Page 88 of The Prices We Pay

“I love you, Mio Re. Josephine, Vita Mia. Can you hear me?”

One minute.

“Yes,” she answers through a broken sob.

“Do everything that Sebastian tells you to. No matter what. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Fifty seconds.

“Baby, we have to go.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

“I’ll see you soon,” I repeat before hanging up the phone and turning off the car.

Forty seconds.

“Sebastian, what’s happening?”

Reaching across the center console, I cup Joe’s face in my hands. “We have to let them take us, okay?”

“What? No. No, we can’t. We can—”

“We can’t, Love. There are too many of them, and I can’t take them all on my own. They won’t risk fighting us in the middle of the day. If they can’t take us, they’ll shoot us and run. If they’re bold enough to do this where everyone can see, they will not hesitate to kill us. This is our only chance. Okay? Do not fight them. Do not argue. Just do as they say until I say otherwise.” Joe sobs violently, and I can feel my heart breaking. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” she cries.

I reach down and unbuckle her before returning my hands to her face.

Fifteen seconds.

“This is a price we have to pay to live, but Iwillget us out of this.” I crash my mouth into hers. Kissing her as deeply as the moment will allow. Pouring out every emotion imaginable into our kiss. But there’s one thing that needs to be said. One thing thatcannot be assumed. One thing she needs to hear in case I’ll never have the chance to say it again. Breaking our kiss, I whisper against her wet lips, “I love you, Joe. I fucking love you.”

Three seconds.

“I love you, Sebastian,” she says through one last sob as the passenger door is thrown open.

A hand reaches inside the car and grabs Joe’s arm. White-hot anger rages through me at the sight of someone touching her, but I remind myself not to resist.

But when the man bends down to look inside the car and pulls off his mask, it takes everything in me not to reach between my seat and the center console, pull out my gun, and shoot this motherfucker in the face. “Nice to finally meet one of the men dating my daughter.”

Joe inhales a sharp breath and mutters a singular word, “Dad?”