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Berlusconi’s smile didn’t waver. “Now, now, Mr. Bell. I would strongly suggest reconsidering your stance. It would be such a shame if anything else bad happened... to your wandering wife, for instance.” He examined his fingernails ostentatiously. “If you don’t give me the answer I want, I will, of course, be speaking with her next.”
Nat’s complexion went chalk-white.
I scoffed, trying to force strength I didn’t have to spare into my voice. “Go fuck yourself, Berlusconi. If you could get to Mia, you’d have her in here with a knife to her throat for leverage.”
Nat looked at me, wide-eyed, as though desperate to know if I really believed that. I held his gaze as I added, “After we went missing, the rest of my pack will have put her under guard and locked things down tighter than Fort Knox.”
I watched as Nat firmed his jaw. “If you’ve got Mia, then prove it. Otherwise, you’ll get our restaurant over my dead body.”
I couldn’t hide a wince, wishing he’d worded that in a slightly different way.
By contrast, Berlusconi appeared as unruffled as a guest at a garden party. “Very well. I suspect you’ll feel differently about my offer after another day or two without food or water.”
He lifted his chin, craning to look past Nat. Fear jolted through my depleted veins like acid as Luca, still huddled in the corner, drew in a sharp breath. I made another attempt to rise, protective rage spiking my blood pressure enough to keep me from immediately passing out as I made it onto one hand and my good knee.
“You two.” Berlusconi gestured languidly at his goons. “Get the omega and take him to a different room.” He patted thepocket of his elegant suit jacket. “I have a heat-stim shot for him. Once he’s good and desperate, you can have some fun with him.”
“No!” Luca shot to his feet behind Nat.
I wasn’t far behind, the room swimming around me as I tried to lock my knees and stay upright.
“Oh,fuckno,” Nat said, taking an aggressive step forward.
Instantly, two guns were pointed at us. A black barrel loomed in my wavering vision; the cylinder bore a bottomless void that sucked all of my awareness toward it like a black hole.
Just like that, I was no longer in a warehouse office, trying to protect my omega lover from the prospect of medical violation and gang rape. Instead, I was in a dead-end alley, surrounded by screams and falling bodies as the deafening sound of semiautomatic gunfire echoed off the brick walls. In my mind, the barrel pointed at me had already released its shot, and only milliseconds remained until that hunk of lead slammed into my side, shredding my guts into mincemeat.
Beside me, the cry as Nat crumpled beneath a pistol-grip to the side of the head might as well have come from a parallel universe. The piercing screams as Luca was dragged past me blended with the screams of my dying gang, rendering the omega as one more flailing body among many.
I stood frozen, the goon’s sneer of disdain warping and twisting behind the gun barrel like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. Calmly, Berlusconi picked up the little emergency light by the door. He and the man who’d been holding the gun on me followed the other goon with his struggling captive. The sound of the door slamming and the lock clicking was the anticipated bullet impact. It ripped into me, and I folded to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
I couldn’t tell if the blackness pressing down on me was unconsciousness or just the darkness of the room after theremoval of the electric light. For long moments, everything was still except for the sound of my ragged breathing.
Then, Nat groaned—the sound coming from somewhere behind me.
“Fuck...fuck!” His voice was slurred, but the sound of shuffling preceded a hand landing on my shoulder. “Byron, can you hear me?”
“They took him,” I whispered, as the terrible realization that I’d stood there staring hypnotized at a gun while Luca had been dragged away crawled through my stomach and chest.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Nat pushed himself upright and away from me.
The outline of gray shadows grew more visible as my eyes readjusted. I couldn’t seem to move my arms or legs, the useless muscles quivering like Jell-O. Nat staggered to the door and yanked at it, pounding a fist against it when it didn’t so much as budge.
“The lock,” Nat said desperately. “Is there... can we... pick it somehow?”
“With what?” Hopelessness washed over me in a wave, leaving suffocating self-loathing behind as it ebbed. “I’m afraid I’m not hiding a set of lockpicks up my ass. And I’m guessing you’re not wearing any bobby pins.”
“Bobby pins,” Nat muttered.
He pushed away from the heavy door, stumbling across the room. Something metal crashed over, followed by the nauseating stench of urine. More clanks and crashes followed. He rushed back to me, holding up something that I couldn’t see in the dim light.
“Wire!” he said. “Will that work? Someone wired the broken handle back onto the bucket after it cracked.”
He pressed a thin, flexible length of metal into my hand, and I stared at it for a beat like an idiot.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Get me over to the door and let’s find out.”