Enslaved (Colombian Cartel #6) - Suzanne Steele Page 0,23
He’d lost everything: his home, his parents, he refused to lose his freedom. He’d heard stories of other boys who had escaped the day to day grind of barely surviving. If they could do it, so could he.
He had escaped with his life and obtained citizenship in the United States. The Colombian cartel was as fierce in Louisville as it was in Colombia, and the boy wasted no time letting them know he was willing to work in exchange for protection. It had been by the strong arm of the cartel that the judge had seen fit to emancipate a boy who couldn’t stay out of trouble in the system. The cartel could achieve impossibilities others were unable to obtain. They bought off judges, cops, and even social workers. When you worked for meager pay, the temptation of tens of thousands of dollars was too much to ignore. The cartel had a sixth sense about who to approach when it came to paying off the higher-ups.
He had started by doing runs for the cartel as a young child. As he grew, the jobs he did were elevated to more serious assignments of stalking potential threats and bringing them in for interrogation. He was proficient in computers and was very good at what he did. He wasn’t a bloodthirsty man who enjoyed beating up people. He’d seen his share of men who enjoyed that type of work. It served to state the sadistic side of them. The anger they carried from childhood was carried out and manifested in beatings they subjected their enemies to. The Colombian cartel used fear to control people, and it worked. There was no one in the streets of Louisville who hadn’t heard the horror stories of chainsaw massacres. It took a certain kind of person to cut up a body with a chainsaw. Doing it while a person was living took a person who had lost their soul to the cartel. Some of these men had grown up watching their fathers deliver retribution to anyone that didn’t succumb to the cartel’s wishes. When the cartel called, you answered, or you died—then they went after your family. They destroyed everything you loved and made you watch before they finally killed you. Morality was easy to let go of when your life and the lives of your family members were at stake. The thought of being tortured for days on end had a way of persuading even the most moral of people. The cartel’s reputation preceded them, and movies like Scarface were the new reality of anyone who watched the nightly news.
Tad noticed he had an email. He was waiting to hear from the woman he’d messaged. He was certain she’d be pissed, and he didn’t give a shit if it opened her eyes to the deaths of fixers. People needed to know someone was killing fixers, and anyone in that line of business was in danger of losing their life.
He was shocked when he read the email. He’d expected the woman to write a scathing defense on her own behalf. This was what he wanted: someone to write his story. The thought went through his mind that maybe this was a setup, but in his gut, he felt like the woman wanted to hear his story. He quickly answered the email and agreed to meet with her. Perhaps this could be the beginning of a joining of two likeminded people. If she was willing to tell his story, he was more than willing to let her do it. She had a huge following of people, including the Colombian cartel. It was time to catch a killer. It was time to catch the man who had killed his family.
Chapter Thirteen
Both women were shocked when the man answered their email so quickly, even going so far as to give his name; Tadias, or Tad, as he liked to be called. Page liked the name, it had a ring of uniqueness to it, and she liked the way it rolled off her tongue. He could very well be an asset for the next writing and possibly even her book she was working on. She was excited to hear Tad’s story. He had revealed just enough to pique her interest. There was a tiny piece of every writer that craved uncovering the hidden truths people kept locked away inside of them. It was like digging for buried treasure, and when the prized possession was unearthed, there was a story to tell