Keeping Allie (Breaking Away #3) by Meli Raine Read Free Book Online

bringing you in for El Brujo.”

Chapter Seven
    Instinct makes me reach out and slap him across the face, so hard his head turns and red floods his cheek. I take the same hand I hit him with and clap it over my mouth.
    “I’m sorry,” he says gruffly, shaking his head in surprise. “I deserve that.” 
    “You brought me here? Knowing what they plan for me? Knowing I was being handed off to be raped by a man who thinks raping a virgin will cure his AIDS?”
    “I’m not that sadistic, Allie! Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell kind of monster do you think I am?” he growls.
    “I take it you two know each other well,” Mom says dryly.
    “I’m her boyfriend,” he says.
    “ Ex -boyfriend,” I hiss back.
    The handprint from my slap is an ugly, raw color, but the pain in his eyes is way worse than the brutal reminder of my hit. “Ex?”
    “You disappeared from L.A.! You kidnapped me and brought me here! What do you think, Chase? That’s some sort of a mating ritual?”
    Mom’s fingers dig into my arm, possessive. Protective. “What are you planning to do with my daughter, Chase?” she asks in a voice that says the answer better be a good one.
    Chase looks at her, nostrils flaring, then glares at me.
    Finally, he says:
    “Rescue her and love the hell out of her for the rest of her life.”
    “You have a funny way of accomplishing that!” I reply. 
    “It was kidnap you and bring you here or let them drag you off without me. Can you imagine what Frenchie might have done if he’d had you alone?” Chase whispers, his voice quiet but his words like thunder.
    That makes me stop, regret filling me. Mom’s watching us, head pinging back and forth, like someone viewing a tennis game.
    “What’s your plan?” Mom asks. “You helped bring her here so you could watch over her.” She eyes my cuts and bruises. “It looks like she got pretty roughed up anyway.” 
    He runs a shaking hand through his hair and gives us desperate looks. “I had to let them do...some things. To make it seem like I didn’t care. That meant they wouldn’t torture her as a weapon against me.”
    “They?”
    He looks very uncomfortable suddenly, then looks at my mom. “The Mephists. They’re the ones handing her over to El Brujo.”
    “Loogie is part of this? No way, Chase. No way. You know this for a fact?” Mom’s completely shocked. I can’t stop looking at her. She’s like an angel. Maybe she is. Am I dreaming all this? I reach out to touch her. What if this is all something I am inventing? 
    Chase gives Mom a very long look, then says quickly, “No. I don’t know. But you’re all here on the same day Allie’s supposed to be handed off to El Brujo. What am I supposed to think?”
    I squeeze her arm and Mom looks at me.
    “Just checking to make sure you’re real,” I explain.
    Her face crumples. “Oh, Allie,” she says in a compassionate voice, giving me a quick hug. “We have so much to talk about, honey, but we have to get you out of here alive. Can you stay strong for me?”
    “And me,” Chase adds.
    I nod and wipe my eyes. My wrists are bright red, raw streaks of flesh covering the bones. The sting of tears breaks me out of whatever weird spell I just went into. I take a deep breath.
    It’s time to act.
    I can feel later.
    “I can’t believe Loogie’s part of this, Chase. No way. He must not know the truth,” Mom stresses. 
    Chase stares Mom down. She looks older now, with deeper wrinkles in her face. She’s thinner than she was two years ago. Wiry is the word. She was always a tough woman. You had to be to marry a guy like Jeff. But there’s a steel rod inside her right now. She isn’t afraid of anything.
    “You his old lady? By choice?”
    She nods.
    “What?” I gasp.
    “It’s a really long story, Allie,” she snaps in a voice that says I shouldn’t ask questions. “And you,” she says to Chase. “You sure Loogie knows? He’s fine with running meth. Not with running slave girls.” Her