The Body #2: Lucio and Janie

Chapter 13 (Janie): BAM!

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

***TW for mention of trafficking and gun violence/death***

Papa gave me a lot of rules for living my life, and I was mentally scrolling through them at the current moment. Making sure my face was impassive and not showing any fear, the rules tripped over themselves in my brain, one after the other. 

I definitely wasn't ready to start planning revenge yet since my survival in the next five minutes wasn't assured, and the type of escape plans Papa had been talking about weren't really applicable in this case. He'd meant long-term while I needed an escape plan to get me out of this situation right this very second.

The fuckwad in front of me didn't know exactly what I was capable of, and the skill I had that no one knew about wouldn't be the least bit helpful in this particular case. She was fucking with me because she already knew I was no friend, but I didn't know if I'd live long enough to fuck her back harder. A girl could always hope.

That left a mind fuck since I couldn't get to my trunk, and I wasn't in a position to show this evil bitch just how merciless I was. Yet. Be positive, Janie. You're not in a position to be merciless yet.

But I was still thinking Papa should have included another rule about not getting cocky. That would have been a helpful reminder. After five years of chasing down this trafficking ring, after proceeding carefully and just having the women involved in the ring disappear after we'd gotten as much information as we could from them, we'd all fallen into the trap of thinking no one was the wiser. If we didn't know who the higher ups in the trafficking ring were, they were just as clueless as to who was behind the disappearances of their middle management brokers and worker bees.

In essence, my girls and I had felt safe and insulated operating as we did, relying on stealth and our skills to accomplish the dismantling of the disgusting, sick operation. There were no witnesses to our interrogations and disposals, no one searched for the mistresses when they went missing -- and if they did, it was over  quickly since they had no families to raise the alarm and keep the pressure on to find the missing mistress. These women were as alone and as friendless as the victims they sold into hell.

Or so we thought.

Tonight's mistress we believed to be higher up in the organization, and we'd been watching her for months, following up on a tip from the last mistress who'd been trying to save herself from the consequences of her many, many heinous sins.

When Lucio had asked me to dinner tonight, I couldn't believe my luck. Cosi and Vic had told me we'd be bagging another mistress tonight, this one long awaited and hoped for, someone higher up the organizational ladder than ever before. Moxie had procured her with help from the girls and all that remained was her shovel time with me. I could get free from Lucio's house and my guards, but getting away from a restaurant was like child's play compared to the fortress Lucio lived in.

His face when I'd agreed to dinner had almost made me think he was as pleased as he looked -- for just a split second before his face went back to Body neutral. I'd contacted the girls that tonight was a go and texted them the restaurant information, all in code, and Moxie sent me coded messages back about where the car with the mistress would be in the restaurant parking lot. The mistress would be drugged into unconsciousness, and she'd have been given a precise dose of a sleeping drug that would keep her out until I was almost at her soon-to-be gravesite.

By preference, I'd always handled the mistress disposal by myself. For one, it still was and always had been easier for me to get away, and two, only I knew exactly where the bodies were buried, so to speak. It was my way of protecting my friends -- you can't tell what you don't know. For all they knew and could testify to, I was driving the mistresses over the Canadian border and admonishing them to enjoy Tim Hortons and never come back or else. Only I knew the fate of the mistresses with any certainty.