A Million Different Ways To Lose You (The Horn Duet Book 2)

by P. Dangelico

  The smell of gasoline and cow crap made me nauseous. My stomach heaved. I tried to take shallow breaths, but that only made me hyperventilate. I coughed and coughed, vomit rising up with it.

  “She’s going to throw up, take that thing off,” said a distressed voice––a familiar one. The fumes were making me so lightheaded I couldn’t remember how I knew it.

  “Give her another shot. Knock her out again. We have another two hours to go.” A Russian accent? The needle stung…and then I faded away.

  Someone was slapping my face. I winced. Slap, slap, slap in rapid succession. I winced again, my face screwed up in protest. Still foggy from the drugs, I didn’t have it in me to even muster the appropriate amount of fear. I knew two things for certain: I had just been kidnapped, and I had been transported to God knows where.

  The pain was everywhere––and intolerable. There was so much of it the slap on my cheek was more of an annoyance in comparison. A mosquito buzzing in my ear. Except that mosquito was probably two hundred pounds and armed to the teeth. My eyes cracked open. Realizing the room was dark, they ventured open all the way. It took me a minute to examine my surroundings.

  I was alone, lying on a dirty floor. No Alek. And no sign of the man who had slapped me, and a man it definitely had been.

  A stab of fear pierced my heart. Was he taken as well, or did they dispose of him right away? Alek was an intellectual––not a fighter. I wasn’t certain he’d ever been in a fist fight once in his entire life; he could talk himself so brilliantly out of any trouble that he didn’t have to raise his fists.

  Composure. I needed to keep my composure and gather information. I was in a house. Dark, and dirty, and dank. Dilapidated. Windows covered up with sheets. Abandoned. The few pieces of furniture were either broken or covered with inches of dust and dirt. I was sitting on a wood floor stained with oil and….was that blood? The singing of birds drew my attention to the covered windows. The house was in a wooded area. Maybe a forest?

  The good news was that I was still dressed. The bad news––my wrists were secured with plastic ties behind my back. Without the use of my arms it was a struggle to sit up. My shoulders were burning, burning with the intensity of a thousand suns. I must have had my arms bound for some time. On the other hand I hadn’t lost feeling in them yet, the blood supply wasn’t totally cut off so there was your silver lining. It was also cold, so cold the tip of my nose felt frozen.

  Someone moaned behind me. With great effort, I turned my aching head and found Emilia lying on her side, close to the wall. Dirty, bruised, ankles and wrist bound by the same plastic ties as mine. My heart sank even further into despair. Scooting on my rear end, I turned my body and did a crab crawl over to her.

  “Emilia.” Her eyes fluttered. “Emilia wake up. Open your eyes. It’s me, Vera,” I begged, my voice rising, my composure slowly but surely unraveling.

  Her eyes blinked open. What seemed like an eternity later, she finally focused on me and said, “Vera?” I could tell from the dilated pupils that she’d been drugged too––with what, was anyone’s guess.

  “Good. You’re awake.” Entering through a door at the other end of the room were three men. The first one was no surprise, Yuri. The second made my blood run colder than it already was, muscle man. But the last, the last was the one that held my attention. My blood went from ice cold to fire hot in a blink of the eye.

  “How could you?”

  His dark eyes met mine for only a moment. He diverted his gaze, staring at anything other than me. His hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, he rocked back and forth on his boots.

  “Look at me, you bastard! Look at what you’ve done!” I don’t know where I found the strength to scream so loud.

  “Shouting, shouting, shouting,” Yuri very calmly said. “I don’t like it.” His English was perfect again.

  My eyes zeroed in on Yuri. “You hadn’t seen her, right? If you ever cared for her, even a little, get her some medical attention.” Considering the circumstances, begging him was not beneath me. I was no naive princess. I was acutely aware that there was a very good chance I wasn’t going to get out of this alive. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to beg them to spare Emilia’s.

  Yuri cocked his head. “You poisoned her mind against me. She wasn’t the same. She was going to run away with the boy, the bartender.”

  Stefan.

