My eyes are still closed because they refuse to open. I reach a hand out… and jerk it back when I feel cold, thin, metal bars and not the warm, muscled arm of the man who’s supposed to be next to me in the driver’s seat.
Like at the warehouse when I was strapped to the chair before Keane, Jax, and Rafe found me, I can hear a faintdrip, drip, drip. Unlike that room, it doesn’t smell musty or earthy. I expect to smell car exhaust or gasoline fumes from the crash. Instead, I pick up a metallic scent and something else that smells similar to rubbing alcohol. But the worst smell of all is me. I finally open my eyes and look down between my legs. I notice a dark bloom of stain spreading out between my thighs. Did I piss on myself? How the fuck long have I been out?
With every bit of strength I have using muscles that scream in agony when I try to move, I shift my position and force my eyes to open. The lashes are crusted together, and I wipe across my eyes with the backs of my hands. Tiny, hard pieces flake off my eyelashes and skate down the bridge of my nose. My tongue reflexively licks my dry lips to moisten them, and I swallow. Shouldn’t have done that. The burn down my throat steals my breath, and I begin to cough.
I can hear movement near me, the shuffling of feet. I wish I never opened my eyes. Because the sight before me is one from my childhood nightmares.
I’m in a cage. No.No no no. Panic sets in and I grab the bars, shaking them with all my might, which isn’t much right now. How is he still alive? I killed him. I cut off his dick and shoved a knife down his throat.
Long, tanned fingers brush over the bars of the cage where the tips of my fingers poke through. Like I’ve been touched by acid, I recoil back and knock my head against the side of the cage.Fuck! That hurt!
“Alexandria.”
I freeze when he says my name. I must still be loopy from hitting my head because at first, I think it’s Rafe, and I’m about to curse him out for calling me that. But the accent is thicker, darker. Deadlier.
A tall body folds down in a squat and a face covered in tattoos and scars stares at me with a look of mania shining brightly in his cold, dead eyes. I’d never met Alejandro before until this very second. He’s nothing like my imagination thought up. He’s actually so much worse up close and in person. The man watching me with unblinking, soulless eyes is a nightmare of death, blood, destruction, and pure evil.
“Finalmente nos conocemos, mascota pequeña.”
I don’t understand what the hell he’s saying.
His face hardens, black brows drawing down, making the snake tattoo across his left eye writhe as if it’s alive.
“You do not speak Spanish?”
I shake my head no, not willing to utter a word in reply, and scoot back as far as I can in the corner of the cage to give me as much distance as possible from Rafe’s older brother. My eyes frantically dart around, taking everything in. There has to be a way out of here. But whereishere exactly? Am I still in the States, or has he taken me back to his home in Mexico?
The metal prison I’m trapped in is larger than the one Max used to lock me inside. I have more room to stretch out and sit up without having to continually hunch over. The irony of my enclosure isn’t lost on me. Max must have told him or Julio about it. The threat of being locked inside of one, a way to keep me pliant and controllable. Joke’s on him. I’m not that weak bitch anymore.
I’ll play the role of scared, timid Alexandria for now. Something hard digs into my lower calf and I internally smile when I become cognizant that it’s Jax’s knife secured in its holster. Stupid mistake not checking me for weapons, especially while I was incapacitated and couldn’t fight back.
When I find a way out of this thing, Alejandro will see who Andie McCarthy Levine really is, when I pluck his eyes out with Jax’s knife and slice him from groin to neck.
Alejandro hasn’t stopped staring at me, and I meet his gaze head-on with one of my own filled with defiant fire and hatred. Whatever he has planned for me, I’ve had much worse. Bring it on, motherfucker.
“Are you hungry?” he asks in that raspy accent that makes me think of nails down a chalkboard. “Thirsty?” He gives me atsking cluck of his tongue. “Such a strong will. One I will very much enjoy breaking.”
“Fuck you,” I spit, and he smiles wide, showing a couple of gold-capped teeth, a round diamond sparkling in the middle of one of them. I stop myself from rolling my eyes. Why are all the bad guys such narcissistic, pompous jackasses?
“Not the language my wife should use,” he replies.
A startled bark of laughter erupts from deep in my throat. “You wish,” I retort. And because I apparently like to poke vipers with a stick, I add, “I’m already married, asshole. To Keane Agosti.”
I flick my rings at him and grin when the flaring of his beady eyes lets me know I’ve caught him off guard. Did they not search me at all? Clearly someone should have noticed that I was carrying a weapon and had a rock the size of Texas on my ring finger. Do they think just because I’m a woman that I’m weak? Can’t strike back?
“And he’ll be coming for you, you piece of shit. My husband doesn’t like it when other people touch his stuff.”
I have seconds to brace for impact when Alejandro stands up and starts kicking the cage in a fit of rage, denting it in on one side where his boot meets the metal bars.
“She’s lying,” a familiar female voice shouts from the other side of the room, and Alejandro stops.
Standing in the now open doorway is Rita, looking expensive in her silk blue blouse and dark navy pin-striped pencil skirt, five-inch Jimmy Choo stilettos on her feet, and thin gold chains draping around her neck and circling her wrists.
I snarl like a rabid animal when she steps fully into the room.
“I was with Keane last week, bent over his desk,” she insinuates with a lithe smile.
She wishes. I’m not the only liar. I know Keane. I trust him. He wouldn’t betray me or Rafe like that by dicking her over a desk.
