“Know what, exactly?” His voice is so menacing, I peer down at his gun, anticipating for him to curl his finger around the trigger at any moment.
When that fails to happen, I answer, “That you were married and expecting a child. Some women are very possessive. They may not have taken the news well.”
I’m talking from experience more than assumptions. My high school boyfriend’s strut was never the same when I caught him kissing Belinda McCotter in the bleachers during the homecoming week game.
I begin to wonder how many women Dimitri has slept with when he pauses to consider a response. I can’t see the women he’s mentally ticking off, but I can see the flicker of his eyes as he scrolls through his little black book of bed companions. It makes me insanely jealous.
“Most were aware, but some were not,” he answers a short time later.
“Do you think any of them would be capable of doing something like this?”
His lips furl at the corners. “I don’t know. I wasn’t with them to conduct a psych exam.” His eyes snap to Rocco’s so quickly, he misses my scoff. “I thought you said she was a double business major.”
Rocco’s scrub of his jaw to hide his grin is pointless when I mumble, “I can be anything you want for the right amount of coin.”
With his eyes back on me, Dimitri arches his brow. “You want me to pay for your help?” When I nod, he slouches low in his chair before shaking his head. “Why would I do that?” I’m about to sell myself in a way that would make Estelle proud, but he continues talking, foiling my attempt. “I don’t need to pay you to do anything. I can justforceyou to do it.”
“It wouldn’t be authentic.” I take a mental note to have my head examined after this. I just witnessed a murder, and I’m reasonably sure the timer above my head is minutes from expiring, yet here I am, negotiating with a mobster. I’ve been in such a rut I’d do anything for an adrenaline high, but still, this is ridiculous. “It would be more believable if I were there via my own choice.”
“Whereof your own choice?” Dimitri asks, humoring me with fake interest.
He isn’t laughing on the outside, but I can see the chuckles he’s struggling to hold in his rising and falling chest. It’s heaving the same way it did when Eddie ‘milked my loins of their nectar.’
Usually, any type of laughter would have me backtracking on every decision I’ve ever made. I can’t do that this time around. We’re still heading toward the woods. My life is on the line, so I either sell my soul to the devil or relinquish it for nothing.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather go out fighting.
“On your arm. By your side.” I swallow the brick lodged in my throat before muttering, “In your bed.”
My lungs fail to follow the prompts of my brain when Dimitri scoots to the edge of his seat. He moves so close to me, even if I wanted to press my thighs together from his hot, heated stare, I wouldn’t be able to. His knee is wedged between them. “Once again, why would I pay you to do that when I could make you do it for free?”
My ability to reply is lost by the thick, accented voice of the heavily tattooed man sitting next to me. I haven’t caught his name yet, but he has a tattoo of a clover on his cheek. “It’s the curse of the golden pussy, boss. All girls think they have one.” As he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, he drags his eyes down my body in a slow and dedicated sweep. “It’s rare to find one who does, but she might have one. Her smell is sweet enough.” He releases his lip with a pop before straying his eyes to Dimitri. “Maybe you should give her to the boys for a few rounds, see if they think her pussy is worth paying for.”
I don’t breathe while snapping my eyes back to Dimitri’s. He wouldn’t do that, would he? He wouldn’t risk his daughter’s safety because I insinuated I’d only sleep with him if he paid me. Only an insane man would let his pride get in the way of his daughter’s well-being. Dimitri isn’t one of them.
My eyes pop open when the truth smacks into me. He watched me come via the hand of another man before he murdered the security guard who interrupted his show, then he tortured my boyfriend for six hours straight. Those events could have seen him facing thirty years to life in a maximum-security prison. He’s far from sane.
“I’ll do it for free!” My eyes dance between Dimitri’s frozen ones when I join him in sitting on the edge of my seat. “On the agreement you let me go once your daughter is found.”
I doubt I’m getting through to him, but am denied the opportunity of hoping when our negotiation is interrupted for the second time. This time it isn’t from the large brute on my right. It comes from the front of the car, from the driver. “We’ve got a tail. They’re a few spots back, but they’ve been with us the last two miles.”
“Fuck,” Dimitri curses under his breath after cranking his neck back. The moon is barely a slither in the sky, meaning even someone with poor eyesight would have no trouble seeing the curved headlights of a sedan in an almost pitch-black night. “Pull over here.”
I watch nervously when our break is closely mimicked by the car tailing us. They’re close enough for their presence to be felt but far enough away, they won’t see the sweat that beads on my temples when Dimitri throws open the back passenger door and slides out. He doesn’t approach the vehicle three hundred yards back. He heads straight for the trunk where he removes two shovels and a tarp.
Oh my God. I’m about to be buried where I’ll never be found.
“Please,” I beg when Dimitri dips the lower half of his body into the cab so he can pull me out a few seconds later. “I can help get your daughter back. Rocco proved I’m worthwhile. You just need to give me a chance.”
Since my arms are bound behind my back, it takes Dimitri no effort at all to pluck me from my seat and drag me to the front of his sleek ride. Not even digging my heels into the rugged terrain slows him down. In a matter of seconds, I’m kneeling on the tarp he laid out, and his gun is aimed at the petrified crinkle between my brows.
“Please,” I plead to the man who stood in the rain to watch me climax instead of the maniac standing in front of me. “I’ll do anything you ask. I can cook,” I groan about my inability to lie, “Not very well, but it’s edible… for the most part. I’ll clean, wash your clothes. I’ll do anything you want as long as you don’t kill me. I don’t want to die.” The dusty conditions make the tears welling in my eyes feel like sawdust. They scratch my eyeballs as well as a sudden urge to live warms my veins. “I’ve barely lived. Please, Dimitri. I’ll do anything you ask.”
“You’re the reason my wife is dead.”
His words are barely heard over the drumming of my heart, but I cling to them as if they’re a life raft, and I’m in the middle of the Indian Ocean. “I know, and I’m sorry. I’d take it all back in an instant if I could.” When my words appear to break through Dimitri’s cold, hard exterior, I keep blubbering. “We’ll be good together. I saw the way you looked at me in the alleyway. You liked what you saw.” I pause to see if truth registers on his face before continuing, “If we had that much spark from a distance, imagine what we’ll have when we’re close together. Your enemies won’t doubt our connection. They’ll truly believe you’re moving on.”
I’m not one hundred percent sure what Rocco meant when he said Justine’s ruse worked, but I’m so desperate to live, I’m willing to give anything a shot. “If you want your daughter back, you need me. You can be angry at me, you can hate me, but you stillneedme.” I bounce my drenched eyes between his. “I’m no good to you dead, Dimitri. I’m worth more to you alive than dead. I can be what you want me to be. I can beanythingyou need.”
