Page 9 of Soulmate of the Mafia King (Kings of Philly #8)

PAIGE

A s the sun started to dip toward the horizon, and I still hadn’t heard from Tom, I wandered into the third bedroom off the common area, the one where he’d sent all the items we’d hidden in a secret compartment in a cargo-hold before all the mercenaries arrived.

The supplies to take care of the women we rescued.

After talking to Sam, I realized I’d been spending too much time thinking about myself.

This final bastard had kept me, tortured me, left me with permanent scars, but I wasn’t his only victim.

I opened the bulging suitcase and looked over the spare sets of clothes, a couple dozen in every size.

We had no idea how many women the bastard would have.

Despite our free rein, McKenna and I had always suspected the little pod we lived in might be one of several throughout the palace, each holding another five or six women.

McKenna. God, I hadn’t thought about her in a while.

That visit had been just short of disastrous, but maybe I could reach out to her again.

Tom gave her parents a few suggestions for getting her into therapy, and this far down the line, maybe she’d mellowed out some.

I missed almost nothing about that time, but I missed her.

At least enough to have a texting relationship, during the brief spans we were both awake.

I pulled a few toiletries out to have them ready, but my mind drifted away.

McKenna had talked about the other women we’d shared the palace with, but I’d barely listened.

Katie, Grace, and JJ. I hadn’t thought about them in so much longer.

Would they be alive? If they were, could they be anything like the women I’d known? I sat down heavily on the bed.

Whatever women we rescued wouldn’t be staying here.

Dr. Marino had recommended a few colleagues overseas, and quietly, all of them had been traveling to Cairo over the past few days.

Tom would be texting them the address of the house he’d rented so they could be there to patch up the women soon.

And I barely had any plans for what to do after that.

I’d been too wrapped up in my own worries.

Distantly, I wondered if I could set a shelter up here. Katie, Grace, and McKenna had all been from somewhere in Europe. I’d bet money that a lot of the women wouldn’t be locals and that they’d be from all different places. We needed a place to keep them safe while we worked everything out.

I remembered my flight through the market, being grabbed.

Making a shelter would be an uphill battle.

Finding a safe place to keep an unknown number of women might be even harder.

I clutched the toiletries to my chest. We’d discussed taking them back to Philly and then home from there. That might be the best plan.

And all of that assumed the raid succeeded. I’d lived in the bastard’s palace. I knew the domino effect of one cocked rifle, the way the sound echoed off the walls as dozens, hundreds of other men did the same. He was paranoid, and he was rich enough to make that everyone else’s problem.

An image of Tom, bloody on the floor of the bastard’s palace, surrounded by the corpses of his men, appeared in my mind’s eye. I flinched back. I’d asked Tom to be safe. That wouldn’t happen. Right?

Someone rapped on the door to the bedroom. It was the same knock Tom used to use when I slept in a different bed than him.

“Come in.” I hoped he couldn’t hear how thick my voice was, the way it threatened to crack.

He swept in, shut the door behind him, and folded me in an embrace. I sucked in a lungful of his cologne, like I could keep him here if I could just inhale enough of him.

“What’s going on?” he asked quietly.

“I was getting everything ready,” I said. “Because…I’m not going on the raid.”

He kissed me, soft and hard and thankful. I kissed him back, even as that image still danced in the back of my mind. I couldn’t ask him not to go on the raid, could I?

No. Of course not. Even if I didn’t know a single woman alive within the bastard’s walls, they all deserved the chance at rescue I’d gotten.

Tom pulled back, and I stared up into his green eyes, so full of relief.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said slowly. “But I think we have to. What happens if everything goes wrong, and I’m not with you?”

He blew out a long breath and released me, then sat on the bed next to me, so close his hip touched mine.

“That’s a fair question. I had a protocol in place already in case things broke bad, and you could be gotten out, so I think we’re just going to modify that a little.”

I nudged him. “You had a plan to make me leave you behind?”

“Yes,” he said seriously.

I swallowed.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Paige.” He smiled. “I love you, and being part of these missions means all the gritty details. If things go bad, you’re going to leave without me.”

Tears filled my eyes. I started to shake my head.

“Hey.” He grabbed me. “Let’s go through the details. Then, I can give my gallant hero speech, okay?”

I chuckled through my panic. “All right. Details, then you can be the prince who slays the dragon.”

He kissed the tip of my nose. “Sam will take you to the airport. There are plane tickets and passports for the five of you in the false bottom of my suitcase, along with twenty thousand dollars. That should be enough to cover any problems. And then you’re going to get on that plane to Philly and never look back. ”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach, hearing him say that. I could picture the Cairo airport, the charming stories Sam would try to tell to distract me.

“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked. “Just leave you behind?”

He kissed me softly. “Because you know I’ll always come back to you.”