“Shut up,” the brutal voice hissed.
“She doesn’t match my profile. I told you this the second we—”
“If you can’t handle a bit of work, then go the fuck upstairs.”
Work? What the hell kind of work was this?
“She’s gonna pass out if we don’t sit her up,” the unfamiliar voice said. “You want to do the CPR this time or are you gonna keep outsourcing that gig to—”
The room moved swiftly as my head sat upright on my body once more. The room spun around me as I leaned forward, gagging and heaving while trying to gasp for air. My body didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t blame it, either. It felt like I had slipped into a nightmare and didn’t have a way back to reality.
For all I knew, I was already dead.
How long have I been here?
“They’ll be looking for me,” I murmured.
The men stopped arguing before a hand fisted my hair and yanked my head back.
“Ouch!” I yelped.
“What did you say?” the brutal man growled.
If I was going to die, he’d have to look me in the eye to do it. “My family. They’ll be looking for me. And they won’t stop until they’ve found me.”
That crooked grin spread across his scarred face before a chuckle fell from his twisted mouth. He released my head, shoving it off to the side. He snorted and snarled. I heard him coughing and hocking, making my stomach turn as my mouth filled with saliva.
And when that fucking ball of snot slapped against my shin, I leaned over the edge of my chair and puked.
“Jesus, someone get her some water,” yet another voice said.
Shock ran through my system as something snapped. The pitter patter of feet moved away from me, and I managed to stop throwing up onto the floor long enough to look up. Three. There were three distinct shadows moving in tandem with one another. And as their footfalls rushed up the steps, I froze.
There had been three men in that room with me.
Where the fuck am I?
2
AXTON
Dante barely got the door closed before he spat out exactly what I was thinking.
“I never profiled a family, you know that,” he said as he whipped around and pinned me with a look.
Well, attempted to, anyway. Nobody pinned me for nothing. “I know. So, shut the fuck up while I think.”
Maverick chewed his gun with those damned aviators of his sliding down his fucking nose. “Looks a hell of a lot like her, though, don’t it?”
I ran my hands through my hair. “Exactly like her, actually. I need to think.”
I started for the kitchen and set my sights on a beer. I needed a fucking drink. After all of the time we had spent planning shit and setting up exactly how her abduction would go, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we had the wrong person. No, a woman’s petty pleas didn’t get to me. Nothing got to me. Nothing got beneath my skin. That was why my men had named me President, because they knew that I was good at picking up the fucking slack when shit mattered.
This mattered, though.
And for some fucking reason, I couldn’t shake the fact that we had royally fucked up.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Dante asked, leaning his six-foot-five stature against the kitchen wall.
