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Someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Lexie, wake up.”
Aiden.
I blinked a few times, attempting to focus on my twin brother’s face, which looked slightly blurred at the edges. Was he real, or a figment of my imagination? It wouldn’t have been the first time I saw his face when he wasn’t really here.
I pinched the skin on my arm to see if it hurt.
Not dreaming.
There was no way my brother was here. And yet, when I reached up to cup his cheek with my hand, his warmth rushed through my fingertips.
“You’re real?” I whispered.
He clutched my wrist and smiled. “I’m real, Lexie.”
I tried to sit up and nearly fell over from all the drugs that still had their hold on me. Until now, I’d never done a single drug. Didn’t know what it felt like to be high. It was an awful feeling I never wanted to experience again.
Aiden propped me up against the wall beside him. He pressed his palm to my forehead and sighed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like someone drugged me,” I choked out, my voice hoarse. “Why are you here?”
“Because of Pops,” he said through clenched teeth. “That would be my guess. His stupid money and that deal he made with the Salvatores.”
“We’re not here because of them.”
He shook his head, his blond curls longer than the last time I saw him and falling into his face. “We should have run a long time ago, Lexie. You don’t owe Pops for the rest of your life. I’m going to find a way off this boat and get us the hell out of here.”
“We’ll never be free, Aid.”
“I will die trying to make that happen,” he shot back.
“I’m glad you’re here.” I laid my head on his shoulder, accepting our fate for the moment. “But I really wish you didn’t have to be involved.”
“I’m the only male heir to the Wellington fortune,” he said with irritation in his tone. “They want to use me as leverage against Pops.”
“Where are we?”
He looked down at me. “On a boat with a bunch of Italians.”
I rubbed my temples and sighed. “Yeah, but where are we going?”
He rolled his broad shoulders against the wall. “I don’t know. Men kidnapped me from a safe house in the middle of the night. They knocked me out cold.” My twin shoved my curls behind my ears and studied my face as if he were attempting to memorize every feature. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted the Salvatores. They promised to keep you safe if I joined The Devil’s Knights. I went willingly because I thought they would follow through. Marcello promised you would be safe.”
“You can’t blame them for every bad thing that happens to me,” I told him. “Mom kidnapped me.”
He gasped at my confession. “Mom?”
I nodded, still in disbelief that my mother was behind my forced captivity. “She spoke to me before the drugs knocked me out.”
His eyes narrowed. “What did she say?”
“I asked her how she got inside the Salvatore Estate. And she said the question I should have asked is why.”
“That greedy fucking bitch.” His jaw flexed as he looked at me. “She wants the bounty. When the person who listed you at the last auction didn’t produce you, the bounty raised to four million dollars. Then it increased to five.”
I slumped to the side, using my brother’s weight to support me. “Yeah, I worked that much out for myself. The man she was with said they offered twenty-five million. And then, she told him to up it to fifty million.”
He slung his arm around me. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
