Dark Vengeance Read online

  Dark Vengeance

  Kristi Belcamino

  Copyright © 2020 by Kristi Belcamino

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  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.

  For information contact: [email protected]

  kristibelcaminowriter.com

  This book is dedicated to Rebecca Cassell for her keen eye in editing this book. I also wanted to give a huge thank you to all the members of my ARC team who also did some seriously impressive typo hunting.

  Any errors that still remain in this version are entirely my fault.

  Contents

  Dark Vengeance

  Your Free Gift

  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

  About the Author

  Also by Kristi Belcamino

  Dark Vengeance

  The 12th book in the USA TODAY Bestselling series.

  Bereft over the death of another loved one, Gia Santella leaves Barcelona with a backpack slung over her shoulder containing all her worldly belongings.

  Determined to live as a nomad until she finds Rose—the young woman she raised as her own—Gia’s quest leads to a camp of misfit surfers on a small Indonesian island.

  A dark evil has recently taken hold of the island and threatens the surfers and villagers who now live in constant fear.

  Gia’s arrival sets in motion a series of deadly events leading to a bloody trail of bodies strewn across the island.

  It’s up to Gia to stop the slaughter before she and Rose are the next victims.

  Your Free Gift

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  Deadly contains the first book in each of my three series: Gia, the prequel novella to the USA Today Bestselling Gia Santella series; Eva, the prequel to the Eva Santella series and The Saint, the prequel to the Gabriella Giovanni series.

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  1

  The jungle’s thick trees arching above the gravel road had created a false, early dusk that coated everything in a greenish light. I’d lost track of time since I’d stepped off the ferry onto this island and began the trip through this endless gloom.

  The driver slowed, and the vehicle emerged from the shadows. On the other side of a wide expanse of beach, an ocean lay before me for as far as I could see. I blinked at the bright, dreamy golden paradise as I stepped outside the car, handing the driver a wad of cash and promising more if he’d wait an hour for me.

  I walked across the sandy pavement and stood, scanning the ramshackle village of huts scattered on the bluff overlooking the beach.

  The setting sun turned the water a molten gold color. More than two dozen surfers riding the crashing waves were only distinguishable as graceful, weaving black silhouettes.

  Walking down to the beach, I scanned the surfers who remained on the shore. Several sat in groups. The sweet smell of marijuana was thick in the air.

  I was looking for one familiar dark head. I didn’t see her and felt a pang of disappointment. I scolded myself. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. I was dealing with Rose. She’d gone to great lengths not to be found.

  I approached one clump of surfers sitting on the sand with their knees to their chests, facing the water as if they were watching a film. Maybe in their world, they were. A movie made up of endless varieties of crashing waves and shimmering lights—each one unique. Some a challenge. Some a disappointment. Some heartbreakingly beautiful. Some frightening.

  A microcosm of life itself.

  A tall black woman with long blonde braids looked over at me. I examined her. Her startlingly piercing green eyes looked like they could see right through me. Her eyes reminded me of my friend Darling’s niece, another stunningly beautiful black woman with green eyes.

  This woman seemed like a no-bullshit type of woman. Her toned, athletic body was in a sporty one-piece swimsuit, and she had a serious- looking surfboard tucked under her arm. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t frown, either, so I kept walking toward her.

  Another young woman, petite and beautiful with a freckled nose and tousled sandy brown hair, gave me the once over as she took a puff of a joint and passed it to a boy beside her. He had spiky dreads and a warm smile that he shot my way. Another guy sat on the other side of her. This boy had white blonde hair that stuck up and a long scar that trailed from the corner of his mouth to mid-cheek. His eyes flickered over my face, and I could see when he noticed my own scar running from my cheekbone up to my hairline. His eyes widened slightly and then he turned away. He was not impressed.

  Two other boys, dark blonde and tanned, were facing the water, giving commentary in thick Australian accents on the surfers riding the waves.

  I sat on the sand nearby and watched the surfers for a few seconds before I spoke.

  The friendly looking guy with the spiky dreads leaned over. “I’m Matteo. Want some?” he asked, holding out a joint to me. He had a Cockney accent. I smiled and accepted the offering, inhaling and then passing it back.

  “You new in town?” the tall woman with braids asked in a friendly voice. I’d been waiting for her to talk.

  I nodded. “I’m looking for my daughter.”

  It was strange to call Rose my daughter, but what else could I call her?

