Page 103 of Lies like Rubies, Part Two (Savage Jewels)

“Sergio brought him on to help with the girls.”

Declan strode up to her, his eyes snapping his fury. There was more to his story than the normal American aversion to trafficking in women. “Unlock your phone.”

Laura shook her head. “If I give up Cosimo, I’m dead.”

Sofia shook her head, pretending sadness. The tight set of her shoulders and the fist that clenched at her side gave her away. “Laura, you’re dead anyway. I intend to leave a swath of bodies a mile wide tonight, then I’ll walk across the stage for my graduation, and then keep burning the city down until I have my daughter and mother back.”

Laura continued to shake her head. Sofia looked over her shoulder at Declan, her eyes harder than I’d ever seen them before. “You captured a second soldier, right?”

He nodded cautiously.

“Kill her and get the other one in here. We don’t have time to dick around tonight.” Sofia’s voice was cold and furious as she denounced the woman and turned her back to leave.

“No, wait!” Laura cried out as Declan calmly held a silenced gun to her head. “I’ll unlock my phone.”

Sofia whipped around to face our captive. “Not good enough. Where is Comiso likely to be right now?”

Laura began rattling off his favorite haunts, the names of his girlfriends, where she thought his apartment might be—the information was endless, and Nico had quietly gotten out his phone to record it. Smart man.

When she finally fell silent, Sofia nodded at Declan, who put a bullet through the woman’s skull.

Blood splattered over Sofia’s arms. “Bring in the next one,” she snapped.

While Declan untied the body and hauled it into the freezer, Nico stalked over to Sofia, pulling her face to his, stroking his fingers over her cheeks, murmuring quiet words in her ears. Her eyes softened, and she sunk into his embrace, resting her face against his chest as she closed her eyes.

Sofia tried to pull away. Instead, all three of us surrounded her.

“You okay, kitten?” I asked her.

She laughed, the sound brittle, before shoving her vulnerability behind a hard mask. “No. But we’re a step closer to finding my kid than we were fifteen minutes ago.”

“I’m going to leave this one with you,” Declan said, as he and one of his soldiers dragged a second prisoner into the interrogation room, “while I track down the information the last one shared with us.”

At his words, the prisoner began to struggle. “I don’t know shit!” he pleaded.

“You don’t know shit about what?”

“Shit!” he yelled.

Sofia frowned, contempt etched into the hard lines of her face. “I don’t know you. How long have you worked for the Costas?”

He spat in her face. “Who the fuck are you, bitch?”

My kitten—my tiny, furious tiger—spun a knife around in her palm. I wondered where she’d picked up that pretty trick, letting that thought distract me from the rage that threatened to end this interrogation before it even began. Nobody talked to my kitten like that.

“Bitch, don’t threaten me. Do you know who I am?” the man asked, struggling against the duct tape that held him to the metal chair. The tension in my body was mirrored in Lorenzo’s, and even our easy going doctor, whose fists clenched at his sides as he took a murderous step toward our captive.

Sofia smiled at him and tilted her head as she took one of Lorenzo’s guns in her hand and wrapped her fingers around it. “Do you know who I am?” she answered.

“Someone who’s gonna get my cock shoved down her throat the minute I get out of here.”

She huffed a laugh. “My name is Sofia Russo.”

The man’s eyes widened for a brief instant before he continued his bravado. “The town slut, then.”

So he did know who she was.

“Bitch, you don’t deserve the kid you have, especially not when you’re spreading your legs for these three assholes.”

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