“So this is all from him?” he asks, voice low, venom dripping from each word.
“Him?” I try to sound innocent.
“The Russian fucker,” he spits.
“I don’t…know who you’re talking about,” I say.
Vince shakes his head slowly, like I’ve just insulted his intelligence. “Don’t lie to me. I had someone follow you, Leanna. Every damn week, you went into Ahren, sometimes for hours at a time. Were you fucking him for money? Pretending to fuck him for money? Feeding him information so he could make a fool out of us at the Commission?”
I stammer, my throat raw. “I?—”
“It’s so pathetic,” he says. “I couldn’t figure it out for the longest time. Why were you going to that Russian strip joint every week?Who were you seeing in there? It was driving me insane. And then you and he were eye-fucking each other the whole time we were at the meetings, and it clicked. So what did you tell him about us?”
“Nothing,” I say. My heart is about to jump straight out of my rib cage, I swear.
My brother steps around my single bed and gets in my face. “Don’t. Lie.”
“I swear,” I say. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Vince lets out a short, ugly laugh. Then he pulls something from his back pocket with a smirk on his face. “Well,” he says, almost cheerfully, “at least I get to have some fun.”
I try to run, but he grabs me by the hair. I yelp in pain as he wrestles me back, pinning my arms behind my back as he slides something over my head.
Everything goes dark. Before I can fight back, my wrists are yanked behind me and cinched tight with a zip tie. I lose my balance and hit the ground hard, my head smacking against the floor.
He tries to force me to my feet, but I kick out blindly, my foot connecting with his shin. He grunts and stumbles.
But then his boot drives into my ribs repeatedly. Pain explodes through my side, each kick stealing the air from my lungs. I scream, but it only makes him laugh. Not because it’s funny. Because he enjoys it.
I can’t breathe; each gulp of air burns. My hands are useless, bound tight, so I curl my knees to my chest, trying to shield what I can and wait for him to be done.
Eventually, his rage ebbs. He grabs me and hauls me over his shoulder. My ribs scream, my head throbs, and all I hear is the steady thud of his boots on the floor.
Outside, the air is cool, and I start to scream for help, but I only have seconds before I hear a beep, and I’m thrown into what I assume is the trunk of my brother’s Mercedes.
Vince’s voice drips through the dark.
“I’ve got questions for you, little whore. Little traitor. You’ll answer, or the pain keeps getting worse. Either way, Dad’s gonna know he can’t trust you with the throne.”
The trunk closes with a metallicthunk.
32
NIK
“Where would she go?”Dom asks, his voice clipped as we cut in front of a guy and steal his cab.
“Her apartment on campus, I suspect,” I say, trying not to sound like I’m losing my shit. “Get the intel on where that is.”
“One minute, boss,” he says, scrolling through his phone so fast that I think he might crack the screen. Finally, his eyes flick up. “Got it.”
He rattles it off to the driver and flashes a hundred-dollar bill. “Make it quick.”
The city blurs past the windows. Every red light feels like a punch in the gut—the lakefront glimmers in the distance, and yet every second stretches into a cruel eternity.
My knee bounces nervously, and I fight the urge to slam my fist into the seat or shatter the window, or to doanything destructiveto burn off the pressure building in my chest.
My blood feels like fire in my veins. I want to punch something, someone—anything.
