How did we not see it?
Olly took one look at Raffaelo’s face and knew. “Jesus, no …”
“It’s Westerwick,” Raffaelo spat. “He’s taken her. There are signs of a struggle at the house, and blood … and a message.”
Olly held up his hands. “Now, wait. We don’t know that it’s him. Someone might have taken them both.”
Raffaelo fumed, his terror making him antsy, but Olly was right. Olly picked up his cell and tried to call Knox.
His deputy answered in a happy, sing-song voice. “Hey, boss. God, this storm is really closing in.”
Olly frowned and, looking at Raffaelo, switched the phone to speaker. “Hey, Knox. Where are you?”
“We thought you were with Inca.”
“I am.”
“You went out in the storm?”
Knox laughed and both of the men listening heard the slightly hysterical tone. “Well, I wanted to make an event of it, you know? I could have just killed her at my place, but what fun would that have been? This way, in this storm, I get to take my time, and there’s really nothing you can do about it.”
Raffaelo moaned, and Olly looked appalled. “Knox … what are you talking about?” He needed to hear him say it.
“I’m going to kill Inca, of course.”
Olly felt the breath being pushed out of his lungs. “You? Knox? All this time.”
Knox laughed. “God, you were all so blind. Yes, me, Olly. Yes, I killed those women. Yes, I’m going to kill Inca, and believe me, she will suffer the torments of the damned before she dies.”
“Why?” Raffaelo was now on his knees. “Please, Knox … please, don’t hurt her.”
There was a silence on the phone then, in a mocking voice, Knox said, “I’m sorry you won’t be able to say goodbye before I stab her to death, Winter, but you should never have loved her. She is mine.”
The line went dead and Raffaelo howled. Olly grabbed him, trying to calm him down. “Raff. Raff, come on. We have to think straight, think about where to find her.”
“What’s going on?” Behind them, Tommaso, his face pale, was standing in the doorway. Raffaelo stared at his brother, his eyes bottomless pits of sorrow.
“It’s Inca,” he said, his voice breaking. “She’s been taken.”
Inca woke, dazed, in the trunk of a moving car. Her hands were bound behind her back and, although she tried, she could feel they were bound with plastic ties. What the fuck was going on? Knox? He was the killer? She tried to clear her fuzzy head, her mind whirling.
Knox was the killer. He had killed her mother, her father, and now he was going to kill her. It didn’t make sense … why?
The car stopped. Oh God. The trunk opened and she was hit with a blast of freezing snow. Knox easily pulled her out of the trunk. Inca screamed, but the sound was lost in the blizzard. Knox carried her over to another car, then she saw the other car … and Belinda Clements waiting.
“Hey, bitch,” Belinda said as Knox dumped Inca into the new car’s backseat.
“Go fuck yourself,” Inca growled, then winced as Knox stuck a hypodermic into her arm. Unconsciousness came quickly …
Belinda smiled at Knox. “Do me a favor … make sure you cause that bitch serious pain.”
Knox was stone-faced. “A knife in the gut will do that, I think I can promise. Get inside … we have a phone call to make.”
Belinda smiled as they walked into her house. “I still don’t know why we have to bring Olly into this.”
“Because,” Knox said impatiently. “With the storm, they won’t be able to bring in anymore police and I get to take my time with Inca. Now call your damn boyfriend.”
Panicking, Olly and the Winters made a list of where Knox might take Inca. “He’ll want to take his time,” Olly said, feeling sorry for Raffaelo as he said it. “So it’ll be somewhere that’s not easy to find, or which would be cut off in the snow.”
Olly got a map out and began to circle where he thought they might be when Raffaelo put his finger down on the place he’d first met his love—the Winter Mansion.
Olly shook his head. “It’s too obvious.”
But Tommaso agreed with his brother. “I’ll go with you.”
Raffaelo shook his head. “No, we need to cover as much ground as we can. I’ll go to the mansion.”
They decided Tommaso would go to Tyler’s house and the twins left Olly to search the town. He was about to leave when his cellphone buzzed. Belinda. He made an annoyed sound,
“Belinda, this isn’t a good time. I’m sorry.”
