Page 18

Diletta

N o one tells you that after a hard rain in the woods, the mosquitoes come out with the first rays of dawn with a ferocity. Maybe everyone tells you that. I’ve never known anyone who had a cabin in the woods here.

I have my leather jacket and jeans on from yesterday, so there’s not much skin for them to chew, but they buzz around my head annoyingly.

Even with the way I have to keep shooing them off, swatting a few that try to chew on my cheeks and forehead or my neck and even my earlobe, it’s too gorgeous a morning not to be out.

Despite my lack of sleep and the activities I engaged in during the very early morning, I woke up as the first rays of sun streamed through the bedroom.

I blinked into it, the whole world washed clean and glistening, everything an exaggerated green so bright it burned the eyes, the sky a thousand shades of pink and purple. I’d dressed, made myself a cup of coffee, and came out here to think.

The mosquitoes were too ferocious to just sit on the porch, so I found myself walking across the grass, heading towards the woods, walking with no destination in mind except to explore and appreciate the wonder of this place.

It’s incredible out here. Peaceful. It’s hard for people like me and Ronan to even think that word, let alone say it. Our worlds were built on violence. My father tried to shelter me, but there was no one to take care of Ronan. No one to shield him protect him, or even do the basics like feed and clothe him. He took care of that himself. He never had a family. Did he ever have a moment like this one now, out in the clear, fresh air where he felt this calmness?

I tasted the rain and the wind on his skin last night, the sun and the mountain air yesterday afternoon. I want peace in our lives wherever we go. I need to believe that’s possible, even if I know that out there, back in the world, it’s far more complicated.

Screw complicated. I’ll do anything to make this work.

Starting with finding something in the cabin to throw together for the gourmet breakfast that Ronan deserves.

I love feeding him. I adore watching his eyes close in pleasure and that first flicker of surprise. I want to find out what else makes him happy and do that for him. I want to give him the world.

I’m so up in my head and in my dreams, my hope a buffer against the potential dangers out beyond the clearing, that I don’t have my guard up. I fail to see the shadows emerging from the woods until it’s too late.

One grabs me from behind, steel arms locking around my chest. I’m fast with my elbows, getting them up, ready to struggle and fight, but he’s faster. Before I can even scream, he slams a massive, gloved palm over my mouth. I sink my teeth into it on instinct, but the thick leather is hard to bite through. He only lets out a muffled curse. A second shadow, then a third, looms over me. They make quick work of the gag and getting my arms bound with something soft. It feels like cotton and doesn’t bite into my skin the way rough ropes would.

Even though I’m gagged, the big bastard who never fully let go of me, gets his leather palm over my mouth. He has to be twice my size.

Tears sting my eyes at my own stupidity. I refused to listen to Ronan. I kept telling him nothing would happen to us. I was living in a dream world.

Terror claws my insides, creating a horrible panic that crawls up my throat, choking me. I can’t breathe through my mouth, so I suck air in through my nostrils so rapidly it’s like breathing flames. I’d shoot them if I could. Incinerate this bastard. At least the first time someone kidnapped me, I could say I put up a fight. This? This is pathetic. It makes me realize just how weak and powerless I am. That’s not the worst of it. The first time, I was scared for myself.

The beast behind me drags me to the edge of the woods. The thick forest swallows us up effortlessly within a few seconds. I can’t berate myself for not having seen this danger coming. I should have been more careful. I gave these men an easy target, but I couldn’t have known they were there.

My body jerks with shock when at least ten shadows move past us, clad in camo and combat boots. This isn’t a hit, this is an army, and one designed to blend in with their surroundings. It can only mean that we were being watched and that this had enough time for them to get their act together and move in.

I struggle against the behemoth at my back, but there’s no way that he’s letting me go, and tied up, I can only do so much. He’s got his feet spread and firmly planted so that I can’t kick back at him and take him by surprise. Even if I could run, I’d be running straight at the cabin with all those men. They have weapons in their hands. This is broad daylight. I can see it all.

What about Ronan? Have they come for him too, or is it just me these men want?

I scream behind the gag and the bastard’s hand, but nothing comes out. I practically inhale the fabric, choking for my efforts. I can’t speak. Can’t thrash. All I can do is let the fear choke me, the adrenaline swamps me, and my heart beats out of my chest with whiplash style cracks that batter against my ribs.

