Page 13 of Sweet Deception (Irish Kings #4)

Chapter Eleven

The moment stills between us, with Darren aiming a gun between my eyes and me staring down the barrel. A little round hole and the pitch black beyond it crowd my entire view.

If he pulls the trigger, this will be the last thing I ever see.

Then, Piro rubs his face against the inside of my hand, distracting us both, and the tension breaks. I gaze down at my little feline friend and cuddle him deeper into my lap.

Despite my adrenaline still working its way down from sky-high levels, I retain my practiced composure.

“Answer me,” Darren growls, lethality contorting his deep, smooth voice.

Rather than reply, I stay silent, measuring my options while rubbing my thumb up and down Piro’s back.

I can barely fill my lungs. The hand pressing Piro against my stomach trembles, so I hold him even tighter.

As hard as this is, I can’t lose focus. I can’t lose sight of what I know.

Darren clearly wants information from me more than he wants me dead. If he just needed me to die, he could’ve let those men back at my apartment do what they’d come to do. He could’ve used me as a human shield, climbed into his car, and driven off. But instead, he protected me.

He brought me this far so he could threaten me in exchange for my knowledge. I must have information that’s important to him, even if I’m clueless as to what it is.

“What the fuck were you doing with my phone back in Vegas?”

Oh, right. Yes. I did clone his phone. Forgot about that.

Honestly, cloning his phone was not the worst thing that happened that night. And in light of recent events, it’s an easy detail to overlook.

I take a deep breath and stare out the windshield. “I like phones.”

Darren’s eyes bore into my cheek. I’m not looking at him, but I can sense he’s astonished by my calm, flippant reply. He’s not the first to be surprised by this skill. Keeping it together is an artform I’ve perfected over many years of dedicated study.

But then Darren laughs in purely sinister, unhinged amusement.

It’s so unsettling that I can’t help but glance at him in the same way I’d zero in on a shadow slithering in the darkness when I think I’m home alone.

A crooked, wicked smile holds up his face. He sneers at me before facing forward and dropping his foot on the gas.

My head slams against the headrest as he floors it toward the end of this alley, which lets out onto a busy street. Ahead of us, cars zoom by.

We’re going to crash.

“What are you doing?” The words are out, but they only sound ten percent as panicked as they should.

“You’re not the only one who likes to play chicken.” The engine revs as we barrel down this narrow corridor, the back doors of several businesses flying by us.

My eyes snap to the speedometer. Oh god, he’s doing sixty.

If any unfortunate soul were to step out the rear exit of one of these buildings, they’d be mowed down by this race car with us inside.

“Something tells me there’s a more talkative side of you just dying to get out.” Darren’s cruel, sickening grin widens as we soar from the mouth of a short alleyway and onto the main road.

I swallow a scream, clamp my eyes shut, and squeeze Piro against my belly as car horns blare. Darren whips the car around so fast, the centrifugal force shoves me into the passenger door.

The car roars beneath us, growling like a wild beast in heat as we tear down the road. Every time I think it’s safe to open my eyes, Darren jerks left, then right, bobbing through traffic. Horns scream at us in constant intervals.

“Keep your eyes closed if you want to, Veronika.” He taunts me with that evil-laced voice. My name on his tongue unsettles me more than I could’ve expected. “It’s not going to save you.”

Those words pry my eyes open.

I stare at him, at that psycho smile plastered to his face as he wheels the sports car with one hand. We’re accelerating with such speed that I think my heart’s going to crack my ribs in two, but still, I find the strength to tell him one truth.

“I don’t fear death.”

His gaze flies to my face. Now he’s drag racing and not even watching the road. “Neither do I.”

“Shocking.”

My sarcasm pushes his mouth down into a hard line, and he yanks the steering wheel around unexpectedly, thrusting us into a hairpin turn down yet another busy boulevard. I grip the dashboard with one hand as Darren swerves and changes lines like we’ll be caught by lava if he doesn’t.

The power generated by this vehicle moving at maximum speed vibrates through my palm and up my arm. The sensation is terrifying, like my fingertips are touching the face of death…

But I don’t react.

Yes, the possibility that this man will kill us all is very real, but other than failing to keep my promise to Maya and Lucy and my concern over Piro’s well-being, there’s nothing about dying today that would disappoint me.

The danger forces my body to react in ways I can’t control, but there’s a calmness about death that calls to me. Maybe it’s because I sometimes wish death had taken me with my parents, with my grandmother. Not that now is a good time to think about that .

Clearly frustrated, Darren pulls another one-handed, death-defying twist, positioning us at the end of a road. Or should I say the beginning? A mile of street stretches between us and a low wall next to a pedestrian walking path. On the other side of the wall is Jamaica Bay.

My stomach does a backflip.

“You’re not afraid to die and neither am I, so why don’t we make today the day, huh?” Darren gives me a crazy, toothy smile, flashing those killer white teeth.

“Meaning what?” He can’t be serious.

His long fingers tighten around the leather of the steering wheel. “Answer my questions or not, your choice. But if you don’t, we all die. Ready?”

Before another syllable passes my lips, Darren flattens his foot to the floor. The car rockets forward, blasting off down the street.

“What did you want with my phone?” He enunciates over the roar of the engine as my heart rate climbs again and my eyes narrow on that low wall.

We’re either going straight through it into Jamaica Bay, or we’re going to die trying.

“What were you looking for?” The urgency in his growl gnaws at me, but I keep my mouth shut while he assaults me with another question. “What were you going to do with the information you stole?”

The wall ahead appears to be flying straight at us as we hurtle toward it at hyper speed.

I throw my eyes over to his unreadable face. Though I’m shaking on the inside, and though time is running out, I keep my voice level. “Why’d you bother saving me if you were just going to kill us like this?”

