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He seemed to be around Luca's age, wearing all black, handsome in a very lethal sort of way.
"Fuck. She's prettier than Dario said," the other man said, shaking his head as he looked at my face.
"No," I snapped, voice a strange, deep sound, completely foreign to me, born of a bone-deep fear of their hands on me.
"Relax, baby, I don't touch what isn't freely given," the man said, sounding offended. "And Luca here hasn't touched a woman in, what, eight months?" he teased, smirking.
Smirking.
Teasing.
While I was pretty sure I had somehow managed to swallow my own heart, and it had then taken up residence in my stomach, thumping away.
Luca ignored the bait, moving out of the shadows, coming closer to me.
"I'll ask you one more time," he started, voice ominous. "Who do you work for?"
"I work for the state of California," I told him. It was the truth, even if he didn't want to hear it.
Disappointment darkened his eyes as he sighed out his breath, nodding his head at his man.
"Don't," he demanded, reaching out for my wrist. "Don't make this difficult," he added when I jerked away, slamming back into the shipping container, feeling a corner of it ram me in the hip.
Don't make it difficult?
Did anyone in my situation actually make it easy on them? Knowing what everyone knew about the mob?
"We just want to ask you a few questions," the guy added, coming closer again.
"If you wanted to ask questions, you could ask them here," I snapped back, rushing around the back of Luca Grassi who made no move to reach for me. I guess he was the sort to leave his dirty work to his men.
"It's ninety-six degrees. Think we'd all rather have this conversation somewhere with air conditioning."
"Nope. I'd prefer to have it here," I told him, pivoting out of his reach again. I didn't like to watch a lot of true crime content, but I knew enough to know that once they took you to a secondary location, you were dead. I couldn't die. Not yet at least.
"Alright, enough," the man said, lunging forward, grabbing my hips, yanking me backward.
All my life, I told myself I would one day take self-defense classes, would learn how to take care of myself, make it so that if something bad should happen to me, if someone should grab me, I wouldn't be stuck flailing in the air with no defense.
I never got around to that, of course.
So what was I doing?
I was flailing.
"No!" I shrieked, body jerking, making the man hiss as he tried to hold onto me. "I'm not a threat to you," I insisted, hearing hysteria slip into my voice. "You don't have to do this!" I pleaded, eyes on Luca Grassi.
If I wasn't mistaken, there was a flash of regret there before he banked it down, replacing it with a cold resignation.
"I'm afraid I do, Romy," he said, turning and walking away, leaving his man to wrangle me all the way back through the maze.
I fought every step of the way. Even when another man showed up to grab my legs while the first one grabbed me under my arms, carting me around between them as I kicked and flailed and twisted as much as the compromising position would allow.
I fought.
I screamed.
Even though I knew where we were.
