Page 90 of Convenient Mafia Vows

“Fuck, man.” The young guy who dragged me here joins him. “Why the fuck did you let her get away with that? I’d have shot her in the fucking mouth and shut her up.”

“And then what?” Ivan pockets his weapon. “She’ll shoot herself soon enough.”

He glances our way, and I realize that he’s our only hope of getting out of here. Because I’m not leaving without Mason and Sienna. The other guy will shoot us in the back of the head if we try to escape and ask questions after.

“Will you help my brother?” I call out.

The other guy’s eyes narrow, but Ivan checks out Mason who still hasn’t moved.

“Please?” I need to talk to him alone, and I need to do it before Olivia comes back.

He mutters something to his friend that I can’t hear and then approaches us slowly, his eyes fixed on Mason like this might be a trap.

“He’s unconscious,” I say, when he’s close enough to hear me without raising my voice. “He needs medical attention.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it right now.”

I maintain eye contact. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in hostage situations? Show the abductor that you’re a real person, try to find a connection so that they have to think about killing you. I feel like I’m already halfway there because Ivan knows who I am, and he’s being manipulated into seeing this through.

“Can you at least bring some water so that I can keep him hydrated?”

Another glance at Mason’s immobile form on the floor. Then he snaps his fingers, his eyes never leaving mine, and one of the other men comes forward with a two-liter bottle of water.

Ivan slices the ropes binding my wrists with a small knife and hands the bottle over, and I seize the opportunity. “Please help me get my brother out of here.”

His eyes drift back to Mason and settle on his sallow skin. He’s thinking about it, now all I have to do is convince him that it’s the right thing to do.

“Caleb will help you,” I whisper. “He’s on his way here. He knows this is all down to Olivia, and he’ll see that your name isn’t dragged into it.”

I’m bullshitting and I pray that he doesn’t see right through me. I’m also praying that Caleb will listen to me before he does anything drastic. One bullet is all it will take for Ivan to retaliate, and I can’t even think about what will happen next.

“You don’t understand.” Ivan shakes his head and glances towards the doorway as if half-expecting Olivia to appear with her finger still on the trigger of her gun. Whatever he was about to say, he has obviously changed his mind. “Stay out of it.”

“What about my brother?” My voice is laced with panic.

“It will have to wait.”

I’m losing him. I’m not like these people. I don’t know how to use fear and threats to get what I want, and I’m nothing like Olivia who thinks that she can bully a man into marrying her. Maybe that’s all people like Ivan know, but from what Olivia said, it’s obvious that, like anyone else, he has issues that can’t be resolved with money and bullets.

So, I resort to the only thing that I know how to do: being honest.

“Caleb and I are not really married.”

His eyebrows lower over his dark eyes, and I remind myself that he’s the one with the gun, the one responsible for keeping us alive right now.

“Don Dragonetti went to Caleb with a proposal: an alliance in exchange for marrying his daughter. Caleb would never have agreed to marry her but, well, her father is persuasive.” Ivan is still with me so far. “So, he asked me to pretend to be his wife.”

“It isn’t real?” His voice is louder than I would’ve liked, but no one else appears to be listening.

“No.” I swallow. My mouth is dry, and I can feel a cough tickling the back of my throat.

His face breaks into a smile. “Fucking brilliant.” He releases a breath and rubs the back of his neck. “This is going to tip her straight over the fucking edge.”

“She already knows. That’s why I’m here: she thinks that she can buy me out of Caleb’s life. But she can’t.” Deep breath. “BecauseI’m in love with him. It didn’t start off real, but I think Caleb feels the same way about me.”

There’s a long pause. I can see the thought process behind his eyes while he figures out if I’m telling the truth and what Caleb’s next move might be. I hope that he has found someone who means the world to him because then he might just be able to relate to what I’m saying. He might just want to help.

“He promised to keep me safe, and I believe him. He won’t marry Olivia because he doesn’t love her, and what my friend here doesn’t realize is that Kyle Murray is in love with her too.”

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