Lost in the Shadows (The Lost Series Book 3)
Table of Contents
LOST IN THE SHADOWS
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Epilogue One
Epilogue Two
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS BY TRACIE
Copyright © 2018 by Tracie Douglas
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Editor: Diamond in the Rough Editing
Formatting: CP Smith
Cover Design: Dark Water Covers
No one expects an angel to set the world on fire.
-Unknown
To Rebecca,
You complete me.
I love you, my darling girl.
Foreword
I’m not going to pretend I know what it’s like to suffer the kind of depravity you’re about to encounter in this book, because I don’t. Without giving too much away, I want you to know this story is not to lighten or gloss over the content. I’m not saying the men, women, and children who survive torment like this don’t struggle or easily recover from what they have endured. Nor am I saying the ones who don’t survive mean nothing to the world. My heart aches for anyone who has experienced this inhuman treatment, and I pray for each one of them. I wish we lived in a world where tragedies like these did not happen.
Lost in the Shadows belongs to the characters I have created, and them alone. They have persevered and overcome countless tragedies and hardships, but most importantly, they did it through the power of love. This is their story.
Prologue
Penelope
“Girl, come here,” my stepfather bellows from the front room of our tiny shack. I know he’s talking to me. I’m the only one he calls ‘girl,’ mostly because he hates me. I set my little sister Isabelle down on the dirt floor and hurry down the hall.
He’s been home for a week, and everyone has tried to be on their best behavior. But something is wrong, and I’m likely to be blamed for it. The only time he hollers for me like this is when he’s angry about something and needs someone to take it out on.
I see my mother tucked away in her makeshift kitchen, pretending to be busy. My stepfather stands in the middle of the family room, his back to me. He’s talking with two men I’ve never seen before. Their eyes are on me as soon as I enter the room. My stepfather turns and glares at me with severe hatred.
“Lope, come here.” He snaps his fingers, and I move, avoiding contact with his dark eyes. If I don’t move fast enough he’ll lash out at me, and I don’t want to be hit. Not in front of these men. Even if they’re strangers, I don’t want them to see.
“Yes, Papai,” my voice is compliant, but his hand reaches out, slapping me hard across the face. I stumble backwards, as his blow catches me off guard.
“Putinha, don’t call me that,” he snarls, spittle flying from his lips. “I’m not your father, thank fuck, as ugly as you are.”
Tears well up in my eyes, but I hold them back, because crying will only get me another slap. My stepfather moves away from me, taking notice of the men behind him once again. He smiles before nodding at them.
“Luckily, you’re not my problem anymore,” he snickers and waves them forward. They step toward me, and my heart falters. Their eyes are filled with lust and ugliness; it frightens me to my soul. I’ve seen that look before, once a long time ago. I push the memory down, regaining my wits.
The bigger of the two men licks his lips hungrily, and his eyes rake down the length of my body. I shiver, hating the gleam in his dark eyes. He looks at me like I’m his last meal and he’s ready to devour every inch of me.
The other man can’t look away from my chest. My dress is at least two sizes too small, a hand-me-down from a neighbor. It’s tight around my breasts and short in length. I lift my hands and try to cover the exposed skin, but it’s impossible to do. Whatever these men want from me, I can tell it’s not good.
“Mamãe?” I turn my head to seek out my mother, and panic rises in my throat. She stands frozen in her kitchen, her eyes on the bowl of Massa before her. Why won’t she look at me? “Mamãe, what’s happening?”
“You’ve been sold,” my stepfather speaks. His voice pulls my attention back to him. His dark eyes, blacker than I’ve ever seen before, glitter with amusement. His words strike me in the chest and knock the air out of my lungs. I hear them. I know what they mean, but I don’t want to believe them.
“Please.” A single tear falls, and I blink, desperate to hold the rest back. “Please, don’t do this.”
The bigger man reaches for me, but I dodge his hands and run to my mother.
“Mamãe, please,” I cry, and throw my arms around her. She sidesteps me and lets me fall into a heap at her feet. I grasp and reach, pulling at her dress, her arms, anything I can hold on to to keep her near. I grip her as tightly as I can. “Mamãe, don’t let them take me.”
She bends over and wraps her arms around me. The fight leaves my body, and I breathe easy thinking she is going to save me. But she doesn’t. She pushes me back, struggling to put space between us. When I realize her kindness was a ploy to get away from me, I rear up. Steel arms of one of the men grab me from behind and rip me away from her. I scream and try to escape his hold, but I’m no match for his brutal strength.