The horde crawls over the grass, signaling to each other, talking low. They have to have earpieces in. This is no low level fuckery. This is a well-orchestrated and oiled machine.

“Gunner!” I scream, eating more fabric from the gag. I flex my arms madly, shake my head, toss myself every which way, and all of my efforts amount to nothing at all. Barely a few inches of movement.

“Stop that,” the man at my back hisses in my ear. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Would Adolfo Rossi care? Romeo certainly wouldn’t. He didn’t before. A sickening sense of dread infiltrates my body. The bindings I’ve been tied in are soft. I was taken first and gagged, but now I’m being held back here in the woods, out of the line of fire, out of harms’ reach. Not because these men fear what I could do to them, but because they fear what I could do to myself, or what could happen by accident.

I struggle harder instead of using my brain. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to process what’s happening. I want to shut my eyes and stop looking at the cabin. Stop watching those men encircling it, their leader raising and lowering a hand, watching as they descend like shadows from hell.

The door gets kicked in by a huge boot. It doesn’t splinter because it was unlocked, but I’m sure it’s damaged. They pour in a sea of menace.

I want to slam my hands over my ears at the crashing sounds. Glass shattering, shit breaking. The little haven being destroyed. A world torn apart.

Because of me.

The front bay window shatters, the middle exploding as a body is tossed through. The camo clad man grunts, picks himself up, and hauls ass back inside. Yelling and shouts fill up the clearing.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” the guy behind me curses, disgusted.

My heart can’t swell with pride over the fact that Ronan is giving these assholes hell. How many are there? Ten? Fifteen? To his one? I don’t know who these men are and who sent them, but they clearly don’t want to hurt me. Their commands are to take him, and it’s clearly to do it alive or they would have just shot him and had done with it.

Bile crawls up my throat and I have to keep swallowing fast or throw up and choke behind the gag.

Part of me wishes he would just let them take him. Maybe they wouldn’t hurt him then.

“Please,” I beg behind the gag, the word entirely muffled. I twist my head around, catching enough of my captor’s eyes to beg, but he twists my face and not all that gently, so all I can do is watch.

My legs almost buckle when I watch four of the thugs shove Ronan through the wrecked door. He tears his arm free and lands a punch to the face of the guy directly to his right. The man crumples, but another takes his place. One throws a fist into Ronan’s stomach. He coughs and gags, spittle flying from his lips. He’s coated in blood. I don’t know how much of it is his.

He struggles harder, and one of the assholes has finally had enough. The four thugs hold Ronan, and one steps up, pulls back his fist, and smashes it into Ronan’s face. His head snaps back and he’s close enough to the wall of the cabin that I hear the sick crunch of both bones and his skull.

He goes limp, but from the blow or the way he hit his head, I don’t know. Did they kill him? I kick my legs, digging my feet into the ground, but the wilder I get, the tighter I’m held.

The sea of men carries Ronan off to the opposite side of the clearing. They disappear through the woods with his prone form dragging, his limp legs and bare feet in the grass and dirt.

I want to pass out. I scream and scream into the gag. My eyes pour out a lifetime of useless tears.

All my railing amounts to exactly nothing. The giant behind me picks me up like I’m made of straw and air. Right now, I feel like it. He tosses me over his shoulder and stomps over to the cabin.

I freeze, my heart pounding for an entirely different reason.

I don’t know who these men are. I had my suspicions back there for a second, when my brain was working, but now I don’t know. They could be anyone. An attack in broad daylight isn’t how the mafia usually work. They would have had a bullet or two for Ronan. I doubt they’d care if he’s alive or dead unless they want him alive so they can torture him until they kill him.

They might have, if they could have got their hands on him five years ago, but now? It doesn’t seem likely that they’d bother. But if they are bothering… how did they find him? Us?

I’m so afraid that once in the cabin, Romeo Rossi will appear out of nowhere, or that the orders were not to harm me but that his men could have whatever fun they wanted with me after, as long as they didn’t leave marks on the outsides of me, that the tears blind me, blurring the kitchen as I’m set down in a chair. Not roughly. Gently.

The asshole reties me to the chair while I try and clear my hazy vision.

Two other men join us. I think they were in the cabin already. They have guns out, but they must be sure that the threat is now neutralized, because they tuck them away.