  I sucked in a breath. As each piece of the puzzle came together, my fear grew proportionally larger. My body shuddered from the cold, mostly though from the knowledge that Stefan was probably already dead and buried.

  “Why am I here? If you plan on holding me for ransom, you’ll be sorely disappointed. My husband and I are separated. I don’t think he’ll even notice me missing.”

  “She’s lying. He cares. He cares quite a bit. I saw it myself.”

  “You disgusting piece of shit.”

  “Enough––” Yuri interrupted. He was about to speak again when his cell phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he motioned to muscle man, and they both walked back out the same way they came in. Only one man left in the room. Alek.

  Chapter Thirty

  “They were going to kill me.”

  I looked up into supplicating eyes, his expression full of regret. Faithless coward. This was the first time in my life I could say that I was sorry I had been right all along. I shifted my sore legs, flexed my foot, and felt it. The small knife was still tucked into my boot. Stupid, stupid men. It never occurred to them that I may have been carrying a weapon. Now all I needed was the use of my arms.

  “I can’t feel my arms anymore, Alek. You have to cut these ties…please.” Plan A was kill him with kindness and understanding, appeal to his ego. Plan B was…there was no plan B.

  “I can’t, Zogu. They’ll kill me.” The sound of the Albanian term of endearment––a pet name that he knew my father always used––launched me into an indescribable rage. Had my hands been free, I could’ve plunged the paring knife into his neck at that moment. I did my best to tamp down the anger.

  “Why would they kill you? What did you do?” The words were forced out between a tight lipped grimace.

  “Loans…” He looked like he wanted to say more but stopped. This was a game I had to play very carefully. Alek’s true weakness was his arrogance. He dazzled me when I was a stupid young girl, easily taken in by a few big words and a pretty face. As a woman, I saw him for what he truly was––a narcissist through and through. He couldn’t resist the opportunity to showcase his brilliance. I waited patiently until he spoke again of his own accord. “I borrowed against our money.”

  “Our money? What money? We didn’t have a goddamn lek. They are going to kill me, Alek.” I persisted, my composure spinning out of control.

  “No, they won’t. Tomorrow we’ll get the money waiting for you in Montenegro, and then you and I will disappear.” His expression changed the more he spoke, the unease and doubt subsiding. Arms crossed in front casually, nose tilted slightly up. His arrogance, unable to stay hidden too long, came up for air in its full glory.

  “Did you say Montenegro?” The last shred of hope I held that I could change his mind went down the proverbial crapper.

  “Banks are funny like that. They won’t give access to a bank account worth three million to just anybody. You were meant to be my wife.”

  “So this was your master plan all along?” I accused, my voice rising, rage and dismay taking turns flashing in my eyes. He met my accusation without so much as a hint of remorse. His unflinching expression not only confirmed it––the smug bastard actually seemed proud of his accomplishment.

  “I underestimated how impulsive you could be,” he said, his countenance pensive as if I was a riddle he couldn’t quite figure out. “Running away? In the middle of the night? You surprise me. Wish you would’ve been that adventurous when we were fucking.”

  “How?”

  He shrugged. “It was absurdly easy. He trusted me with the combination of his safe.
I ran his errands for years. I transferred money all the time for him. He never assumed anyone else ever gave a shit about money because he didn’t. Very small minded of him, I always thought. He disappointed me in that.”

  A dormant volcano of rage exploded within me. “You betrayed a man that treated you like a son––loved you like a son.”

  “Do you remember what we did on our first date?” The bastard had the nerve to smile wistfully, as if this was some pleasant trip down memory lane.

  “I’ve worked very hard to forget everything about us,” I ground out, straining not to lose it completely on him. I had to keep him talking, stall him. I needed time to assess my surroundings, if I held any chance of escape.

  “We pretended we were in Paris,” he continued, unaffected by my contempt. “We both wanted a better life.”

  Shocked by where this line of thought was headed, I practically shouted, “Yes! But not at the cost you’re willing to pay––let me rephrase that––you’re willing to cost me. Your greed killed my father!”

