My heart pumped so hard that the blood in my veins seemed to rattle in my ears, feeding off my husband’s rage. He was close, and he was lusting for blood.
Feeding off his energy, all cylinders started to fire, and I came into my body with what felt like awhoosh!, realizing my hands were tied—one to each side of the bed with a fabric so rough it seemed indestructible, and tied much too tight.
I allowed my right foot to flop, like I was still knocked out, and confirmed that my legs were not bound like my hands and my (Brando’s) knife was gone. But my hands were enough to send a flood of panic rising to my chest.
Burgess must have known I could be slippery and had given his partner in crime a synopsis in warning. Or I had tried to finagle my way from them before, and this was my punishment—memories were a bit hazy.
What had they given me?
The cut over my heart stung, and the sweater stuck to me with dried blood. My head ached. My wrists throbbed. My arms tired from being stretched from one side of the bed to another. I was past the point of cold. I almost felt hypothermic, but it seemed more from fear of what all this could to do my baby than the actual temperature.
“I would have gotten word if Luca Fausti was out of prison,” Cesare said, cutting through the thoughts swirling around my mind, most of them in the direction of my unborn child and doing what I had to do to protect his life. “Lothario would have said something. He wants them dead as much as we do. She lies to bring out fear. I fear no one or nothing. Not even the lion during thelodicould kill me. If Luca is out of prison, even better. It will be new lion—” he seemed to pound his chest “—against old lion.”
What was he talking about?Lodi?If I remembered correctly,lodihad something to do with Rome and the Gladiators. I wanted to believe he was lying, but knowing the Fausti Family, this was an event, or tradition, they would choose to keep around. Something barbaric enough to make it almost unbelievable.
Perhaps almost as unbelievable as my ability to “feel things.”
If Burgess had briefed Cesare on this, Cesare certainly wasn’t trying to hide his feelings from me. He was insane enough to think he could get away with this. Certain he’d kill me before Brando could get to me.
Above the surface, his reasons for wanting to do this, to announce his arrival in this world as King of Beasts, were on the up and up. Taking something that belonged to the Faustis would no doubt put his name in the history books, even if that book was only read by other likeminded individuals.
Below the surface, buried deep down, there was something personal lingering.
If this situation was purely business, he could have tried to kill me through far easier means. He’d made this personal by taking me. He was out for vengeance because of something that had happened to him either by the Fausti Family’s direct hand or by indirect associations.
Boots pounded against the wooden floor, a gait that told me the owner was beyond frustrated and was ready to bail. Burgess. If he were a smart man, he would.
What Cesare was doing was laughing in the face of fate, almost taunting it.
I knew it, and so did Burgess.
The door slammed with Burgess’s exit, and light laughter followed. I hadn’t fully opened my eyes or made a move to alert them that I’d come to on my own.
Cesare knew. He wasn’t laughing at Burgess. He was laughing at me.
“I hear you have a sixth sense. I believe it. Open your eyes,vixen.”
The scent of sweet orange floated through the air, the peeling sending drifts of a wonderful perfume past my nose, acidic with a honey overcoating, and my stomach decided to roar at him for it.
How long had it been since I had something to eat? If I didn’t eat every couple of hours, I’d spiral into what felt like the flu.
In summons to this thought, I promptly turned my face to the side and vomited. For a split second, I was terrified that he’d let me drown in it, that the bile would rush back and suffocate me to death.
Instead, he came over and used Brando’s knife to cut the ties. I sat up, as quickly as possible, using the arms of my sweater to wipe the bile from my face, close to throwing up again at the mess I found myself in.
Despite what had just transpired, though, my stomach was ravenous. The peeled, dripping orange Cesare held seemed like manna from heaven.
I was so hungry I began to salivate at the sight of it.
Realizing that I hadn’t noticed anything else apart from the food, I decided to take notice of my surroundings. We were in a crude cabin made of old wood. It had two beds, including the one I was currently occupying, one fireplace, a kitchenette off to the side, with old pots and pans hanging from pegs along the wall, and another door that must have led to a bathroom.
There was one window in the entire place, over the sink, which showed a pleasant snowy scene outside, the conifers coated in white, while more snow continued to fall at a breakneck pace, blanketing the entire world around me.
Only one door that led outside and back in.
One way in and one way out then, unless another door was in the bathroom leading outside, but I doubted it.
My eyes went back to the man who currently sat next to me, legs crossed, eating the half-peeled orange. The juice dribbled down his chin, over his throat, and then faded into his black thermal shirt. Judging from his face alone, he seemed to be around Brando’s age, or perhaps a little older. He had deep-set lines, and his hair was streaked with pure silver.
