A twig snapping catches my attention, and I straighten up, on the alert, my hand feeling for my gun in my back pocket. There aren’t many animals out here, but occasionally, there’s a deer or a rabbit.
That didn’t exactly sound like either.
A prickling sensation crawls down my spine, and my senses heighten.
A footstep sounds, and I know it’s a footstep. The next thing I know, a guy jumps out of the bushes at me and throws a fist in my face.
Fuck! I stumble, but I don’t fall. I hit this fucker with the log I’m holding and get him good. While he’s down from the hit he took, I whip out my gun and end his ass. But fucking hell, more guys come. They’re dressed in black, and they move through the shadows like they’re part of the fucking trees.
Damn it… fucking hell. This is exactly what I feared happening. Shit. I shoot and run, deciding not to be a hero and take them down. There are too many of them. What I do is head back to the house. I have to get to Cora. We have to leave now.
We have to leave right the fuck now.
Something pierces my body, and I fall.
I trip over a bush and fall down the hill. The sting radiates throughout my body from the side of my hip, and I know straight away that I’ve been shot.
I try to get up, but my body won’t move. Another one gets me in my shoulder, and I see stars. I fall on my face and start crawling forward. I need to get to Cora.
“Cora!” I cry, but I’m too far away. She can’t hear me.
I will my body to move, still trying to save her.
I just can’t.
The earth moves and suddenly I’m falling.
Darkness surrounds me, thicker than the night.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cora
Alex likes spices, so I add more pepper to the lasagna mixture of minced beef and Italian herbs.
I like cooking for him, and cooking tonight has been a good distraction.
My mom taught me how to make lasagna. She liked to add a dash of sugar to the meat to give it that extra flavor. So, I do that too.
I put it all together with the layers of pasta sheets and grated the cheese in between each sheet so it will blend with the sauce.
I’ve just put it inside the oven when I hear a noise outside the window.
I look out, but I can’t see anything.
The window’s open, and I’m not overly fond of that given the view of the place can look a little scary at night.
I walk over to close the window and jump out of my skin when a masked man rises into my view and laughs.
I scream and stumble backwards only to collide with someone who grabs me from behind.
“Not so fast, my pretty,” he says with a Russian accent.
Shit. It’s Matvey’s men. Fuck… they found us.
I struggle to break free, but it’s no use. This guy is big and tough. I’m no match for him.
The gun is in the drawer. If I could get it, I could kill him and run. That’s not happening though, not with the choke hold he has on me.
“Alex!” I shout.
“Sorry…” comes a voice I recognize.
Zack walks into the kitchen with Matvey. I’ve only ever seen pictures and footage of him, but he’s just as gruesome in real life as he is in the pictures. He’s a big guy with a shaved head and full beard. There’s a nasty gnash running down the side of his face, right from his eye to the edge of his jaw.
“Your boyfriend is dead,” Zack informs me, and I scream.
“No, he can’t be.”
“The bullet I left in him says different.”
Tears run down my cheeks.
I can’t believe this is happening.
“Alex…” I whisper his name, and Zack walks up to me.
“Yes, dead. Now I get to keep you as a fuck toy.” He laughs, and so does Matvey. “Get her in the car.”
“Let me go!” I scream.
“I don’t think so.”
I kick and scream and fight, but it’s useless.
It’s doom, all of it is doom, and there’s nothing I can do.
Alex… they killed him.
I’m bound, gagged, and my head is covered.
In darkness, I’m taken away in a car, and we seem to travel for hours.
I’m escorted like a package handed from one person to the next, then it all stops after I’m taken down a set of stairs. I find myself being seated, and it feels like I’m in a room.
There’s a tap dripping somewhere. I try to imagine where I must be.
The sackcloth covering my head is removed, and I see Zack.
He smiles and rips the gag from my mouth.
I’m all cried out and can’t cry anymore. I wish they would just kill me.
“You motherfucker,” I snarl.
“Such a mouth on you, my dear Cora.” He tsks, shaking his head at me in dismay. “See, that’s where we would have been more suited, I think, than your dead lover. I would never allow you to talk like some fish wife.”
“You bastard. I would have never been with you. I saw you for what you were.” I did. Even when Lyndsey was telling me he was a great guy and how I should give him a chance.
All that shit was a show he put on for everyone else. I could see straight through it. There was just a vibe I could pick up that didn’t sit well with me. Now I know why.
“Damn shame that was. We would have made the perfect couple. We still will.” He grins.
“Fuck you. I will never let you touch me.” I scowl.
“Let? I think you’ll find you aren’t really in any position to do anything.”
I’m sickened to my stomach when he reaches for my breasts and squeezes. I try to wiggle away from him to get him to stop touching me, but he doesn’t. He just squeezes harder.
“Let go of me, you creep!”
He laughs and releases me. “Soon, you’ll be willing to come to me. You’ll beg for it.”
“I never will.”
