Page 69 of Joey

“Of course.”

Lorenzo squeezes my shoulder on his way out the door. “We should be back first thing tomorrow. Take care of Anya for me too?”

“Always.”

ChapterTwenty-Nine

MAX

“Where the fuck is your boss?” I spit at Ponytail. “Because he’s sure taking his sweet time if he’s so desperate to speak to me about his girl.”

Ponytail shrugs. “He will be here when he is here.”

“Fucking assholes,” I mutter, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor. They tried their plastic bag trick a few more times and used me as a punching bag, but they haven’t dished out anything I can’t handle. The waiting and not knowing what the fuck’s going on is the worst part. That’s the real torture. Ponytail isn’t very forthcoming with information, no matter how many different ways I try to find out who he’s working for, and the other guy may as well be mute. He seems to only be able to communicate in grunts.

Blood trickles into my eye, and I blink it away. Twisting my wrists, I try to work the iron cuffs off, but they’re too tight. My ankles are in similar shackles, attached to chains sunk into the concrete floor. These pricks obviously need me alive for something. If I can get the two of them close enough—

None of us are prepared for the deafening explosion that rocks the room. My ears ring, and I shake my head to clear it. I need to focus. I have no idea who was behind that explosion, whether it’s an ally or another enemy, but this is my shot. The force of the blast causes Ponytail to stagger on his feet. He spins around, staring at the doorway and shouting in Russian, while the mute one draws his gun and trains it on the entrance. I take my shot with Ponytail. They left way too much slack on the chains on my ankles, enough that I can kick Ponytail in the back of the knee. The sickening crunch of bone is sweet music to my ears, and he drops to the floor like a giant sack of shit, cursing and shouting something to the mute one, who comes for me.

I wrap the chain around Ponytail’s neck, crossing my ankles and pulling it tight until his face turns purple. He scrabbles at my legs, fingernails pulling on the chain, but it has no effect. I squeeze harder as the mute one comes behind me and wraps his arm around my neck, trying to choke me so I’ll release his buddy. But my throat is slippery with blood, and I wriggle enough to get my mouth on the meaty part of his thumb. I bite down, through flesh and cartilage and blood, shaking my head like a rabid fucking dog and refusing to let go.

He screams and curses, dropping the gun onto the floor. I guess he’s not mute after all. He hits me on the side of the head, but I only bite down harder. Ponytail gets weaker, his body going lax and his eyes bulging out of his head.

Light glints off a blade in the mute one’s free hand, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him from plunging it into my abdomen. Burning agony has me seeing stars, but I block it out and focus on gaining my freedom. He probably thought it would make me scream and release his hand, but it only makes me channel all the pain toward crushing his hand with my jaw.

He screams louder, and the door bursts open. A cloud of smoke fills the room, obscuring the faces of the men who enter. I release Ponytail’s deadweight as the mute motherfucker pulls his hand back to stab me again. Bracing myself for another strike, I flinch when a bullet whizzes by my ear. The weight of his body dropping to the floor jerks his thumb out of my mouth, and I unclench my jaw to spit out blood and chunks of flesh.

“Nice shot, Loz,” says a familiar voice.

Oh, thank holy fuck. “You two took your goddamn time,” I croak.

“You’re lucky we came at all, asshole,” Dante says. I guess they’re still pissed at me about the whole having sex with their baby sister thing.

They get to work freeing me from the shackles on my ankles and wrists, and the adrenaline leaves my body in a rush, making me lightheaded, but I manage to gesture toward the floor and mumble, “Joey’s pendant. They pulled it off.”

Dante picks it up and slips it into his pocket.

My eyes flicker closed. “Hey, I need to ask you both something,” I mumble.

“What’s that?” Lorenzo asks.

“Can I date your sister?”

I don’t hear their answer because everything goes black.

ChapterThirty

MAX

“Hey, there,” Kat Moretti’s soft voice penetrates the fog in my brain as light filters through my flickering eyelids. I look sideways to see her standing beside the bed, and it takes me a few beats to realize I’m in the Moretti mansion. Every single part of my body thrums with a dull ache.

I glance down at my stomach and note the bandages and the telltale signs I’ve had surgery. “You fix me up all by yourself, doc?”

Kat is a nurse, but we affectionately call her doc because she patches up our guys as good as any doctor I’ve ever met.

“Nope. Lucky for you, I got nowhere near you with a scalpel or a needle,” she says, rolling her eyes. “We had to get a surgeon in. You had a little internal bleeding so we wanted to make sure…”

“Figures,” I groan as I shuffle into a more comfortable position.