Enslaved (Colombian Cartel #6) - Suzanne Steele Page 0,4

can always take the boy and go to the states. We’ve saved enough to leave the war zone mi amor. The safety of my family will always come first.”

“And that is why you will always be the love of my life, Fidel. You never allow money or business to take precedence over Mano and me.”

“And I never will,” he said with rock-solid decisiveness.

Chapter One

Page weaved her long blonde hair into a braid as she listened to her best friend Judy lecture her on the dangers of her job… again. Like Judy’s practical name, she was practical about everything. They were total opposites, and at times, Page wondered how they could be so tightly knit. They had met each other in a first aid class and had been inseparable since. Page figured it would come in handy in her travels. She never knew when she would be in an area with no medical assistance. Many people in the mountains lived hours away from a hospital. There was always a witch doctor close by, but they only served to feed the superstition of the people.

Page looked over her shoulder at her friend, taking in the worried look on her face like some women did a resting bitch face. She almost felt sorry for the girl because she was so dull. Page had every intention of bringing her friend’s alter-ego out; she just hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

“Honestly, when your mother named you Kavya Page, and you were born with the surname Wordsmith, I wonder if she put a curse on you. This whole writing thing is like an obsession with you, Page.”

Kavya was the meaning of a poet, Page was like the page of a book, and Wordsmith was self-explanatory. Each name she’d been born with meant one thing: she was destined to be a writer. Her mother ensured she made the message loud and clear; she would fulfill her dreams through her daughter. It had always been her mother’s dream to be a published author. Still, she’d never had the courage or connections to publish the one novel she’d spent a lifetime writing. This was before the days of Indie authors, and Page often wondered if her mother would have followed through, even if that avenue had been available. Her mother was a pipe-dreamer and a procrastinator, a lethal combination to never be a finisher in life. Page vowed she would never be like her mother. Page had the courage of lions, the confidence runway models, and the balls of the narcos she wrote about.

“My mother knew I was destined to be a writer; she only did what destiny demanded.” If it had been anyone else saying something about her deceased mother, she would have been pissed. Still, Judy was just Judy—a worrywart.

“You can’t fix the world by writing about the cartel and their side of the story. I can’t believe you sympathize with those bloodthirsty animals.”

“I’m not a fixer—I need a fixer,” Page said, ignoring her friend’s comment. Page knew the men who farmed poppies and the families who cooked cocaine and heroin were the poor people from villages who had no other options for employment. It was true. She sympathized with the people forced into a lifestyle they hadn’t chosen. Still, there was a part of her that was driven to tell their stories. For some reason, she related to the cartel; she hadn’t figured that one out. She’d always been intrigued by crime. It was what she knew, so it was what she wrote about. She didn’t write about it because the first rule of an author was to write about what you know. She wrote about it because it was in her blood. Nothing Judy could ever say would stop her from feeding into who she was. Writing wasn’t what she did; it was her identity. Judy meant well but Page would go crazy if she didn’t put the voices in her head on paper. The quote by Franz Kafka went through her mind “A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.” She of all people knew she was a monster in the making. The only way to keep the darkness at bay was to bleed it out onto paper. There was a part of Page that felt trapped no matter where she went in her ventures for truth, and the only thing that set her free was writing. She was doing the world a favor by allowing the monster within to roam free through