Page 88 of Stolen Mafia Vows
They’re holding captive the child that will unite two solid Irish mobs from either side of the Atlantic. They would be foolish not to want me on their side; all I have to do is prove it to them. Olivia was right when she said that I was leverage, but she assumed that they were the ones with all the power.
Oh, how I’m going to enjoy proving her wrong.
The doctor warned me to keep my leg elevated, but the healing process will have to wait. I’m too busy watching Olivia and Ilya drag each other down without either of them realizing.
While Ilya is swimming, he spends hours churning the water back and forth, length after length, his stroke never weakening, I wander back inside to find Olivia. I’m not sure what her role is within this organization apart from looking relentlessly stunning and topping up her tan, but I sense an aura of growing impatience around her. It oozes from her pores, preceding her arrival along with her heady perfume.
Ilya feels it too. He subconsciously backs away from her whenever she gets too close or finds an excuse to leave the house.
I guess an organized crime racket can be run from the comfort of home, but I get the distinct impression that Olivia and Ilya are nothing like my brothers. Rather than working hard, they want to steal the rewards of someone else’s efforts, and that doesn’t sit right with me. Even if those rewards are earned by illegal activities.
I find Olivia sweeping down the grand staircase in the middle of the house like Cinderella arriving at the ball. She is wearing a floor-length emerald-green dress that clings to her body, revealing every curve and the lack of underwear, and shimmers in the daylight streaming through the windows. The front of the dress has a neat round neckline, but when she descends the stairs and performs a twirl in front of me, I see that the back plunges almost down to her butt cheeks.
“What do you think?” she asks like she already knows how incredible she looks.
“The dress is beautiful.” I refuse to boost her already inflated ego. “Are you going somewhere special?”
She watches me then with her head tilted to one side like I just asked her to solve a quadratic equation. She arches a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Somewhere very special. Have you seen Ilya?”
I suppress the urge to remind her that I’m the captive here and disregard the question. “Will my family be there?”
Her features rearrange themselves into an expression that can’t be misconstrued as friendly. “They’ll all be there.” Her lips twitch into an almost-smile. “Because while you were trying to get yourself eaten alive by a pack of dogs with titanium fangs, your parents and brothers have been living their best life.”
It hurts. And she knows it. Olivia Dragonetti is one of those people who gets their kicks out of seeing others in pain, but I keep my expression neutral, and my fists clenched behind my back.
“Will Caleb be there?”
Her eyelids flicker so briefly I almost miss it. “Yes.” She turns her back to me so that I can admire her exposed curves and the side of her breast through the sheer material. “His wife won’t be there, clinging to his arm like a frightened little sparrow.” Her tone alters when she mentions Victoria, the brittle edge of spite unmistakable.
When Caleb first met Victoria, she pretended to be his wife so that he could extricate himself from an awkward situation, and then they fell in love anyway. Victoria is beautiful, generous, compassionate and …
A memory flashes into my mind. A white-haired man in my family home… Victoria apologizing to Caleb for revealing their secret to me… The panic in her voice when she said that she’d ruined everything.
The man’s name:Dragonetti.
I stare at Olivia. I can’t imagine her and Caleb together; she is everything that Victoria isn’t, and this dress is the perfect example. Victoria would never wear something to impress my brother because she is comfortable in their relationship.
“Does Caleb know that you’ll be there?”
“It’s our little secret.” She turns back around to face me and bops me on the nose with her fingertip. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to tell him that you’re safe when I speak to him.”
“What do you want from him, Olivia?”
She composes her features into the kind of expression she might reserve for an introduction to the Princess of Wales, but when she speaks, her tone is filled with venom. “I want to watch him squirm when I destroy him the way he destroyed me.”
I maintain eye contact. “You don’t look destroyed to me.”
“What do you know?” Her voice splits the air inside the otherwise silent house. “I lost everything because of Caleb Murray.”
“But you have Ilya now.”
Her eyes turn dark. “Stay out of it, Emily. With a bit of luck, this will all be over in a few days, and I’ll never have to listen to your whining voice again.”
A few days?My heart does a forward roll at the thought of getting out of here.
But then reality kicks straight back in, and I realize that I’m running out of time. If I’m going to be set free before my family or my husband comes for me, I must act quickly.Because if they find me here, they’ll expect me to return to their version of my normal, and I can never go back to all the lies and the secrecy and the mistrust.
“What about Eoghan?” The question slips out before I even realize I need to know the answer.
