Page 161 of Handsome Devil
My eyes were closed, and my head was dizzy, but I wasn’t passed out. Someone grabbed my feet. Then a second pair of hands scooped me by the wrists. They dragged my back over the pavement on their way to the vehicle purposely, leaving painful welts of raw skin.
They tossed me into a waiting van. Tiernan’s face peered down at me, wearing his victorious expression like a crown of vipers. I watched him through half-closed eyes, still feigning unconsciousness.
“If it isn’t Tatum Blackthorn’s one and only weakness, in the flesh,” he rasped. “Oh, what lovely plans I’ve waiting for you.”
Some people smashed glass ceilings.
Ismashed a thirty-five-hundred-year-old, eighty-million-dollar vase I’d bought at an auction.
“Kidnapped her!” I grabbed the edge of my office desk and flipped it over. That shit was at least two hundred pounds of solid wood. “He fucking managed tokidnapher. I’m impressed with your incompetence. I’ve met broken condoms with better security.”
Achilles, Luca, and Enzo stood in my office, solemnly taking the verbal berating. As soon as the three of them walked in together, I knew things were dire. It had been forty minutes since they gave me the rundown of where we stood, and I still wasn’t over their bullshit service.
“It was a miscalculation on our part.” Luca’s jaw ticked. “But as I said, we have a plan and collateral.”
“He gave me hisword.” I screamed so hard my throat gave out.
“Dude, his word is worth jack shit.” Enzo flicked his knife open, squeezing it in his palm until blood oozed out. “He’s got no honor. No code of conduct. He’s a loose cannon.”
“Well, no fucking shit.” I tore my jacket apart, feeling too hot to breathe all of a sudden. I stalked out of my office.
The brothers followed me stoically through my apartment. I was going to execute their so-called plan and inflict maximum pain on everyone involved.
“Filippo proved to be fucking useless,” I spat out, ripping my coat from the hanger in the mudroom and putting it on.
“Tiernan killed him.” Achilles’s throat worked, and I thought I saw a flash of something that wasn’t undiluted crazy going through his face. “Shot him in the back of the head.”
I yanked the entrance door open and stormed to the elevator bank. Panic ran through my veins. Callaghan was obviously insane and capable of anything. Gia was a small, unarmed woman, but that didn’t mean he’d spare her. And she had a very smart mouth, something I usually worshipped but that, in this situation, gave me a lot of anxiety. She’d sass back even with a gun to her head.
Especiallywith a gun to her head.
“I’m going to kill him,” Luca muttered.
“Get in line, motherfucker,” Enzo protested. “You dragged my ass from Crimson Key to take care of this hiccup. The least I can do is—”
“He killed Filippo,” Achilles cut both of them off savagely. “I’ll be the one killing him, and I’ll be doing it very slowly, over the course of a fucking week. Death will be an unattainable fantasy when I get my hands on him.”
“No one is touching a hair on his head until I have my wife back, safe and sound,” I informed them. “This is no longer a pissing contest. I—”
My phone buzzed in my hand. I glowered at it. It was Callaghan. I knew, because I had the foresight to save his number in my contacts last time he called, when Nash Moore was in my trunk.
Oh, how the tables had turned. I slid a finger across the screen and put him on speaker as we all stepped into the elevator.
“Blackthorn,” Tiernan greeted merrily. “What’s the craic?”
I wanted to lash out at him. To threaten and yell and beg and bargain. But doing so would put Gia in even more danger. Pretending to have my shit together was crucial if I wanted to get her back.
By the looks Luca, Achilles, and Enzo gave me, they too were worried I’d go down on my knees and start bawling like a little bitch.
“Been better, been worse,” I said calmly. “Yourself?”
“Grand. I have a visitor. Would you like to say hello?”
I closed my eyes, swallowing down the scream wedged in my throat. I had never felt so out of control. I started tapping my numbers, not giving a fuck about Dr. Patel or the Ferrantes.
Two, six, two.
Two six, two.
