Page 81 of Vendetta

Drip.

Drip.

Fuck, my head was pounding, and that incessant dripping wasn’t helping. I pried my eyes open and choked on a gulp of sharp, metallic air. The rusty red drain blurred against the dull concrete inches in front of my nose.

What the fuck? Was I back in the safe house cellar?

After a couple more blinks, the sheen of wet blood came into focus as it trickled down the grate in the ground. I pushed myself up, and a wave of dizziness washed over me, making me wish I hadn’t. My head throbbed in time with the thud of my pulse, and I lifted my hand to my temple, inspecting the damage. As soon as my fingers whispered against the wet, matted mess of my hair, I flinched away at the jolt of pain.

Holy shit.

I wheezed out a groan as another round of dizziness slammed into me. Black spots exploded across my vision. Fuck, I was going to pass out again. My stomach lurched, and I slumped to the floor.

If I died choking on my own vomit, Cruz was never going to let me live it down.

As shimmering sparkles danced inside my eyelids, and my brain did the waltz inside my skull, images of Lorenzo’s lopsided, bruised face and the sexcapades in the redecorated version of my father’s bedroom seeped back in.

I focused on my breathing. In through my nose, out through my mouth.

Shit.

This had gone badly.

What seemed like a few minutes later—but could have been hours, for all I knew—the swimmy feeling in my head subsided. I peeked through my blood-crusted eyelashes and was greeted by a cold, gray cell with a metal bench built into the wall. It was like all these criminal drug lords who hate each other hired the same interior decorator for their dungeons or something.

I cringed when my silent chuckle sent pain shooting through my bones.

Mother effer.

Getting up off the blood-soaked floor sounded like a great idea, but I didn’t trust myself not to fall, so I propped myself against the wall and leaned my head back. If I could focus, maybe I could hear something or someone beyond the door. The caged light fixture above my head swayed in time with the ebb and flow of the pain. Was it moving? It was probably just my imagination.

After a moment of concentration, I thought I heard the shuffle of fabric over the dripping of blood and a whiff of something alpha-like. With my luck, it was Lorenzo jerking off outside my cage door. Fucking lunatic. I wasn’t going to find out by sitting here on my ass, so when the light fixture stopped spinning, I used the wall to push myself up. I wasn’t sure if I trusted myself to stand, but the desperation finally overrode the delirium.

If that sleazy little creep was perving on me, I might actually throw up.

Once on my feet, I slid along the wall to the door and grabbed the vertical bars covering the window. If I pulled myself up on my tiptoes, I could just see into the wide, shadowed corridor. There were no surprises, it looked exactly like the last time I’d wandered down here, however many years ago. A metal table, shelves full of bone saws, and random tools, and more cells identical to this one leading away down either side of the dull gray hallway.

Dare I call out to see if anyone else was down here? Did I even want to know? Not really. In fact, I really, really did not want to know, because if Lorenzo had taken over the compound, my father was likely either down here or dead. Neither option was great for anyone at the moment. But the alternative, just sitting around doing nothing, was not great either.

Time to put my big-girl panties on. I cleared my scratchy throat. “Hello?”

Another scuff echoed through the space, and a gruff voice answered. “Rosa? Are you okay?”

I knew that voice. “Diego?” I struggled to swallow the panic down. “Am I okay? Are you okay? Where’s my dad?” A million questions raced through my already throbbing brain, but the pain at the sound of my own voice echoed through my skull like a church bell, stopping me from continuing.

“Dios mio, Rosa. What are you doing here?” Diego’s face appeared behind the bars of a cell across the corridor.

“Me? What are you doing here? Where’s my dad? Where’s Maria?” My head was killing me, and the dingy light was starting to spin again.

“Maria is still working in the house. They’re using threats to keep us both in line.”

“They who?” I stifled a groan and battled the urge to slide down onto the cold concrete and pass out.

“That’d be the Vasco pack. They took control of the island as soon as they got back from the wedding,” Diego replied.

He was avoiding the one question I’d asked twice already. That made me nervous.

“Diego, where is my dad?”