“Don’t shoot,” she said. “I surrender. Don’t shoot.”
“Rachel!”
I was too stunned to move, but I watched her walk towards the men like a lamb walking towards slaughter. She had no idea what she was doing. No idea what kind of danger she would be in once Tony got his hands on her. I didn’t even feel confident I understood the full extent of Tony’s evil.
The men had moved their way around the lake and were close enough now that I recognized one of them as Tony’s father’s right-hand man. He only came out for important missions, and I could hardly believe my eyes. How were Rachel and I a matter of such importance?
As Rachel walked towards them, they lowered their weapons, and I regained control of my body. I ran after Rachel and grabbed her arm, yanking her back.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I hissed, angrier than I could ever remember being.
Rachel pulled her arm back. “I’m saving you, you idiot.”
“How am I the idiot in this situation? You’re turning yourself over to the mob.”
She turned to face me, her eyes narrowed. I could hardly believe she was the same scared woman I’d been staring at a moment before because now, she looked furious. “You’re an idiot because you thought for even a second I would run into the trees and leave you here on this shore to die. You are so incredibly stupid.”
The men were getting closer, and I knew our window of opportunity to escape was closing. If we were going to try, we had to try now. I reached for her arm again, but Rachel moved out of my reach.
“Rachel, come on,” I whispered. “Don’t do this. Please. Come with me.”
She smiled. “You really are getting good at begging.”
Then, before I could say another word, she threw herself at me. Her arms were around my neck, fingers tangled in my hair, and her lips were pressed to mine.
I wanted to resist and pull her off of me, but how could I? How could I do anything other than kiss her back with everything I had in an effort to show her how much she meant to me? If we were both going to go out, this seemed like an okay way to go.
“Break it up, love birds,” one of the men said, his voice a mixture of disgust and amusement.
Rachel only kissed me harder, crushing her body to mine as if she wanted to meld into one person. I could hear footsteps crunching across the sand, but I couldn’t stop. My hand trailed up her spine and tugged on the end of her hair. I twisted the ends between my fingers, wondering if it would be for the last time. I thought about how cruel it was that I’d known her for such a short time. That she was going to be ripped away from me after it had taken me so long to find her. I cupped her face in my hands and pulled away until our noses were touching, and I was looking into her clear blue eyes.
“You are incredible,” I whispered. “Just incredible.”
She smiled and bit her lower lip. “I don’t regret anything, you know? Not a thing.”
Then, the men’s hands wrapped around her arms, and she was pulled away.
I knew it was going to happen, but that didn’t stop me from fighting. I ran after her, raining blows and curses down on the man leading her away. He flinched away, but then the three other men tackled me, throwing me face-first into the sand while I was still screaming. Sand coated my tongue and the last thing I remembered was yelling Rachel’s name into the earth, fighting to stand up and find her.
I woke up in the back of an SUV with ropes around my ankles. The first thing I thought was how ironic it was that I’d been kidnapped. The next thing I thought was that I had to find Rachel. I tried to open my mouth, but I had a cloth over my lips and duct tape around that. Apparently, I’d given them reason to believe I needed to be thoroughly gagged.
Unable to speak, I began thrashing around, kicking my bound feet against the side of the car.
“Sounds like lover boy is awake,” a deep voice said from the front of the car. “Should we knock him out again?”
I felt the car shift as someone adjusted in their seat. Suddenly, there was a face hovering over me. It belonged to a young kid, no older than twenty. His facial hair was patchy and he had chubby cheeks, but still, his neck was thick, and his shoulders were broad.
“Calm down, dude. Your girl is fine.”
Liar. They were all liars. I lashed out at him with my hands, but realized those were tied, too. Still, he reared back, eyes wide.
“I said she’s fine,” the kid repeated. “We aren’t here to hurt her. Or you. So long as you stop acting crazy.”
“Just knock him out again,” another voice in the car said. “We still have a couple of hours to go, and I don’t want to listen to him freaking out the whole time.”
“Don’t hurt him.” The voice was female and it only took me a second to realize it was Rachel. Rather than calm me down, hearing her so close to me, yet knowing I was unable to do anything to help her made me crazy. I began thrashing back and forth, straining against my bindings. I could feel the skin around my wrists and ankles being rubbed raw, but that pain was nothing compared to the guilt clawing at my insides like a caged animal.
“Be quiet,” someone said, talking to Rachel. “You’re making it worse.”
“Untie him. He’ll calm down,” Rachel said. She was fighting for me, but she was entirely wrong; if they untied me, I’d kill them all.
“If we untie him, he’ll kill us.”
Well, at least one of the Gambino’s enforcers wasn’t a complete bumbling buffoon.
“Would someone take care of him? He’s shaking the car, and I’m already feeling carsick,” one of the voices said. I’d been listening to the chatter in the car, but I was also still rearing up and kicking the seats.
“Fine, I’ll knock him out again. This is ridiculous.” The young kid leaned over the seat with a pistol in his hand, and I narrowed my eyes at him.
But it didn’t matter. There was a distant thudding sound, and then everything went dark.
