Suddenly, someone is cutting my seatbelt, and two hands are gripping my arms, roughly pulling me through the smashed window like a ragdoll. At first, I’m grateful. I’ve seen videos of cars exploding after an accident. Getting out of the car is smart. I turn, trying to see when they pull Sandro out. If he’s okay. But someone shoves a black bag over my head. I suddenly can’t breathe.
There’s yelling and a scuffle but I’m too panicked to make out what’s happening.
“No.” My hot breath fills the sack as I’m lifted and shoved into a car. The door slams shut. I begin to kick out, scream. My feet hit the door. I kick harder. I almost pass out from the lack of air and the pounding in my head but I keep kicking.
“Nett, perestanjte dratsya.”
I freeze. Russian. Oh god. The Bratva.
I feel the vehicle jerk forward and accelerate. The bag is ripped off my head, and I’m faced with two sets of cold blue eyes staring at me. The one in the passenger seat with the red beard and mustache makes a show of raking his gaze over me from head to toe. “Budet veselo, da.” There’s blood seeping through the sleeve of his gray T-shirt.
The driver chuckles and flicks his eyes to me in the mirror. “Da.” Then he looks over a Red Beard’s wounded arm. “Who the fuck was that?”
He hikes up his sleeve and examines what looks like a stab wound. Then opens the middle console and pulls out a towel.“Ne znaio.Some fucking herozasranets.”
I push myself upright and wince. Pain radiates across my chest and ribs. My head swims and I have to fight down nausea. But I will not let these thugs see my fear. “You’ve made a mistake.”
Red Beard turns so he can watch me as he presses the towel to his wound. “No mistake,printzessa.Your boyfriend will comply with the Captain’s demands or you will die.”
My blood turns to ice.
“Maybe we will have some fun and you will die anyway,” the driver says, his tone too serious for my comfort.
Is this my fate?Dying at the hands of the Russian mafia like my mother?No. I don’t accept that. I will not. Also… Sandro must be okay. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be keeping me to control him.
The driver says, “Call Miguel. Tell him to contact Don LaRocca and tell him we have his woman.”
I scoff. “I think he knows, since he was driving the car you just ran into.”
The driver slams on the brakes at a red light, and the two men turn to gape at each other.
Is that fear in their eyes?
Chapter 32
Alessandro
Ibecome aware of the smell first. Antiseptic. The sharp tang of disinfectant. Then sounds begin to enter my consciousness. A steady beep. The low drone of a TV. Then the pain. I force my eyes open. I’m in a hospital room. The room is dim, curtains drawn, just the light from the TV flickering.
I try to remember why I’m here, but my thoughts are engulfed in a thick fog, out of reach.
“About time you joined the land of the living.” Rocco’s voice drifts toward me like a kite in the fog. And then he’s standing beside me.
I turn my head slowly and wince at the jackhammer assaulting my skull.
“You look like shit,” I whisper through a dry throat. And he does. His face is unshaven, dark circles under his worried eyes.
He grunts. “If you haven’t noticed, you’re the one laid out in the fucking hospital, brother.”
And then it hits me. I remember.
Lennon.
An SUV slammed into us. A rush of adrenalin, rage and fear floods me.
“Lennon,” I breathe. I push myself up on one elbow.
“Whoa, whoa, stop.” Rocco presses my shoulders, gently guiding me to lay back down. “We’ll talk but you have a concussion. You’re not going to be any good to her if you don’t look after yourself first.”
