“Whatever, man, she’s just a girl,” the first guy snorts, tightening his arm around my throat, cutting off my air, and making the world spin out of focus.
I hear muffled voices as the thought strikes me.
These guys are mafia. Their accents, the way they look, the guns strapped against their sides. This is something to do with Jess and her family. But why do they want me?
“Coast is clear. Let’s go.”
“Right behind you.”
He releases my throat, and I take a sharp breath through my nose, my mouth still bound with tape.
As soon as they open my dorm room door and drag me out into the early evening darkness, I start fighting again.
It earns me a sharp punch against my left side that knocks the breath from my lungs and shoots pain through my entire body.
The man tosses me over his shoulder.
They throw me into the trunk of a car.
They slam it closed.
The darkness is thick and overwhelming.
What are they going to do to me?
My mind races through all the stories Jess has told me over the years, but I never asked about these kinds of things. I never asked what they do to people, what her enemies arecapable of. We spoke mainly about her family, how it affected her as a person…
I have no idea what is going on and what is going to happen to me.
The engine growls to life, and they pull away. I roll onto my back and start kicking wildly at the inside of the trunk.
But they just turn the music up in the car, and my attempts are rendered useless.
Tears stream over the duct tape and roll off the sides of my cheeks.
I squeeze my eyes shut and count to ten.I’m a trained psychologist. I can keep a level head. I have to decide if I want to make it out of this alive.
A full-blown panic attack won’t help anything. It’ll make things worse. I need to pay attention, focus, gather any information I can that might help me.
But the fear is so real, so intense, it’s like nothing I have ever felt before.
Chapter 3 - Kristopher
I’m pacing up and down my living room and my coffee is getting cold on the bar top near the wide glass patio doors. I’m on edge. My fists are clenching and unclenching, and it feels like there’s a massive knot stuck right between my shoulder blades. It keeps getting worse the longer this situation drags on.
It’s the first time that my father’s silence has bothered me. Usually, I’d be thrilled to have a break from him, to not have to deal with his bullshit, but something's different now.
It’s been over a week since I told him I wouldn’t marry the Koskos sister, and he hasn’t said a word. No calls. No messages. No visits. No arguments.Nothing.
It's making me incredibly uneasy.
I turn and walk back along the wooden floors, pacing, relentless pacing matching the looping thoughts in my head.
There’s only one logical reason for him being so quiet, and that’s that he must be up to something. He’s busy with some grand scheme, and I’m sitting in the dark.
But what? What is he doing? What has he got planned? And why the hell do none of my spies know anything?
I don’t know what direction to look in to figure it all out.