“Fuck, she’s a mess,” the first guy says. They all look similar. Black knit hats, camouflage fatigues, black combat boots. They aren’t wearing masks, and I can see that most of them have similar complexions to mine. Mediterranean.

It’s pretty unmistakable that they’re Italians.

They’re speaking English at the moment, and like Ronan and myself, they have almost no detectable accent. Professionals, to a man.

“Clean her up or her father’s going to kill us.”

My world crashes to a total halt. It’s not like I’m going anywhere, tied to a chair and tied additionally, still gagged, but the tears stop. My insides clench tightly. I wasn’t wrong back there in the woods, when I had that split second of suspicion before my attention was distracted.

This is both the best and the worst news.

I have a thousand questions, but I think I can surmise most of the answers myself. My father always had me watched. I assumed, but didn’t know for sure. Ronan must have evaded whoever it was for the most part, but not lately. Papa’s informant let him know something was off. Maybe there’s still hope. My father doesn’t know Ronan is the man who saved me. All that he was likely told was that a rough and tumble biker who was bad news in every sense of the word was hanging around. Worst case—they know who Ronan is. My father will be furious either way, but that doesn’t mean he’ll have Ronan killed. He’s probably being held somewhere for questioning. Light torture. And then an undecided fate.

I need to get my shit together, get my head unscrambled, and do something .

Maybe it was their plan to take the gag off all along, or maybe it’s my eyes, promising them each a slow, brutal death of their own that does it.

The scrap of fabric disappears. I don’t give anyone the satisfaction of wincing at the disgusting dryness in my mouth.

“We’re sorry, Signorina Cosmo. We were instructed to keep you safe at any cost. Your father figured you wouldn’t come with us nicely, if we asked.”

“We had to make sure you didn’t become collateral damage. It was our necks on the line,” Thug Two pitches in from behind the giant who held me, tied me, and carried me here.

I shoot them both death glares. “Untie me. Now.”

All three give each other uneasy looks. They switch to arguing in Italian. It’s been so long since I’ve heard my native language spoken in person that my eyes irrationally get hot, but this isn’t the way I wanted to hear it.

“What are you doing with Gunner?” I shout, cutting their angry argument off.

They give each other another long, slow look. Their silent communication game is weak. Do I beg and cajole for information or just skip straight to threats that I would never act on? These assholes have their orders, and those orders come directly from my father. The whole country, as well as his men, never got to see the side of him that I know. Luciano Cosmo is a fair man, but he’s also earned a reputation of being unspeakably cruel when it’s called for. I know they won’t tell me anything and I don’t have time to waste.

“If you don’t untie me right now, I’m going to tell my father stories. I don’t give a shit whether they’re true or not, they’re getting told and you won’t like what I have to say.”

The three men group up, the one a full head taller than the other two, all of them burly as any of the bikers back at Gunner’s clubhouse.

Merda. The clubhouse. My father knows that Gunner is a biker, but doesn’t he care? Does he not think that they’d be okay with something like this or see this kind of violence and destruction of their property as anything less than an act of war?

After a quick discussion, the giant steps behind my chair and undoes the bindings. He pulls out a wicked looking knife and cuts the ones at my arms.

I rub them out, wincing at the tingles, but only for a second before I turn the full force of my wrath on these three assholes.

“Were you instructed to keep him alive?” I get a whole lot of silence until I walk to the little island and bang my hand down on it. “Answer me!”

“Yes,” the giant mutters. “Your father wants him for questioning.”

Does that mean that my father is here? Shock, anxiety, and a painful amount of loving hope crash into me. I swallow all of it back. What the hell does questioning mean? All of this is my fault. If I hadn’t gone near Ronan, my father’s attention never would have been drawn to him. What about the rest of the bikers? Their families? I need to talk to my father. Immediately. “You could have killed him,” I accuse, shaking my head at all three.

“He’s alive.” The third man, who hasn’t said much of anything, speaks up.

“Did you not see how he hit his head? All that blood?” I snap my fingers together and put my palm out. “Phone. Now.” That earns me six bugged out eyes. No one is going to comply with that level of crazy. “I want to talk to my father.”

It’s the giant who is probably in charge, at least of this operation back here. “We can’t give you a phone right now. We’re waiting for further orders. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I gape at him.

How long will it take the men from Ronan’s club to get here? From what he’d told me, Satan’s Angels are security conscious. Do they have cameras on the place? If they were cut, that should be a very obvious tip off that something is wrong. I don’t like the answer.