My younger siblings finally emerge from their room and bound down the hallway toward us. The commotion is now too much for them to ignore.
“Leave my Penny alone.” My youngest sister, Isabella, and most fierce of the group cries out before throwing her arms around my leg. I reach down for her, but my arms are held tightly to my sides, as the man pulls me toward the front door.
“Paolo, get your sister,” my stepfather barks at my brother. He steps forward, grabs Isabella, and avoids any contact with me. Isabella wails
in protest and flails her small arms and legs. Paolo tries to be gentle with her, but she isn’t giving him much choice. He must do what father told him to, or else he will face the consequences later.
“Paolo, please.” I struggle desperately. I want him to look at me or speak to me, but he does none of those things. “Help me, please.”
Paolo ignores me and lifts Isabella up into his arms. He carries her out of the room and down the hallway. Her eyes never leave me until they turn the corner, and then her wails grow louder and more animalistic.
“Papai, please, don’t do this,” I wail, but I’m almost to the door. “Mamãe, please, help me. I’ll be good, please, I promise.”
The larger man lifts me up higher and throws me over his shoulder. My family gathers around my stepfather, all but Paolo and Isabella. My mother tries to console my younger brother and sister; their gentle sobs and tear-stricken faces are buried in her apron. She doesn’t look at me at all.
No one does. No one except my stepfather.
He watches me with laughter in his eyes. Pure evil radiates from him, and the smile on his face makes me sick. He is overjoyed at the pain he’s causing me and the others. We are his entertainment.
The strength I felt moments ago leaves my body, and the fight I’ve put up weakens against my captors. My family does nothing to stop them from taking me. Why should I continue to fight? What’s the point?
They don’t care.
They don’t want me anymore.
Except Isabella. I can still hear her cries and pleas coming as I’m carried past the threshold of the front door. I even hear Paolo’s gentle voice trying to console her, but it’s pointless.
“I love you, Isa,” I yell out to her with the last of my strength, then slump into defeat. The tears I’ve fought to hold back fall, and I watch my family’s home grow smaller and smaller with each step.
“Isa...” I whisper as an intense sadness overwhelms me, filling my mind with bleak darkness.
With nothing left to fight for, I surrender to it.
Damien
I close the curtains of my shithole motel room, keeping the bright light from the sun away from my sensitive hungover eyes. The room is littered with beer bottles and trash. I’ve spent the last ten days holed up here, drinking and fucking my way into oblivion. Clearly something that’s worked, because I don’t remember much of it.
Glancing back at the bed, I groan, seeing the white, supple skin of some bar floozy who got her hooks into me the night before.
“Hey,” I holler, cringing from the way the sound makes my head throb. She doesn’t move. “Hey, you, woman in my bed,” I say a little louder, ignoring the pain. I’d rather go through a few moments of discomfort now than prolong the awkward moment I’m about to have with this woman.
Shit, what is her name again?
She moves finally, groaning into the pillow.
“Hey, I don’t remember your name, but you got to go.”
“Fuuuuck,” she moans, indicating she’s hungover, too, as she pulls the blankets over her head, but I reach for them, pulling them off her naked body. Cocking my head, I take her in for a moment. She has a lush ass and a tiny waist, two things I love most in a woman. Too bad I can’t remember what it was like to fuck her.
“Get out.”
“What the fuck?” She lifts her head and peeks up at me through a mass of black hair.
“You got to go. I need sleep.”
“I was sleeping,” she argues, clearly not getting the fact she isn’t welcomed anymore.
“Let me spell this out for you. Thanks for the fuck, not that I remember much of it. Now you’ve got to bounce.” I pick up a few scraps of clothing I know came from her and toss them to her. “You’ve got three minutes to get your fat ass out of my bed and dressed before I physically throw you out myself.”
“Jesus, who pissed in your Cheerios?”
“Just get the fuck out,” I holler, my patience with this bitch fading fast.
“All right,” she says, flipping over and getting out of the bed. She dresses quickly, throwing me pissed-off glares, but I don’t care. The faster I get her out of my room, the sooner I can crash. I need to sleep this off before boarding my plane tonight. It’s a long flight back to the sandbox, and even though I didn’t want to leave it in the first place, I’m not too excited about going back.
My phone pings, alerting me to a text message—for the thousandth time this week. I reach for it, pretending to be busy as the woman I spent the night with slams the door of my motel room, signifying her long-awaited exit.
