Hard Rock Unrehearsed (22 page)

“Your assistant was picked up two minutes ago and is safe with her escort.  Without her brave effort we would not be so close to finalising the case.  Maya Ortega will be arrested along with the other three later today.”  Agent Hernandez said to Michael before looking coldly back at Diego.

Oscar spoke interrupting him.  “I’ve been retained as Mr Delgado’s legal counsel and he has informed me that he is willing to help the DEA arrest those involved however possible.”

With that Oscar opened the door and the questions started.  It felt like hours later that the two detectives took their leave to join up with the rest of the task force to take down the men who had poisoned his family’s lives for more years than he had been aware of.  The detectives had speculated that Val’s accident had been staged and that Tag had been very lucky to have survived it.  So many things had been revealed that Diego had a hard time believing that his Dad had not known anything.  He must have suspected as he had been close with both Sandro and his uncle Bernardo, Emilio’s dad.  Was this shit part of why his mother had left and gone back to her family in Italy?  Fuck he needed to call her and give her a heads up before the fuckin’ paparazzi found her and she was blindsided by the media.

It was a difficult phone call.  His mother was a strong woman but the idea that Val’s accident hadn’t been an accident made her cry brokenly.  Diego spoke softly to her in Italian, soothing words to assure her he was safe that Jade was safe.  When his Mama asked after his father he didn’t know whether to be honest and admit he didn’t know where he was or lie and tell her he was busy with business.  In the end he went with honesty.  His mother’s answer cleared up one question for him.

“I told him one day Bernardo would be the death of him!  He’s always covered up his little brother’s mistakes.  Bernardo used him and he was too blind to see.  So stupidly loyal!”

He silently agreed with his mother but kept his mouth shut.  They talked for a few more minutes, mostly about Jade, his mother was ecstatic they were together and wrung a promise out of him that they would visit very soon.  He sighed as he ended the call and turned back from the glass wall.  Only Michael was still in the room.

“Any news on my Dad?”  Diego didn’t hold his breath that there would be.

Michael shook his head.  “No one’s seen him since early this morning.  We’re keeping an eye out for him.”

Diego nodded because there was nothing to say.  He wasn’t sure but he suspected his father had been pressured by his uncle or Sandro to orchestrate last night’s fiasco.  What the hell did they have on him?  Nothing else would explain why he would hurt the woman he loved like a daughter like he had done.  Or did he in some twisted way blame Jade for what had happened to Val?  Fuck, Val had been no choirboy and his dad being his manager had known that, so blaming Jade would just be fuckin’ crazy.

Michael’s phone pinged and Diego watched the man read the message.  He looked up at Diego with cold eyes.

“Your father has just been picked up at the airport getting ready to board a flight to LA.  The DEA has him in protective custody.  He was on his way to confront Bernardo Delgado apparently.”

Diego rubbed a hand over his face with a deep groan then looked up at Michael Galloway.  “He’s safe, I’ll worry about the rest of it another time.  Jade is what’s important right now.  Why do they want to get to her so badly?  What does she know that she doesn’t realise she knows?  Or do they think that Val came clean and told her everything he knew about them?”  He growled as he pushed his hands through his hair, fisting it on either side of his head in his frustration.

“I need to be out there with my team taking these fuckers down!  It’s what I used to do best, fuck it’s what I have been trained to do!”

“I need you here.  If law enforcement fails to apprehend them they are going to come after us and if they do we’ll be ready for them.”  Michael smiled thinly.  “Astrid came in while you were talking to your mother, I sent her in to sit with my princess so she’s taken care of.  The helicopter will be here shortly to take the band and the women to a safe location.  Luckily it’s a Saturday so the building is mostly empty but I’ve had it evacuated to ensure no civilian casualties should the worst come to the worst.”

“How sure are you the helicopter is safe?”  Diego wasn’t taking any chances with his woman’s life.

Michael opened his mouth to answer but his phone pinged insistently.  He read the message and gave a thin satisfied smile.

