There are no noises now. No yelling, no screaming. Everything has gone from the lightest shades of gray to the darkest black. I don’t know if I’m dead or alive. If I feel numbness or pain. If I’m moving my hands and feet or not. Nothing. If I’m alive, then why can’t I hear my family? Where are they? Am I alone? Thrown from the truck like my dad?

Is this the fear one gets right before death? You try to inhale a breath, not even knowing if you truly are. I feel detached from my body. If this is it, then take me. Take me so I don’t have to think about my family. Take me so I can breathe. Just take me!

“She’s coming around.”

My muscles constrict. My heart starts pounding. All of my limbs are weak and tingling. Yet, that voice, it doesn’t sound like the sweet voice of an angel. It’s rough, deep, and more like the voice of the devil. I’m going to hell. That’s where I am, just like Monty said. The voice is gone now. I’m floating. Floating through nothing but blackness.

“Wake her up,” a brooding voice says close to my ear.

“I’ve tried. Her eyelids flutter every now and then, but then the bitch is right back out again. She’s been banged up bad. Bruises and cuts everywhere. You really should let me see if she has any internal damage.”

Is he a doctor? Please let him be talking about me. I’m not dying. Not being sent to hell.

“She gets nothing. If you don’t get her to come to within the hour, it’s your ass right along with hers, Doc.”

I feel an arm on both of my shoulders shaking me adamantly.

“Listen, girl. You need to wake up. At least for a few minutes.”

“Pl…please. My family.”

My eyes flutter open, trying to adjust them to the bright light. I can vaguely see an older, gray-haired man leaning over me. He’s too close. His eyes show years of wisdom mixed with something else. Compassion? I just don’t know. The devil as we know him is the king of tricksters. But something tells me this isn’t the devil and I’m not dying.

At least not yet, anyway, I think to myself, remembering the other person’s threat.

“It’s about damned time you came around. That will be all for now, Doc. Thanks.”

The voice I heard earlier is coming from my left. I turn my neck towards it.

“It’s you and me now, Princess.”

I’m unable to open my eyes all the way, but I am able to get a glimpse. If I were able to gasp or cry out, I would.

He is the scariest man I have ever seen. He’s not much older than I am. His head is shaved bald and he wears a black patch over one eye. A thick scar, old and healed, runs from the center of his forehead all the way down his cheek. It’s ugly and twisted, as if someone had sliced him with a jagged knife.

The scruff on his face matches his voice. Coarse, rebellious, and dirty. But in spite of the scar and patch, this man is downright sexy. This is a smoothly polished professional who I have no doubt is a trained killer.

His eyes tell a story. A long, fucking scary ass story. I’ve been trained how to read people, and my observation tells me he’s seen and done some horrific things in his life. What I want to know is, what does he want with me?

I shake my head trying not to think about what he is going to do. He presses my shoulders down with so much force I can feel my bones start to rattle.

“Get off me!” I scream to the best of my ability through my scratchy and sore throat.

He withdraws his hands.

“You have it in you, I see. Good to know.”

I’m seething. My body is bruised from head to toe. I remember the accident. The way I was tossed and flipped around in the truck. Everything. Now that I know I’m not dead, I want my husband and my family.

He took me from them. But how? How did he get away with me without anyone coming to save me? There is no way my dad, Cain, or Manny would just let someone take me. My mother, either. They would all fight. Unless... Oh, God. No!

“Where’s my family?” I demand.

He doesn’t answer me. He swings his head slowly to the right, his demeanor becoming uncompromising.

It takes every bit of energy I have to lift my head, using my elbows to hold me up. I cry out as pain shoots down my neck and arms. In the corner of the room is a man who has his back to me.  He’s leaning over a man whose head is slumped down, resting on his chest. Those clothes he has on. I recognize them.

A bloodcurdling scream escapes me when I see the man pick up a long, shiny knife and bring it up to the light. He examines it closely, twirling it around in his fingers. My cries and pleas are ignored as my abductor laughs.

“You sons of bitches! Let us go! Do you have any idea who he is?”

I’m hauled up by the hair and dragged off of the table. My body crashes to the floor. I’m too weak to try and fight. Too bruised, too battered, too shocked.

“Let her take a look at him. Let her see what’s about to happen if she doesn’t help me get everything I want,” he says, looking down at me. His eyes bore into mine.

“This is the kind of torture your father inflicts on people when they won’t give up the information he wants. Only I’m not your father. I won’t end his life, not until I’ve drained every ounce of blood out of him. Not until I get what is rightfully mine. I want you to watch, and if you disappoint me and look away, I’ll instruct Raymond here to do the exact same thing to you, except he likes to play with women before he tortures them.”

No words come out of my throat, as it is choked with my sobs. Tears drip steadily down my cheeks, landing beside me on the cold, tile floor.

Raymond doesn’t say a word. He licks the tip of the knife. His eyes are crazed, darting back and forth over his target, who slowly lifts his head. Oh, God. Please don’t look at me. I don’t think I can bear to see him. When his almost unrecognizable face comes into view, I scream.

“Manny!”

No! What have they done to him?

Chapter Nineteen

Cain

I stare out the window, studying the view of the Long Island Sound from Salvatore’s house. It’s been two days since Calla and Manny were taken from the accident and not a word of their whereabouts.

By the time the paramedics got to the scene, they were gone. Both of them. There were no witnesses to the accident to give anyone a description of who took them. Yet Salvatore knows. He knows there would be only one person who would do something like this. One person who was biding his time and waiting to strike. He has my wife. He has my best friend. And he’s a cold-blooded killer. A hitman seeking revenge against his family, who shunned him for his actions and betrayal.

I’ve been left in the dark while Salvatore works with his men to try and find them. No one has heard from him in years, so why now? Why all of a sudden would he come back and take two innocent people? Why wouldn’t he take John or Cecily? It doesn’t add up. I know there has got to be more.

Guilt surges through my veins. I’m the only one who came out of this nightmare unscathed, except for the knot on the side of my head where I must have gotten bumped on impact when the truck flipped and crashed into a building. Cecily has a broken arm, bruises on her face, and burns across her neck and shoulder from the seatbelt. John is banged up all to hell. He’s got stitches in his forehead and some broken ribs. It’s a damn miracle any of us are even alive.

Cecily is going crazy, crying constantly over not knowing where her daughter and her nephew are. John has been bandaged and is gone, looking for a man who is known to do worse things to his victims than even himself. I need to be out there helping instead of here with my hopeless thoughts. I just got her back. I need her. We all need them both.

“Fuck!”

I can’t stay here anymore. They’re out there somewhere, I know they are.

“Cain.”

I turn around to the sound of Salvatore’s voice. He strides in with the same clothes on from yesterday, looking like shit. There isn’t any other way to describe it. He hasn’t slept from his worry, just like the rest of us. His wife, Lola, is going out of her mind. She’s normally so calm and collected just like Cecily, and now she’s just a shell of a woman. She is guilt-stricken, blaming herself for all of this.