Chapter 18
Colton
The next time I opened my eyes, I was looking up at the sky with gravel beneath me, and for a second, I thought I’d dreamed everything. The men showing up on the beach and capturing Rachel and tying me up had all been a nightmare. We had just fallen asleep on the beach after having sex, and I was just waking up. I tried to reach over to feel Rachel, to assure myself she was next to me and perfectly fine. Except, I couldn’t move my arm.
I looked down at it and my heart sank into my chest. My hands were tied together. So were my feet. And the gravel I was laying on was the gravel parking lot behind one of the Gambino’s warehouses. I didn’t see Rachel anywhere.
“If I untie your feet, can I trust you not to kick me in the face?”
I turned my head and saw the same young kid who had pistol-whipped me earlier sitting on the lip of the SUV’s trunk, presumably waiting for me to wake up.
“No promises,” I mumbled, realizing they had taken off my gag.
“Your girl is fine,” he said, anticipating my next question. “She’s inside, being watched by a few of the guys until everyone gets here.”
“Everyone?”
He nodded. “Boss wants everyone here.”
Jesus, if Tony was calling everyone in for this, that meant he planned to make an example of me. He wanted to show everyone how tough he was. That did not bode well for me or Rachel.
I sighed. “I won’t kick you. I promise.”
There was no point anymore. I had no idea where Rachel was, so even if I could kick the young kid in the face and escape, I’d still have to go into the building to find her, where I would run into every enforcer the Gambinos employed. I was in a serious pickle, and I didn’t see an easy way out. So, I figured I might as well try and cooperate as much as possible to make things better for myself and—hopefully—Rachel, too.
The kid untied my feet and then grabbed me by the arms to help pull me to my feet. I would have refused his help, but I still felt unsteady from the couple of blows I’d taken to th
e head, and falling down was a lot more embarrassing than accepting help from my captor.
He grabbed my arm and led me across the parking lot and through the vaguely familiar hallways of the warehouse. I’d been there a few times, but I’d never paid too much attention to the layout. Now, I tried to remember everything in case I needed to make a quick escape with Rachel.
Finally, the kid pushed open a door and stepped into a large, concrete room. Only half of the fluorescents overhead were turned on, so the edges of the room were sunk into deep shadow. But right in the middle of the room—standing with her arms crossed tightly over her chest and her back ramrod straight—was Rachel. As soon as she saw me, she sagged forward. I could tell by the puffiness under her eyes that she had been crying. I jerked my arm out of the kid’s grip, and to his benefit, he let me go.
Rachel wrapped her arms around my shoulders, and I leaned into her as much as I could since my wrists were still bound.
“Are you okay?” I whispered, stepping back to look at her. “Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head. “No, I’ve just been worried about you. They wouldn’t let me see you when we first got here, and I…” her voice broke and she shook her head. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”
I nuzzled my forehead against her cheek. “I’m here now. It’s okay.”
Just then, figures began stepping out of the shadows and into the circle of light. I spun in a circle and realized we were surrounded. I recognized some of the faces, but I didn’t know many names. Except for one.
Standing in the middle of the back wall was a face I knew very well. A man everyone in the mob recognized. It was Benny Gambino, Tony’s father.
I blinked a few times, trying to understand why he was here. Tony had taken the lead on this mission, and he’d even gone as far as to tell me not to mention it to anyone else, his father included. So, what was Benny doing here? And why was the rest of the mob here, too?
I stepped close to Rachel and whispered in her ear. “The boss is here.”
“Tony?” she asked, turning to scan the crowd.
“No, his dad.”
“Oh,” she said, confused. Then, she picked up on my panic. “Oh.”
I nodded. “This doesn’t look good, Rach.”
Her reply came in the form of a kiss. Rachel grabbed my neck and kissed me until I forgot we were being watched by a room full of mobsters. Until I forgot about anything other than the feeling of her lips on mine, of her hands on my skin, of her warmth on my body.
“I like when you call me Rach,” she said as she pulled away, the corner of her mouth lifting up into a smile.
Suddenly, there was a loud clap that echoed through the room. Rachel turned around and pressed her back into my chest.
I looked up and saw Benny walking forward. “Come on in here, you two. Don’t be scared.”
“What is this, Benny?” I asked.
He smiled and turned to the enforcers behind him. “Did you hear that, boys? He called me Benny. I guess professionalism has gone right out the window.”
“Professionalism went out the window when you sent four idiots to tear up a diner and try to kidnap us. Were those guys seriously the best you could find?”
Benny’s mouth tightened. “We’ll get to that soon.”
“Why not now? I’m anxious to find out why you were so eager to get us back here.”
“We’re waiting for Tony.” The way Benny said his son’s name caught my attention. He didn’t sound like the leader of the mob. He sounded like a disappointed father.
“What’s going on? It’s the middle of the night. What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until morning?”
Benny held up a finger to quiet me, and just as he did, the back door opened. I turned to see Tony strolling through the door.
“Did the party start without me?” he asked, smiling at everyone standing around in the circle. Tony always did like showing up fashionably late, a trait his father hated. “What’s all this about? I left a party for this meeting, so it better be good.”
