by Evie Adams
I stopped in an alleyway, my hands on my knees as I sucked in air.
Shit.
I was trapped with no escape except over an eight foot wall. Maybe if I wasn’t out of breath I could have tried to scale it. My only option was to turn back.
I turned around and there he was, Rodya, just a few feet behind me. He looked almost perfect in his suit, nothing out of place, his eyes shined pale blue, they had made up their mind.
I hadn't even heard him behind me. I looked at his shoes as I sucked in more air. Sneakers. Black sneakers that matched his suit. Smart.
He walked slowly towards me, his suit straining at the seams as his chest expanded to breathe. He loosened his tie to capture more air, and he had an amused look on his lips, more sinister than a smile. The same look as when I caught him staring at me on the street.
Hungry.
I shivered, remembering that they sell women as sex slaves. They ship them around the world, wherever men have a taste for white women.
I stared into his eyes as we both caught our breath, hoping to find something there reassuring. They were bright and full of energy, and there was an arrogance to them. Something that said the game was over, he had won and now he would claim his prize. And there was nothing I could do about it. But there was something more, a hesitation.
I wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. I had nothing to fight him off with, no keys or weapons not even my phone. Only the bulky rings on my fingers. I turned them around to the inside of my hand. If I scratched an eye maybe that would be enough to get away from him. A shame to hurt such beautiful eyes but better than being taken and sold as a sex slave and shipped around the world. His eyes weren’t that beautiful.
As he closed in on me I swung my hand to rake his face, but he grabbed my wrist easily, like he expected it. He pulled my wrist down and across my body as he twirled me around and pinned me to him holding my wrist against my chest and my back against his chest. I felt his heart thumping almost as loud as my own.
He held me like that my wrist clasp tightly in his hand but gently, hesitating.
What was he doing?
I imagined him weighing me like fruit at the grocer, meat at the butcher. Figuring out what I was worth. I struggled against his embrace and he unpinned me but still held my wrist.
I turned to look at him. I couldn’t speak. I had never seen what I saw on his face. It was a look of possession. Focused and determined and without any trace of doubt or hesitation.
“Please let me go,” I said, “Please don’t hurt me.”
CHAPTER 2 – RODYA
I could feel heart thumping in her wrists. They were small and delicate and my thumb and index finger could encircle them with room to spare.
She stood waiting for an answer and the voice in my head screamed ‘No’. But I didn’t trust that voice right now. He was usually right, but nothing was usual right now, everything was different than before.
When she burst from the closet I wanted to grab her or hit her with my pistol. The voice inside me said ‘No’, so I watched her get the back door and started chasing after her when nobody else moved.
She was a witness, an enemy, I had to catch her. But I had chased down enemies before, people who could hurt me. I knew the feeling of closing in on them, trapping them. The excitement, the rush of fear and anticipation for what will happen when you catch them and face them. I loved that feeling.
But this was something else. Something different. A fear of the unknown. The feeling as a child when I was sent out of the house in the dark. I knew the trees and the rocks and fence and there was nothing to fear during the day. But in the dark the trees were misshapen, the fence taller, all the familiar, usual things were different. I didn’t know what was out there. A silly, childish fear of the unknown.
And here it was again. She wasn’t my enemy. I didn’t know what the hell I would do when I caught her. She was familiar but different and I feared her. A woman had never made me fear, never made me hesitate. I feared not knowing what I wanted from her, I feared not knowing what she would do to me, I feared this need to protect her, I feared this need to touch her, to taste her to make her know that she belongs to me. I feared this unfamiliar feeling and the voice in me that was as confused as I was.
I didn’t want to let her go. Didn’t want to let go of that feeling of her heart beating through her tiny delicate wrists, the feeling of what would happen next.
She stood there, still waiting for my answer.
“I promise you won't be hurt while under my control. From now on you’re mine. And as long as you are I won’t let anyone harm you. Not even me.”
I tugged on her wrist to follow me. She had ran straight to where we had placed the getaway car just in case things went badly and the van was compromised.
I pushed her into the car, across my seat, still holding her wrist. I took her other wrist and held them both in one hand. I bound them with duct tape and secured the seatbelt over her.
She didn’t struggle or speak, but the fight wasn’t out of her yet. I drove along the quiet streets and back roads where no one would bother us.
“What's your name?” I asked.
She didn't answer. She just looked straight ahead trying to figure out where we were, where we were going.
“Answer me when I ask you a question.”
“Let me go right now.” Her lips curled as she said the words. Her face was flushed from the exercise, her lips cherry red. I wanted to feel how soft they were, how they tasted. Like apples, maybe honey.
“Cap will pay you to ransom me back. I’m not worth much to anyone else.”
A jolt of jealousy went through me, but it was replaced by something tender at her last words.
‘I’m not worth much to anyone else,’
The fat man had offered her up for nothing. No price at all. She heard him, she heard everything. That twisted something deep inside me, made me angry, made me want to protect her. Made me fear that she could inspire these things in me.
“My family is at war with the Caprio’s. We just took bags of cash from him. How can you pay for you?”
“Then you'll sell me as a slave?” she asked.
“Maybe. For now you're mine.”
I stopped the car at the stop sign and considered telling her the truth. That I would never sell her. That I would never ransom her. That she was mine. But she destroyed that tenderness in me.
She unbuckled her seatbelt and flailed at the ‘unlock’ button, unable to hit it with the stump of her bound wrists, but trying desperately. Trying to get away from me.
I grabbed her hair, my fingers wrapping around her curls and dragged her body over the valley between our seats. I looked into her eyes and hesitated. I almost couldn't say what I needed to say to those watery, pained eyes.
“You are mine,” I screamed at her. She closed her eyes with the force of my words. I let go of her curls and she sank back into her seat. I drove past the stop sign and told her, “If someone filled this car with $100 bills it would not be enough.”
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About Evie Adams
I’m always reading, so I figured I’d start writing too. So I can have more time to read! I’m a lawyer and mother by day and romance author by night (and sometimes day too, but don’t tell anyone).
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If you want more Mafia Bad Boys:
MARCUS : A Mafia Bad Boy Romance
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