Page 36 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

He halts at the entrance to the container and tosses me inside as if I’m an empty cardboard carton. I curl myself into a ball so that my side takes the brunt of the collision with the metal wall, and land on all fours, dull pain shooting through my kidneys and up my spine.

I’m back on my feet in an instant and charging at him like a bull with my head down, a low feral roar emitting from somewhere deep inside.

He draws a gun from the holster around his waist and points it at my head, but I duck beneath it and hurl myself at his legs aiming for his knees. They buckle beneath my weight, and we both go sprawling backwards as his bullet ricochets from one of the container walls.

I hit the ground in a sideways roll, drag myself onto my feet, and run.

But his friend tackles me back to the ground before I’ve gone anywhere, rolls me over and straddles my chest, his hands around my throat. He squeezes, and my blood gushes in my ears. But if I’m going to die here, I’ll make sure he never forgets me. I produce saliva in my mouth with my tongue and spit in his face, as I slide my right hand up beneath his legs and into my jacket, locate another blade and drive it upwards into his balls.

His shriek sends a shiver down my spine as I gasp for breath.

There isn’t time to fill my lungs before my first assailant hauls me onto my feet and drags me back to the empty container. This time, when I hit the floor, I don’t have the energy to fight back. I curl into the fetal position, eyes closed, and try to quell the panic scooting around my veins as the world darkens around me.

I hear the clips sliding into place, and the lock being bolted on the outside, and I’m eight years old again, back in the Russian port, cradling Ivana on my lap while our cell is winched aboard a vessel, and the other captives wail and moan and sob.

I don’t cry for help.

No one on the dock will hear me, and the Russians are armed. I have a fighting chance of surviving this if I have a plan and if I don’t make them any angrier than they already are.

I sit up and lean against the wall, staring into the gloomy darkness, and pretending that the pain in my skull isn’t real.

I’ve lost a gun and two blades. But I still have a second gun that they didn’t bother to check, a blade in my left boot, and another in the inside pocket of my jacket. It will have to be enough. But I will have to be fast when they open the door.

I close my eyes, and my thoughts automatically drift to Finn.

I wonder what he is doing right now. He promised to help me find Ivana, but he is an enforcer first, and he is loyal to his boss as I am to Leonid. Has he been looking for me today, or is he waiting for me to come to his apartment tonight so that we can fuck again? Heat pumps around my body and straight to my pussy when I think of him binding my wrists to his bed posts and making me come with his mouth.

Will he be sad when I don’t come back?

Something deep inside me already knows the answer, but I don’t know how I feel about it yet. What does he think will happen between us? I work for Leonid. He works for his Irish leader. I’ve never heard Leonid mention an alliance with the Irish mob, and besides, enforcers don’t have that kind of influence over their bosses.

We’re opposing teams. I still don’t know what he was doing at the port the night I met him, but it’s obvious he wasn’t trying to be friendly.

No. Finn Twomey doesn’t want to be friends. He wants to be a whole lot more than that, and he doesn’t realize yet that it will never happen because I can’t walk away from my sister and Leonid, no more than he can walk away from the man who owns him.

Our lives are not that simple.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force him out of my mind.

I don’t know how much time has passed, when I realize that the container hasn’t moved. It was early evening when I arrived at the Iroquois Landing. The dock isn’t operational through the night. Which means that they won’t move me until tomorrow, and a night-shift worker might hear me if I call out for help now.

My head feels too big and heavy for my shoulders when I haul myself onto my feet, and I sway against the metal wall. I touch my cheek tentatively with my fingertips; nothing is broken, but Finn and I will have matching bruises now. If I ever get to see him again.

The image in my head of his dimples when he smiles keeps me mobile.

I go to the door and shove with both hands, testing the lock before I start yelling for help. It doesn’t budge. My captors wouldn’t be that careless, not when one of them already ended up with two daggers in his groin. I hope he can never fuck a woman again. It’s the very least I can do for other women out there.

“Help!” I bang on the container door with my fists, the rattling echoing off the walls. “Help! I’m trapped inside a container!”

I stop and listen. Nothing. Not that I expected someone to come rushing to my aid.

I keep pounding the door and the walls, circling the gloomy cell until my fists are throbbing and raw, and my voice is hoarse. No one will hear me if I use up my voice, so I stop yelling and kick the metal walls instead. The entire container rattles, and I throw my weight against the door, but nothing loosens; they are far too sturdy to collapse so easily.

Rage blooms inside my chest. I refuse to let this happen to me again; once in a lifetime is too much, and I will not sit down and wait for them to come back and finish what they started.

The containers are airtight, which was why Ivana and I were the only survivors when we reached Chicago from Russia all those years ago, so no point trying to find a hole to widen with my blade. However, there are screws surrounding the frame. Even if I can unpick one, and create a tiny hole through which to yell, it might make a difference.

I sit cross-legged in the corner, slide my dagger from my pocket and insert it into the jagged center of the screw. It doesn’t budge, of course it doesn’t. But right now, it’s my only hope, so I twist and scrape and chip away at the edges of it until my arms are screaming at me to stop.