Chapter 1-2
1078 Words
Desiree
I barely notice my surroundings as I walk, keys in hand, to my old but running fourteen-year-old Honda Civic. I don’t see the shiny black Range Rover parked a few spaces down.
My instincts don’t warn me.
Maybe they would’ve if I hadn’t just worked a twelve-hour shift in Trauma. Maybe I wouldn’t have just plodded out to my parking garage, brushing off the security guard’s offer to walk me to my car.
Not until two big guys in trench coats get out of it and come right for me.
Oh God. This is it. I’m about to be r***d and killed.
I freeze for one second, heart pounding, then dart forward, racing to jump in my car before they can reach me.
“Hold it!” One of them yells and they both lunge, one blocking my driver’s side door, the other coming after me. “Desiree Lopez?”
My brain can’t even compute how they know my name. I open my mouth to scream, but the guy claps a hand over my mouth. “Quiet.” His terse command comes out deep and scratchy. He smells of cigar smoke. He takes my purse from my shoulder, pulls out my wallet and looks at my I.D. “Yeah, it’s her.”
Adrenaline pumps through my veins. I know what they say. If someone drags you to a car, you’re not going to come back alive, so fight for your life. I elbow my kidnapper, turn my head to bite his hand.
But it’s useless. He mutters a curse in some other language and tightens his hold. All my weight thrown around, all my twisting and writhing is nothing to him. He picks me up and carries me forward.
His buddy comes up behind us and presses a g*n to my ribs. “Enough with the struggle. Get in the car.” They haul me into the back of the Range Rover, sandwiched between the two men. One of them strips me of my purse as the vehicle takes off.
A bag drops over my head and I renew my fight, but they control me easily, each one taking a wrist and pinning them down by my sides.
“Yeah, we got her,” one of them says. At first I think he’s talking to the driver, stating the obvious, but then I realize he must be on a phone. “See you there.”
“Wh-what’s going on?” I warble.
No one answers me.
The phone call gives me pause. They wouldn’t call someone to say they had me if their intent was to r**e and kill, would they?
They would if they’re devil worshippers who require a virgin sacrifice.
Not that I’m a virgin. Or that my theory is likely.
“I don’t know what you want, but, please. Please let me go.”
Again, no one bothers answering.
The Range Rover drives fast—and the way it only briefly slows, I’d bet they are rolling through stops or red lights, making me plow into the men beside me when it turns.
We drive long enough for me to get good and scared. For my breath to shudder in and out on silent sobs. No tears, though. I must be too afraid to let go.
And then we stop. The asshole on my right drags me out of the car, and I stumble for my footing, the blackness of the sack over my head stealing my sense of balance as well as my sight.
The surroundings are quieter—not a city street anymore, but still a sidewalk under my feet.
“What the f**k are you doing?” An angry male voice demands in a low voice, drawing closer with each word. “I told you not to hurt her.”
“She’s not hurt, just scared.” The voice beside me is low, too. We must be someplace people would hear us if they raised their voices. A neighborhood?
“Let her go.” The bag flies off my head.
I open my mouth to scream, but the sound dies on my lips when I blink up at the pair of sharp, dark eyes above the stubbled masculine line of a powerful jaw belonging to my former employer.
Junior Tacone.
Shit.
My galloping heart slows, reverses direction, takes off again.
“Junior.” I call him by the name his mother used when I worked in her house, forgetting the “Mr. Tacone,” forgetting to show respect.
And then, because I had actually been attracted to this man last time I saw him—had thought maybe he had a thing for me, too—and I just had the s**t scared out of me, I slap his face, hard.
The men beside me growl and grasp my arms again.
“Let her go.” He takes my forearms instead, pulling me into him. Through his long wool coat, the firmness of his large body presses back at me. His dark gaze is commanding. Intense. “I’ll let that slide, this time. Because they scared you.”
A shiver runs up my spine. He’ll let that slide.
This time.
Like ordinarily, there are consequences for slapping the mob boss.
Of course there are.
“Now, come inside, I need your help.”
I look up the sidewalk at the huge house illuminated by streetlights. It’s not his mother’s Victorian brick where I worked for three months as a home healthcare nurse after her hip surgery.
Must be his?
I try to pull my wrist from his grasp. “No. You can’t just, just… kidnap me and tell me to come inside because you need my help.”
He shifts his grasp and tips his head toward the house. “Let’s go.” He doesn’t even bother answering my argument. And I suppose that’s because I’m dead wrong. He can just kidnap me and demand my help. He’s Junior Tacone, of the Chicago underground. He and his men have guns. They can make me do whatever they damn well please.
The relief that trickled in when I saw his handsome face ebbs back out. I may still never walk out of here. Because whatever awaits me in that house isn’t going to be pretty. Or legal.
Someone’s hurt and they need a nurse. That’s my best guess.
And now I’ll be a witness to whatever they’re trying to hide.
Is one of their members hurt? Or are they torturing someone? Need me to keep him alive so they can get something out of him?
I have no choice but to go in. I may have spunk, but I’m not willing to find out what happens if you defy the kingpin of Chicago. I fall into step beside him, hurrying to match his long strides.
He slides his grip from my wrist to my hand. His large hand warms my icy one and has a protective quality, like we’re on a date.
Like I’m not his prisoner.
- Writer
