The more time you give me to find you first, the worse this works out for you. Tell me what you want and where we can meet. And don’t lay a finger on her.
The reply was immediate. Nothing more than a string of rolling laughing faces. The synchronized animation of the teardrops leaking from the yellow-faced eyes mocked him even as his heart shredded.
“Boss,” Armando called from the front seat, his tone cautious. “We’re here.”
Santino glanced up, looking past him and out the windshield. He meant home, of course. And somehow, Santino wassurprised not to see the house engulfed in flame. But it wasn’t—it was just lit, too brightly for the hour.
The sight of his home standing upright, visibly intact, coupled with the knowledge that his fiancée had been taken and was in that very moment being horribly mistreated and worse made Santino’s chest constrict with fresh anger. “Take Ciro and sweep the property. Talk to the staff. Find Luca, and he better fucking need a hospital, or I’ll put him in the goddamn morgue.” He swiped his thumb across the screen of his phone. “I have a call to make.”
Chapter eighteen
Captured
Reiko pulled herself upfrom the groggy state of unconsciousness with a little help from the relentless pounding in her skull, and the not-so-far-away pair of voices that sounded like they were arguing rather fiercely. But it only took a few seconds for her to realize that her raging headacheand nauseating disorientation was not the reason she couldn’t understand more than tones and implicit genders. She heard a distinctly male-oriented voice, and a rough but nonetheless identifiably female-oriented voice, and neither were speaking English.
Of course, they weren’t speaking Japanese, either. That would have been far too convenient.
Reiko bit back a groan and blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to clear her vision as the fog over her mind faded away. She was horrendously uncomfortable, actually. Her entire body hurt. And she was cold. And there was something in her mouth.
Her heart slammed hard against her ribs, the cotton-tasting thing forcing her to breathe too hard through her nose. Her nose was stuffy, because she’d been crying, and she still couldn’t fuckingsee, and on top of everything she suddenly remembered, it was nearly impossible not to panic.
She’d been kidnapped.
She remembered having grown tired, her eyes heavy, and informing Luca that she would be going upstairs to bed. Luca had assured her he would remain in the house—downstairs—until Santino got home. She wasn’t sure if Luca was being kind to her because doing otherwise would get him killed or because he liked her on some level, but he didn’t make her uncomfortable, so she had chosen to appreciate the possibility of having a friend. Especially if she was going to have to accept that person as a living shadow for the foreseeable future.
It turned out her judgement was shit.
Luca had jumped her in the wardrobe only minutes later. With the late-night staff all downstairs, no one had heard her screams for help or whatever sounds had resulted from her struggle. Reiko remembered fighting. She remembered swinging her arms and legs, punching and clawing and kicking as best she could, and she was damn sure she’d connected a few times. Butit hadn’t done any good. Luca was larger and stronger than her. Luca had actual training and experience.
Worst of all, Luca was prepared.
She’d cracked her head against something and blacked out about the time he’d muttered a curse of agitation. Her memories after that were fleeting, disassociated images and sensations of pain and half-shadowed figures. Echoes of words she couldn’t understand.
Her consciousness had finally, if not regretfully, fully returned. She recognized that more than likely the conversation she couldn’t understand was being spoken in Italian. What she did not understand was why she couldn’tsee, and why she was so cold and stiff. Her skin felt half-numb from the chill.
Reiko swallowed compulsively and nearly choked around the gag that was soaking up her saliva and leaving her mouth too dry. It made her kind of want to vomit thinking about what it might even be.
She tried to focus on testing her body, slowly, one area at a time. Her toes felt like they wiggled appropriately, but something definitely restricted the movement of her legs.Bound.She pictured rope or shackles at her ankles, but didn’t want to move so dramatically as to risk making a loud sound. She had no way to know if she was being watched, and learning her immediate situation seemed most important. So, she kept testing her muscles, and realized quickly that she was on her side, on a hard and unforgiving surface over something reminiscent of plastic.
A different kind of chill rolled through her. Her first thought of what that plastic thing could be was a tarp.
Tarps were where people who died were dumped, to make cleanup easier. That was what they showed on television, at least.
The argument in the background stopped, heels clacked off, and a door slammed somewhere in the distance. Moments later, a male voice—the male voice from the argument—spoke in English, closer than before. “Finally woke up, huh?”
Shit.The tarp had crinkled with her movement. Not that it mattered. She had to be blindfolded, that had to be why it felt like her entire head was wrapped—because she had a gag and a blindfold encompassing her head, as well as a crushing headache. She was completely blind and wholly unable to do more than emit a thoroughly muffled, dehumanizing moan-like sound around the thing wadded up in her mouth. She’d rather flip her captors off and glare in silence, but her hands were trapped behind her back at an uncomfortable angle, so that wasn’t an option, either.
The tarp crunched faintly, far too close, the sound practically reverberating through her. Then the man spoke again, his voice lowered but crystal clear. “I’ll be honest, I don’t see what he sees in you. Never would have pegged a broken, mousey little Jap like you for his type.” The air shifted over her and if not for the gag she would have screamed—in shock, on principle, and perhaps with a tinge of terror—when he pressed something cool to the edge of her scar. “This isn’t personal, but that won’t stop me from carving you like a fucking Thanksgiving turkey if you give me half a reason. Your job is to be the nice, hapless damsel. Let me use you. Play your role, and when this is done, we let you go.Capisci?”
Tears burned her eyes, a toxic and oddly fortifying blend of fear and fury pouring through her system. It was probably best she was gagged. Because for as deeply as she recognized her disadvantage, she was pissed. She absolutely didnotunderstand—her assumed translation of his Italian tag-on—and she would never, ever agree.
She had been a “broken, mousey damsel” her entire life. Then she’d met a man who’d told her, even shown her, she could be more. She’d tasted it, like licking the spatula while the real dessert baked in the oven, andgoddammitshe was not going to let go just because some racist trash told her to.
If only she had a way to turn that searing feeling into anything more than vibrating anger and tears.
Santino stood inside his closet, the closet Reiko’s clothes hadn’t even been hung up in yet, and stared at the evidence of the fight that should never have been. Coats had been ripped from hangars, more hangars knocked askew, and an entire pedestal of accessories toppled over. Watches, cuff links, clips and pins all scattered across the floor. It was a mess, but it wasn’t the mess he cared about.
It was the cracked mirror, where traces of blood had smeared and rolled down the glass and a few errant strands of black hair had stuck. It was the blood, dribbled like raindrops on the floor, overtop of the toppled pedestal and staining at least one Rolex. It was the sight of Reiko’s blood and the proof that she had been scared—the proof that she’d fought—that mattered to him.
