Page 53 of Married to the Mafia

The faceless voice muttered what had to be an expletive, but it didn’t sound like English. It sounded … Irish. “And the acquisition?”

“The Ink Blots are supported by a piece of shit named Brendan Coughlan. He’s the last blood of an Irish Mob that picked a fight with our family a long time ago.” Mikey’s words rang through Brandi’s head and she had to bite her tongue to keep from cursing out loud.

“Resisting,” Gustavo replied.

Brandi drew a breath.

“Do what you have to.” The man who might have been Coughlan himself disconnected.

Gustavo slipped his hand into the space beside his seat and pulled out a gun. He tossed a quick glare her way. “Don’t do anything that will make me shoot you.”

Brandi’s heart thundered in her ears. He’d already looked away, as if he genuinely assumed that little threat was enough to buy her silence. He’d spoken like a man who’d researched her life, but it was clear he didn’t know shit. The sight of a gun was only mildly disconcerting at this point. She was much more concerned about what he intended to do with it, and it was clear his primary focus was Cristiano, who was actively tapping on the driver’s side window.

She would only have one chance.

Brandi watched Gustavo turn his focus to her future cousin-in-law. She heard the low tone of Cristiano’s voice, too muffled to be properly discerned. She saw Gustavo raise the arm that held the gun. In a singular, adrenaline-fueled movement, Brandi heaved herself up and swung out a leg in a hard kick. She used her captured arm as an anchor and did her best to brace with the other, to minimize the damage already screaming through her, but it didn’t matter. Her foot connected with the back of Gustavo’s shoulder and his arm swung wide.

The gun went off. It sounded like a bomb in the confined space and the bullet tore through the windshield. But it missed Cristiano.

The wild kick also left Brandi more than a little helplessly sprawled across the car’s center console.

“Bitch!” Gustavo cursed as his window was shattered from the outside.

“Go around!” Cristiano bellowed, not seeming to be talking to Gustavo. Something echoed through the car a moment later and it took Brandi a second to realize Cristiano must have manually depressed the lock button.

Brandi sucked air back into her lungs. “I’m—”

The car lurched forward and Brandi cut herself off with a scream, her body rolling much too freely with the sudden movement. She scrambled to at least wrap her whole hand around the damn security bar she’d been cuffed to, but her arm didn’t have the strength she needed to haul herself back into her seat. Her knees were bent awkwardly over the backside of the console, leaving half her butt hanging off the seat completely and her entire form too sideways to be easily straightened.

More gunfire erupted outside and with nothing else to do for herself, she screamed again.

It took her several seconds to realize the car had stopped moving. Her heart was racing so wildly she couldn’t hear anything else. Then the door behind her flew open, taking what little support it had been offering with it, and her head fell back at a horrible angle. She’d probably have shrieked one more time if she weren’t suddenly breathless.

“Oh, shit,” a male voice said above her. One sturdy hand settled behind her shoulders, easing her up enough to relieve some strain on her arm. “Kill the fucking car, Cris. She’s damn near dislocated this shoulder.”

Brandi’s panic eased enough for her to finally recognize the man at her back. He was the Japanese man who’d come to help her once before. She couldn’t remember his name, but she knew he was family. “We … really have to stop meeting like this.”

He was leaning around her, into the car, in the process of helping pull her into a more tolerable position. He paused before setting her feet back on the floorboards and his lips kicked up at the corners. “Better for both our long-term prospects, I think.” His gaze shifted to the handcuffs. “Hang on a sec, I’ll pop you right out of these,” he said.

Brandi didn’t even see where he produced the bobby pin from, so she just held still and let her eyes bounce between the motion at her restraints and the tension she couldn’t quite discern in the front seat. Gustavo still sat in the driver’s seat, and Cristiano still stood beside the closed door. It looked like Cristiano had an arm inside the car and for all intents and purposes he’d become a statue. Gustavo’s gun was on the dashboard, in sight but not in his hand, and the keys had been pulled from the ignition. She’d missed a lot in her distracted state. It didn’t seem like she should have.

Suddenly the pressure around her wrist came free. “There you go,” her rescuer said.

“Get her in my car,” Cristiano said. “This motherfucker’s going with you.”

“You got it.”

Brandi didn’t fight the help that was offered to her to get out of the car. She hadn’t realized she was shaking, but she definitely was. That’s embarrassing. She steeled herself for ignoring her own weakness and allowed the man whose name she really needed to remember to walk her toward the car at the front. It looked like Gustavo had tried ramming into it, but whatever Cristiano had done to stop him, he’d done fast enough to spare his own ride.

Something clicked in her head and she stopped, turning to look toward Cristiano. “Hey!” She wasn’t entirely sure how much she was supposed to know, but this was probably not the time to worry about that. “He called someone when you pulled him over. The ID said ‘boss’, but I think it was that Coughlan guy you’re looking for. The history should still be in the car’s computer.”

From her new angle, she not only had the perfect vantage to see Cristiano’s eyes widen, but she even saw Gustavo’s whole face darken. It was something like double satisfaction.

Cristiano raised the arm he still had inside the car, bringing a gun into sight and up to Gustavo’s head. The gun had been too low for Brandi to see before, but definitely had to have been in his hand. She could only think that meant he’d had it aimed at a very motivating part of Gustavo’s anatomy, and the thought made her feel a little better.

Gustavo glared at her through the windshield.

“Hands up,” Cristiano said, voice hard. “You’re gonna step out of the car, and you’re not gonna do anything stupid. Because I would love to shoot you right now, so you don’t want to give me an excuse.”

---