Page 2 of Sin and Redemption

My eyes widened when one of the cars sped up even more.

It collided with our rear, and my head hit the side window.

Everything turned black.

Fingers raked through my hair. A soothing touch that made me want to purr like that stray cat that occasionally visited my parents’ shelter and drove our dogs absolutely mad. I wanted to keep my eyes closed and enjoy it. But the scent of blood and my lack of memory of where I was shook me from my state of calm. I peeled my eyes open. They felt heavy, and when my vision finally cleared, a woman’s face with big brown doe eyes came into focus right above me. It took several moments before I recognized Sara Cancio. Her fingers were responsible for the gentle touch, and it must have been her blood I’d smelled because the left side of her brown hair was matted from a head injury. “You’re hurt,” I rumbled. My voice sounded even deeper and rougher than usual. I cleared my throat, but it felt as if I hadn’t drunk anything in days.

“You’re worse,” she said with a faint smile. She looked pale, and even though I wasn’t familiar with her facial expressions, she was clearly scared.

I sat up, raising my head from Sara’s warm lap. Her clothes were covered in blood where my head had rested. I touched my scalp and face—sticky with blood. I couldn’t recall what had happened. All I remembered was talking to Romero and picking up Sara at his request.

I looked around, and my body switched to high alert. We were in a cage, something that looked and smelled as if a wild animal might have lived in it, maybe some wild cat. The Bratva was big in the smuggling of endangered species. The cage was in a big warehouse near the harbor, considering many bigger wild animals arrived in shipping containers. The walls had been covered with noise-dimming materials. Three more cages were beside ours. All of them empty…

No. A half-dead bloody figure lay on the floor in the cell farthest from us. The man was still alive, but by the state he was in and the amount of blood pooling beneath him, I knew he wouldn’t be alive much longer unless someone helped him. Was he one of ours?

Captured by the enemy.

We had many of them. But this couldn’t be the Outfit’s doing. Their Capo, Dante, would never allow a woman to get hurt. The Camorra and Remo were certainly capable of every imaginable atrocity, but I didn’t think it was them either. That left the Russians or the bikers.

Neither option was good. Neither would spare Sara. My gaze found her again as she huddled beside me on the floor. Her blouse and skirt were covered in blood—mine and hers.

“I’ll get us out of here,” I promised without thinking. I didn’t have a hero complex. My job rarely allowed for acts of heroism. I did the dirty work. I maimed and killed. I didn’t save lives.

She licked her lips. “Is this the Outfit?”

I could hear the faint note of hope in her voice. The Outfit would have been her best bet. Fuck, I wished it was them. My fate would be the same no matter the enemy, but for Sara’s safety, it mattered.

I considered lying to lessen her fear, but my face must have given the truth away.

Disappointment filled her eyes. “It’s not, right?”

“No,” I said simply. I was as good a liar as I was a hero—unfortunately for Sara. I rose to my feet and glanced at the half-dead man in the other cell. From this vantage point, I could see more cages on the other end of the warehouse. Snow leopards, orangutans, and a few bears with black fur slept in them, probably drugged to the max.

Sara stood too and followed my gaze. Her eyes grew wide. “Why are there animals here?”

“They’re contraband.”

“And what are we?” Sara whispered.

I didn’t have an answer to that question. Bait? Leverage? A soon-to-happen bloody message?

Sara’s gaze moved to the cage with the bloody human body, and she swallowed visibly. “He hasn’t moved yet. Is he dead?”

“No. His chest is rising.” He wouldn’t make it much longer from the looks of it, though. Maybe they would feed him to the leopard later. It was a good way to get rid of the evidence.

“What do they want with us?”

I regarded Sara. She was beautiful, young, untouched. It wasn’t difficult to guess what some of our enemies would do to her. Had she been the target? Or me? I was notorious among our enemies for my brutal treatment of captives. Many wanted to get their hands on me to pay me back. But I wasn’t even supposed to pick Sara up. That was a last-minute change of plans. Had someone followed me unnoticed?

That was something I would have to figure out later. If there was a later.

I would definitely be tortured. I could stand the torture—I wasn’t concerned about that—but they would instrumentalize Sara, and that was a factor I couldn’t predict. I needed to protect her no matter the cost. I had promised Romero to bring Sara to him safely, and seeing her scared face, I wanted to protect her on a deeper level too. In recent years, two Famiglia girls who should have been safe were targeted. I had to protect Sara from becoming another victim of our feud.

Keys rattled, and a door to our side opened with a squeaky sound.

The moment I saw the face of the first man entering the room, I knew things were fucking bad. If it had been just me in this damn cell, things would already have been shitty, but with Sara in the picture, it was disastrous.

Jabba tilted his head. I always forgot his real name. Everyone called him Jabba because he looked like the ugly-ass creature from theStar Warsmovies.

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