  “No.” He charged forward, stopping close enough that I automatically shrank back and curled into myself, afraid he would hit me; I didn’t put anything past him any more.

  “Good old-fashioned pride killed your father,” he drawled in an awful voice. “He couldn’t bear to let his friends see him as anything less than a bastion of moral rectitude, of everything good. He could have told the authorities, he could’ve turned me in. He and I knew I had access to the money. But he didn’t,” he chuckled darkly. “He didn’t because he was ashamed, of what it said about his judgement.”

  I stared at him with pure hate in my eyes.

  “We all could’ve done a little bit better. Except for your father, and the high fucking horse he rode in on,” he shouted, his hands curled into claws that looked ready to choke the life out of me.

  And then a monumental realization crashed down on me. My mind finally caught up with my gut instincts. The knowledge crawled over my skin like an army of red ants. “Oh my God…was any of it real? Did you ever love me, or were you going to marry me only to get access to the money?”

  “Of course, I loved you. I was even faithful in the beginning.”

  His dark eyes fell on the diamond cross peeking out from my half open coat and narrowed. I knew what was coming. His face screwed up in a snarl and he yanked the cross off my neck, the thin platinum chain digging into my skin before breaking free.

  “You won’t be needing this. I’ll buy you a new one once we get to Russia.”

  Russia?

  Muscle man suddenly appeared in the doorway. “We have company,” he announced, his tongue tripping over his accent.

  Our Father

  Who art in heaven

  Hallowed be Thy Name

  Thy kingdom come…

  I prayed and prayed and prayed…the cavalry had arrived.

  “In here!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. A coughing fit followed, my throat still raw from the chemicals they had used to knock me out when they took me. Muscle man stepped closer into the room. He reached behind him and pulled out a serrated hunting knife as long as my arm.

  “Make her be silent, or I will,” he barked at Alek while his cold, dead eyes remained on me. Alek bravely stepped in between us and held his hands up. “I will, I will.” No doubt he couldn’t afford to lose his golden goose.

  Quickly, he produced a cotton handkerchief out of the inside pocket of his down jacket and roughly stuffed it into my mouth, jamming it down my throat. It made me cough even more violently. The scent I recognized as uniquely his brought back every memory of us. Another wave of nausea hit me.

  Pop, pop, pop. Gunfire. I knew what it sounded like now. More of it. A lot more. Muscle man hurried out the door, handgun drawn. Alek’s eyes darted around. The more gunfire rained, the more anxious he became.

  Moving swiftly, he grabbed me by the elbow and yanked on my arm. I screamed in pain and launched myself up onto my feet. My legs were barely able to support me. Weak and dizzy, I was seriously dehydrated. The sound of men shouting in English and Russian outside the house increased while the gunfire lessened.

  “Let’s go,” he said, wrapping an arm around my waist. I glanced down at Emilia. She was still out cold. I said another prayer for her.

  We were headed for the back of the house, exiting onto a rickety covered porch, when a familiar voice said, “Get down! Face down on the floor! Now!” Ben Winters and Gideon Hirsch stood at the back entrance of the abandoned house with their guns aimed at Alek’s head.

  The faithless coward released me at once. As soon as he did, I collapsed onto my knees. Slowly, Alek went to his, then down on his belly, palms in the air in surrender.

  “Hands behind your head,” Gideon growled and placed a knee on Alek’s back.

  “Wish this motherfucker had been armed so I could’ve shot him,” I heard Ben mutter to Gideon. My arms were suddenly free of the plastic ties. I cried out in pain and Gideon began massaging my wrists, working his way up my arms. I sat back on my heels, no strength left in me.

  “I won’t tell,” Gideon replied in that soft voice with the soothing, rolling Rs.

  “Sebastian?”

  “We had to uh…restrain the sonofabitch. Pardon––him. He’s in the car,” Ben informed me.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He? It’s you I’m worried about.”

  Gideon wrapped his arms around me, and gently lifted me to my feet while Ben was much rougher with Alek. My gaze slid sideways to the man I once thought I loved. The man I had vowed to spend my life with. I was looking at a total stranger. A stranger who didn’t have the courage to meet my eyes.

