Page 16 of Perfect Vengeance

Gina maneuvered her mouth until she could get her teeth around two of his fingers. She bit down and the metallic taste of blood trickled into her mouth.

The guy grunted, but his hand didn’t budge. With her luck, he probably had some communicable disease. It was either that or die a worse death in far less time.

She clamped her teeth down harder, putting everything she had into it, and was rewarded with a half growl, half grunt of pain, followed by a string of muttered curses.

More blood streamed into her mouth and she nearly gagged.

Yuck.

“Jesus, lady.” Uttering more colorful curses, he wrenched his hand from her teeth and wrapped that arm around her chest too. “You already broke my wrist, the least you can do is leave my other arm intact.”

She continued squirming, flapping her hands uselessly at her sides. Then his words filtered through to her brain. She stopped struggling and hung there, legs dangling a foot above the floor.

Annabelle’s favorite phrase came to mind.

Oh. My. God.

She widened her eyes. Now her heart galloped faster than when she’d thought he was a rapist. It can’t be. Then again, there had been something familiar about his face right before she’d lunged for her knife.

The same leather bomber jacket. And that voice—pissed off but still smooth and rich like melted chocolate. How could she have been so stupid?

The white on his jacket cuff and that rock-hard feeling against her arm made sense now. His cast, you dope. The one on the wrist that she and her friends were responsible for breaking. She closed her eyes and groaned.

It was him. FBI Special Agent Jack Gates.

Her muscles went limp. If Gates hadn’t been holding her, she would have slipped to the floor like warm jelly.

I’m so screwed.

Of all the sticky situations she’d gotten herself into over the years, this was one she couldn’t run from or pick her way out of. Looked like her future really would be filled with stinky prison latrines. Meals that looked and tasted like puke. Chain gangs and collecting garbage on highway shoulders.

Orange jumpsuit, here I come.

Gates’s breath might have been warm against her ear, but his granite-hard tone held a clear warning. “I’ll let you go, but if you try to bite me, kick me, knife me, or break any more of my bones, I’ll cuff you and hang you by your ankles from the chandelier.”

Gina didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Crap. She’d lost her voice. Again. Twice in one night.

“Do you understand me?”

“Y-yes,” she finally whispered, nodding.

Her feet met the floor and his arms dropped away as he let her go. Something brushed her ankle, and before she knew what was happening, he’d whipped up her pants leg and slid her stiletto from its leather sheath.

Adrenaline that had been storming through her veins drained away as if someone had pulled the plug in a bathtub.

It was over. Everything they’d worked so hard for. What would happen to all those other women who needed cash to help them escape? For that matter, what would happen to her? To Margo, Kinsey, and Annabelle?

Nothing. She’d take the blame for all of them. Stealing from the Falzones had been her hair-brained idea from the beginning. Charity and revenge all rolled into one. She was responsible for masterminding every rip.

She held back a laugh of disgust at how similar her mantra was to the Mafia code of silence. Omerta. Never dime out your friends.

No matter how much she tried to deny it, she really did have Mafia blood flowing through her veins. It was ensconced in her DNA. Much as she wished it, even leeches couldn’t suck that out of her.

She turned to see Gates standing a good three feet from her, palming the stiletto.

“This is what you were planning to gut me with the other night?” He shot an annoyed look at the knife. “Looks more like it’s made for scaling fish.”

“Or a snake.” She sucked in her lower lip. The last thing she should be doing was taking potshots at Gates. He’d only add “mouthing off to an FBI agent” to the lengthy list of charges she was about to be arrested for.