“They just took down the house and all four suspects are in custody.  The DEA simultaneously moved on Sandro Ortega and Bernardo Delgado, we’ll know soon enough if they were successful in taking them down.  They are keeping a total media blackout on the case for now, but we both know there will be leaks.  We will continue on high alert until such time I am assured my family is safe.  The band insists on performing in Portland tonight therefore we need to get down there, take over stadium security and ensure we have it tied up tight.”

Diego was totally okay with taking over security in Portland, he had sent Dawson and Pete with a few of his team ahead with the crew therefore they could start the security clean out before the rest of them got there.

“Some of my team are already there with the crew.  I’ll get right on it.”

Diego was calling Pete as he spoke.  Several minutes later after a short and succinct explanation their plan for the night was on track and as he spoke to Pete the penthouse had been filling up with the teams all returning.  Diego stood silent as Michael laid out the plan for Portland.  With Gina Vincent out of the picture he felt cautiously optimistic about any further threats to his woman.

Now he just had to sort out the shit about him and Maya in the fuckin’ media!  How the fuck he was going to do that he had no fuckin’ clue.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Trace stood listening to the planning going on around him and the band and slowly started to lose his fuckin’ mind.  No one thought to ask any of them what they thought about the plans being made or if they had any concerns.  The fuckers just bulldozed right over them!  Enough was enough.  Clearing his throat he waited until he had their attention.

“Seeing as we’re without a manager at the moment we need to borrow Astrid for a few hours.  We have some rescheduling to take care of.”

Michael Galloway just gave a distracted nod and Trace swore silently as they were yet again ignored by the fuckin’ macho badasses.

“She’s with Jade.”  Diego was suddenly next to them.  “Why do you need Astrid?”

Fuck!  Delgado looked ragged and stressed out.  “We need to cancel the meet and greets and the after party for tonight.  Too much has happened to pretend nothing is wrong.  All of this shit is hitting the airwaves as we speak and we need a spokesperson to state our position loud and clear.  The drug shit with Richie is going to come up again and fuck knows how they’re going to spin it.  We need someone to manage the social media shit storm that’s unfolding around you and Jay.  We need to protect Jay.”

RJ interrupted.  “Why don’t we employ those two kids back in Salt Lake to get on it?  We just shoot them the info they need and they run everything from their end.  We don’t need to be in the same location to make that happen, it’s the internet after all.”

“That’s a great idea!”  Giv and Jimmy gave their approval.

“Cool, I can live with that, you handle it.”  Trace growled as he stalked across the room to get to Astrid.  The woman knew how to organise shit and right now they needed her.  He felt Delgado’s eyes on him as he left the room.  That fucker was in a bad place right now but he had put himself there so he would just have to deal.  Jay and the band was the priority right now.

Astrid was worried.  Jay-Jay had woken up but she was strangely quiet, too quiet.  The first thing she had looked for when she woke was her phone and when she couldn’t find it she sat down with her laptop and scanned all the gossip sites.  Her face had become more and more drawn as she read the absolute rubbish being posted.

She did not understand this morbid fascination with celebrities that people had.  If they liked the work those celebrities did they should be happy to leave it at that.  Why dig into their private lives and revel in their adversities?  It made no sense to her.  What it did do was make her angry that they were hurting Jay-Jay.  And the girl was hurting big time.  With that Astrid had had enough and she gently removed the laptop from Jay-Jay’s grasp.

“You know none of what they are saying is true princess so let’s close this up and ignore them.  They know nothing of your life, it’s all speculation and bald faced lies.”

“But it’s half-true.  He did stay at her side until they left the party.  He did go into that room with her.  He did stay all night.  I did leave the party hours before everyone else.  I did spend the night alone.  All of that is true.”

Michael’s icy blue eyes looked up at her from his princess’s beautiful face, eyes filled with anguish and glimmering with tears.  Astrid wanted to hurt the bastards who had done this to her.

“I can’t do this again Astrid.  I just can’t.”

Sitting down on the bed next to her Astrid took her into her arms and held on tight.  “You are a strong and vibrant young woman with her whole life ahead of her and no one is going to take that away from you, I won’t let them.  We are going to take care of this, that’s a promise.  You have a show tonight and I’m damned if that little slut and her lies are going to ruin it for you.”  With a soft kiss on Jay-Jay’s temple Astrid sat back and smiled.  “Mel is waiting in Portland with a kickass outfit, her words not mine, that she says you are wearing on stage tonight.  She won’t be taking no for an answer and she says it won’t show your guava.”