  “Where are you sending him?”

  “Interpol will take custody. Then back to Albania where he’ll be residing in a six by eight cell.”

  “Emilia!” I remembered belatedly.

  “Let’s get you inside while Interpol wraps this up,” Gideon said.

  I took a moment to glance around. The house was surrounded by a heavy forest. Gray and bare, the trees were not covered with snow. Nothing else stood out except for the armed men with official looking uniforms traipsing through.

  “Where are we?” I asked, beyond confused.

  “Croatia––border of Montenegro.” Gideon answered while he escorted me back into the house. I watched Ben take Alek away. I could only image what was going through his mind. He didn’t looked at me again.

  Clad in riot gear and armed to the teeth, police officers swarmed the property inside and out. Two of them were assisting Emilia when we walked back into the house. They had released her bound hands and feet, but didn’t move her. I walked over and crouched down close. She didn’t make a peep as I checked her pulse. Two EMTs rushed over to help.

  She raised a hand and gripped mine. “Vera?”

  “It’s me,” I murmured. “You’re safe. You’re safe. I have you.” Gently, I stroked her hair and spoke words of comfort. No doubt she was in shock. Mentally and physically beaten down. It would take a while for her to accept that Yuri was willing to sacrifice her without so much as a second thought.

  She tried to get up but I wouldn’t let her. I was certain that with the beating she took, she sustained a number of broken bones. Emilia was lifted gingerly onto a gurney. I squeezed her hand, murmuring in Albanian that I loved her and would see her soon. After that, they whisked her away.

  “You’re next,” Gideon softly ordered.

  “Not yet,” I answered, my gaze elsewhere, scanning the room that was filled with people doing their job. My eyes bounced from police officers and medical assistants, to Sebastian’s private security team. I found him then––a blonde, disheveled head above everyone else. He glanced around nervously. Even from afar I could see the anxiety in his gaze as he searched the room for me. When our eyes connected, mine welled with tears. All the fear I had pushed down and locked up came bursting forth with a vengeance. A loud sob broke out of me.

  And then I was in his a
rms, enveloped in love, smothered in kisses and tender caresses. I buried my face in his chest and wrapped my arms around his waist in a death grip, my body convulsing uncontrollably.

  “Shhh, I got you…I got you,” he whispered close to my ear. “I’ll always come for you.” In between kissing me, he muttered some more nonsense I couldn’t make out––something about handcuffing me to him, I think.

  I wiped my snotty, teary face in his shirt. “You know I didn’t mean a word I said to you the other day.”

  “When I got back in the car, I realized you mentioned wine and I knew something was wrong. I know you love me. I know you wouldn’t hurt me like that…I trust you with my heart.” Still recovering from a mix of adrenaline and fear, his voice was gruff. A shiver rocked my body. He unzipped his down jacket and wrapped it around the both of us, cocooning me in his warmth and reassurance.

  A minute later I was hooked up to an IV while I rested in Sebastian’s lap and closed my eyes, drawing strength from the man I loved, my home––the only place I belonged was with him.

  “How did you find me?” I asked. I was awed by my good fortune. It was almost too good to be true. After a pause he answered, “The cross.”

  “My cross?” I asked, more confused than ever. “What does my cross have to do with it?” In reflex, my hand went right to my breastbone and found empty space. “Alek took it.”

  “There’s a chip imbedded in the platinum frame––a tracking device.”

  As the knowledge began to seep into my tired brain and register, I looked up with a mixture of amusement and outright fury that had me wavering between laughing and punching his lights out. He had the grace to look sheepish.

  “You’ve been tracking me all this time?” I asked, downright incredulous. Did I want to be mad about it? Yes. But there was also no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for his possessive tendencies, and questionable tactics. “You psychotic, control freak…”

  “Your psychotic, control freak,” he murmured in a low sexy voice, interrupting my quiet tirade. “You own me, baby. All of me––even the psycho parts. For better or worse, remember?”