The grin he flashes turns my blood cold.

“Better get comfortable. You’re in for some long days and nights.” He leaves, pulling the door shut behind him.

I hold my breath and listen as several clicks sound, locking me in.

This is actually happening.

This is real.

What does he hope to do to me?

I scour every inch of my cell as hot tears stream down my cheeks, looking for an escape.

3

Gabriel

“What the fuck do you mean, he got by you?” My anger ricochets off the penthouse’s looming ceilings. “We pay you assholes to not let guys like my father’s hitman get by you!”

The bodyguards stand in a row, studying their shoes. They don’t have answers for me, only excuses.

I turn to Moe, lying on a bedsheet on the marble floor, his face as pale as the white linen. “And it was definitely Bane who did this?”

“Yes,” he pushes through gritted teeth, as the doctor willing to fix and not ask questions yanks a bullet out of his shoulder with his medical tweezers.

Blowing up our plane a few nights ago, now kidnapping my girlfriend right out of our hotel bedroom? Bane’s been busy.

“He came in through the service elevator,” Farley confirms.

“Well, no shit, what gave it away? The dead body in front of it?” Caleb snaps, throwing an arm toward where Ross lies in a pool of blood, his throat slashed from ear to ear. He was livid when I dragged him away from the poker game prematurely and with a royal flush in his mitt, but thankfully his focus has shifted to what’s important. “How long ago was Bane here?”

“An hour, tops. He must have slipped in just after the last check-in.”

It was Michelle who answered Moe’s phone in a panic when Farley called, screaming that Moe was unconscious and bleeding. Farley raced up to find Ross dead and Moe with a bullet in his shoulder, a used needle for whatever sedative Bane injected him with lying nearby.

“Is there anyone who doesn’t know about that elevator? It’s a goddamn parade entrance into this place!” An odd mixture of rage and fear claws at my chest, the latter being the most potent and raw. The most foreign to me. “And let me guess, the cameras didn’t catch anything.”

Farley’s eyes flash to his guys before confirming my assumption with a head shake. “They’re still down from last night.”

From when we had to sneak three bodies out and cover up a triple murder. Not that having surveillance video would make any difference in this situation. Mercy is gone and we know who took her.

And I know why.

I pick up an empty tumbler from the counter and throw it across the room, hoping the simple act will release some of this overwhelming tension. The glass shatters against the far wall. None of Farley’s men flinch—they know better than to react. The doctor’s eyes flicker to me but he quickly shifts back to his patient.

“Calm down,” Caleb warns.

It only stirs my ire. “Don’t tell me to calm down! We were downstairs, playing a stupid game of cat and mouse with Cohen when we should have been up here.” I should have come straight back to the penthouse after receiving that call from Stanley, knowing my father was up to something.

I should never have left her.

“Which is why Bane hit when he did. He knew where we were,” Caleb counters evenly. “If he hadn’t taken her this morning, he would have got to her some other way.”

He’s right, but that doesn’t make me feel better. Was Bane sitting in the lobby, watching? He couldn’t have been. It’s impossible to miss that face. “You know what that psychopath is capable of.” The guy takes the task of dragging answers out of people too literally. My gut clenches at the thought of his sadistic hands on Mercy’s body.

But it’s guilt that is quickly taking root, readying to fester. Mercy is in danger because of me. Because I’m a selfish prick who forced an innocent woman into our blood-drenched life and plied her with money and charm and promises of a better life. I should have known there was only one way this was ever going to go—badly, for her. I should have known, when our father started asking about the inmate I’ve been paying to protect—Mercy’s father—that he’d find a way to use her, that she’d be his ticket to getting me to do anything he wants.

Caleb’s jaw tenses. He shifts his attention to the bleeding bodyguard on the floor. “Doc?”

The stout man’s fingers move quickly with needle and thread. “Flesh wound. A deep one, but he should be fine with rest. Nothing vital was hit.”

“Lucky son of a bitch,” one of the idiot guards murmurs.

“It has nothing to do with luck. Moe’s gonna be fine because Bane allowed it,” I hiss, pacing around the vast common room. They have no clue who they’re dealing with. Hell, we probably don’t know everything about who we’re dealing with. Bane—as he goes by—has revealed little over the years to my father. We dug up a few details from his time in the military, namely that he was dishonorably discharged for using “questionable” tactics to interrogate the enemy about their operations, a dirty secret that was buried to avoid sullying senior officers who knew but looked the other way. The guy was trained to hunt and to survive. He can slip through any net or trap. Drop him in a deadly jungle with no supplies and when you go back to pick him up in a month, he’ll be waiting for you, ten pounds heavier and no worse for wear.

Tags: K.A. Tucker Erotic
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