Delgano: A Dark Contemporary Interracial Romance

“Good.” He pulled the trigger and stood in the middle of the room, waiting for movement.

When no one groaned, he left and returned to the truck. Five minutes later, Lee and Trevor emerged, so well hidden that a shadow at midnight would have been more visible.

Lee tossed up his hands. “What the fuck, Gano. You couldn’t at least send one?”

“There were only four,” he argued.

Lee, mumbling, hopped inside the truck bed.

At the second location, Lee went inside with him while Trevor remained behind with a sniper rifle. This structure housed a group of men sitting on a sectional that wrapped around the entire room, sipping something from cups that added a bitter, fruity tinge to the air. They didn’t see him or Lee enter, and he had half a mind to ask them the same question, which wasn’t a question in reality: “I’m looking for someone.”

Then, he remembered Sayeda’s fear, the men with the machetes. He didn’t want to think about what could have happened had he not been there, and his eagerness to be with her had provided the greatest benefit.

Before he knew it, he was standing in the middle of bodies, some still and others groaning, all packed with bullet holes and knife wounds. Lee stared at him from behind the sectional, jaw slack. Then Lee called Trevor and told him there would be no stragglers at this location, either.

So, they returned to the truck.

They visited the two remaining locations, both Trevor and Lee going inside with him, and he vaguely remembered a man begging for his life. He vaguely recalled dark hair with a balding patch in the middle, cheeks that moved when the man spoke, and a wrinkled shirt collar that looked like a patchwork quilt. But, as the man begged, he realized he didn’t care whether they gave him the information he needed. If it meant Sayeda never had to be afraid, ever again, he’d murder them all.

“Gano, wait.”

Adrían looked up.

Trevor had a grip on his wrist, their arms raised, the gun aimed at the ceiling. “We have to get the information first,” Trevor said. “This is our last stop.”

The gun fell to his side, and the man clasped his hands as if to thank them or start begging again, but Trevor struck the man’s temple with the butt of his gun. The man fell to the ground, his palms smacking against the concrete floor.

“Do you know this woman? This little girl?” Trevor held the images so close to the man’s face, the man’s eyes momentarily crossed. “We’re looking for someone who might have taken them, and as you can see, we’re determined to get them back.”

The man mumbled something in Arabic.

Trevor switched languages, but instead of Arabic, it sounded like he’d switched to Russian.

Clearly caught off guard, the man paused. Then he looked at the images, studying them more carefully. Trevor translated as he spoke:

“There was a man. He didn’t give his name, but he had white hair.”

Adrían’s head twitched.

Trevor glanced at him before continuing.

“He had a message for if men came by asking for the woman and her child.”

Adrían watched as the man’s gaze shifted to him. Then the man nodded and rattled off a sentence.

“Was that an address?” he asked.

Trevor nodded. “Yeah. He doesn’t know anything else more than that.”

“Tell him he’s free to go, but he’ll only live if he can outrun Lee.”

“I don’t know how to say the second part in Russian,” Trevor said. “For him, that will be very unfortunate.”

The man scrambled to his feet and sprinted from the house. Lee followed without any hurriedness or pep in his step.

Trevor stared out into the night, brows narrowed. “Hey, Gano? Something’s not right here. Remember that one woman we ran into? The one who sounded like a Russian speaking Arabic? It was the same with this guy.”

“And he answered when you switched to Russian,” Adrían said. “But what sense would that make?”