Page 117 of Love Him Like Water

The popping sound.

That’s what I’d heard.

The gun with a silencer.

Elian.

My heart squeezed in my chest even as the adrenaline sizzled across my nerve endings making everything suddenly feel too bright, too abstract, like the room itself had become impressionist splashes across my vision instead.

Because, surely, if I was seeing correctly, I would have picked up one of the full cans. To throw. To bash.

Or gone for the lid I’d just pulled out of a can, surrounded by little teeth from the opener. Enough to do some damage if he got close enough.

Instead, though, I seemed to freeze, to stand there completely uselessly as he drew closer.

I saw that look in his eyes.

I’d seen it once before, in the eyes of a man named Brio in my family. A man who got a sick sort of satisfaction out of his job. Which often seemed to involve a lot of bloodshed and pain.

It was an animalistic sort of coldness.

Like all the humanity had been leeched from him.

When he lunged, I would like to say I scratched, clawed, bit, fought.

All I seemed to manage, though, was throw the can of tomatoes, some of it splattering across Michael’s pants, my own bare feet, and the floor.

I braced, expecting to feel the burning pain of a bullet slicing through my skin, my vision flashing back to the handful of times I’d seen a member of my own family with a bullet wound, how they’d curse and throw back whiskey as someone performed battlefield medicine on them. Once, in my own childhood kitchen.

Instead, though, Michael flipped the gun in his hand, holding it by the muzzle, lifting his arm, and striking out.

There was a split second of an explosive pain in my head.

Then complete and utter blackness.

I woke up being jostled, but too groggy to remember that I should be fighting as my brain screamed, little icepicks being drilled into my skull over and over.

By the time I remembered it all—the pop, the slam, Michael, the gun, being struck—I felt myself slammed down across a backseat, a man’s body coming down on top of me, crushing me.

“Drive!” he snarled, making my head whip over, seeing the darkened SUV windows, the back of a man’s head in the driver’s seat.

It was Michael on top of me, his chest pressing hard enough to make my lungs hurt when I took a breath, prepared to scream.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” Michael snarled, shifting his weight to slap his hand over my mouth, his weight pressing down, making my teeth ache with the pressure.

His finger was pressing up against the underside of my nose, making it harder to pull in a proper breath, causing this uncomfortable tight sensation to spread across my chest.

Panic, familiar and unwanted because it made my brain mushy, spread, little tendrils of adrenaline snaking around my mind, my chest, my throat.

I needed to calm down.

To focus.

It was already too late to make sure I wasn’t taken to a second location. We were already in one, and on the way to a third one.

Nothing good could happen there.

The best case would be that my kidnapping was just a ploy to draw out Renzo.

---