Taken For A Debt: A Mafia Romance (The Taken Duet 1)

“It’s nothing,” I spoke up as his examination grew uncomfortably long. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“We will have to be more careful with you in future,” said Devin. “Perhaps if I treat you like a princess, you will behave a little more like a proper lady.”

He slipped the shoe back on my foot and fed the long ankle strap through the buckle, his eyes staying on mine the whole time. “If this is how you’re going to act about the whole business, it’s a good thing these are the shoes I selected.”

I maintained the stare, giving him no material to work with, but of course he didn’t really need it.

“Because maybe you’re right and I am at least a little open to the whips-and-chains lifestyle… but I rather relish the idea of you trying to use them as weapons against me too.”

Of course, the end of this was that I was so turned around I just hobbled out the door with him and got in the car he had waiting. The funny thing was, he seemed preoccupied too, staring off into space with his expression shifting like he was engrossed in a discussion with himself… or maybe coming up with a new plan. And that might be one more thing for me to worry about.

“There’s just one thing that surprises me,” I spoke up. We’d been riding in silence for maybe ten minutes, and I’d been struggling most of that time to come up with an opening that would put Devin at a disadvantage. I wasn’t particularly feeling this one so far, but it was the best I had.

“I’m eager to hear about it.”

“Why all those goons were involved in the kidnapping process in the first place.” I tried to refer to it as vaguely as possible, the kidnapping rather than my kidnapping, but my voice trembled as if I’d been straight about it, and there was something about the change to his profile as he focused on the road that told me he’d heard. “What I mean is, you obviously don’t need them to pin a girl down.”

If I’d been hoping to shame him with that crass imagery… well, it didn’t get me anywhere. “To be quite honest,” said Devin, “I don’t like running the risk of getting scratched or bitten. Young women are such wildcats. After the initial shock wears off they’re much more reasonable and can usually be persuaded to keep their nails to themselves, but until then…” He shook his head with the sort of smile that was usually supposed to come with remembering good times.

“What you’re telling me is you’ve got a bit more experience with kidnappings than you initially let on.”

He shook his head. “Not personally. Of course I am familiar with more incidents where it’s been necessary to take women than the average young man you would have encountered in your previous life, but I truly don’t go in for it myself. It’s messy, the sort of thing where you can get yourself into a lot more trouble than you need in your life. Sometimes those young women die, when the kidnapping goes wrong.”

“I know you’re not going to want to hear this,” I said, my feet fidgeting in the seatwell of the car. It was impossible to get in any comfortable position in those shoes. “But all your posturing about women is such bullshit. You’re the most sexist pig I’ve ever encountered, and I’m not as much of a cloistered princess as you’ve decided I am from a couple weeks of stalking. I’ve been to all those parties where young men feel free to be the most sexist pigs they have in them.”

“What made you stop?”

“Excuse me?”

“The parties. Why did you stop going?”

“This isn’t a Q&A session about my life. I’m not the one with documented issues here. And for the record, I thought we made an arrangement that you would stop poking me about aspects of my behaviour you don’t know anything about except through creepy means.”

He threw his hands up in the air for a moment. “Did I poke?”

“Please leave your hands on the wheel.” I could see it now, the movie they’d make of my life: just as I thought I was going to be able to get away from this guy, we both ended up dead in a horror smash on an otherwise quiet highway, mowed down so thoroughly by an unexpected log truck we couldn’t be separated even in death.

“Such a demanding girl.” But he already had his hands back in position. “Now, did I poke? Even a little? We can’t have a conversation if you’re going to get sensitive about something that’s such a big part of your life.”

“There you go accusing me of having no life on a technicality.”

“What I’m doing is getting a pretty good idea of how sensitive you are about those parties,” Devin corrected. “But I’m not interested in taking anything from you that you’re not willing to give—aside from your liberty to go about as you please this ev

ening, which you weren’t likely to do much with anyway.”

“That is a poke.”

The fucker put his hands up again. “I suppose I can’t deny that one.”

“Please! Hands on the fucking wheel!”

“You know, I’m glad we took this trip together,” Devin said. “I’m getting a vivid picture of what it will be like to be married to you. I can’t say I’m against the challenge of it.”

That seemed to be the end of the conversation, which was just fine by me at that point. I almost wanted to cry with frustration, but I reminded myself that was just a consequence of my fright and exhaustion catching up with me, something I didn’t want to show Devin, and it would pass.

I stared out the window at fields I would never have seen on my way out there, had probably never passed by before. It was strange, thinking about my parents on the other side of the world right now while I had never even seen a bunch of cow hotels a few hours’ journey from my usual location. Somehow I’d never thought about how strange it was that they never invited me to come along with them on their trips. They were primarily business, of course, but back in the day I’d met a couple other kids who had parents in academia, and they assumed I went along on the conference trips sometimes. It turned out some of the bigger events even arranged activities for partners and children to take part in while their family member was at talks.

I’d never been terribly interested in holidays and travel. I liked my familiar scenery and to be able to organise my time exactly how I liked. That was what I always said, but that was what my mother and father always said, too. Julia’s always happy at home. She’s not a social child. So… had my preference come from me, or was it something they’d cleverly inflicted upon me to keep me from being too curious about the other half of their lives?