Page 49 of The Bratva's Forced Innocent Bride

I closed my eyes and curled into a ball, trying to be grateful I was no longer tied up and wasn’t being slowly cooked to death. By now, I was all but certain they were taking me to Luca, and he’d want me alive, so there was no way they’d put me in the trunk again, no matter how much they threatened it. The fact it was much hotter at the rest area than when we started out told me we were heading south, so probably back to LA. The temperatures at this time of year had been averaging in the nineties, so the trunk was an assured death sentence they couldn’t afford to risk.

However, could I risk testing them? They were speaking Italian again, their laughter floating back to me, putting my already shredded nerves on edge. As we sped along toward my fate, I began to wonder if dying in the broiling heat of the trunk wouldn’t be a more peaceful way to go than whatever waited for me at the end of this journey.

No, that was giving up, and that was something I never did. Hadn’t I been through some pretty awful situations? I’d been scared before, uncomfortably cold or hot before, hungry and uncertain of my next meal. I’d even experienced slaps and shoves and countless cruel words.

This was infinitely worse. I already knew what Luca was capable of, and I’d been eluding his grasp for almost two months. That had to piss him off.

Before I could become completely immobile and mentally checked out from the terror coursing through my veins, I gathered the last slip of my composure. I was still alive, still conscious, and I was untied. Also, on a public highway, with cars whipping past us on either side. That meant witnesses.

I didn’t dare rise up above the window line but began paying attention to the frequency of the traffic outside the door next to my head. We were still in that somewhat empty expanse, so there weren’t many. Opening the door and rolling out wouldn’t mean an instant death by getting run over. If I could get my feet under me fast enough, I could get to the side of the road and start running to flag down the next car that passed by.

If they stopped. If every bone in my body wasn’t broken by the impact with the road. By the way, the electrical posts were flying by, we were going pretty fast.

“I need to use the restroom,” I said, tensing up in anticipation of a hit.

“Too bad,” the driver said. “You should have thought of that back at the rest stop.”

“I drank a lot of water since I was so dehydrated,” I said, hoping for a flash of guilt since it was their fault.

“Piss your pants for all I care,” the driver tossed back, and I saw a flash of his menacing eyes in the rearview mirror.

“No one’s around,” the scarred one grunted. “Just pull over. I don’t want to smell it if she has an accident.”

God, they were monsters. But the car began to slow. I had to get out and run before they realized what was happening, and then I hoped that they frequently skipped cardio days so I could stay ahead of them until another car passed. It was now or never, even though we were still going much too fast.

I’ll go out fighting.

If I died, at least it would be on my own terms. With my stomach a tight ball and my legs tensed, I reached for the door handle, slowly testing it.

There was a heartbreaking thud as it moved uselessly in my hand. Child safety lock, something my foolish hope wouldn’t let me consider. The scarred one spun in his seat, yanking my wrist away and slapping it back down to my side. He nodded to the driver, who sped up again, swearing under his breath.

I pressed myself as far back into the seat as I could as the scarred man angrily loomed over me. “I was just trying to get the window down for some more air,” I said, my voice barely able to get past the lump in my throat.

His fist closing and barreling toward me told me he didn’t believe me, and just like he promised, it was lights out.

Chapter 33 - Max

Since I was positive that Luca was behind everything and using his distant family members to orchestrate this kidnapping, I told Dima to lean on the Italians we encountered down in San Diego. I didn’t care if he framed it as a favor, bribed the hell out of them with every last dime I had, or threatened them within an inch of their lives. As long as one of them talked, that was all I wanted.

If they had information at all. Lev’s people were still trying to convince me that this was nothing, but an hour had passed since I discovered my wife was missing, along with her guard, and there was no calming me down.

Lev’s crew had scoured the area and had begun hacking into surveillance cameras in the neighborhood, including the hotel. If I saw her casually walking out beside Pavel, I would only start to relax. I’d still be heartily pissed off, since I insisted on continuing to call his number every five minutes with no answer.

It was too unlike my most trusted security specialist to ignore calls, and even though I saw the blooming friendship between him and Brooke, there was no way he’d ever jump ship and switch alliances. For one, the fact he personally cared about her now meant he was determined to keep her safe on a level that went beyond mere orders from me. If he hadn’t been so happily married to his high school sweetheart and bemoaning every late night I made him watch over Brooke, I might have been jealous of his bond with her.

No, there was no way he wouldn’t be answering my calls unless he couldn’t, and that was something that Lev’s people should have understood. I was pretty sure they did, and werejust trying to keep me from tearing the walls down in my helplessness.

We were doing everything possible to locate Brooke, and I’d called every last person I knew who had some kind of relationship with Luca, all the way back to college. The only thing left for me to do was wait and wrack my brain for something more that might help.

What would I do without Brooke? How could I survive the crushing guilt if something happened to her before I found her?

That wasn’t happening.

As I paced, checking my phone every ten seconds and barely refraining from shouting at the two people working at laptops in the second bedroom of my hotel suite, I suddenly stopped dead.

I had contacted every last man and woman I knew who had a relationship with Luca, but that still left the ones I didn’t know. I hurried to grab my laptop and slammed onto the balcony where the fresh air might help me think. I was onto something, and there was a glimmer of a memory struggling to break out. Something helpful, someone who’d want to bring Luca down as much as I did.

There had been an up-and-coming actress about three years ago who’d briefly dated Luca. They had gone so far as to go public, appearing on red carpets together and being anointed the golden couple of the moment. Then she’d begun to get that thousand-yard stare that I seemed to be the only one to notice in the women Luca dated, and she slipped off the radar soon after they broke up.

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