  She’d come to me for refuge when she was eight and INS agents—well—evil pricks disguised as INS, came after her. I’d already made her part of the family before I fell in love with her biological father. And then, for a long while, the best days of my life, we were a family.

  I brushed those memories and the heartache they triggered aside. I had to be strong. This wasn’t about me and my grief. This was about me finding Rose and telling her that her father was dead.

  A few people exchanged glances. I didn’t miss the zing of alarm that seemed to trickle through the group. Now the ice blonde boy was paying attention. He narrowed his eyes at me.

  “We aren’t saying shit
to you. This is a free zone. Nobody asks questions. Nobody has a past or any history. We live for the moment.”

  “Yeah, man,” one of the Australian guys said, and reached over to bump fists with the ice blonde boy.

  I waited a beat and then nodded. “I get it. I’m just here to tell her that her father died.”

  The tall woman met my eyes. She stared at me for a long moment. Then she stood.

  “Tell me about your daughter.”

  I stood, as well.

  “Her name is Rose.”

  She laughed.

  “None of us use our real names around here,” she said, and then looked at my phone which I had been holding in my hand. “Show me a picture.”

  I glanced at the group that was still sitting on the sand. They suddenly seemed hostile. The surfers had come in to shore then and walked up the beach toward us, lugging their boards and shaking their wet hair. Two were women, and the others were men.

  They wouldn’t meet my eyes. I saw them look at the tall woman with dreads, and she gave them a nod. I could see their shoulders relax. The boy with icy blonde hair sneered and said something I couldn’t understand. He walked back toward the road, mumbling to himself.

  “Don’t mind Dre,” she said.

  Leaning over my phone, I pulled up a picture of Rose from a few years ago. In this photo, she had black hair down to her waist, and her huge dark eyes made her look like a doll. She was smiling, revealing that dimple I loved, and her white teeth were a sharp contrast to her dark skin. She was wearing Converse sneakers with a short white dress, and her long legs seemed to go on forever. She’d quickly become taller than my five-foot-six-inches.

  I had no idea what she looked like now. I hadn’t seen her since her boyfriend Timothy died six months before. She’d left Barcelona with her dog, Dylan, intent on hunting down the Sultan, a religious cult leader freak she believed had been behind Timothy’s murder.

  I held the phone out to the young woman. “She probably has a dog with her, as well.”

  As I said it, I watched her carefully. At the mention of the dog, she grew stiff. She thrust the phone back at me without even looking at the picture.

  “I can’t help you.”

  It was less than a second, but I saw it: Her eyes flicked up to the bluff where the huts were. Gotcha.

  And then all friendliness was gone.

  “Let’s go,” she said to the group. They stood and within seconds all twelve of them were gone, down the beach. At one point, the beautiful petite girl, still flanked by the two boys, turned back to glance at me. She had hate in her eyes.

  They knew Rose.

  And they were acting really strange. Were they afraid? Or had she warned them about people asking about her? I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to leave until I found out why.

  And I knew where I was going to start. I headed for the road.

  I’d seen the tall woman involuntarily look up at the huts on the slight bluff above the beach, tucked back toward the dirt road. I scanned each hut. They all had doors that opened up toward the beach and one small window. As I walked, I kept expecting to see a dark head of hair duck down in a window. But I didn’t see any movement.

  I was nearly to the end of the row of buildings when I heard something that made me break into a sprint.

  It was a dog barking, furiously, angrily as if it were attacking someone. The sound stopped abruptly.

  I raced toward the closest hut and ran past it to the road in time to see a car—the beat-up black sedan I’d hired to bring me here—squeal away down the dirt road, kicking up a plume of dust. Fuck. I couldn’t see inside the back window, but I knew. It was Rose.

  Standing in the dirt road, watching the car’s taillights as it slowed to take the steep curve onto the main road, I was stunned.

  Rose had run from me.

  It stung.

  It had been foolish of me to expect her to greet me with open arms. I understood her telling the surfers to act suspicious—she had enemies who would kill her without blinking an eye. But that she would be happy to see me.

  I looked around. There was not another vehicle in sight. Did none of these surf rats drive? I would never be able to catch up to her now.

  Dejected and stranded, I headed back toward the beach. I needed to ask that group how I could get a ride into town. As I passed the closest hut, I heard a slight whimper.

  The door was open. Gently, holding my breath, I pushed the door open. It squeaked loudly, and I jumped.

