Page 133 of Dust to Dust

A foot kicked my leg. “Look at me,” a voice commanded.

After swiping my eyes, I stared up at the man standing over me. “My apologies, Ms. Vaughn.”

He held his hand out to help me up. When I eyed it with disgust, he chuckled. “Not very grateful, are you?”

“You’re the man who had me kidnapped.”

“I am.”

“Why?”

He tsked at me. “Come now, Ms. Vaughn. A woman as smart as you should already know the answer to that.”

“Quinn,” I whispered.

With a nod, he replied, “Your boyfriend and his family have been making things very hard for me. First, they killed Carmine Lucero which fucked my son’s alliance and left him saddled with an Italian bitch for a wife. But that wasn’t enough for the Kavanaughs. They, or more importantly Quinn, had to fuck with another lucrative alliance.”

“But why take me?”

“Does the name Terrance Manning mean anything to you?”

A shudder ran through me. “He assaulted me at Alainn.”

“And then Quinn killed him in retaliation.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Guess who my lucrative alliance was?”

“Terrance.”

Mikita nodded. “So, you can see why I have very personal beef with Quinn.” Mikita tilted his head at me. “Do you know what Bravta calls your boyfriend?” At the shake of my head, he replied, “Odinokiy volk so shramami. It means ‘scarred lone wolf’. He hasn’t had a woman to share his life with.” A wicked gleam flickered in his gray eyes. “But he’s not so alone anymore, is he?”

I swallowed my fear down. They were going to use me to draw Quinn out. “Are you going to hurt me?”

He ran the back of his hand over my cheek, causing me to shudder. “Not like you fear.”

Turning away from me, he surmised Yuri’s bleeding corpse. “In Jersey, for a long time the Irish, the Italians, and Bratva believed women shouldn’t pay for the sins of the men. But then the pact was broken. A beautiful young Russian woman–a mother of two small sons–was kidnapped. Although she wasn’t beaten or wounded, she was raped.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Repeatedly by many men.”

Fear choked off my ability to speak. Instead, I could only widen my eyes in horror.

“When the dispute between her family and the Italians ended, she was sent back to her family. While there were no physical scars on her body, the emotional ones crippled her. Even though her two sons were so happy to have her back, she was merely a shell of who she was before. A month after she was returned, she jumped off the roof of the family penthouse.”

My chest rose and fell. “She was your mother.”

“You are very astute.”

“I’m sorry. I lost my mother as well.”

He cocked a brow at me. “Did she plummet fifteen stories before slamming to the ground and pulverizing into bloody soup?”

My stomach rolled at his description, and I fought not to gag. As he stared expectantly at me, I gave a slight jerk of my head. “Car accident.”

“Don't try to empathize with me. We aren’t the same.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

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