Page 6 of Wild Card

“You’re not really in a place to argue semantics, sweetheart,” I snap. I’m angry at my uncle, not her, but I don’t need a smart mouth making this harder. Not that I expect anything better of James Carney’s spawn.

She narrows those feline eyes, but winces as she moves so her back is against the wall. I have a ridiculous urge to move the curls plastered to her pale face. It’s perverse how beautiful she looks even as beat up as she is. I have to remember who she is, and what her family did to mine.

“Good morning, Catriona,” Lorenzo says.

She cuts her eyes to him.

“You,” she says. “You’re the piece of shit who grabbed me. I recognize your voice.”

“Observant,” he laughs, slapping me on the back like this is some kind of fucking shared joke. My skin crawls at his touch. “We’re going to ransom her, Gio. Get that money her daddy stole from your parents.”

Her eyes widen slightly at that. I wonder what she knows or doesn’t know about her father’s business.

“This is ridiculous. Let her go, Lorenzo. Jesus.”

I won’t be like her father. No one in that despicable family deserves any kind of pity from me, but I won’t stand for having a woman, any woman, brutalized like this. It’s unacceptable.

“No can do,” he says jovially. His irreverent tone, after all the pain he’s brought to me and now to this young woman, innocent or not, threatens to uncap the explosive rage that heats me from top to bottom. “Ralphie helped me grab her. Freddie knows we’re doing this to repay him, and if we don’t finish the job, he will. She’s my collateral, and he’s keeping an eye on the place to make sure we keep up our end of the bargain.”

Fuck. Me.

“We?” I snarl.

“Carney owes us,” Lorenzo replies bitterly, his humor suddenly leaving him. I notice his eyes are glassy and wonder if he was up drinking all night after grabbing Carney’s daughter. “And she’s going to help us get that money. Better she be our guest than Freddie’s.”

That’s a fucking understatement. I’d heard rumors that Freddie traffics women. I hope it isn’t true, but he would be bad news for the beautiful Catriona.

Freddie is never alone. Never without soldiers. Not someone you could fight directly without some kind of army, some kind of opening. Not unless you wanted you and your entire family, including your fucking pets, to end up dead.

I still can’t believe my idiot uncle thought it was a good idea to be on Freddie’s payroll, and to kidnap this woman in his name.

What the fuck am I going to do?

If I insist she be freed, Freddie will find her and do God knows what to her, and then kill the rest of us for fucking up his deal. If I keep her here, maybe I can keep her safe and we can get that money from her father.

I look at the fiery young woman on the mattress. I don’t owe her any more than I owe any other woman. Maybe less so because of what her family did to mine. But she doesn’t deserve whatever horrible fate would await her at Freddie’s hands.

What happened to her at my uncle’s is bad enough.

“I have your phone,” Lorenzo says, moving over to Catriona. “I’m sure you were afraid you’d never see it again.”

I don’t like him being so close to her, not after how rough he’s treated her. I have to make a decision here. If I let this happen, I’m complicit. But it could pay the debt Carney owes my family, and I don’t just mean the money. That matters far less to me than the lives it represents. My parents, Lorenzo’s, and my grandmother’s and mine now that Freddie’s involved.

I’m so Goddamn heated that my uncle did this, but it’s done. Much like the burned-out bakery, I have to decide what I can do moving forward rather than wallowing in the wreckage of the past.

Maybe if I keep telling myself that, I’ll believe I can move on. That I can fix this too.

Lorenzo sits next to Catriona on the mattress, his weight pushing her end up several inches. She’s got incredible curves, but she’s very slender.

Again I bristle at his proximity to her. Men who hurt women have no right to be near them.

“Look,” he says, shoving the phone in her face. “Your livestream has quite a few views.”

Her eyes slowly drift down to the screen, and then back up at him.

“I disabled the GPS, though. Can’t have folks finding you here, not yet.”

“Didn’t figure you had the brains for that,” she spits. “Congratulations. What do you want?”

---