“It was.”
“I can’t believe I fell for your shit,” she says with a humorless laugh. “Apparently, I still am because I want to believe you so bad.”
“You can believe me, Baby. I swear.” I’m pleading at this point, and I don’t even care. It isn’t even that I’m begging for my life, which I am. I’m pleading with her to believe me because I don’t want to lose her. I could feel my heart breaking just thinking about it. These past four months have been the happiest I’ve ever been.
“How?!” she asks, throwing her arms in the air, knife still in hand. “You have lied to me formonths, Leo. You told me you lov…” She shakes her head hard once, shaking out what she was about to say. “You made a plan to set me up.”
“To unite the families,” I insist. “We wanted to show you that we aren’t like Frankie.”
She rolls her eyes heavenward. “That is not how you do that. All you showed me is that you’re all liars. Just like him and the rest of the Perez family.” She looks at me again, and her eyes look haunted like some old memory is creeping up. She blinks, and it’s gone.
What the fuck was that?
“Do you know why the feud started?” she asks, sitting in thechair Gage vacated, crossing one leg over the other, tapping her knife on her thigh. I shake my head. “Evander and Mateo didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head again. “They said they didn’t know why or when it started. They were young and raised to hate the Poletti’s. They formed their own opinion when they realized Frankie was a fucking monster.”
“Do you know how Frankie died?” she asks with that weird tilt of her head.
“He was tortured. They always figured it was one of his many enemies and never investigated it.”
She nods. “It was,” she confirms, then looks me dead in the eye. “It was me.”
I know my face shows my shock. This beautiful girl tortured Frankie Perez? Did I know her at all? Apparently not. The only real thing I know about her is what my brothers told me.
“Why?” I ask and she immediately shuts down.
She stands up. “That’s not important. What is important is that you expect me to believe your brothers would want peace with us. I can’t just let you go, and I’m not ready to stick my neck out for a meeting yet.” She turns to look at me. “Don’t make me regret not killing you.” She walks to the table, laying her knife down before walking to the door; she turns one last time. “Even though that’s not completely off the table.”
The door clicks behind her, and I let my breath out in a whoosh. Everything I told her is true. Evander and Mateo are nothing like Frankie, and I don’t even know the man personally. I only regret the hurt in her eyes when she found out who I really am. If I get out of this alive, I’m killing Evander and Mateo for talking me into this shit.
I don’t know how long I stay like that before I hear the door click back open, and Ryder steps through the door. My shoulders are screaming from being stretched out so far, and my fingers are numb from how tightly my hands are wrapped together.
He walks over, stopping right in front of me, crossing his arms over his chest. His eyes are narrowed, and he looks fucking terrifying. He’s about two inches taller than my six-foot-one, but he’s twice my size. My brothers showed me everything they knowabout fighting styles and guns, but I wasn’t raised for this. Ryder was.
“I wanted to kill you on the spot,” he says, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “She didn’t.” I don’t need him to clarify who ‘she’ is. I don’t say anything because I can tell he has more to say. He steps closer, and I see murder in his dark eyes. Reaching over, he releases the chain holding me up; the sudden release has me hitting my knees on the concrete floor. I grit my teeth so I don’t make a noise, which is what he wanted.
He squats down in front of me so I look into his eyes. “You better not be lying to her or your brothers,” he spits the word, “are as good as dead. Along with you.”
He unhooks the longest chain, jerks me up by my still tied arms, and drags me through a long hallway, going through several doors. I don’t fight him because there is no point. He would put a bullet through my brain with one of the Glocks hanging in the holster over his shoulders and deal with her wrath later.
What the hell is this place?
We finally come out in a room that looks like a wine cellar before stepping into a huge kitchen. He continues through the kitchen before taking a left into another hallway, shoving me into a room under the stairs with the door open. I stumble and then right myself. Now I’m starting to get pissed off.
He laughs. “There’s that backbone, pussy boy.” He points to the chair in the corner, where Alessa is waiting. “One hair on her head gets harmed, and I’ll cut you into little pieces.” He laughs again and shuts the door.
She motions to the bed. “Sit.” I sit down, and she comes over to unlock the chain around my arms. I rub them to get the feeling back. “You’re going to call your brothers. You’ll tell them you’re staying with me at my beach house for a couple of days. Keep it on speakerphone. If you try to tell them what’s going on or I even sniff out a code word,” she pulls a Glock from the back of her jeans, “I will end you.”
She hands me my phone with her other hand before sitting back down in the chair, the gun lying on her thigh aimed casually at me.
I pull up Evander’s number, dial it, and flip it to speakerphone. He’s my best option not to say something stupid like Mateo would. Evander is the oldest and, mostly, the more mature of the two.
“Hello?” he answers on the second ring.
“What’s up, bro?” I ask in my most ‘I haven’t just been kidnapped’ voice.
“Just got back in. Where are you?”