  Inside, a golden stream of sunlight poured through a window facing the beach. It was a small hut with a chipped tile floor covered in sand. I scanned the rest of the room. Something black and silver was on the floor. It was a phone.

  My breath caught. I knew that phone. It was Rose’s phone. And it was crushed, the plastic smashed, the SIM card gone. She must have known it was how we found her. I glanced around looking for any clue, anything that would reveal her life here and why she’d run away from me. The hut was tiny and contained very few belongings, which she’d apparently seen fit to leave behind.

  The small space held a wooden table and two chairs with a tiny kitchen and bathroom in a separate room. A small crate held a few clothing items and bottles of water. I picked up a sweater and held it to my nose. Yes. It belonged to Rose. My heart pounded. I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad.

  A beat-up surfboard was propped against one wall. In one corner was a thin futon mattress with a ratty blanket. I inhaled sharply when I saw what was lying next to it—a wadded up blanket covered with dog hair. I ran over and knelt down to see proof that Rose and her dog, Dylan, had been here.

  As I crouched on the ground, I noticed something else, and my heart stopped.

  Blood. Fresh blood was smeared all over the floor. My heart was pounding, and my cheeks felt ice cold.

  I heard a sound behind me and whirled.

  At first, I thought it was the wind howling through a crack in the bathroom wall. But it wasn’t— it was a small whimper. The same sound I’d heard outside. A crumpled heap of black fur was curled up in the corner of the bathroom floor. Oh, my God. I raced over. It was Dylan. He was bleeding.

  That’s when I realized—Rose hadn’t run away from me after all.

  Maybe I didn’t know Rose anymore, but I knew she would never leave her dog.

  Someone had taken her.

  Fear coursed through me. Rose had been kidnapped by someone who had no qualms injuring an innocent dog. I had no idea where she might be now and what she was facing—even if she was still alive.

  And then horror struck me at the realization that I might just have been the one who led someone to her hiding place.

  2

  With Dylan in my arms, I stumbled down to the beach, heading for a bonfire in the distance. He was heavy, so I wasn’t moving very fast through the thick sand despite my efforts to do so. The group of surfers I’d seen earlier were huddled around the fire. When they first noticed me, the tall girl jumped up and ran over.

  “What happened?”

  “Someone took Rose. I saw the car leave. And found Dylan like this. Please,” I pleaded. “He needs to see a doctor. Is there a vet in town? I don’t have a car.”

  A skinny guy with long hair in a ponytail and tattoos covering both arms stood.

  “I can get a car. I’ll drive. I’ll meet you at the road,” he said and took off running.

  Relief filled me.

  The tall girl nodded. “I’ll come, too.”

  Dylan was limp in my arms. I was worried he’d already lost too much blood. The gash across his stomach was long and deep. I’d found a rag in the hut’s makeshift kitchen and wound it around him. It was already red with blood that had seeped through.

  The tall girl grabbed a Mexican blanket off the sand, and we headed back to the road.

  The ponytailed guy appeared in a rusted-out pick up. He leaped out and opened the tailgate. “There’s more room back here.”

  I was afraid to let go of
Dylan, but I passed the dog to him while I scrambled into the bed of the truck. The boy handed Dylan back to me, wrapped in the Mexican blanket. Dylan gave a small whimper as I took him in my arms. The tall girl leaped in the back, closing the gate behind her, and we were off.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m Gia.”

  “I’m Makeda,” she said. “Arrow is the one driving.”

  “This is Dylan,” I said, looking down at the dog in my lap.

  Makeda smiled. “I know,” then she exhaled loudly. “We knew her as Pearl, from Dylan Thomas’ love letters, you know.”

  I didn’t know that. I knew Dylan Thomas was a poet, and that was about it. I didn’t even know that’s why Rose had named her dog that. Dylan was the dog we’d bought her to get her out of her dark funk, to coax her out of her bed. After Timothy was murdered, Rose had shut out the world. This dog had helped bring her back to the land of the living.

  Dylan was one of the puppies from the dog she’d grown up with—Django. I’d given my own puppy, another of Django’s offspring, to my best friend in San Diego, Dante. My aunt, Eva, had taken one of the litter, too, and had it at her Italian home and training camp for female assassins.

  Makeda was opening up to me now. “You think she was kidnapped?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you think she would leave him behind injured like this?”

  She frowned. “No. She wouldn’t leave without him. Or her book.”