Something flashes in Darren’s eyes.

I know I just sealed my fate, so I press my eyes closed in a silent prayer, but the bone-crushing impact never comes.

Darren breaks right at the end of the road, averting our deaths, and tears off into the dark night. My heart rate doesn’t slow for several minutes, my body still on high alert.

My breathing is uncoordinated and unsteady, as if my lungs are malfunctioning. I can’t even think, my nerves are so shot.

And Darren’s exchanged his questions for dead silence.

There’s nothing but the roar of the road under these wheels. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d burned the tread right off them after that Formula One audition…

Outwardly, I manage to retain my composure.

I decide this is like ballet. I just need to stay focused on the music.

On the goal. Find Lucy. Save Lucy.

Remaining calm increases the likelihood that I’ll survive this. That’s the lie I’ll keep repeating until I find a way out of this situation.

For a while, the three of us coexist in horrible silence as Darren drives down interstates and then remote back roads. The city noise and streetlights fade until the world narrows to the small sliver of road illuminated by our headlights and the stars glittering their cold beauty from above.

Trees, tall and green, begin to canopy us…until they fall away entirely when Darren navigates onto a dirt path and revs down a strip of dust and gravel that cuts through a great big open field of nothingness.

Somehow, I find this part of our adventure far scarier than when he thrust us into an impromptu game of chicken with traffic and brick walls.

A huge, lonely, lightless thing that is four times the size of a barn looms in the darkness. It’s got to be a…warehouse of some kind?

Motion-sensor floodlights flick on as Darren glides closer. For a split second, I’m sure we’ll crash, but then the wall separates in the center. We drive straight in, the doors shutting behind us.

Darren stamps on the brake pedal, shoves the car into park, and cuts the engine.

My eyes scan the dark, dingy place surrounding me.

Metal worktables covered in tools and supplies that seem illegal in nature.

Spare, random pieces of furniture. The husks of what were once functioning automobiles parked at random intervals.

Chains hang from the ceiling alongside garish caged lights.

By all accounts, it’s Darren’s private office.

Or his torture chamber.

In any case, I’m certain I’m about to die.

He gets out of the driver’s seat and stalks around to my side, those long legs narrowing the distance in seconds.

He’s in a hurry.

That’s my impression when he throws the passenger door open, grabs my right bicep, and drags me out of the vehicle while I cradle Piro to my chest.

My legs wobble. Wow.

My motor skills are still coming back online after that ride from hell.

Darren directs me through this cavernous space. Oddly, he’s not shoving me like I expected he would. Still, his palpable heat and power radiate into my back as he inexorably forces me forward.

My eyes dart around, scanning for exits, but I know it’s futile. This warehouse is set way back on a large property, and I’m not sprinting anywhere on these legs. Not anytime soon.

Meanwhile, if I ever needed evidence this man knows about trafficking, I have it. He has an abandoned warehouse where he brings his captives. That’s got to be somewhere in the beginning of the Human Traffickers Handbook , right?

Darren leads me to a metal chair and spins my ass toward it. I sit, still petting Piro reassuringly, more for my own peace of mind than anything else by this point. Breathe, Nika. Keep breathing.

“Who were those men shooting at us?” Darren’s next question shocks me for a few reasons.

One, because I thought those men were affiliated with him until they started aiming at us both.

Two, because I thought even if he wasn’t with those guys, he must’ve known them.

Do mafiosos really shoot at men they don’t know at all?

But most importantly, I’m floored by how his voice has gone back to velvet-cloaked gravel.

He was nothing short of unhinged in the city, driving all insane while demanding I talk.

He was so convincing that I thought that level of crazy was…

his true self. But the fact that he can put that guy away so completely and return to this remarkably sane-seeming creature is the scariest part of this.

I don’t know what to believe anymore.

Just who the hell is this guy?

Jerking my chin in his direction, I swallow. “I…until they started shooting at us, I thought those guys were yours. So, your guess is as good as mine.”

After uttering those words, I clamp my jaw shut.

Say nothing. Reveal nothing.

Darren grills me with his eyes for another agonizing minute. Then he circles me where I sit, a shark contemplating his next meal.

Finally, he stops. Directly in front of me.

His eyes are heavy on my face. My mind races as I weather the weight of his stare. Maybe we’re both thinking the same thing.

Who the hell were they then?

I recall the threatening message Maya received the day I got back from Vegas. Maybe they figured out that she and I have been searching for Lucy, and they came to my place to put an end to me since Maya got away clean.

Which means if Darren hadn’t shown up…

Okay, so he didn’t just save me from getting shot in that alleyway so he could shoot me himself. He saved me from human traffickers.

Or…he’s a human trafficker who plucked me right out of the palms of…other human traffickers?

Bozhe moy , what has my world turned into?

Darren leans in close, crouching in front of me with his grasshopper legs. “Listen up, Veronika Kotova. This is your last chance to tell me everything you know.”

Nice try. My lips stay buttoned up.

I have information he wants, and the longer I keep whatever I know to myself, the longer he’ll keep me alive to extract it.

Our eyes meet, and the electricity that zips from his irises into mine could jump-start a huge-ass car. It radiates in every part of my body.

I force myself not to wince away from his intensity. Not even one centimeter. I will not back down or show him that he intimidates me.

“Who hired you?” Darren’s voice becomes impossibly gentle, and the tenderness throws me.

A man so obviously capable of mayhem shouldn’t be capable of infusing his rough voice with this much softness.

My eyes skate down to the hand clutching his gun.

I’m uncertain of my safety with Darren in every respect.

But the real question is…can I barter for my life with the information he wants from me?

There’s only one way to find out.

I tip my face up and away, remaining completely silent.