Astrid was relieved when Jay-Jay sat up and laughed, a glint in her eyes that said the pity-party was over and the strong, resilient young woman was back in charge.

She had to concentrate to not turn the sound check into a damned farce.  She wanted to scream at Diego Delgado to get off the fuckin’ stage that he wasn’t her bodyguard anymore, but she kept her mouth shut and did her job.  She ignored him as the band quickly ran through two numbers to give the sound technicians what they needed.  They were running late after all the shit that went down in Seattle and everyone was tired and edgy because of it.  Thinking about Luis just made it worse.

She was relieved when they finished and hurried off stage to the relative safety that her dressing room would give her from answering questions she didn’t want to.  Her girls were waiting for her and getting ready for later that evening was all the excuse she needed.  She ignored Tag and Diego following her.

Mel let her wear her usual clothes and muttered something about ‘later’ that Jade chose to ignore.  The night went quickly from there on.  Thankfully no meet and greets and no after party for her.  Trace and Astrid handled it all.  Jade was tired, so tired all she wanted to do was go to sleep and that’s what she did when she got to her hotel room.  She went to sleep and she did it alone.

She was not aware of him when he slipped into her room and slid into bed with her in the deep of the night.  She did not wake when he drew her into his arms and sighed deeply as she nestled into him.  He was gone when she woke so she never knew he had been there.

They had two rest days before the next show in San Francisco and Jade grabbed it with both hands.  She talked her Dad into letting Adam fly her and Tag to the family’s beach house.  She needed a break and fortunately her Dad agreed.  They slipped away as soon as she could get away.  No one noticed them leaving.

The peace and solitude at the beach house had been just what she needed.  She spent the two days thinking about the path she wanted to follow.  Tag didn’t let her laze around long, he had her in the gym working out the kinks and they took long silent walks on the beach.  The two days of silence was broken when she heard the helicopter early on the afternoon of the second day.  Adam was back and her little break was over.  But it had not been a wasted two days, she had made some decisions that she would implement very soon.

Security had been tightened, the meet and greets and the after parties were back on the schedule and Jade did not look forward to it.  She would make it through but if anyone made one comment she didn’t like there would be hell to pay.  She was no longer going to smile and say nothing!  Fuck them all!  Jade Galloway Delgado had had enough.

Astrid and the band must have known she was close to the edge and kept the media away from her when she arrived back from her break.  The paps were another story, they damned well popped up everywhere!   They would be performing two nights in San Francisco and her dad had arranged for them to stay in the mansion of one of his business associates.  He arranged it because they would have more privacy and because they could totally control access to the house.  Jade had been given a big suite towards the back of the house and had strict instructions from Tag not to open any of the sheer curtains.

There were some things that the band had refused to cancel, those were a visit to the children’s cancer ward and the dinner party planned by Jimmy’s brother and his wife.  Jade was back in time to attend the dinner, she didn’t know if she was up to socialising but she had agreed to go so she felt she couldn’t cancel at such a late date.

Jimmy’s brother Gordon and his wife Shirley made them all feel like family and the dinner became a relaxed evening around the pool instead of another performance for the cameras.  Gordy and Shirl, as Jimmy introduced them, went out of their way to make everyone feel welcome.  They had kept the visit private and had invited none of their friends, they even went as far as not inviting Shirls’ family!   Jade overheard Jimmy thanking both of them for taking such care of them.

Very early the next morning Jade, Tag, Mel and Sally slipped away and spent the morning doing general touristy things, heavily disguised.  Tag had them back at the stadium in time for the sound check and Jade felt as if her life was slowly returning to normal.

Diego was a thundercloud but she ignored it.  She had a job to do and she would do it regardless of how shitty her personal life was right at that moment, at least the tour was almost over for her.

