“I can do it.”
He could see the reluctance but also hear the determination. His woman was a fighter. He took out the burner phone he’d gotten from his cousin, the one he’d programmed Clariss’s number into. He knew if he called Clariss’s number, one of the Demons would answer, and that was the point.
He punched in the number, and after several rings, Clariss’s voice, very shaky, responded. Nicoletta started to answer, but Taviano shook his head, scowling at her.
“Clariss. Drago here.” He hoped she would remember the bodyguard’s name and realize no member of the gang would know who he was. “Where are you, babe? I’ll come pick you up. Nicoletta said you were separated at the concert.”
There was the sound of a scuffle, a muffled scream, and then a man took over. “You want this bitch?”
Taviano counted to ten before responding. “Who is this?”
“Does it matter?” the voice barked curtly.
“You have my girl, it matters,” Taviano snapped. “What the hell is she doing with you?”
“Where’s Nicoletta?”
“Why would I care? You got my girl. You don’t want to mess with me.”
There was a snort on the other end of the line and Clariss screamed, clearly in pain. Nicoletta stepped toward Taviano and the phone, one hand over her mouth to keep from crying out herself.
“You don’t want to mess with me,” the man snarled. “I’m Iker, vice president of the Demons, and you’re so screwed. You want this bitch of yours back in one piece, you’d better find Nicoletta and bring her to the warehouse on South Street. You have an hour to get here.” He added the exact address.
“I don’t know this city. How the hell do I do that? And Nicoletta’s off somewhere partying. I have to find her first.”
“The longer you give me with your bitch, the more fun I have with her,” Iker threatened, laughing, and he ended the call.
Nicoletta caught at Taviano’s arm, and when he winced, her eyes widened, remembering his injury. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what it must be like to go into the shadows with a bullet wound. I know what they’re doing to Clariss right now. They’re horrible people. We have to get there fast. I don’t care what you have to do, or how dangerous it is to travel that way, just please get us there, Taviano.”
“You don’t know what’s going on there, Nicoletta. They don’t know what’s really happening with us. She’s all they have left to bargain with to get you back. They can’t torture her, or even pass her around, or they take a chance at losing her. They already have to tell Valdez that they lost you and his right-hand man. They don’t have Pia or Bianca. They don’t have the bodies of their own men and they don’t know if those men are dead or alive. They aren’t going to take too many chances with Clariss just to satisfy some idiotic urge. They have other women if it comes to that.”
Nicoletta took several deep breaths, trying to get herself under control. “All right. Are we going right now?”
“I’m just going to ditch the phone, and then we’re gone.” He broke it apart and scattered it throughout the various garbage containers, in the bedrooms, bathrooms and hallway, knowing the maids would clean up.
Stepping into the mouth of the widest, slowest shadow tube, he pulled Nicoletta into his arms and waited until she wrapped herself tightly around him. He felt the tremors running through her, but knew if he suggested again that she stay, she wouldn’t. He dropped his chin onto her head.
“Press your body as tight as you can into mine. Feel every movement.”
“Sometimes it feels as if we have no skin or bones,” she admitted reluctantly.
“I know, piccola, the sensation is a horrible one, but just keep pressing tightly to me, and no matter how strange we feel, try to follow every movement of my body with yours, even if it feels as if we aren’t even there. Keep your eyes closed and breathe me in. You’ll recognize my smell, right, Nicoletta? You’ll always know my scent, the way I do yours.”
He waited for her to nod for him. She took another deep breath, her gaze clinging to his, that trust there in spite of her fear. Dio, he loved her all the more for that trust. He knew he wanted to earn it more every single day. He wanted to deserve it.
She’d been through the fires of hell when she’d been so young, and yet she’d come out the other side, and here she was, standing with him on unfamiliar ground, doing something most people would run screaming from, looking him in the eye and giving consent when she knew it was going to hurt like hell. More, she was doing this for her friend, to be there for Clariss when she knew what could possibly be happening to her. That moved him all the more.