The Royal Bastard

by Nicole Burnham

  “Why?”

  “You don’t get to ask why.”

  “Justine, it’s a matter of—”

  “Safety. I know, I know.” He should be damned grateful she’d agreed to come at all. She’d had her reasons for moving out, and Rocco’s desire to know all about her while revealing so little of himself topped the list.

  Pain shot through her left leg as she pushed to stand, but she waved off Rocco’s assistance as he leapt to help her. It happened from time to time, especially when she’d put in a tough session at the rehab clinic, as she had this morning. And that was before standing for a solid hour at the cemetery and then going out to dinner with her girlfriends.

  “You quit taking your pain meds?”

  This time she did roll her eyes. “I agreed to come with you. I didn’t give you permission to play twenty questions. Now let me pack a bag before I change my mind.”

  Rocco grumbled his irritation, but strode to the sofa and seated himself to wait. He began dialing his cell phone—presumably for a taxi—so she turned and went to her bedroom, closing the door behind her for a moment of privacy. The man was blindingly attractive, even in his current state. It was in her best interest to spend as little time in his presence as possible.

  She walked through the darkened bedroom to her bathroom, flicked on the light, and arranged her essentials in her makeup bag. After mentally running through her morning routine to ensure she had everything she needed, she returned to the bedroom to change out of her nightgown and grab the clothes she’d already laid out for tomorrow. Rocco would wonder why she packed a suit, but she’d deal with that in the morning.

  She reached for the bedside lamp at the same time a floorboard creaked behind her. She spun to see a man step through her bedroom window from the fire escape. She jerked, her hand halfway inside the lampshade as she reached for its pull chain, and inhaled to scream for Rocco.

  “Don’t make a sound. And don’t turn on that lamp.”

  Shocked, she let her hand fall to her side. The man was huge, his voice rough and low. He remained in the shadows near her window, rendering his features unreadable, but there was no mistaking the dark barrel of the gun he held.

  It pointed straight at her chest.

  Chapter Three

  Terror threatened to buckle Justine’s knees. “Who—”

  “Not. One. Sound.” The heavily-accented words were dark, lethal. The man stepped closer, affording Justine a better view of his face. Savage scars riddled his left cheek. The lack of light kept his eyes too shaded for Justine to read, but the set of his broad jaw proved he meant business. “We are going out the window and down the fire escape. A car is waiting at the bottom. You will get in the back seat. You will move to the center. You will put on the seat belt. If you resist in at any point” —his shoulders lifted— “you will die on the street and I will throw your bloody body into the car myself.”

  The manner in which he uttered the instructions made it clear he meant every word. As if he’d done this a dozen times and knew every thought going through her head, could thwart any argument, could anticipate every escape attempt.

  “Do we have an understanding, Mrs. Cornaro?”

  She nodded, then held her hands palms out in surrender before pointing to a pair of sweatpants she’d left on the corner of the bed. He tipped his head, giving her permission to pull on the pants underneath her nightgown. Despite the mind-numbing fear that sent tremors through her entire body as he watched her step into one leg, then the other, she forced herself to dress slowly. The self-defense experts she’d seen on television said to do anything possible not to climb into a car with a potential assailant. Once you did, your odds of surviving dwindled.

  Not that stalling would help her. The streets were empty. No one would see the man shove her in a vehicle. Her neighbors were likely asleep and wouldn’t hear her on the fire escape. Screaming was out of the question; she’d be dead before they could react.

  Then there was Rocco. He wouldn’t hear a thing over the music playing in the living room. If he knocked on the door to hurry her along, what could he possibly do other than get himself killed?

  She swallowed hard as the gunman angled a look at the window, silently instructing her to climb out. Was this the danger Rocco warned her about? Was Rocco responsible for this man’s appearance in her bedroom?

  Justine took a step toward the fire escape, sliding her feet into the moccasin slippers at her bedside without asking. At least with the moccasins on, she could try to flee when she reached the street. Two years ago, she could’ve escaped this hoodlum with both arms tied behind her back. He was gigantic and thick with muscle, but she doubted he possessed her agility and speed.

