My mind couldn’t seem to make sense of numbers or keep them straight. It was like they were in my head, but somehow, I knew they were wrong, and it was making my pulse kick up and my face feel hot. It was pissing me off that I didn’t have control of my functions, though I knew they were behind a door somewhere.
Think back.
My wife’s face before I left. The docks. Intercepting the biggest shipment yet. Celebrating. My old man and my father-in-law shaking hands and embracing. Like my wife’s family and mine were a done deal.Solid.Going for pizza while we passed around a whisky bottle.
Yeah. Mamma’s pizza. That’s where we were ambushed. Going for fucking food. My father-in-law getting out to take a piss. Rocco going with him. The sound of shattering glass before all hell broke loose. We fought back while trying to figure out if we could identify the motherfuckers. By face alone, had no clue. But the accents—American, though I knew they belonged to a family somehow.
The price on my head.
Getting overrun because it seemed like more men were crawling out of cracks.
Cracks?
Poison-tipped darts?
They stuck me early on with something. Something that made the blood in my veins feel like lead. Like being in a dream and having heavy limbs. I thought I remembered free falling, then noises seemed to creep inside my skull.
We flipped.
We had been rammed and flipped—another car hitting us as it passed, not able to swerve in time. It flipped us right. We took off again, but we were hit again not long after. The car couldn’t take anymore. Smoke was spewing out of the hood, and the interior smelled like gas.
Stepping out. Fighting. Using buildings for cover. Guns. Men. Hard to tell who was who in the darkness.
Too many, though.
They were going to have to kill me, but I couldn’t seem to fight back.
That was the plan.
To sedate me.
More money if I was taken in alive.
I was the trap to try and lure my wife out to save me. But damned if I’d sit at home with my tail tucked between my legs like a frightened dog. I was going to destroy them like they were trying to destroy us. I was going to hurt them like they were trying to hurt my wife.
Mia.
That thing in my chest ached when her name came into my mind. It was almost too dark of a place to have her come to me in thoughts. But that thing ached with the distance. With not knowing what the fuck was going on with her, or how this was all going to play out.
My sister.
I had one. And her voice seemed to nag me from beyond the void.
What about her?
Think, you motherfucker.
A promise. I made her promise me that whatever happened, she’d stop Mia from doing anything reckless. From coming for me at all costs. Her family would deal with this war. They needed to start burning cities down.
Cities. That brought me back to the plane. Guns. Being walked up stairs. The men on the plane shooting at the ones who delivered me. Broken fragments after that.Nothing.Then Hours and hours and hours. Or what felt like millions of minutes.Nothing again.Then…here.
A voice echoed inside my head, but it wasn’t in a language I understood. Russian. They probably brought us to Russia.Better to play on your own turf then on foreign soil.
Us.
A groan that was deeply buried in my chest seemed to vibrate against my tongue.
My old man. My father-in-law. Rocco. Vincenzo. Nino. Oscar.
