Page 19 of Scars He Gave Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 2)

There is, thank the heavens, and I trade the jacket for a T-shirt, then hurry to the bed to yank on the pants. But there’s a dead man sprawled on the floor, along with Alvin, who didn’t waste a single second selling me out.

I’m standing in the center of the bed and am still yanking on my jeans when Tomas comes out of the bathroom, using a hotel towel to wipe the blood from his hands.

“What the hell are you doing up there?”

“Reverse striptease.” Apparently, my impulse for sarcasm is not affected by—well, whatever you’d call all of this.

“Up there?”

I shrug because I don’t have words to explain that part. In the moment, getting up on the bed made sense. It gave me a vantage point and momentum if I had to jump on someone. Though I do suppose it looks a little silly now.

He holds out his hand as if I need help, but I ignore him as I step down. I don’t need anything from him. Not now, not ever.

“How did you end up in this room?”

“I’m not really sure. They had a cancellation? A mix-up? I don’t know. When we checked in this morning, I used the bridal room to get ready, but they brought Alvin and the guys here. And our luggage. Said it was an upgrade since we had the wedding downstairs.”

I have a million little things bubbling up inside me—Alvin’s kinky perversions that he never mentioned in two years of dating, the fact that two men are lying dead in the room, and Tomas.

But only one of those things is looking at me like this is all somehow my fault.

“When you checked in this morning, were you together?” He nods to Alvin, still bleeding on the floor but kind of crawling toward the door.

“No. It was our wedding day. We couldn’t see each other …”

He doesn’t even try to hide his eye roll. Asshole. “Did they type your name into the computer?”

While these questions all seem very purposeful, the heart flutters, stomach cramps, and oncoming headache mean I am one or two minutes from a full-on panic attack. I don’t have time for all this.

“Probably. They had to give me a new key card.”

“Then you’re in danger.”

“No shit.” Tommy and what he’s become are my most pressing dangers.

“Until I know why the rooms were changed and what these guys were after, you have to come with me.”

He grabs my bicep in a death grip to start dragging me out, but I jerk away, then use as much weight as I can shift to stomp on his foot hard.

Tomas doesn’t even blink. He waits a minute before he looks down at me. “Finished?”

“Fuck you.” He’s not the boy I remember or the man I once hoped to grow old with. He’s a murderer. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

His blue eyes go stormy and gray, dark and angry. “You’re coming with me.” And to emphasize his power, he drags me through to the seating area then shoves me against a wall when I start to go slack. “These men will torture you and rape you and do God knows what else just because you were unlucky enough to end up in a room that was supposed to be theirs.”

I scoff, despite the fear that’s bubbling up inside of me. “So, my life lesson for the day is go with the murderer I know because the ones I don’t know might torture me before they kill me?”

He glowers without another word and pulls me toward the exit.

But I’m not done. “Who’s Gio and why is his cash hidden here?”

That stops him. He lets go of my arm and sighs. Calmly, as if he hasn’t just killed two men, injured another, and is not on the verge of kidnapping me on my wedding night, he glances down. “What did you say now?”

“One of the goons said,‘The cash was here. Presidential suite #1409.’ I don’t know much about guns or murder, but I know this is the Presidential suite, room number 1409.”

He considers me with a side-eye then hauls me back through to the bathroom. He checks the toilet tank, the cabinets, the towels, and ignores the framed art that no reasonable designer would ever hang in a bathroom unless it was to hide something.

I guess it’s about thirty steps through the bedroom and the other room to get out of here, and I won’t be able to slow Tomas down because there’s a big dead Italian man lying in the way of closing this door, so I’m going to have to distract him.

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