  That was then. Now she didn’t have a chance in hell of outrunning him, let alone his bullets.

  If she got out of this in one piece, she’d throttle Rocco.

  “You have thirty seconds to get down those stairs,” the man growled. For the first time, she pinpointed his accent. She’d been so petrified at the man’s appearance in her room she hadn’t processed the fact he was Russian. As she straddled the open windowsill and put one foot on the metal fire escape that led to the building’s back alley, he added, “Make it quiet. If you alert anyone in the apartments below yours, I will shoot them first, then you.”

  * * *

  Rocco plucked an apple from the dish on Justine’s kitchen counter, gave it a quick scrub against his dress shirt, then took a bite. He’d waited on Justine’s sofa long enough for his stomach to rumble, the gurgling echoing over Justine’s music. A second, more painful rumble reminded him he hadn’t eaten since yesterday evening. He hadn’t been able to stomach breakfast this morning and the desserts well-wishers offered after the graveside service didn’t appeal.

  He filched a napkin from an open package on top of Justine’s hip-height refrigerator and swiped it across his chin before taking another huge bite. Suddenly, he needed food like a man who’d been left to starve on a barren island.

  What was taking the woman so long? Was she putting on makeup? He couldn’t fathom it. When they’d lived together, Justine was always ready in minutes.

  A muffled scrape of wood interrupted his train of thought. Rocco paused mid-crunch, straining to hear. It sounded like the window being closed, but he’d looked up at Justine’s as he’d approached her apartment building from the alley, trying to determine whether she was awake. He could swear that window was already closed, and she’d claimed it was locked.

  He tossed the rest of the apple in the trash, then knocked on her bedroom door. Silence.

  Irritation flared. He knocked again. “Justine?”

  He waited for a count of three, then opened the door. Nothing stirred. The bathroom was empty. The window was raised about an inch, as if she’d attempted to close it from the outside. She was gone.

  A four-letter word slipped from his lips. He’d grossly underestimated the level of distrust Justine had in him.

  He strode through the darkened bedroom to follow her down the fire escape, but paused before opening the window as his brain registered what he’d seen in the bathroom. As he backtracked to the bathroom for confirmation, his heart chilled.

  Justine’s pink- and brown-striped makeup bag sat on the edge of the porcelain sink, its sides bulging and zipper pulled shut. She wouldn’t have packed it and left it behind.

  Covering the room in quick steps, he returned to the window and looked down without opening it. A black sedan, its headlights dimmed, idled in the alley underneath the fire escape. He couldn’t see Justine, but he could hear the low clang of the metal steps as someone—no, multiple someones—descended the fire escape floor by floor.

  Even as his mind screamed no, no, no, instinct sent him springing over Justine’s bed, through the apartment, and down the stairwell that led to the street. Fear twisted his gut as he rounded each floor, using the iron railings to propel himself forward, past the apartments that occupied the floors below hers. After what se
emed an eternity, he reached the front entry and released the heavy lock.

  As he exited to the street and circled the building, Rocco forced himself to slow down, keeping his steps silent. If he could sneak up behind the car before it left the alley, perhaps he could surprise them. Give Justine a chance to get away, not that she had speed on her side. At the final corner, Rocco took a deep breath and waited, ears straining, hoping he could differentiate the sounds of human movement in the alley from the usual nighttime noises of the city. For a moment, all he heard was the rush of water under a nearby sewer grate and the far-off chug of a train. Finally, he was rewarded with the click of a car door opening, then the sound of feet against cobblestone. Twenty, maybe thirty feet away.

  Crouching, he hazarded a look around the building. Justine was being forced to the bottom of the fire escape at gunpoint. If Rocco wasn’t mistaken, the weapon was held by none other than the brutal Russian, Anton Karpovsky.

  Terror iced Rocco’s veins.

