Page 6 of Sinful Scars

I might be half Russian, but it’s been so long since I’ve spoken the language that I can only decipher every third word or so.

My mother was adamant I learn the language as a child, but after my parents died and I went to live with my Italian grandmother, she didn’t let me continue my studies, claiming that the language was of no use to me now that my mother was dead.

How wrong she was…

I need to get the hell out of this car. Taking off my seatbelt, I pull at the door handle, willing to throw myself out of the moving vehicle if I have to.

But nothing happens. I’m locked in.

“Come on,” I groan as I pull on the door handle, but it’s no use.

I’m completely defenseless. I have no phone, no weapon.

My uncle used to insist I carry a small handgun with me at all times but after working in a hospital for the last two years and seeing countless GSW victims, I refused.

I was terrified I would accidentally set the thing off, so I settled for using a can of pepper spray, which I’ve left in my locker at work.

“Damn it.” I pound on the window. “Stop the damn car!”

“Calm down!” the driver barks at me over his shoulder.

My eyes swim with tears, causing his features to blur.

Throughout my life, I’ve been warned about what to do in situations like this. To look for defining features of your attacker, to remember license plate numbers or the color of a vehicle. But I was never warned about how you could become so paralyzed by fear that it takes everything just to remember to breathe.

I ignore the driver as I bang on the window again.

There’s no way I’m strong enough to break the glass, but I can’t just sit back and do nothing when my life is on the line.

“Calm the fuck down, or Lucia is dead!”

Lucia.

I freeze at the mention of my cousin’s name.

“What the hell are you talking about? Where is Lucia?”

My driver ignores me once more, and my skin breaks out in a cold sweat as I realize this is no random attack.

My cousin’s father, Massimo Conti, is an incredibly powerful man with many enemies that wouldn’t think twice about kidnapping and torturing a member of his family.They’ve already made that clear once after Lucia was kidnapped almost two years ago and her life as well as the life of her unborn child was threatened. If something has happened to her, or sweet little Vivi…

I swallow the bile in my throat as I try to calm myself enough to think rationally.

“W-where are you taking me?” I try to get a better look at my driver.

He looks like so many of the men who work for my uncle, with his cropped, dark hair.

“We’re almost there.”

“Are you taking me to Lucia?”

Silence.

Wiping at my eyes, I turn to look out of the window.

I don’t know how long we’ve been driving for, but my heart rate quickens when I realize we’re on the interstate heading away from Manhattan.

I press the palms of my hands into my eyes.

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