Tony finally looked ahead to where his father was standing, but then, his eyes went slightly to the left, where Rachel and I were. His eyes landed on Rachel and his mouth fell open.
Then, he looked at me, his eyebrows pulled together in rage. “What did you do? I’ll kill you, you son of a—”
Benny cleared his throat behind me. “He didn’t do anything, Tony. You did this.”
Tony looked at his dad. “You don’t have any idea what’s happening here.”
“That makes two of us,” I said, looking from father to son. Now that Tony was here, Benny didn’t seem bothered with us at all.
“Untie him,” Benny said, gesturing to someone behind me.
A few seconds later, I felt hands messing with the ropes around my wrists and then they fell away. I circled my hands around to ease the tenderness in my joints and then grabbed onto Rachel, pulling her against my side. She nestled her head into the crook of my shoulder and hugged my waist.
“I understand what’s happening perfectly,” Benny said, stepping forward, his hands crossed behind his back.
His shoes clacked ominously against the concrete floor, echoing up into the metal ceiling. Even Tony dropped all of his usual bravado and stood still. The closer his father got to him, the more he looked like he was going to crap in his pants. It was a beautiful sight; I just wished I could understand why.
Tony looked over at us again. He was having a hard time taking his eyes away from Rachel, and I knew it was because he thought she was Jenna. Rachel felt his eyes on her, too, and made a point to look in the opposite direction, looking away from the drama altogether and preferring to stare at me.
Benny crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back on his heels. “You, my son, used my employees and my money to take care of a personal errand.”
“That’s not—”
Benny held up a hand and silenced his son immediately. “You decided to go after your college girlfriend because you were jealous of her fiancé. I mean, Tony, come on. I thought you’d moved on from this kind of shit. Sure, you were always pugnacious as a kid, but I thought giving you more responsibility in the family and business would mature you, make you a man. But standing before me right now, I see a disobedient boy.”
Tony’s face was turning a deep shade of red. His lips were smashed together, and his eyes were narrowed. He didn’t look so pugnacious now.
“And the men you sent after the man you hired to kidnap your ex-girlfriend,” Benny said, pointing to me. “They have all been arrested. Do you trust those men to keep their mouths shut? Because I sure as hell don’t. They will all make plea deals so fast it’ll make your head spin. You set the police on our tails because of your ego.”
Rachel leaned into me. “None of this is about us.”
“I know,” I whispered back. “Maybe if we’re quiet, they’ll forget we’re here, and we can just go home.”
It was a joke—and a dark one at that—but the longer Benny and Tony talked, the more I began to realize that truly, no one seemed to be bothered with me. The only thing I could possibly be blamed for was the four goons who were now arrested, but that was out of necessity. Benny wouldn’t expect me to go down without a fight, and I wasn’t the one who called the police, so he couldn’t fault me there either.
“Honestly,” Benny said, “I think you have Colton Long to thank for things not being much worse than they are.”
I perked up at the sound of my name.
Benny continued. “Had he kidnapped the girl you sent him after, it could have brought our entire operation down.”
“It was one woman,” Tony argued, as if it was no big deal.
“One woman with a rich family and a fiancé who knows how obsessed you’ve been with Jenna the past few years,” Benny said. “The police would have been beating down your door within the day. Especially since the kidnapper you selected had no business being involved in an operation like
this.”
“He completed the mission, didn’t he?” Tony asked, gesturing to Rachel, but not looking at her. If being dumped by Jenna had been bad for Tony, being berated by his father in front of a woman he believed to be Jenna had to be excruciatingly painful.
“No, I didn’t,” I said, shaking my head and pulling Rachel close to kiss her forehead.
Tony growled and made like he was going to lunge at me, but two of his cousins stepped forward and held him back.
“That isn’t Jenna Kendrick,” Benny said. “Your kidnapper grabbed the wrong woman. Your mission was a complete and utter failure.”
Tony’s face wrinkled in confusion as he stepped closer to Rachel. I moved in front of Tony, not wanting him anywhere near her. I could practically see smoke coming out of his ears as he tried to work out how I could have failed to find Jenna yet be standing with someone who looked so remarkably like her. However, I saw the change on his face once he got close enough to notice the subtle differences.
“How the—? Are you—? When—?” Tony stammered, shaking his head.
I didn’t feel like we owed him any explanation. Plus, I had no intention of telling Tony anything about Rachel. Not even her name.
I turned to Benny. “So, are we free to go or what?”
The boss rolled his eyes, clearly not appreciating my lack of respect, but I wasn’t in a very respectful mood. These people had tied me up and thrown me in a trunk, for God’s sake.
“Yes, Colton. You two are free to go. As long as you stay quiet, there will be no further need for any connection between you and my family.”
“Is that a promise?” I asked, grabbing Rachel’s hand, already turning her towards the door.
“No, wait,” Tony said, moving towards us.
I yanked Rachel behind me, still holding her hand, and pointed at Tony. “Don’t you dare come near either of us.”
Tony opened his mouth to argue, but his father cleared his throat. Tony glared at me, but like a reluctantly obedient child, he fell back and crossed his arms over his chest, letting us pass.
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