“He’s here.”
“Who’s here?” A flash of irritation took before what she said had sunk in.
“He says he’s going to kill me, Olly. Knox. He says he’ll kill me unless you come.”
Olly’s face hardened. “I don’t believe you, Belinda.” He heard a scuffle and Belinda cried out in pain. Then his stomach turned over as he heard his voice.
“Rosenbaum, I currently have a .22 caliber pistol pressed against your girlfriend’s throat. I will kill her unless you get here in five minutes. Do I need to tell you not bring anyone else, to come alone?”
“No.”
“Do it.” Knox hung up.
Olly took off, out into the storm and down the road. He parked and jumped out of the car, weapon drawn. The door was open. He went in, checking around him, his police training kicking in. He got to the living room and stopped. Knox was standing against the fireplace, smiling at him. His gun sat on a chair, away from his reach. Olly frowned.
“Hello, Chief.”
Olly glanced around him, never taking his weapon off Knox. “Where’s Inca?”
Knox laughed. “That’s just typical. Even now, with your girlfriend in danger, your first thought is of our lovely Inca. Inca isn’t your problem anymore, Olly. Soon, she’ll be no one’s problem.”
“Why did you call me here, Knox? When you could have gotten clean away?”
Knox’s smile dropped. “Loose ends.”
Olly’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s Belinda?”
Knox laughed. “Right behind you.”
And then there was pain, a searing, shocking blow, and Olly’s head felt like it had exploded. Olly dropped to his knees. Another blow, and then there was nothing.
Knox nodded at Belinda as he walked casually over to Olly and relieved him of his gun. Belinda beamed. “Did I do good?”
“You did good.”
Belinda looked down at Olly’s prone body. “Pity. He was a good fuck, if nothing else.”
Knox smiled. “And yet your hatred of Inca Sardee outstripped your need to get laid.”
Belinda laughed. “Just the thought of you gutting that bitch is keeping me warm. So, what now?”
Knox met her gaze. “Like I said … loose ends.” And he shot her in the head.
Tommaso raced along the road to Tyler’s house, the car skidding and swerving on the icy roads. The car almost smashed into the porch steps of the house, such was Tommaso’s hurry and panic, but one quick search of the house proved fruitless. He was back in the car in seconds and racing back towards town. Then he stopped as he reached the main street. Olly’s car was outside another home, one he didn’t recognize. He got out of the car and searched around, calling Olly’s name, the blizzard taking his words and flinging them to the wind.
Then he saw it, glinting, half buried in the falling snow. He went over and picked it up. Inca’s watch. His heart began to beat fast—there were tracks leading away from where the watch was, half hidden now by the snow.
A movement to his side caught his eye and he looked around to see Olly, blood pouring from his head, staggering from the house. Tommaso dashed to help him, moving back into the house, out of the blizzard, kicking the door shut behind them.
Then he saw her. A woman, dead, prone on the floor. “Jesus.” Tommaso stepped over her and checked her pulse, but it was obvious she was dead.
“It’s Belinda. She was working with Knox. He killed her
. I didn’t.”
“If she was working with Knox, then she got what she deserved,” Tommaso spat. He grabbed a towel from the kitchen and pressed it against Olly’s head wound. “What happened?”
Olly gave him the basics. “Knox is insane, man. He’ll kill Inca. I know it.”
Tommaso’s face was pinched and pale as he pulled out his phone to call Raffaelo. “I think Raff was right—if he’s this petty, he’ll want to kill her where it’ll hurt us the most. Our own home.”
The snow was three feet deep by the time Knox pulled Inca from his car and marched her, hands bound behind her back, into the night. She shivered uncontrollably as the freezing air hit her skin. She recognized the garden immediately and she gritted her teeth. Bastard. He would use her murder to add more hurt and pain to Raffaelo and Tommaso.
Motherfucker.
Knox pulled her into the open garden—a vision of pure white snow. The killing ground. He’d fixed up a light so that it shone in a pool on the snow.
“I’m going to stab you to death here, Inca,” he said matter of factly. “I like the look of your blood on the snow.”