Too long.

My eyes sweep the kitchen quickly. I do it while I’m shaking my head, like I’m exasperated. This is going to be about putting on a show for the next thirty seconds before I can make the magic happen.

If I can make it happen.

If I can’t, these men have their instructions. I know the worst they’re going to do is incapacitate me again.

While not painful for me, I can’t let that happen. I might be the only person who can get to Ronan right now, and I need to get to him.

Wherever he is.

These men won’t tell me. My father won’t tell me.

Getting to that knife block across the kitchen and getting a knife to one of their throats won’t do anything. If they disobey their orders, they think they’re as good as dead anyway, though I refuse to believe my father would punish his men like that. He never did before, at least not unless it was an extreme circumstance.

I channel all of my training and leap, using the island for leverage. I spring up onto it and jump from it to the counter, crashing down half on top the propane stove. The grates rattle loudly, but I keep my footing. I crouch down and grasp the handle of one of the largest knives from the block and press it to my wrist, all of it in less than three or four seconds.

The three thugs are so stunned that all they can do is blink at me.

“I’ll hurt myself,” I threaten. “You so much as move, and I’ll cut.” I might be holding the knife at the wrong side of my wrist to do much damage, but even the threat of a potential fuckup of this magnitude has the quiet one digging in his pocket.

Out comes his cell and he sets it down on the floor in front of him.

“Yeah, not likely,” I snort. “Pick it up and set it over here by the stove. You get too close, I cut myself and I won’t do it like I don’t mean it. You’ll have a puddle to clean up and I’ll probably need stitches.

He quickly complies. I have no idea what kind of fear my father instilled in the men he chose for this, but I think that he’s taking not a scratch on her way too far. Then again, if he wasn’t, I’d be so screwed right now. It’s the training he gave me and the way he taught me to be a quick thinker that gave me this advantage right now. I don’t feel bad about taking it as far as I have to.

Until I get to Ronan and make sure he’s safe, it won’t be nearly far enough.

“Where?” I growl. “I want an address.” When they don’t immediately respond, I press the knife harder. Before it can draw blood, the giant puts up his hands, one at me and the other backwards, to keep the other two from moving.

“There’s a place in Seattle. An old butcher’s shop.”

My stomach lurches. It takes all my strength not to be sick all over the place.

“When you said questioning, what did you really mean?”

“Just that,” the giant stammers, trying to be convincing.

“How are they going to question him? With fists? With tools? Torture? Question him about what?”

“I don’t know. Honestly. Your father isn’t here yet, but he’s coming. He’ll be in Seattle by tonight.”

“ Testa di cazzo !” The second thug hasn’t said anything for a while and now he’s cursing out his leader.

The guy turns a menacing eye on him.

I stomp my foot on the counter to get his attention. It’s so crazy that I’m up here like this, threatening to hurt myself and they’re down there. They don’t look nearly as big or powerful from this vantage point. I don’t have time to play games. What I need is a phone, a vehicle, and an address.

“I need keys, and I need to know where you have your vehicle stashed.”

The giant’s eyes get wide at that, but I angle my arm so he can see I mean business with the knife. It’s a good thing that it’s not really all that sharp or I would have sliced my arm off by now with my theatrics.

“You’ll put your guns on floor and find something to tie those two up with. When that’s done, you’ll sit and let me tie you. Any false move and I tell my father you set hands on me. You understand?”

I could never do that to someone, but right now, all I have is threats. These men didn’t get a choice, and my father didn’t give me one either.

“If you give me an incorrect address, same thing.”

None of them like it, but eventually they move, unloaded their guns as I asked. They don’t have any more rope. The first gets what was holding me, and the second gets sliced up bedsheets from the spare room.

The only solution is that I get to Ronan and get this figured out with my father. I need to move us that much closer to the happily ever after that I’m claiming for us. I can’t think about us any other way.

After immobilizing the men I run upstairs to get my cellphone, I’m sure that Ronan’s club brothers will be on their way—that’s assuming there was some kind of security monitoring on this place—but I need to tell them to head to Seattle. Though when I get to the bedroom my phone is gone.

Fucking bastards.

I should have known that my father’s men would remove any communication devices. I run back to the kitchen, check that the men are still secure, then grab the phone Thug Number One left on the counter and stuff it in my pocket, then pick up their weapons before running to their vehicle.