Taking a deep breath, I glance down at the screen and see another text message from my oldest sister, Astrid, worried because I haven’t checked in. I toss the phone away with disgust.
What the fuck do they care how I am? Where was their concern for me the day I left on deployment? I shake my head trying to ignore the pain raging in my chest. My mother is dead, and they kept me from being there at her last dying breath.
Fuck them.
Fuck them all.
Chapter 1
Damien
“I’m going to level with you, Reynolds.” Special Agent John McNamara shakes his head, his eyes reflecting the turmoil I feel in my gut. “I’m not okay with this shit. I hate it.”
“Then why is it still on the table?” I frown.
“You heard your man; we’ve tried every other way to infiltrate and take these assholes down. Nothing has worked,” he sighs, rubbing his face with his hand. I see something in the agent I didn’t expect to see. Guilt. “We’re at the bottom of the barrel. We have no more monkeys.”
“You realize it’s going to take a miracle to get me up the ladder. How many more lives do we have to risk making it happen?”
“Not as many as you’d think,” he explains, finally sitting down in front of me. “The plan is for you to head into town ready to set up your own operation. We’re hoping to catch their attention with your connections; maybe they’ll try to recruit you and bring you into the fold.”
“It sounds too easy. Surely, these guys won’t trust me that fast.”
“Don’t get me wrong, they’ll test your loyalties like no other, but we’ll prepare you for it. Armando Castranova might seem like a trusting man, but his reputation with the agency and our undercover dealings with him prove otherwise.”
“How many agents have you lost to him?”
“One is more than enough, but there have been a few,” he admits begrudgingly.
“It isn’t going to work,” I groan, rubbing my eyes. “This new plan is too desperate. They’ll expect someone like that; they’ll count on it. No, I need to start at the bottom.”
“That’s risky, and it could take too long. We have five years riding on this.” He shakes his head, but I need him to hear me out.
“You said you know everything about the organization, yeah?”
“Of course, like I said, we have five years invested.”
“We can use this to our advantage.”
“How so?”
“I go in at the bottom and use their weaknesses against them. Who or what can we bring to their attention that’ll make me look like a good little lap dog?”
He opens his mouth only to close it right away and leans back.
“Your plan is to show them their weaknesses, so they can strengthen the ladder? If, and I mean if, we did that, what happens if your cover is blown? Giving them this information only makes it harder for us to plant someone else in the future.”
“I won’t fail,” I state matter-of-factly. If I must put innocent lives on the line to make this job successful, then you can bet your ass I will see it done. I will not fail. They will fall.
“It will still take too long. Two years minimum.”
“Then we plan for two years and hope for better.”
He looks at me, really looks, and for the first time since we sat down in this room, I see the man behind the badge. He’d do it this way if it were him going undercove
r. I can see it in his eyes.
“You know I’m right.” It’s a simple statement, but what it means could change the entire face of this investigation. “Too many have gone in and failed. Clearly, this department’s plans aren’t working. Do it my way, and I guarantee you a win.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Reynolds. It’s your life on the line,” he sighs, rubbing his hands over his face.
He’s wrong. It isn’t just my life on the line. But my life compared to those who become victim this organization means nothing. Only they mean something.
The innocent.
Chapter 2
Damien
It’s taken me nine months to rise to the top. To make my mark in this world of darkness. To be an ally, someone they can’t operate without. To be brought into the fold and trusted. To come face-to-face with the two men who run this sadistic operation and gain access to everything needed to take them down.
Nine long months. But it should have taken me longer.
No one could have planned my rise to the top any better than it happened. Even I’m surprised at how easy it’s been for me, and at times I have found myself wondering why. Have I been playing the role assigned to me too well?
For such an elite organization, it’s surprising to discover just how many issues there were. Issues I was easily able to use and manipulate to my benefit, placing myself on the fast track to success. Issues no one knew about, including my predecessors. How many did McNamara say there had been? Too many, by any count.
While McNamara was right about this group of thugs, my instincts were spot-on. Exposing their weaknesses gave me the upper hand.
I started at the docks. Providing crucial evidence to prove there was a better way to get around customs and having the “connections” to do so got me a promotion within a week.
They set me up a runner or a peddler. I outsold everyone. It helped that my clients were also undercover agents, planted to intercept whatever items I was selling. Whether it was drugs or stolen merchandise, I was a natural-born salesman. At least in the organization’s eyes I was. They took my success as a sign that I was hungry and ready for more responsibility.