  When he’d looked his mother in the eye a little over a year ago and noticed a yellow haze there, he’d experienced the same deep fear. He’d known instantly that her liver wasn’t functioning and that she’d kept her condition a secret from him, which meant it was serious enough to kill her. Horrified as he was, he’d also known precisely what actions to take. He was able to tap the right experts, call in favors, get her the medications necessary to give her energy and meaningfully prolong her life.

  This battle was more immediate, the enemy yet far less predictable. Years spent in design laboratories wouldn’t help him. He had no weapons, no military training. Boxing done with his trainer was strictly for fitness, not fighting. Yet Justine was alone, with no idea what was happening to her or why, and no means to combat a lethal enemy.

  Worse, it was his fault.

  He pressed his back to the wall, mustering his strength. Resources or no, if he didn’t save Justine, no one would.

  * * *

  Unable to delay the inevitable, Justine stepped off the fire escape and moved to the side, allowing the gunman to follow her onto the street. She refused to look at the black vehicle idling in front of her. If she kept her focus on the gunman and acted as if politeness was her habit, she might convince him that she planned to cooperate fully.

  The instant he dropped his guard, she’d run, leg be damned. Better to be shot here than trapped somewhere far from civilization where she had no chance at escape.

  “So deferential, Mrs. Cornaro,” he mocked her. “You make this easy.”

  “Too easy,” came a voice from the other side of the sedan. “Get her in the car.”

  Justine swiveled her gaze toward the man standing beside the driver’s door. Even in the hazy yellow light of the alley, his dark eyes shone like those of a bird of prey. A lean, curved nose added to the effect. He lacked his compatriot’s breadth and muscle, but she suspected he made up for that shortcoming with his intelligence.

  A taxi passed by at the corner, then slowed and flashed its turn signal as if headed to park in front of her building. The gunman put a rough hand on Justine’s shoulder and shoved her toward the rear door on the sedan’s passenger side at the same time the driver said, “Quickly. No witnesses.”

  “Please, no—”

  “Now, you stupid bitch,” the gunman snarled.

  Panic set in as he opened the rear door. Justine braced her hands against the sedan’s roof, ground her feet into the cobblestones despite the fiery sensation shooting through her bad leg, and shoved backward into the gunman with every ounce of her strength. “No! I’m not leaving! Shoot me here if you have to!”

  She meant it. Her neighbors were out of danger. If she bled in the street, at least she had a chance of making it to a hospital. Not so if they strangled or shot her in some far-off cabin in the woods.

  The thug behind her muttered in Russian and tightened his grip on her shoulder as the driver snapped, “Don’t let her fight. We need to get out of here.”

  It was the word fight that did it.

  In the back of her mind, she once again heard the crowds that cheered her as she flew down the slopes, heading toward the finish line in a tight crouch at breakneck speed.

  Flyte! Flyte! Flyte!

  It was the roar—so like the playground chants spurring kids to fight—that pulled Justine out of her own head during races and sent her hurtling toward the finish line, to hell with the risk of a wipeout. All or nothing. Win or lose. Go big or go home. It was the roar that drove her to the podium at World Cup events. It made her who she was.

  She sent her elbow into the man’s gut with no compunction, then ducked, hoping to skirt around him while he was off-balance, but the man didn’t move. He was impenetrable as a wall. She tried again, aiming lower, even as his bicep curled around her throat, constricting her airway, and the cold steel of his gun pressed against her temple.

  This time, she connected with soft tissue and was rewarded with a gratifying whuumpf. In the next second, he dragged her to the ground with him. Knowing it was her only chance, she kicked hard and shoved at his arm, then scrambled to move her body away from his. A glimpse underneath the car made her realize she had only seconds before the driver made his way around to assist. Faster than her mind could process it, a second set of feet appeared on the driver’s side of the car, then there were two men on the ground.

  “Justine! Go!”

  Rocco. Gratitude flooded through her even as she was hit with the sickening realization he was in danger of losing his life. She yanked her ankles free of the kidnapper’s grasp and yelled, “Watch out! They have guns!”

  “Run, dammit!” A grunt punctuated the order.

