Judging by how stiff I felt, he’d gone a level of tightness too far. Maybe he wanted one to pop so he could do it again—while I was awake, with the biggest needle he had, and without meds. I’d done it before, without meds, but his hand could be as bruising as it was healing when he had a lesson to teach about preserving the temple he considered the human body.
A chirping sounded in the room. At first I thought it came from the monitors, but then I realized it was my phone. They must’ve cut my clothes off, and my pants were in the corner, the sound coming from my pocket.
“Who the fuck—” Then I realized. It was the ringer Keely had set on my phone.
She said it didn’t matter if anyone else had a special one, hers would stand out. She’d picked a picture of an animated green bird, and when my phone would ring, it would appear and this weird birdcall would sound.
It started out as chirping at first, and then it morphed into a voice screaming, “Warning.” Squawk. “Your wife is calling. Warning.” Squawk. “Your wife is calling.”
“Warning,” my phone yelled from the corner. “Your wife is calling. Warning.”
Why the fuck would my wife be calling if she was in the same building? And why the fuck, if I was awake, or not, would she not be beside me? Even when she hated me, she still refused to budge from her place.
Yanking the wires out of my arms, I moved like a man on a boat during a storm to the corner of the room. Every gash—my side, my back, and wherever else the fuck on my body—caught fire with each step that I took. I’d never been close enough to a raging fire to feel the heat, but my body was lit up in the same way.
Every muscle. Every nerve. Every cell. Burned.
All it took was for the ringing to stop, or maybe the man on the other end heard how hard I was breathing, because as soon as he sensed an opening,life, he told me where to meet him.
“Alone, or your wife’s dead.”
* * *
Rocco’s menwere not paying attention. They were more concerned with who threatened to come in than who was going out.
Plenty of men had tried to escape from Tito Sala’s clutches, though, and those men, they got strapped down to the bed. Then he’d read you the most boring fucking book in the world. The countless men who had been strapped down by his command probably wished they would’ve just died from the fight instead of having to listen to him drone on and on.
One of the men in the kitchen looked up and nodded at me, but since I swam toward the room where my wife was supposed to be, he probably thought I was looking for her.
Yeah, swam. I felt like I was underwater, but in a hellish version of it. I was sweating while my skin burned to a crisp. I wasn’t even sure if I could lift my arm above my head.
I knew my wife wasn’t in the room, but these places were loaded with weapons, and I needed something to bring with me. I was going alone, but I wasn’t going empty handed. In the closet I found a leather shoulder holster and put it on. There was only a pair of sweatpants in here, so I was going with no shirt and no shoes.
Every instinct in me told me to fucking run, but my head was at war with my limbs. Whatever Tito had given me was strong, even though pain still existed. Maybe it was wearing off. Which meant I had to get out before he came to give me another dose and found me gone.
I slipped past the men in the kitchen. I knew the man standing guard outside, though, was going to be a problem—a six-foot, four-inch, two hundred and fifty pound, solid-muscle, Sicilian issue. I’d met the guard, Rizzo, who they sometimes called “The Giant” at the door before, and I knew he was from Sicily. The Fausti’s reach was long, and they had family in every area imaginable.
“Kelly,” he said, squinting at me. He had a red stain on his cheek.
I lifted a gun to his head. “No offense, Rizzo, but I need a set of keys.”
“I’ll drive you,” he said. “Sala gave you—”
I shook my head. “Have to do this alone.”
He sighed and pulled out a pair of keys from his pocket. He threw them at me, and I caught them with one hand.
He nodded to an all-black Hummer across the street. “I am going to bust your ass as soon as you heal,” he called after me. “I would do it now, but I am too afraid of Sala. You know how he feels about stitches—they are his art.”
I pressed the button on the Hummer and it chirped, but right before I climbed inside, I felt someone watching me. I looked over my shoulder but didn’t see anyone. I knew, though. That Machiavellian motherfucker. Mac. He was like a ghost, always watching, and when you felt him, that was all it was. A feeling. He was never where you expected him to be.
And if he called Keely “my wife’s friend” one more time, I was going to swing on him. It was like no other woman’s name was good enough to come from his mouth except for his wife’s.
“Keely,” I said, as I strained to get inside of the Hummer. It was a road beast, and after I shut the door, I found a clean shirt on the passenger seat and a new pair of shoes on the floor.
I looked around again, but nothing but darkness surrounded me. There was no telling when Mac had arranged this ride and the clothes. Probably as soon as my wife called them for help. Again, he was a smart killer, one of the most dangerous of all. He plotted before he executed.
So how did my wife slip past the men in the house and Rizzo outside?
