Maybe it was the wrong call. She didn’t know. She couldn’t think with Dante touching her, with the threat of her family being harmed held over her head. This was what she’d been trained for, to be able to make quick-fire decisions under duress, but the only thing she could focus on was that some consequences were too high a price.
She’d deal with Romeo and smoothing over the situation once she got free. That could be rectified. If someone she loved died, they’d stay dead.
Rose licked her lips, achingly aware of how Dante followed the movement. Apparently he hadn’t been faking that. She could use this, couldn’t she? She’d be a fool not to. She reached up and hesitantly covered his hand with hers. “Okay. You’ll have your way. I’ll come quietly.”
He stared down at her for a long moment. “We’ll see.” Dante straightened, and she got a momentary view of the stars overhead before he slammed the trunk shut.
“Fuck,” Rose breathed. It took everything she had to stay still as the car started moving slowly, crunching along the gravel. She mapped the area in her head. They took the turn slowly that would bring them back around to the front of the church. She pressed her lips together, not sure if she wanted them to get away without a fight or for someone to question what this strange vehicle was doing.
Except that was the problem. With so many parties in play, there were a lot of strange vehicles around the church right now. No single family would be able to account for all of them, especially nondescript black town cars like this one.
Rose blinked up into the inky blackness of the trunk. “That motherfucker threw me in a trunk.” She could barely process that Dante Verducci had the balls to show up in her presence again, let alone to crash her wedding.
The car took a turn and picked up speed. They were on the highway now, but god knew where they’d end up. She felt around for the trunk release latch, only for her fingers to encounter a jagged piece where it’d been broken off. Next, she prodded the area around the taillights. It had been taped or something, so she wouldn’t be able to pop one out.
He’d planned for this.
Of course, he had. It’s not like he caught her wandering down the street in the city and nabbed her in a crime of opportunity. Dante planned this, and he’d thoroughly blocked off her exits.
He won’t kill me, she repeated to herself. Anything else, she could come back from.
Rose shifted, but her dress was too tight to get comfortable. Damn it, she couldn’t believe this had happened. It wasn’t like kidnapping was exactly unheard of in the life, but most of the time, when someone was snatched, they were either ransomed or never heard from again.
Dante wouldn’t ransom her. The Verducci family wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass to her uncle Kirill if they didn’t have plenty of resources. And if he wanted to make an example of her, killing her right before the wedding was about as big an example as she could come up with. No, he had something else in mind.
I’m going to claim what’s mine.
A shiver of unease went through her. Surely he didn’t mean what it seemed like he meant. Dante Verducci was not going to risk it all for her. He lied. He pretended to be someone he wasn’t. And she… Honestly, she did the same. She’d kept herself toned down for him, catering to the image of the woman she’d been the first night they’d met. Their relationship, fake though it was, had been so fucking normal. Not the kind of love story written in the stars. Certainly not the kind that would turn the head of a dangerous man like Dante Verducci.
Surely not enough to go to war over.
War might be the whole point, though. Maybe it had little to do with her and everything to do with her current position. By snatching her before she could marry Romeo, he’d put the Romanov-Capparelli alliance in danger. Surely they were more likely to go to war with the Verduccis though, weren’t they?
She didn’t know.
Romeo was intelligent and manipulative and proud. How he’d react to this situation could go either way. Fuck. She had to get out of here. If there was a war with the Italians, it wouldn’t matter that she’d stopped a single shoot-out at the church, because the casualties would add up quickly. She should have thought of that in the moment, but all she’d been able to focus on was how nearly every single member of her family was in that church.
Her parents. Her sisters. Her aunts and uncles and cousins. All of them.
There was a way through this. She just needed to think.