  She stumbled to the front of the car, but searing pain in her leg blackened her vision, forcing her to lean against the hood in an attempt to regain her equilibrium. Her eyesight cleared just in time to see her assailant push up off the ground. She took two steps toward him and slammed the open car door against his head, then turned and ran straight into a hard, firm body. Strong hands wrapped around her forearms. A scream formed in her throat, but died when she realized the man who grabbed her wasn’t the driver, but Rocco.

  She blinked at him in confusion. “Where’s the—”

  “Run.” Blood oozed down the side of his face from a cut on his temple, but he seemed unaware of it as he propelled her down the alley. A shoop sounded near her ear, then a fist-size section of wall exploded from the building beside her, sending white chunks of stucco flying through the air.

  They were shooting. Why in the world would someone shoot her?

  She tried to slow as gut instinct told her to surrender, but Rocco’s firm grip on her arm kept her moving forward. He rounded the corner, then turned onto the street fronting her apartment, pulling her along beside him. She took an odd step to keep from hitting the curb. The move sent pain knifing through her leg.

  He guided her across the street, then cut to another alley, one that led to an area filled with popular sidewalk cafés and restaurants. When Rocco glanced over his shoulder for signs of pursuit, he must have seen her pained expression, because his steps faltered and he released her arm.

  She shook her head and waved for him to keep going. “It hurts, but better that than to get killed. They won’t call it a night ’til they find us.” Bravado fueled her words more than ability. If it hadn’t been for Rocco’s supportive hold, she might’ve limped back into her apartment to call the police. An idiotic proposition, given that the men had weapons and had gotten through a locked window easily enough the first time. They’d be inside her apartment again long before the police could arrive.

  “I’ll get us somewhere safe as soon as I can.”

  “That’d be ideal.”

  Rocco took her hand and changed direction, leading Justine away from the strip of darkened restaurants before steering her toward a familiar stone bridge. A twenty-something woman in a short skirt sat on its edge, her legs intertwined with those of a man whose nose was pressed to hers. S
he clung to the back of his leather jacket and smiled in the way of new lovers before she angled her head for a kiss.

  “The Old City?” Justine’s question emerged in a huff as Rocco hustled her onto the long, wide bridge, which led over a dry moat to Dubrovnik’s famous Pila Gate.

  “They can’t bring their car. It’s our best chance to lose them.”

  They hurried past the entangled couple, who didn’t glance up despite the odd appearance of two panicked people sprinting across the bridge in the middle of the night, one of whom wore a flapping blue nightgown over a pair of sweatpants.

  Once Rocco and Justine entered the arched gate, they found themselves on the Stradun, the neighborhood’s main pedestrian street. In the daytime, tourists jammed its length and breadth to window shop, eat ice cream cones, and gawk at the medieval architecture inside the ancient city walls. At this hour, the Stradun was silent aside from the echo of their footfalls against the cobblestones. Metal grates covered shop windows, tarps blanketed kiosks, and even the stray cats that frequented the area in search of dropped tidbits had nestled away for the night. Only the soft yellow glow of street lamps hinted at life.

  As one, Rocco and Justine turned down the first side street, then quickly turned onto another, twisting through the narrow maze until they entered an empty plaza and slowed to a walk. They kept to the perimeter, away from the street lights. As with the Stradun, the plaza was quiet as death. A dog lazing on the steps of a church cracked his eyes at their appearance, but closed them when he saw they posed no threat.

  “Think we’re all right?” Justine let go of Rocco’s hand and leaned against the wall of a shuttered bakery, taking in lungfuls of air. She hadn’t run—really run—since her accident. While she’d known her leg was a wreck, she hadn’t realized how badly her cardiac fitness had deteriorated. Rehab sessions hadn’t quite prepared her for this.

  Rocco sank to a crouch, resting his back against the wall beside her and planting his forearms on his knees. His head angled back as his breathing slowed. “For now. I don’t think they saw us go over the bridge. Even if they did, it would’ve been from their car. They would’ve had to find a place to ditch it.”