“JHENE!” I bellow. “Jhene, where the fuck are you?!”
The restroom’s empty. Every last stall.
It’s another shock to the system as I realize she could be anywhere. She could be lost among the crowd or have wandered off aloneagain.
…or worse.
Then my gaze falls to something cracked on the floor, and I realize itisworse. It’s so fucking bad a wave of lightheadedness passes over me. Not from the many punches I’ve taken tonight, but from what’s on the floor at my feet.
Jhene’s broken glasses, snapped in half.
SIXTEEN
Jhene
“Your little straywandered too far from home tonight.”
A rare glimpse of amusement flickers across Rurik Raguzin’s chiseled face. He holds my gaze as he issues the taunt, his cell phone small in his huge hand. He’s placed it on speakerphone just so I can hear Killian’s furious roar on the other end.
“If you fucking touch her?—”
“It is not our fault your stray wandered. You should keep better track of your pets, Rourke.”
I scream from behind the gag that’s been stuffed in my mouth. They’ve tied me to a meat hook. It hangs from the ceiling of what I’m pretty sure used to be meatpacking facility.
The way they’ve knotted the rope to the metal hook, my feet barely touch the ground. My body aches from how it’s been stretched, arms tethered above my head.
I went from watching a professional boxing match to being accosted in the women’s restroom and thrown in the back of a mystery van.
The worst part isn’t even the rope chaffing against my skin or the dirty gag that’s been jammed into my mouth.
…it’s the fact that I can hardly see anything. Notclearlyanyway.
During the struggle at the Barclays Center, my glasses were knocked off my face. I heard a distinctcrunchas Rurik’s men carried me off.
Now everything looks noticeably blurry as I’m held captive and Rurik taunts Killian.
“You’re a dead man,” Killian growls. “I won’t need a weapon to do it, Raguzin. I’ll be killing you with my bare hands.”
“Then come settle this now,” Rurik says. “You have been dropped the address. We will be waiting.”
He ends the call before Killian can bellow more threats at him. He slides the phone into the pocket of his suit blazer and starts toward me.
Rurik Raguzin is a huge man.
Which is saying a lot considering Killian’s no shrinking violet and neither are the Callahan brothers. But he’s well over six feet with a build that’s mountainous and jarring.
He stalks toward me, and it’s like old times again.
I’m back on Bratva turf, an object to be possessed. Just something to be consumed.
My insides twist tighter as I try to remember to breathe, but it becomes harder the closer he gets. Memories start to circle me in an attempt to drag me under.
“Everything is according to plan,” the Russian boss announces. “The Irish will be here soon.”
According to plan.
I’m nothing more than bait. A means for the Bratva to lure Killian and the others here. Another move in this war they’ve waged against each other, and I can’t do anything about it.