This is a nightmare. I’ve cried everything out of me, but the pain is still there. I can still feel that mass inside me growing bigger and bigger with every passing second. I grieve for Alex. I shouldn’t have sent him outside. I don’t know what would have happened if he’d stayed in, but I don’t think I’d be here, and he’d be alive.
I can’t even think it. I can’t think. He can’t be dead…
I glare at Zack and shake my head at him.
How could I have known this man for two years and never knew he could be this evil?
“What did you get? Must have been a lot of money,” I say, narrowing my eyes to slits.
“Yeah.” He nods and draws in a deep sigh. “Definitely. I got paid very well for my work. I joined a team of people with talents that allowed them to play God if they wanted to.”
That explains how they kept everything so hidden and under wraps. From the second Matvey knew he was being hacked when the ghost tracker located him, I knew he would have been working with special people. The same special people who knew to look for me.
“You bastard,” I retort.
“I can’t help my love for money, Cora. Especially the kind that comes easy. Do a little thing on the side here and there and get paid thousands. Do something like this and get paid a million dollars. I’m happy with that. A guy like me can do a lot with one million.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. So, killing Giles was worth your million? He was so good to you. He was always looking out for you and making sure you got the money you were worth. I feel sorry he didn’t know you were just a piece of shit.”
He laughs. “See, that’s where you’re wrong, Cora. I lured good old Giles into the trap we set for him.”
“You and Matvey?”
“No, not Matvey. He doesn’t care for people like Giles when he has other things to tend to. I always knew I couldn’t be the one to kill Giles when he got close to figuring out what we were up to.”
He keeps saying we.
“So, you’re saying you didn’t kill Gile
s and you weren’t the mole working with Matvey?”
“Oh, I worked with Matvey, yes, but I wasn’t the mole, and I didn’t kill Giles.”
“I did,” comes a voice that makes my soul shriek.
My gaze drifts up to Richard as he walks down the stairs.
Richard…
My Richard is here, and he just said he killed Giles.
My mouth falls open, and my eyes are so wide I think they may pop out of my head. My throat instantly goes dry. Dry like I’ve been stuffing cotton inside it.
Shock suffuses my being and lances through my mind.
What am I hearing?
What is he saying?
Richard… I called him. Alex wanted to keep us safe, and I called the devil and led him to our refuge.
“What’s going on?” I ask, and Zack starts laughing.
Richard answers my question by pulling out his gun and shooting Zack in the head even as he laughs. I scream as blood splatters everywhere and on me.
Zack drops to the ground, limp, with blood pouring from the wound and his body thrashing and quivering as the life leaves it. I scream and cry, feeling faint.
“Insolent fool. That was for messing things up. He failed to take you the first time,” Richard says and looks at me, eyes sharp like a hawk.
I’m looking at him and am hearing the words coming out of his mouth, but I can’t believe it. I can’t conceive what I’m seeing and hearing. It’s like something has infiltrated my mind and it all feels like they don’t belong there.
“Guards, come and get this bastard out of my sight,” he calls out. Even his voice sounds different.
Two men come down the stairs, and bile rises in my throat as they clear Zack away like he’s little more than dirt on the floor.
“Good,” Richard scuffs when they leave us.
He focuses back on me, and I shake my head in disbelief.
“It was you…” I wail.
“Sadly, my dear girl, this was a side of me I never wanted you to see, but I guess there’s a time and place for everything,” he replies.
“How? How could it be you? I trusted you. I trusted you with everything. You betrayed me.”
“I never meant for it to be that way. It’s funny. I knew something would happen in Chicago. I wanted you to stay in LA, stay away from this, but you were so keen to go, and Giles pushed and pushed.”
“You killed him…”
“Giles got way too close, sweet girl. Like you, he saw things he shouldn’t have and found out my secret. I had to kill him.” Richard nods.
“Are you going to kill me too?” I choke.
“I haven’t decided that part yet. Depends on whether or not you’re willing to cooperate. The fact you’re still here is because of me.”
I start shaking. “I can’t believe this is you.”
“Cora, a man has to do what he has to do. It’s like I’ve always told you—never turn away a good opportunity. This was one of mine.”
“It’s not just now… is it?” It can’t be. I don’t think it was. He looks like he’s in charge.
“No. It’s been years. The Hand have been good to me,” he answers and my breathing constricts.
The Hand…
The terrorist group. Richard is a part of them?
“How could you do this?” I rasp.
“Money and power Cora. A lot of money and unimaginable power. The type you can’t say no to. A man like me is valuable to them because of the connections I have by being who I am at the Bureau. I bring value to the table in a massive way. I can open doors with one word, one command, and it’s done. I can hide evidence, create evidence. Make arrangements for a shipment of missiles to be at a certain place so my arms dealer friend can take it.”
I press my lips together and try to steady my breathing.
He smiles a proud satisfied grin and continues his speech. “On this occasion, we hit the jackpot with a terrorist group in Sierra Leone.”
“How could you do this? After everything. Richard, you’re doing this after all you told me about my father. You forbid me to see Alex. Four years ago, when you found out I was with him, you hit me with the truth about my father, and look at you now. You’re no different than him.”
