“Shh.” Don Leo presses a finger to her lips. “Here. Have a taste.”
He holds the cigar to her mouth.
She shakes her head, pressing her lips together.
“It’s rude to refuse a gift from a Don,ragazza.” His voice drops to a growl. “Especially on his birthday.”
Something breaks behind Bella’s eyes.
She opens her mouth.
Don Leo slides the cigar between her lips, and pushes it deeper than it has any right to. Panic flickers across Bella’s face and she chokes on the intrusion. But Don Leo doesn’t pull away.
He looks at me while holding her mouth and face still, and pushes the cigar deeper. “Suck.”
A tear slides down Bella’s face and she does as she is told. My hands ball into fists beneath the water, helpless to intervene because all four guns are now pointed straight at my head.
“That’s right,ragazza,nice and slow,” Don Leo purrs. “Swirl it around your mouth. In and out. Let the smoke get on your tongue so you can really taste it.”
Then her chest heaves, and she starts coughing. Don Leo finally pulls the cigar out of her mouth and starts laughing, looking around at his men like he’s just told the world’s funniest joke.
“I think she likes it, boys!” he chortles.
The guards join in on the laughter.
I’m going to kill every last one of them. Slowly. I’m going to fucking peel the skin off their faces.
“Whatever game this is.” The words tear out of me before I can stop them. “Name your price. Just let her go.”
Don Leo’s laughter dies. He looks at me with something approaching pity.
“What do I want?” He yanks Bella even closer to him. “I want my son back, Romanov. I want my daughter back. Can you deliver that?”
I can’t, and he knows it.
“That’s what I fucking thought. So here’s how it’s going to work. Since you were so rude and came without a present to my birthday party, I think I’ll takeheras compensation. Right there.” He points his cigar at the bed behind my head. “So you can fucking watch.”
The water cascades off his fat body as he rises, and he drags Bella up by her hair. She cries out in pain.
Then, the gun at the back of my head is there again. As soon as I feel it, I move without second thought, snatching it out of Nico’s hand and bringing it around to aim directly at Don Leo’s head.
“Let. Her. Go.”
But Don Leo’s guards have already trained their weapons on Bella. And Don Leo himself has positioned her in front of him like a shield.
“Drop the gun, Romanov,” Don Leo says calmly. “Or we’re going to see what the inside of her pretty little head looks like.”
Bella’s eyes find mine. She’s not crying—she’s too terrified even for tears—but I can see the prayer written across her face.Please. Please do something.
I can’t.
There are too many guns. Too many angles. Even if I take out Don Leo, his men will kill her before his fat body ever hits the ground.
“Sopredictable.” Don Leo laughs, shaking his head. “You’re making the same mistake you made in the past.” He jostles Bella, making her cry out. “Tell me,ragazza, did this Russian prick ever tell you what he did to my poor Gia?”
Bella doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t have to.
