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I shake my head again, and immediately there is another crack across my other cheek. This time, I yelp. And to cement his intentions, my father slaps me a third time.
A sob breaks free from my chest, but I try to hold it in. My father bends down in front of me and lifts my chin. “Don’t make me hit you again, Eve.”
“I didn’t make you do anything,” I say, my voice shaking.
He shakes his head, disappointed, and then runs a hand down my stomach. “And don’t make me hurt my grandchild.”
I stare into his eyes—the same caramel shade as my own—and shake my head. “You wouldn’t.”
He steps back and gestures to the man behind him. The man who had the gun. He steps forward, eyes bright with violence, and brandishes a long pole. He holds it out to the side like it is a baseball bat and he is approaching the plate.
My arms are tied behind my back. I can’t protect myself. I try to bring my knees into my chest, but it isn’t enough. He is getting closer and panic claws at my chest. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m screaming.
“My baby. No. Not my baby. Please, no.” The man keeps coming towards me, and I look to my father for help, but he is just watching me like I’m in a nature documentary. Like it is too bad about the antelope, but a lion has to eat. “Luka. Luka, please. Help me!”
26
Luka
I’m so exhausted from being up all night planning that I first think the voicemail might be a nightmare. I’ve been planning and plotting how to get to Eve and save her without losing my own life. Not that I care much about my own safety, but if I die, Eve doesn’t stand a chance of escaping. I have to survive to save her, it is that simple. It is just after dawn, and I’m no closer to knowing where Eve is being held than I was when I got the first message. And then, the second arrives.
Eve’s screams are so loud the speaker on my phone goes staticky and the phone vibrates in my hand. It sounds too horrible to be real.
Not my baby. No, not my baby.
I listen to it once, twice, three times. Letting the words and the reality of it wash over me. Letting it sharpen and hone my anger into a blade. Eve is pregnant with my child, and she is in danger. From her own father, no less. I should have killed Benedetto the night I spoke to him in the bar. The night he discussed his own daughter like she was nothing more than an object to be traded. I knew something was wrong with the way he viewed her, and now she is in his possession, screaming for my help.
I want to kill every person who stands between us. I want to cut down anyone who dares get in my way, but for the first time in my life, I have to temper my rage. Rather than giving myself over to the bloodlust, I have to use it to focus my energies on what is important. Not revenge, but Eve. Eve and our child take priority over everything.
There is no time to waste. I can’t spend another minute guessing where she might be being held. I have to go to the only person I know who might be able to help.
* * *
Seeing Patrick O’Neill’s house during the day is strange. It looks serene. There are flowers blooming in the front garden and nearly trimmed hedges lining the walkway. It is like a house from a story book, the roof steeply pitched with a screened in sun porch off to the side. A baby pool and wagon sit in the grass, reminding me that I am going to have my own child soon. So long as I can get to Eve in time.
For the first time, I knock on Patrick’s front door rather than sneak in the back. If he is smart, he has changed the locks by now, anyway. I wait several seconds until I hear a bolt click and a young, red-haired woman answers the door.
“Hello?” she smiles up at me, oblivious to the fact that I’ve been in her home before. That I’m the man who nearly killed her husband.
“I’m here to speak with Patrick O’Neill,” I say in my best door-to-door salesman voice.
She frowns. “I’m sorry, he isn’t here.”
After the state I left him in, I can’t imagine he is well enough to be taking day trips. “Do you have any idea when he will return?”
“He is actually in the hospital recovering from knee surgery. Maybe try again next week?” Behind her, a baby starts to cry, and she glances over her shoulder before turning back to me and beginning to close the door. “Sorry, I have to go. Try next week, okay?”
I can still hear the baby crying when she closes the door. The sound mixes with the memory of Eve screaming into the phone, begging for me to help her. Begging for her baby to be saved. I get in my car and head for the nearest hospital.
* * *
Patient privacy is a big deal to hospital staff, but a smile and a wad of cash goes a long way towards loosening lips. It takes ten minutes from the time I walk through the automatic sliding doors of the hospital to gain access to O’Neill’s recovery room. When I walk in, he is sitting up in bed eating from a gelatin cup, laughing at a joke from a morning talk show host. He glances disinterestedly towards me, probably assuming I’m just another nurse coming around to check his blood pressure, and looks away before doing a rapid double take. The heart monitor next to his bed begins to beep rapidly.
“I’m not here to shoot you again, so calm down,” I say, keeping my distance from the bed.
“Do you have a knife?” he asks, his eyes darting to each of my hands and then my waist, searching for weapon.
“I’m also not here to stab you.” I hold up my hands to him, palms out. “I came to talk.”