“You’re insane,” Inca whispered. “Completely insane.”
Knox smiled, then cuffed her around the face, splitting her lip. “And you’re a dead woman walking, Inca. Your billionaires aren’t going to save you now. Listen …”
All around them, all she could hear was the cold wind, the snow whipping around her. Knox forced her down onto her back. Her skin reacted to the cold snow, and he knelt above her.
“I waited until it was like this, because I don’t want you to die too quickly. I want to savor this, want you to feel the utter agony of what I’m going to do to you. The cold will slow your heart.”
The knife in his hand was a bayonet knife—Tyler’s knife. He saw her look at it and smiled. “Yes, I killed your mother with the same knife. Both of your mothers. And your father. And all those women who looked like you. Practice runs for the big event. Now,” and he placed the tip of the knife into the hollow of her navel, “I’m going to do this real slow.”
And he pushed the blade slowly into her belly. Inca gasped, the pain unimaginable as the steel sliced through her. Knox smiled. “Beautiful … beautiful.”
He pulled the blade out and Inca felt her blood pumping out of the wound onto the snow. She could smell it, rust and blood. Dark spots were at the corner of her eyes and they whirled in her head. Knox slapped her face, hard.
“Don’t lose consciousness, now, baby. I’m not nearly done with you.”
From somewhere, she thought she heard a voice. A shout. A cry in the night. Another stab from the knife. Her systems began to shut down.
Just let me die …
She heard Knox laugh. “You’re not getting off that easy, my darling.” There was needle in her arm, and she was shocked back to full alertness. Knox’s face was very close to hers. “I told you; we’re going to take our time here.”
“Just kill me,” she said. “I’m already dead.” The blessed delirium of unconsciousness had been taken away by whatever he had injected into her and she watched the knife, dripping with her own blood, as he raised it above his head. Suddenly, despite the agony, despite the hopelessness, Inca began to laugh.
That stopped him. “What the fuck are you laughing at, bitch? I’m killing you, for fuck’s sake!’ His face was a picture of rage that she could have the nerve to be laughing at him at this moment.
“I know,” Inca laughed at him, “and I’ll probably die right here. But right now, behind you, Raffaelo Winter is holding the gun that’s going to blow your head off.”
Knox whipped around and got to see Raffaelo’s furious face just for a second before Raffaelo did indeed blow his head off. Knox slumped to the snowy ground, the eye that was still attached to his head open and staring in disbelief.
The adrenaline left Inca then, as Raff dropped to his knees beside her, ripping his coat off and wrapping it around her, and she began to feel the agony burn through her body. He pulled his sweater off and pushed it against her wounds. “You live? You hear me? You hang on!”
Inca nodded, knowing that it was impossible to hope, but in her final moments with this man, the man she loved so very deeply, she didn’t want to be sad. “I love you so much, Raffaelo. So very much.”
Raff’s face was pale, but he had never looked more gloriously handsome to her. “And you are my life, Inca. Please, I know it’s bad, but please try …”
She leaned her head against his chest as he carried her back to his car and laid her in the passenger seat, grabbing a blanket from the front seat and tucking it around her. “Keep talking to me, Inca. Keep putting pressure on your wounds if you can—I have to drive us back through the storm.”
Raffaelo saw she was shivering violently now and knew the cold, and the blood loss meant her body was going into shock.
God, please, no.
He was having a hard enough time seeing her so badly hurt … dying.
No. No way.
Inca, his love, his life, was going to be okay.
Inca touched his face. “Where’s Tommaso?”
Raffaelo hesitated. “He’s dealing with Rosenbaum. Olly’s pretty badly hurt.”
Inca’s eyes opened wide. “What?”
Another pause. “Knox attacked him, knocked him out. We think your old friend Belinda had something to do with it, but it doesn’t matter anymore She’s dead.”
Inca moaned softly and he looked around. “Inca?”
“I’m okay—are you or Tommaso hurt?”
Raffaelo swallowed. “No, we’re fine. Look, we’ve got some people just up here; Rosenbaum gave us a few places he could think of, so we split up. It was just luck that I found you, my darling. I’m so sorry.”
