"yes mother" Lorenzo replied and walked round the desk.
Lorenzo....they were Italian. Then suddenly, Annie could notice the faces around her looked Italian .... and their accent too, meaning, they could be somewhere in Italy.
Well she'd be made the conclusion based on what she was seeing.
They walked out of the study, shutting the door behind them.
This time, it was Lorenzo who walked behind them, Chondria led the way.
There's no way a human would birth a child and name the poor thing Chondria!
The kid would be dead from shame by the time the Kid got to middle school ..... it totally had to be a nickname.
Jon thought as they walked...he was still in awe of the man while his sister was more concerned about the one behind.
He shook his head and rolled his eyes.
Girls would always be girls.
When they were out of the mansion, they turned left and headed in the direction of the houses Annie had noticed in the distance when she was climbing up the stairs, heading into the mansion.
There was a truck waiting for them at the side of the see through gates.
Annie Jon and Bertha hopped in, Lorenzo drove.
The see through gates opened and they drove through.
There were towers scattered on the grounds haphazardly, a man in each, of course dressed in black and armed with a weapon.
Annie suddenly felt a deep sense of pity for who would even attempt or dream of breaking into this place.
They'd be dead before they could even breathe.
They drove across the smooth grounds for some time and stopped.
Then more gates. They were waved through the first, then the second.
The third one wasn't see through like the others.
This one was thick, had high walls and the walls had enough electric wires that could grill a fish.
The gates had no designs and it could only be opened from the inside.
There was no handle, nothing.
As they stopped at the gate, Lorenzo hopped down and spoke into his comm device.
It took some minutes and the gated rolled open.
"Come on" he said to Jon, helping him off the jeep.
Annie flew up immediately.
"wherever he goes, I'm coming along"
No way in hell was she going to let them take her brother to lord knows where without her coming along.
Probably this was it.
Where all their by kidneys were going to vanish.
She shuddered at the thought.
Chondria held her shoulders and pulled her back down. She turned and glared at him.
Lorenzo gave a low chuckle, his eyes glittered.
The girl really was something else.
"It's alright Chondria...let them come"
"but Lor..."he started to protest, Lorenzo held up his hands.
"let them come....makes no difference anyway"
Chondria reluctantly let go of Annie's shoulders and she hopped off instantly.
She was heading towards Jon and Lorenzo when she halted suddenly.
She turned and glanced back at Bertha.
What if this was some ploy of theirs and they just wanted to separate the three of them to make the work easier.
She glanced at Chondria, then Lorenzo.
"what's the matter? you seemed so confident few minutes ago" Lorenzo said with a predatory grin spread across his face.
Annie threw him a death glare, then she considered her options.
They weren't going to hurt Bertha she concluded.
They seem to regard kids as sacred she thought. She'd noticed it. .
Since they were taken, apart from the time at the building, they'd never been hurt or harassed.
She set her jaw and walked towards the gate.
As they walked in, there were more towers and more security.
They walked towards the main building which had steel doors at the entrance.
Those parted both ways from the middle.
When she went in, there was a lone guard standing behind a counter, an electronic signature detection device, and a scanner that doubled both as a millimeter wave scanner and a backscatter X-ray scanner.
They both went through the scanners but Lorenzo walked around it.
If he had infact walked through it, he'd set off an alarm that would send half the men assigned to the building to this very spot.
He could of course take the weapons off, but there was no way in hell he'd go in there defenseless.
His mother might be the boss, but he was sure there were others that had eyes on her position.
After Annie and Jon had been waved through, they walked through another set of steel doors, similar to the others.
This one opened to a buzz of computers, humans and electronic devices, all running at the same time.
Every individual here had their own business they were handling.
Some sat in front of computer screens, others studied maps that held secrets to lord knows what, others walked with files in their hands, entering and exiting doors.
Then Annie understood what the woman in the red robe had decided for her brother.
It was some sort of spy den.
With the kind of equipment in here, they could practically see anything, anywhere and everywhere.
A woman walked briskly towards them.
She had on black heels and she wore a black suit.
The one with pants...she had on black rimmed glasses.
"I'm Rita Watts...I run this shit hole" she said, the moment she stopped in front of them.
"Hello Lorenzo" she said, nodding to him, then she turned her eyes to Jon.
She seemed to have x ray vision as her eyes boring into him looked like she was checking out all the bones in his body.
Under her intense stare, Jon felt like finding a hole and scurrying inside.
He was extremely uncomfortable.
After sometime, she said "he'll do" and turned back in the direction which she came.
Lorenzo prompted Jon forward.
He glanced at his sister who held his hands as he was about to walk away.
Lorenzo held her other hand. "let him go Annie... he's not going to vanish into thin air...
Let him go"
Annie's brain rang...how did he know her name?
She didn't remember mentioning it since they were taken.
She pulled him towards her and hugged him.
"argggh ....I hate the mushy stuff" Rita said, rolling her eyes as she clicked away on her tab.
"ooohkay.... that's enough... time to get it done with...let's go" she said, dropping her tab to her side .
Annie pulled herself off her brother.
She didn't cry, yet she wondered why.
Probably because she'd done enough crying and the tears had decided she'd had enough to last her for a long time.
She let him go and he stepped in line with Rita's steps.
"say hello to Madame Jerome" for me Rita said as she walked away.
"sure thing Aunty Reeee" Lorenzo replied then he turned to Annie.
"alright ... let's go" Lorenzo said as he walked towards the direction from which they came.
Annie glanced back at her brother as he walked and she felt a pang in her chest.
She wished they had another choice.
They'd probably be sitting at home right now with her parents, seeing a movie or even out to a movie, well if it was weekend...they did that most weekends as a family.
She couldn't even remember what day of the week it was.
So much had happened that the least of her worries was the bloody damn day of the week.
She walked with Lorenzo through the steel doors and she didn't bother to go through the scanner on her way out.
The guard only spared them a glance before burying his head back in his tab.
They walked back outside to the jeep.
They found Bertha with a tab, tapping away at a Tetris game.
Annie had to admit, she was surprised. So that Chondria of a man really did have a soft side to him.
She wondered where that soft side was buried and what brought about the burial.
Chondria looked up, his shoulders tensing as they approached, then he relaxed visibly when he knew they were the ones approaching.
This time, he hopped into the driver's seat and decided to take the wheel.
Annie eyed him and kept her peace, choosing to swallow her words.
She held Bertha as they drove.
She'd resigned herself to fate and was prepared to let it take her wherever it wished.
There was no way to fight it. This much she'd come to discover.
It felt like their lives were no longer theirs and they were acting out a script written by someone else.
Since life wanted that script followed, she was sure they'd follow it to the end.
The jeep turned right and drove straight, then they entered rocky terrain.
It made Annie understand the reason why they brought a jeep along.
The jeep eventually came to a halt in front of another gate similar to the other one, except this one had higher set of walls, a bigger, stronger black gate.