Page 1 of Their Virgin Valentine

Javier Perez

Icheck my watch for the fifth time in the last half hour. “Have you heard from Jon?” I ask my best friend and business partner, Ryan. It’s just after one o’clock. Sophia should have finished her last Thursday class and been on her way home by now.

Ryan looks up from his computer with his brows pulled together and shakes his head. Picking up his phone he looks at it. “Shit, no. He’s usually given us our midday report by now.” He says, then a second later he’s calling someone with his phone on speaker so we can both hear.

“Boss?” Jon Whitman, our best security specialist answers.

“Tell me she’s okay,” Ryan demands.

“She’s perfectly fine. I was waiting to call-”

“Why the fuck for?” Ryan growls.

John sighs. “There’s been a development. I was waiting to see how it played out before I notified you and Perez.”

I’m on my feet instantly and walking to where Ryan is standing next to his desk. “What kind of development? Tell us what the hell is going on Jon.” I demand.

“Shit. I have to go. She’s safe. I’ll message you.” He says before hanging up.

“What the fuck was that?” I look at Ryan and ask.

“Beats the hell out of me, but if he doesn’t message us in the next five minutes he’s fired,” Ryan answers tossing his phone on his desk and glaring at it as he stretches his arms behind his head.

I roll my eyes at him and walk to the couch in our office, take a seat, and wait for my phone to ping with a message.

Between the two of us, Ryan is the one quicker to react. We’re both a bit controlling when it comes to our business and the people we care about. After the way we grew up, no one could blame us. We met in the first grade when he was assigned to the same class as me halfway through the year. Ryan was an angry kid and rightfully so. His dad had just gone away to prison for beating the shit out of his mom. She moved them from some tiny town in Alabama to Newark, New Jersey, into the same rundown apartment complex as my mom and I lived in. Our moms worked crappy, minimum wage jobs, barely making ends meet. They paid an old lady twenty bucks a week to watch us after school. While our moms worked, we’d sneak out and do whatever the fuck we wanted, as long as we didn’t get caught. We saw a lot of shit on the streets of Newark. Did things we aren’t proud of. When we were seventeen my strict Cuban mother gave us the riot act and begged us to make something of ourselves before we wound up dead or in prison. We chose to go into the Marines.

Joining the Marines is the best thing that ever happened to Ryan and me. They straightened us up and made us into the men we are today. They gave us something we never had before, a purpose. Because of the Marines, we graduated from college and made the right connections. That one decision to join up, set us on the path that brought us here.

Ryan grabs his keys and pockets them and his phone then heads towards the door.

“Wait,” I say before he reaches it.

Ryan stops and glares at me. “She could need us. I’m not sitting here twiddling my thumbs waiting for him to message us.”

“Jon has her. He won’t let anything happen.”

Jonathan Whitman was the first employee we hired when we opened our security company four years ago. We met him when we were in the Marines. He’s more than just an employee to us, he’s a friend, but right now he’s on the job and that’s all that matters.

“I swear to God V, if she’s hurt-”

Just then our phones chime, notifying us we have a message. We grab our phones to look. Jon’s messaged our private group chat.

Jon: Some guy asked Sophia out to dinner on Valentine’s Day. She told him no at first, but then she changed her mind and accepted.

Jon sends us several pictures and I’m quick to enlarge them, staring at each one carefully. With every picture I look at, blood rushes to my ears and jealousy consumes every part of my soul. The first picture is of Sophia opening the door to get into the white Range Rover we bought her for her high school graduation gift. In the right-hand corner is a guy walking up to her. The next picture he’s closer, maybe a couple of feet in front of Sophia and she’s facing him with her door closed. The third pic I see Sophia tilting her head at the fucker and he’s standing closer handing her a rose. Another pic is of her smiling holding the flower up to her nose.

“Who the fuck is that, V?” Ryan growls staring at his phone.

“Hell if I know,” I mumble still looking.

From what I can tell, the guy is dressed well. In the next picture, he’s getting into a silver Mercedes. His daddy must have bought him that car, no way a kid can afford it. The last image is of the kid’s license plate. As soon as I see it, I’m walking to my desk and pulling up the software to search this kid’s plate number.

Ryan comes up behind me to see what I find.

Eventually, we find out the car is registered to one Henry Theodopolis, a senator in our fine state of Washington. A quick search tells us everything we need to know. Theodopolis is married to his college sweetheart and has two children, Paul and Savannah. Paul Theodopolis is a senior and a soccer star at Seattle University, where our Sophia goes to school.

“She said yes to this kid?” Ryan scoffs.

I shake my head, not believing it myself.

Sophia is the little sister of our best friend Mike. We met Mike at boot camp when we all enlisted right out of high school. He was killed in action over five years ago and since then we’ve been taking care of Sophia. She was almost seventeen when she came to live with us. We’ve put her through college and given her everything she could need and want in life. The only thing we’ve asked in return was that she follow our one rule, one that she’s followed to this day.

No dating.

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