“You saved me.” Her voice was growing weaker.
“Inca, stay with me. Keep talking to me …”
“I love you.”
Raffaelo couldn’t help the tears that poured down his face then. “I love you, Inca Sardee. Don’t you dare fucking die on me.”
“You’re so sexy when you curse in that accent. You wanna pull the car over and we’ll get busy right now?”
He laughed. “Even now, you’re making jokes.” He knew why she was doing it, so that when—no, if, she died—he would at least have a happy memory of their last moments together. “God, I love you so much, but I will fucking kill you if you die.”
He was gratified to hear her chuckle, but he could also hear the pain in her voice. “Baby … I want you to know … it was always you, Raffaelo. Always you…”
That broke him and he began to sob, his whole body shaking uncontrollably. “Oh God, Inca. Please don’t leave me … we’re so close, so very close …”
“I’m trying, baby. I promise. I don’t want to die.” But her voice was getting weaker. The car skidded all over the icy road, the snow battering down, almost completely obscuring his vision. For a second, just a second, he considered pulling the car over and dying with her, but something was stopping him. The promise, the hope for their future.
We have survived so far; we’ll survive now. There is a reason I love her as much as I do …
He reached back and held her hand for a moment. “We’re going to be okay, Inca. I swear we will. And I’m going to marry you.”
Inca laughed softly. “Well, you’d better …”
Hope suddenly soared as he saw the lights of the town in front of him. Raffaelo almost laughed. “Almost there, mio caro, almost safe …”
Inca was silent, and Raffaelo, half-crazed, looked around. Her eyes were closed, the blanket soaked with blood.
“No … no …” The car screeched into town, towards the blue and red lights of the emergency vehicles, braking sharply, and he was out, opening the passenger door, desperate to get to her.
“Raff!” He heard his brother through the storm. Raffaelo gathered Inca up in his arms and trudged through the snow towards the emergency vehicles. Hot tears were flooding d
own his cheeks. He saw Tommaso’s expression when he saw her. Fear. Grief.
Then they were surrounded by paramedics and police and everything was a whirl.
Inca opened her eyes and drew in a long, deep lungful of cool fresh air. Alive. There was pain, yes, but nothing she couldn’t handle. Because, there, right in front of her, Raffaelo Winter saw her eyes had opened and his smile was better than any morphine.
Three months, four days, six hours. That’s how long they had been back in Italy. Back, safe, alive …
Inca stroked her fiancé’s face, marveling at his glorious beauty, the way he looked at her, the feel of his arms around her body. They sat in their bed, in their new villa in Naples, across the bay from Sorrento. They’d decided, like Tommaso in Venice, like Olly in Portland, on a new life, a new home.
It was summer, and the evening was sultry. They had dinner in a small trattoria in the city, then walked back up the hill to their home. As they walked into the villa, Inca had pulled her little white dress over her head, looking back over her shoulder at a grinning Raff. She lost her panties and her bra on the way to their bedroom; Raff lost his shirt and pants …
Now they held each other, enjoying the feeling of skin on skin. Nothing was hurried, nothing was desperate. They knew they had forever. Inca glanced down at his cock, thick, long, and rigid against her belly, and smiled, lying back and spreading her legs so he could plunge into her. They fucked slowly, leisurely, and came, shuddering and vibrating, kissing each other and murmuring their love.
Outside, the sun slid beneath the horizon and lit up the sky with fire as the lovers, catching their breath, began all over again …
The End
Winter Extended Epilogue
After the death of his ex-girlfriend, Perdita, in a car accident, Tommaso discovers he is the father of her young son. He agrees to take the youngster on, but finds himself ill-prepared for fatherhood.
Not helping matters is the fact that he can’t get British singing superstar, Bo Kennedy, off his mind. Since their flirtatious meeting at his brother Raffaelo’s wedding, Tommaso and Bo have been thinking about each other, but it takes Tommaso’s sister-in-law, Inca to match-make for them.
Dr. Orgasm (A Holiday Romance Collection Book 2) Page 38
