Her eyes drift closed again.
I put the can to her lips again. “Drink. You’re no use to me dead.”
She mumbles something, her full lips wet with the amber liquid. I want to lick the sweetness from them. Bite those lips. Punish her for being a Tacone. For being so beautiful. “What’s that?”
“Fuck you.”
I chuckle. “You still have a little fight in you, hmm? Good. I liked wrestling with you back at the casino. Made my dick hard.”
Her eyes fly back open, pupils narrowing in fear as soon as they land on my face.
I give her a wicked smile.
She blinks several times, but it seems to take too much effort to keep her eyes open, because they roll back and she slides back into a faint.
Oops.
The adrenaline spike she got from my taunt probably wiped her out.
I’m a sicker fuck than I thought because even with her passed out I want to fuck her.
Hard.
Rough.
I want to ride the mafia princess until she screams and begs me to let her come.
It seems to take forever, but finally I hear Mika’s footsteps racing up the stairs.
“I got it,” he says in Russian, holding the pink purse. “No one saw me.”
“Good job.”
I dump the contents on the bed. Lipstick, wallet. A syringe and bottle of insulin falls out, along with a test kit and a piece of paper with hand-written instructions taped to it. If unconscious, administer glucagon. The glucagon is in a red kit labeled with the same black Sharpie. Instructions inside have me mix the powder with saline in the syringe. As I work, I bark orders at Mika. “Check the bag for an electronic trace. It could be something small and thin, like a watch battery.”
I follow the instructions and pinch the skin of her belly, jabbing the into the fat layer and slowly pushing down the plunger on the syringe of insulin.
I check my watch. How long will it take? How long does she have before her body shuts down completely? I don’t know enough about diabetes to know what I’m dealing with here.
“Nothing,” Mika reports.
I search through everything on the bed. The contents appear to be innocuous.
“Give it to me.” I hold my hand out for the purse. Nothing changes in the boy’s face—the kid is always stoic as fuck, but somehow I know I’ve offended him. “I trust you, Mika, I just want to double-check.” I point to the stuff on the bed. “You double-check my work here.”
The boy nods and moves to the bed, picking up and looking over everything the way I had.
He’s not a good kid. I’m not sure he even has a moral compass. I’ve seen him beat boys twice his size on the street for no reason at all. He’s dangerous as hell.
But like a feral dog who finds someone to feed him, he’s bonded to me. He’ll do whatever the fuck I say without question. Kidnap a woman and tie her up on a bed? No problem.
Drive a car to the enemy’s lair? Whatever you say, boss.
And as much as I know I’m doing him a disservice, I don’t trust him with anyone else. I know he’s broken. His bitch of a mother made sure of that… Junior Tacone completed it when he orphaned the kid from his bratva. I have little to offer, but at least I will give him his dignity and the skills to survive.
Alessia stirs. Her eyes open.
Thank fuck.
She groans and rolls to her side. “I’m going to puke.”
It takes me a moment to translate the word puke, but the look on her face helps. “Mika, hand me the trash can,” I order in Russian.
Mika moves quickly, his intelligence and reflexes perfectly honed for emergencies. The kid has probably been through too many to count. A girl puking is nothing compared to what he’s seen.
I get there just in time for her to lose her lunch in the wastebasket.
Mika makes a sound of disgust.
“You can go,” I dismiss him.
It’s not because I want to be alone with the girl.
Yeah, right.
I want to strip the girl bare and tie her up to this bed. Taunt her with my cock and record her pleading.
Instead I get a wet washcloth and bring it to her. And because her hands are tied, I wipe her mouth with it.
She glares at me. We’re close. I loom over her, checking to see if there’s anywhere else to clean. Her focus falls to my tattooed knuckles, follows the ink on my forearms, stops at the bulge of my biceps.
She swallows.
I sprout a chub. Does she find my strength attractive? The way her pupils dilate makes me think she does. But then, who knows if she’s ever been close to a man who wasn’t her brother before.
“You could’ve killed me,” she accuses.
I allow one corner of my lips to lift in a humorless grin. “I still can, printsessa.”