Page 54 of Chasing Danger

I first saw the sky outside a window that took up most of the far wall. Dawn was just starting to light the sky, adding pink highlights among the gray and black. I prayed it was the next morning and that I’d only been unconscious for a few hours, and not actually days later.

The next thing I noticed was the room itself. Suddenly, the swaying light made sense. It wasn’t really a room at all. Rather it was the control booth of a large cargo ship. A long line of complicated control panels lay just under the window, and the front end of the ship stretched out beyond the glass, pointing toward the far horizon. Beyond the ship lay nothing but open sea.

All of these observations were noted and then immediately forgotten when my attention shifted again to the people in the control room with me.

The Russian woman was there, along with several other very intimidating people, but sitting calmly at a table in the center of the room was my grandmother.

“Nana? What?” The words scratched at my dry throat, but I had to speak up.

What was my grandmother doing here?

Had she been kidnapped, too?

She glanced at me, but her expression was like ice. If it weren’t for the fact that I recognized her face, she would have seemed like a stranger.

It was too confusing to look at her, so I shifted focus back to the Russian woman instead. She was speaking to some of the other people in the room, saying something about ‘International Waters’. I couldn’t follow the full conversation, but it seemed important.

The man she spoke with also kept calling her Aslanov. I couldn’t tell if it was meant as a first name, a last name, or a title, but it definitely sounded Russian.

These people were definitely the Russian Mafia. All the effort D’Angelo had put into keeping me from getting kidnapped, and I’d ended up in the hands of his enemies anyway.

How had I gotten here?

The last thing I remembered was sitting in the kitchen of my own house, speaking with my family.

My thoughts were interrupted when someone shoved open the door to the control room and ran up to Aslanov.

“The Bianchi leader has shown up, just as you expected. He’s demanding to be let onto the ship.”

Aslanov faced the window that looked out over the ship, hands clasped behind her back like she was standing at military attention.

“Are we far enough out?”

“Yes,” someone else answered, pointing toward something on the control panels. “We’ve just crossed the maritime boundary and are now on the high seas.”

She nodded. “Very good. Let him aboard, but only him. His bodyguards and anyone else he may have brought with him must stay behind.”

People immediately started moving around the room, but Aslanov stood like an unmoving pillar among the chaos.

“Oh…” She glanced toward me. “Gag him. We don’t want any disruptions.”

She had barely finished speaking when someone outside of my view shoved a wad of cloth into my mouth. Another strip of cloth was wrapped around my head to hold it in place. The cloth strip was secured so tightly it cut into the sides of my mouth, and the gag clung to my already dry tongue.

Even if I shouted, I wouldn’t have been able to make a sound.

After that, no one paid me any attention. Even my own grandmother, who continued to sit like an unmoving statue at the room’s only table, completely ignored me. I’d never felt more invisible in my life. There were plenty of times when I’d wished I could disappear, especially when people were staring at my scars, but right now I wanted nothing more than for someone totalk to me. Even if they didn’t explain what was going on, just a few words of assurance would have been enough.

Someone grabbed the back of my neck in one broad, cold hand, and the hard barrel of a gun pressed against my head. The twitch of a single finger would be enough to end my life.

Like dangling over an abyss by a spider’s threat, I was afraid to move or even breathe too deeply for fear of that lifeline snapping.

Moments later, the door to the control room opened again, and this time D’Angelo’s familiar figure stepped through. Until then, I’d never really seen him in full Mafia Boss form. Even when he was literally killing someone in front of my eyes, it didn’t have the same effect as it did right now. He almost didn’t look human. Everything about him was perfect. Not a hair hung out of place, and his all black suit was pressed so sharply that he could have sharpened his knives on the creases.

Even the expression on his face was cold and perfect. This was the kind of man who comfortably held life or death in his hands on a daily basis.

For the briefest moment, his blue eyes flickered in my direction, but he almost immediately looked away and focused on Aslanov.

Even D’Angelo was ignoring me. Maybe I really had become invisible. I sunk in my seat, but then the gun at my head dug harder into my scalp and I sat up straighter.

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