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With a knife pressed to her jugular, Jasmine didn’t dare move. The man holding it to her skin only had to dig it in, and her life ended. Eli would be an orphan because she hadn’t told anyone his father was Ace Hammerson.
She cursed herself for being so stupid. Ace deserved to know Eli was his son. At least then, if she died, he’d have one parent to see him through life. Jasmine believed with all her heart that Ace would make Eli a wonderful father.
She was shoved into the SUV. The man who’d held the knife to her throat had to release his hold long enough to push her into the vehicle.
Once the knife was removed from her throat, Jasmine dove into the SUV, scooted across the seat and tried to open the opposite door.
The door was locked, apparently with the child lock feature. She was trapped inside the SUV.
The door she’d attempted to exit through jerked open, and one of the men who’d attacked her back in Jordan slid in.
Bunching her hand, she shoved it upward, hitting the man in the nose. Blood erupted from his nose and spilled down her face and into his mouth. He roared, grabbed Jasmine’s hair and slammed her face into the back of the driver’s seat.
Though the seat was cushioned, the blow made her dizzy and her head spin.
Another man slid into the seat on her opposite side.
When she turned toward him, she looked down the barrel of a pistol aimed at her face. The man holding it had salt-and-pepper gray hair and looked very much like Christos Demopoulos.
“Just give me the scroll, and you can go free,” the man said.
“Athanasios Demopoulos,” Jasmine breathed.
He nodded. “You have caused my people and my son a lot of trouble. Give me the scroll, and I won’t let my man pull you apart, limb by limb.”
Jasmine glanced at the man she’d hit hard in the nose.
His eyes bulged, his cheeks flushed a ruddy red and he clenched his fists, ready to slam them into her face.
She lifted the satchel strap from around her neck and handed it to Demopoulos. “Here. Take it. I only wanted to get my son back from Bertolli. Now, let me out of this vehicle.”
She glared at the man with the bloody nose, hoping that, by staring him down, it would somehow make him open the door.
Ha! When she’d hit him in the nose, she’d made an enemy out of the guy, and nothing short of beating her into a pulp would make the man happy.
“Not yet,” Demopoulos said. “Before you are released, I want to see the scroll for myself.”
Jasmine bent over as if she needed to tie her running shoe, which she did. At the same time, she removed the ceramic knife from the sheath around her ankle and slipped it up her sleeve.
If they didn’t let her go, she’d have to fight her way out of captivity in order to find and rescue Eli.
Thankfully, Ace had insisted on taking the scroll. If she’d had it with her, Demopoulos would have taken it back to his home near Athens.
Then she’d be stuck on Corfu empty-handed. Bertolli wouldn’t have accepted her sob story about how she’d lost the scroll to his former friend, and now rival, Demopoulos. In which case, she might as well have said, Just shoot me.
She prayed Ace, Fearghas and Dmytro had succeeded in subduing their attackers and that the scroll was safe.
No matter what happened to her, Ace would go after Eli. He wouldn’t give up on the little boy.
“What is this?” Demopoulos blurted. “This is not the copper scroll.” He pulled the small life preserver out of the bag and flung it across the interior of the SUV. He shook the bag as if it might contain more. When he accepted it was empty, he flung it aside as well.
His lips curled back into a feral sneer. “Where is my scroll?”
“I don’t know,” Jasmine said.
Demopoulos gave a slight chin lift.
The man behind her wrapped his arm around her throat and squeezed hard, cutting off her air.
