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I didn’t waste a second following those orders.
“Luca, tell her to leave,” Milo demanded as I came down the hall to find Smush loading the magazine of a gun before tucking it into a holster on her hip.
“Luca, tell Milo that these motherfuckers nearly put my brother in a grave tonight, and I don’t give a flying fuck what he thinks, I am going to get some justice for him.”
The rules of the Family were clear.
A bit antiquated, but clear.
We didn’t let women in.
Not because we were sexist, but because we knew there were ways enemies could use our women against us that they wouldn’t do with men.
Sure, some of the women might have been willing to risk it, but we wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night knowing we were responsible for that kind of trauma.
That said, this was Smush.
I wasn’t sure the entire might of the East Coast mafia could stop her when she set her mind to something.
“Sofia,” Luca started, shaking his head.
“Don’t. Don’t be a raging fucking sexist right now, Luca,” Sofia demanded, voice shaking a bit with her anger.
“I’m not being sexist. But I am thinking of what your brother is going to say when he’s well again. Or how your mom is going to make me pay if I let you come.”
“I can’t sit around and do fucking nothing.”
“We’re going to be short-handed,” Luca said. “We could use more guards. On the women, the kids, even Lettie’s clinic. We don’t know how big this is, or how many men might still be in the area. You could help us by making sure no more of our people go down tonight while we are getting Josie back.”
She didn’t like it.
Her jaw was tight and her shoulders were tight.
But she knew he wasn’t likely to give in.
And at least he was allowing her to have a job, not cower in a basement somewhere so she didn’t get shot.
“Fine,” Smush hissed, turning on her heel and almost slamming into me. Her gaze slid down to my hands, seeing my cut open knuckles. “Good. I hope he suffered.”
“He did.”
“Go get that girl. She’s family now,” she added, and something about the certainty in her voice managed to crack through whatever mental block I’d been keeping up about my feelings for Josie.
She was family now.
Even if by some strange twist of fate—like maybe her deciding she didn’t want to be with a man whose existence put her at risk for kidnapping and beatings—I had a feeling that my family was going to get their grips into her, invite her to the parties, take care of her when she wasn’t well.
She’d earned that.
And now knowing what I knew about her upbringing, I wanted that for her.
But, selfishly, I wanted her for me as well.
She could have all of that.
But I wanted her to want me too.
Though I had to admit, in light of recent events, it might be a hard sell.
That was why we had to get to her as soon as possible. Before something inexcusable happened to her.
“Let’s go,” I said, impatient, when the rest of the cars started to roll up. “They have a good forty-minute lead. We need to move.”
A forty-minute lead meant they were still in transit.
And I didn’t know about them, but I meant to blow past every speed limit on the way to gain on them, to get there as close to when they arrived as possible.
Before anything worse could happen to her.
I had to get her back.
Then make sure nothing ever fucking happened to her again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Josie
Rolling around in a trunk should be a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
It definitely shouldn’t have been something you experienced twice in a one-month period.
But here we were.
And I was in another damn trunk.
This time, though, I had zip ties on my wrists instead of duct tape. And there was nothing over my mouth or connecting my ankles.
Small miracles.
I said a silent “Thank You” to the universe for that.
That was kind of where the blessings stopped, though. You see, even if I could get my wrists free from behind my back, and pull the escape lever, the car must have been on the parkway because it rarely slowed, let alone stopped.
Popping the trunk and trying to hurl myself out would spell sure death for me. Which, you know, sort of defeated the purpose of escaping.
In my heart of hearts, I knew that Matteo was doing everything he could to come get me. That being said, he didn’t even really know who took me. Even if he did know, he couldn’t be sure of where I was being taken.
So while I was hopeful that some big, strong, scary, and trained mafia guys were going to come—guns blazing—and save me, I had to be realistic. There was a good chance they weren’t going to make it. Or they would make it way too late.
