Page 34 of Assistant to the Mafia

Nausea rolled through him and the world spun backwards. Romeo didn’t stop to breathe. He didn’t give a flying shit about some abandoned rental car. “Pack it in and follow me!” he shouted, already sprinting for his own SUV. He’d drive himself if Mo lagged behind.

Mo never lagged behind. “Sir, it could be dangerous, you should—”

“I love you like my own brothers,” Romeo said, taking hold of the nearest door handle, “but I will shoot you where you stand if you finish that sentence.” He threw himself into the SUV and buckled in as Mo leapt into the driver’s seat. “Take me to her.”

It wasn’t that Mo was wrong. It was that Romeo couldn’t just sit back and leave such an important task to someone else. Whatever had happened, he needed to see it for himself. Even if it destroyed him.

He fished his phone from his pocket. There was someone else who needed to get their ass on-scene, too, because if she was hurt in any way, it was his fucking fault.

“Didn’t expect to hear from you again today,” Dante said after the first ring. His voice was far too casual and his statement far too moronic.

Romeo grit his teeth. “You gave me your fucking word, brother. And then you went and called Grace into the office anyway, and—”

“Watch the way you speak to me,” Dante said sharply. “I did give you my word, and I haven’t broken it.”

“Bullshit! I was with her when that text came in.” Romeo dragged in a breath, intending to tell him the more important part, when the obvious answer struck. He swung his free fist sideways into the window, the bullet-proof glass holding steady against his temper. “Goddammit. Your number’s been fucking cloned.”

Dante was silent for several seconds, and his voice dark when he spoke again. “Then we have a problem.”

“No,” Romeo said, “we have multiple. The car Grace was in went off-route, then offline. I’m headed there now.”

“I’ll meet you there. Try to keep your head.”

eleven

Don’t Panic

Visions of shattering glass and the echoes of rapid-fire pop-pop-pop worked together with the jostling of wherever she actually was to drag Grace back to consciousness. Her head hurt, and for a long, petrifying moment, she was certain that she’d gone blind. It was so dark.

Her body was jarred again, the surface beneath her seeming to jump and bump sharply, which only served to knock her around. She tipped forward, her forehead connecting with something cool and solid. Something almost metallic. And a terrible possibility whispered to her over the ringing in her ears.

Grace attempted to adjust herself, moving carefully, and found that while her body was sore, nothing felt broken. Nothing was restrained. Except she quickly realized she was folded into a box-like space. A space that was moving, sometimes bouncing, where she could hear the muffled but nonetheless familiar roar of fast-paced road noise.

Her stomach rolled. She was in a trunk.

She vaguely remembered the attack on the SUV as her hands found the outer edge of the mystery trunk. Her mind replayed the moments after someone had fired an actual real-life rocket launcher at the vehicle, obliterating what had probably been bullet-proof windows. She remembered seeing Al twist as if reaching for something behind him, something like a weapon, and she remembered seeing his body jump and twitch unnaturally in his seat.

At some point the vehicle had tipped, though she didn’t as clearly recall why or how, and the airbags had finally deployed. That was probably the only reason her head didn’t hurt worse than it did. Still, the inflation of the life-saving bags was the last thing she really remembered. That, and thinking the very devices meant to save her were going to be what got her caught.

Her fingers slid over a change in the surface and she paused. Taillight.

People always said to kick those out or at least pull the wiring if you got kidnapped, right? She knew she’d heard that. Granted, internet advice was probably not the greatest thing to be dependent on, but Grace wasn’t sure she had a whole lot to lose. The one place she definitely did not want to be was in this car, going wherever her abductors were taking her.

There was always the chance no one was around. But in that case, all that would happen was nothing. It would really be much worse if there was a second car of attackers—whom she had to assume were the gangsters at war with the De Salvos—and those were the ones who spotted her attempt. If she didn’t try, she ended up in the worst-case scenario.

She couldn’t allow that to happen.

Grace was the first to admit she was not a car person. She knew several brands by name and logo, but the most complicated thing she knew was how to change a tire. And she hadn’t learned that until college, because her parents had believed a woman wasn’t meant for that kind of labor.

That doesn’t mean I can’t do this.

She held still for another several seconds, hyper focused on the road noise filling the box around her. It seemed loud. Though she did still have a splitting headache, too. More importantly, she couldn’t afford to assume she had all the time in the world. So Grace shifted herself as much as her confined quarters allowed, moving her feet toward where she estimated the second brake light to be. If she missed, she was only going to make too much noise. And even though, with her head closer to the interior boundary, she could clearly hear something that sounded like rock music coming from inside the cabin of the car, she couldn’t assume her actions would go unnoticed. She could only hope.

She bit her lips, carefully toed the break in surface to be as sure as possible of her aim, and made herself consider all she stood to lose if she screwed up.

As much as she liked her job, and as proud of herself as she was for getting there, that job wasn’t what she was fighting for. She finally had a chance at the thing she wanted even more than a stable, respectable, self-sufficient career. She finally had hope for a future with a man who made her heart race, a man who had no need to use her for a damn thing, and a man who wanted what she did. She finally had a chance, soon, to be a wife and a mother. She could have that loving family she’d always dreamed of.

If she just got out of this damn car.

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