Page 117 of The Devil's Deal

“Shut up,” he growls, no kindness in his brown eyes as he finally looks at me. He picks me up by my armpits. “Walk.”

He pushes me between my shoulder blades as terror fills me. He isn’t the guy he appeared to be back at the mansion.

Why is he doing this? Did Dominic order him to hurt me?

I keep moving toward his sedan, my hip aching from the car accident he caused. “Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me?”

He ignores my questions, opening the door to the back and shoving me inside. Instead of getting into the driver’s side, he locks all the doors and moves to the trunk. I follow his every movement, my pulse beating loudly in my ears. The trunk opens, then a few seconds later he slams it shut, holding a red canister.

What the hell?

He marches back to Laura’s car, and part of me hopes he’ll get her out too, but instead he’s opening the cap of the canister and pouring the liquid all around.

“No!” I shout, gripping the handle, pushing, pulling, hitting the window with my other hand, desperate to get to Laura. “Don’t hurt her, you son of a bitch!”

I bang on the window, my palm stinging from the repeated blows. But I’m too late. He’s walking back to his car just as the flames start, slow at first, and then, as though out of nowhere, they light up the sky with angry orange and red sparks.

“Nooo!” I shriek, sobbing, my palm planted against the cool window. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

He gets inside, turns on the ignition, sending the car rolling back down the road. Laura’s burning car gets smaller as he drives away. A stabbing pain hits the center of my chest.

“How could you do this?” I scream out with tears etched in my voice. “She was an innocent person! A mother!”

His eyes meet mine through the rearview mirror.

“Call Dom right now,” I demand. “I want to hear him tell me he ordered this.”

He laughs, frosty and sinister. “Dominic? You’re not going to see him anymore.”

My entire body’s swallowed up by fear. “What the hell are you talking about? Where—where are you taking me?”

But even before I ask, even before those words leave my mouth, I know the answer.

“Your father. He’s demanded your presence. And he doesn’t like to wait. Now shut up and go to sleep.”

Then he stops the car momentarily, takes out his handgun, and whips it hard on the side of my head until everything goes dark.

Chapter Thirty-One

Chiara

My eyes pry awake,and my body tries to follow suit, but the headache at my left temple makes it harder.

Confusion settles in the depths of my cluttered mind, and as I try to lift a hand to rub my eyes, I can’t move my arm.

What the…?

I pull my wrist, then the other, causing my shoulders to ache. When I yank again, something cuts into my wrists and the realization hits: I’m tied up.

Again.

Fighting through the heaviness in my eyelids, I come to find myself sitting on a chair in a large, slightly darkened room, my arms twisted backward, bound behind me.

I can’t tell where I am, but it’s eerily cold, devoid of life. It doesn’t feel like I’m in someone’s house.

“Hello?” I whisper, my voice scratchy. “Where the hell are you,Daddy? What is this?”

Pounding footsteps crash against the floor.

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