“I am different, Cora dear. Your father was a criminal bastard who stole your mother away from me. He didn’t deserve her,” he fumes.
I narrow my eyes at him. “What do you mean by stole her away from you? You were best friends… weren’t you?”
“Yeah, for most of our lives, that was what we were called. Then we took that step to be more, and she didn’t want me. Because of him. She loved him, and he loved her.” He snarls.
“He killed her.”
“No… he didn’t kill her. He wouldn’t kill her,” he clarifies and a tremor flies through me making my body ridged.
“What are you saying to me? You told me he killed her. The whole explanation threw me into this person I am today.”
“I know dear Cora. You get that sense of adventure from your mother. Everything else is from me. We like to retreat when hit with news we can’t handle because we like to be in control. You inherited that from me.”
My breath stills. “I don’t know what you mean?”
“That man you were calling father loved your mother. I’ll give him that. In fact, he loved her so much that he was all but willing to raise my child as his own. And she loved him so much that she stepped in front of the bullet that was meant for him to save his ass. She took the bullet I fired for him.”
“No!” I scream and tears pour from my eyes. Shock crashes through my soul, tearing me up from the inside out then it freezes me in the horror of his words.
“Yes. Yes. I found out you were mine. Cora, I found out I was your real father and how they hid the truth from me. So, I killed them. I killed them both.”
My head suddenly feels so light.
The room spins, and Richard shifts from my view. The shock-riddled news burns my ears.
What he’s saying can’t be true.
He killed my parents and… he’s my… father.
The air leaves my body in one whoosh from my lips, and my eyes roll back. My head lulls to the side, and darkness surrounds me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alex
Something soft runs over my cheek.
It reminds me of her touch.
My girl. My Cora.
When she touches me, it feels like a gentle caress with all that she feels for me in that small gesture.
Four years ago I wanted to ask her to marry me. That was the first time I thought I’d do it. I thought there was no way that I could feel the way I did about this woman and not have her forever.
“Cora…” I whisper, and the softness comes again, but it’s not her touch. It’s not even fingers. It’s a cloth.
My eyes flutter open slowly, and I find myself staring into Claudius’ unusual eyes. One blue, the other brown. Both eyes are focused on me in that way that freezes a person in place.
I turn my head to the side when movement catches my eye, and I see that they’re all here.
Dante, Gio, Donny, and even Gibbs.
Ava, Claudius’ wife, is here too. She’s holding a bowl of water, and Claudius places the cloth inside it.
“Cora…” I say again, like I’m programmed to say her name. It’s then I remember what happened, and I bolt up.
The pain that gets me slams me right back down, along with Claudius’ arm.
“Stand down Capo and stay there,” he orders.
The door opens, and our field doc walks in with a little bag.
I was shot twice. How am I alive?
“My girl,” I say.
“She was taken, Alex,” Claudius answers. “We found you in the river.”
My skin buzzes with rage. “I have to get her.”
“I have a team trying to locate her,” Gibbs says. “They’re working hard to find her.”
I look through the window and see it’
s daylight. They’ve had her since last night. Anything could have happened to her. Is she still alive?
“I have to get her. I have to…” I insist. I need my body to move.
Claudius keeps his hand firm on me, holding me down.
“You need to rest,” Doc says. “You nearly died. I got the bullet out of the side of your waist. It lodged in the muscle. If it had been any higher, it would have been fatal. The other bullet grazed your shoulder. You need to rest and take the pain meds.”
“God…” I’m a pathetic shit.
“Leave us,” Claudius says. “Gibbs, take my wife to the hotel and head back here.”
“Sure,” Gibbs replies.
They all leave. Ava is the last to go, but not before giving Claudius a kiss on his forehead. She places her hand on her ever-growing bump, and worry clouds her eyes. It’s the look I’ve seen on her many times.
The door clicks shut, and I return my attention to Claudius, who’s already looking at me.
He’s here. They came. They all came. They came to a place they weren’t supposed to know about.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
“We picked you up on the CCTV of one of the shops you went in yesterday. You know Gibbs. He has his ways,” he says. “We searched around the area. We figured once we saw the dead bodies in the forest, your house couldn’t be too far.” He smirks.
“Didn’t think I was worth all that trouble.”
“Bastard prick,” he scuffs, shaking his head. “You know you are, and I shouldn’t have given you the ultimatum to choose. I shouldn’t have been an ass. There’s no choice. You are like a brother to me, and I’m not letting you leave us. I apologize for allowing you to.”
“You were right. The situation is shit. Thanks for coming, but they have her, and I have to find her.”
“Gibbs has a way of finding things, finding people. I pray with everything inside me he finds her. We should have been here to back you up. It shouldn’t have come to this.”
“Claudius,” I say weakly, “you can’t be blamed for wanting to protect your family. It’s the promise we make to our women when they become ours.”
Double Edged Hearts : A Mafia Romance (Gangsters and Dolls Book 4) Page 15