Money, and you can do anything, anything to get your hands on it" she replied.
"You know me Vee" he replied with a proud smirk.
"Ignore him" Nick said and turned to Valeria.
"Lover boy, are you trying to get some pussy tonight?" Pete asked Nick with a dark smile.
"That's none of your business" Valeria replied.
"Was just asking, you may want to keep it down you know, you have someone else in the house sleeping and a baby trying to sleep. Keep the screams down tigress" he advised with a sarcastic smile that looked anything but kind.
"I'll sure try, as hard as that may be, he does know how to fuck a woman Pete, he's very good at it too" she replied tauntingly.
Pete glared at her and went back to his work, visibly angry.
"And for the baby" she began.
"What about him? Are you playing mother again? How about pretty boy here knocks you up so you can have yours and stop trying to hard to have what isn't yours. Moses is the job and he doesn't belong to you, get that" Pete snapped.
"I know, I never said he did belong to me. I wanted to tell you to get a nanny for the boy, I don't want to as much as see him again talk less of touch him, it's either you guys take care of him from now on or you better get a nanny to do it, I want nothing with him henceforth" she stated boldly.
"Fine! I'll get a nanny Vee" he replied in frustration and looked at her. "Happy?" He asked.
"Elated, asshole" she replied and left the dinning room with her doughnut.
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