He was worried and he fuckin’ missed his woman.  He wanted to kill whoever had sneaked her away for the last two days, he suspected it was Adam.  Days he had needed to get her to believe in him again, to believe that he had been faithful to her.  He wanted to tell her about the whole fucked up night in Portland, how he had promised his dad to look after Maya who acted so fuckin’ out of it that he had believed she would be stupid enough to jump if left alone.  When would he learn that the only women he could rely on were Jade and his mother?  They were the only ones who didn’t lie to him and they didn’t try to manipulate him to get what they wanted.  You would think that after Marcella and Gina Vincent he would have learned to never take anything at face value, but no, not him!  He went ahead and fucked up the best thing that had ever happened to him, the one thing he had always yearned for and thought he would never have.

He was sick of waiting, sick of giving Jade time to work through the shit that had descended on them.  He wanted her, she was his and as of tonight she would be back where she belonged, in his bed and in his arms.  With his decision made he stalked to Jade’s room, determination in every bone of his body.

He didn’t knock, just pushed the door open walked in and shut it softly behind him.  His woman was asleep, lying on her side, her legs drawn up and with her hands beneath her cheek she looked small and so vulnerable it made his heart ache.  She woke as he stood staring down at her and for a moment he saw love in her eyes before she masked it.  But he wasn’t going to give her the chance to retreat, he wanted her in his life and if he had to sit here all day to get that he would.

Sitting down on the bed he lifted her into his arms and onto his lap.

“What are you doing Diego?”  She muttered sleepily.

“Taking care of my woman.”  Diego whispered as he softly kissed her temple.  “We have to talk baby.  I hurt you after I promised I wouldn’t ever put you there again.  I don’t know why I let my Dad convince me that I should take care of Maya.  What I can tell you is that it had nothing to do with me wanting her or any of that shit, she was like a sister to me.  And please note the ‘was’ in that sentence.  The idea of having sex with her makes me feel sick to my stomach.  On top of that is the fact that I know she likes to fuck around and she’s not very picky about who she fucks.  God baby, even if I had never met and fallen in love with you I wouldn’t have fucked her!  Ever.  Knowing who she’s been with I would’ve been too scared of my dick rotting and falling off!”

Diego grinned as his woman laughed.  Maybe, just maybe he was on the right track.

“My Dad has always had a soft spot for Maya.  When we were young he always joked that one day she would marry one of his sons and be his daughter for real.  I knew she had started to believe that shit when she turned fifteen and insisted that Val and I attend her birthday party as her dates.  Fuck Val was twenty nine and I was twenty four, way too old for her!   My Dad tried to talk us into it so we got the hell out of there, leaving him to explain our sudden disappearance.  Jesus, how Val teased me!  He told me to watch myself around that girl because she was determined to have one of us and seeing as he was taken that only left me.”

Diego tightened his arms around her, breathing in her scent.  He felt the band around his heart loosen just a little as his baby slid her arms around his waist and held on to him.  Yes!  Please God just give me this, this woman who I love more than I ever thought possible.  He silently prayed.

“I made it my mission to stay away when I knew she was going to be around.  My Dad wasn’t too pleased with me but I didn’t give a fuck.  After Val died it was more difficult to avoid her but I tried anyway.  I was busy setting up my own business and was hardly ever home so that helped.  Though when I did get a chance to visit somehow she always found out and turned up.  I thought my Dad let her know when I was home but I now suspect that it was James who set me up.  I promise you baby, I have never ever been with that woman.”

Lifting Jade’s face with one hand he looked into her beautiful blue eyes.

“I love you Jade Delgado.  I will never be with another woman for the rest of my life baby.  You are the one, the only one and if I should lose you there can never be anyone else for me.  From the minute I realised I wasn’t going to walk away and you gave yourself to me I became a one woman man and nothing can change that, nothing at all.  You have my solemn promise baby.”

Jade’s eyes shone with unshed tears as she looked up at him and Diego’s heart clenched.

“Okay, I believe you.  What I don't understand is why you didn't call me.  I would have understood that you had to look after her, not that I would have believed her story, but I would have understood your need to be protective.  I know you had a life before me Diego, it's just not nice having it shoved in my face when I least expect it."

His woman stared up at him, her eyes filled with questions.