Page 26 of Brutal Legacy

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, her eyes searching for mine behind my dark shades.

“Wherever I want,” I said simply. Here wasn’t the place or time to explain to her how fucked she was.

“What?! You can’t!” she exclaimed in a squeaky voice.

“And who is going to stop me?” I asked, with an edge of arrogance to my tone that I knew would piss her off. To cement my control, I pressed the end of the spoon into her side, hidden from view.

She stiffened, clearly believing that I had a gun pressed against her. I fucking wish I did. Everything would go more smoothly once I had a proper weapon in my hand.

“You can’t just steal a person,” she stuttered as I put her in front of me and started forward.

“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” I murmured to her.

She gasped and squirmed as I pushed her through the side door and into a short hallway, heading for the emergency exit at the end. Alarms had gone off, and there was no one in sight.

Then Georgia stopped and stomped her foot on top of mine, as hard as she could. It would be laughable if I were the kind of man partial to a good laugh. Instead, her bravery and stubbornness only pissed me off. I whirled her against the wall, pressing the hilt of the spoon harder into her side. I put my other hand at the base of her neck and squeezed slightly.

“Let’s be clear. If I say jump, you say how high. I say kneel… you hit the fucking deck, got it?”

“Or?” she panted, her dark eyes wild with fear, her pulse thundering under my fingers.

“Or – you’ll die,” I told her with perfect confidence. Sure, I wouldn’t be the one to kill her, but I was pretty sure the Ravellis would.

She blinked at me, and a tear dashed down one cheek. It nearly transfixed me for a second. While our past had hardened me into an empty, frozen shell of a man, she still burned as brightly as ever. Her emotions were so potent, I wanted to pull back before she infected me with all that feeling.

Messy and uncontrollable. Chaos bottled in one volatile package.

“Got it?” I pulled myself back to the very real threat of the cops busting in at any second.

I pressed her pulse point a little harder when she failed to respond.

“Got it,” she spat at me. Defiance, even now?

Mytopolinahadn’t changed. Not at all.

“Good, because I won’t repeat myself. Now, move.”

9

GEORGIA

The madman holding me tightly against him led me down the alleyway behind the hotel and out to the street. We were around the corner from the entrance. People passed us on the street, looking curiously at the building, with its shrieking alarms and large crowd of upset patrons standing outside on the sidewalk. They’d evacuated, it seemed, every room but the restaurant.

Cop cars screamed toward us, and hope fluttered in my chest. I stumbled for a second, seriously considering ripping myself out of my captor’s hold and making a run for the road. I could throw myself in front of one of the cop cars and point out the gunman.

“Don’t even think about it.” His deep, low voice was a growl in my ear.

He prodded me with the gun and herded me toward the wall of a nearby building.

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” I muttered hopelessly as he pressed me against the building, adopting the pose of a couplewrapped up in each other and oblivious to the commotion down the street.

“Sure you weren’t.”

His tone was so overly confident, something in me snapped, and I spoke without thinking.

“Don’t pretend like you know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

He stared down. I wished I could see his eyes. What kind of eyes went with a man like this? A man who would shoot up a room and take a woman hostage?

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