Delgano: A Dark Contemporary Interracial Romance

When she noticed Trevor, her sleepy demeanor shifted.

“It’s okay,” Adrían reassured her. “This is Trevor.”

She studied his back, squinting against the light. “I’ve heard about Trevor, but this is my first time seeing him.”

“If we have an op, does that mean someone’s here to watch the house?” he asked Trevor.

“Four guns are outside, and two snipers are across the desert. On our way back, we’ll stop to take Sayeda with us back to the villa.”

Adrían leaned down and brushed her lips with a couple of kisses. “Go back to sleep, querida. I’ll see you soon.”

He left the bed, stepped into his underwear and shorts, and doubled back to bless himself with a few more pecks before leading Trevor out to the front room.

“Aren’t you sticky, kid?” Trevor asked.

He ignored the question.

Before they left, he would clean up, but right now, he would bask in Sayeda’s passions and pleasures. “Are you one of the people in charge of all of this?”

“Me?” Trevor shook his head. “Not at all. All I’m doing is completing ops and making money.”

“So, there is money?”

“No one mentioned the payouts? That’s why this took so fucking long.” Trevor rubbed his face with one oversized hand, and even the man’s wrists were jacked. “Yes, there’s money. Six figures for some, seven figures for most. On occasion, a little higher.”

Had they mentioned this earlier, he would have signed on after a couple of days. Trust would have been hard to come by on his end, but they would have been able to trust that he wouldn’t do anything to risk his wallet.

“I came here tonight because I figured you might want a little fieldwork,” Trevor continued. “I heard Sayeda had a run-in with some cartel wannabes. I know where a few of them hang their hats. Feel like taking a ride?”

Adrían smiled. “Perfect. Give me ten minutes.”

“Oh, and one more thing.”

“Hannah?”

Trevor nodded. “She’s outside. I wasn’t sure if you didn’t want your girlfriend knowing you spent the night with your girlfriend.”

Adrían, heading for the bathroom, rolled his eyes. “It’s not an issue, ‘Trev.’ Hannah’s not my girlfriend.”

Trevor’s truck was as uncomfortably large as his muscles. It stood on massive tires that looked like they could handle the roughest terrain on Earth the same way it might tackle a paved road. It also boasted a four-door cab and a truck bed as long as Chile, all painted so black that the truck wasn’t visible until Trevor deactivated the alarm.

Hannah was seated on the passenger side.

Adrían took a seat in the cab.

Driving along the roads in a vehicle other than Sayeda’s small Toyota was a completely different experience. This late at night, there were no goats. They didn’t stop at any markets, and a tension that didn’t exist when he was with Sayeda filled the interior cabin.

“The men who visited Sayeda are from a gang that calls themselves Al-Kafan,” Trevor said, his voice shattering the quiet like a nail to a glass pane. “They came up from Mauritania since there’s more money to be made in Morocco. Making the jump from slavery to human trafficking was a child’s leap. What they do here is mostly terrorize the towns and villages surrounding Zahrat Al-Jibal, trawling for ‘goods.’ The people here are peaceful, so they use their guns to stoke terror and fear.”

Adrían studied the darkened landscape, adding color to the landmarks he recognized from his day trips with Sayeda. “Zahrat Al-Jibal? Is that what this area’s called?”

“Yes. It means ‘Flower of the Mountains.’ Sayeda never told you?”

“It never came up.”

He’d been more interested in learning about who she was and where she’d come from:

“Tell me more about where you’re from,” he said, turning away from the window. “Is Morocco home to you?”