by Vivien Dean
Her hands shook as she tied Gino’s arms behind the chair’s back. When she crouched in front of him to do his feet, his soft voice drifted down to her bowed head.
“He would’ve killed her if I didn’t do what he said.” His eyes were bleak when she glanced up, his remorse thick enough to choke her too. “You know I didn’t have a choice, don’t you, Maddy?”
She offered him a small smile. “I know. Don’t worry about it. We’ll get out of this somehow.”
“Stop that yammering and get to work on this one.” Marty appeared at her side and shoved Ava into the other chair. He’d moved them farther apart while Maddy had been fetching the rope, beyond arm’s reach for either Gino or Ava to get to the other. Though he stepped back to give Maddy room, he kept the gun trained on Ava’s head. “My trigger finger’s getting a little itchy. You don’t make it fast, and it might slip.”
Red splotches marred Ava’s face from where Marty had gripped her so tightly, but the fury in the look she leveled at him made up for it. “Just wait until Cash gets his hands on you,” she spat. “You’re going to wish you ran when you had the chance.”
Marty laughed. “You think I’m afraid of Vinci? He’s dead meat as soon as the boss sees how they were going to pull a fast one on him. It’s going to be my pleasure to put so many holes in his body, he’ll sink instead of float when I throw him in the river.”
Maddy grabbed another length of rope and crossed behind Ava. She’d left Gino’s bindings as loose as she dared without making Marty suspicious. Her plan was to do the same for Ava. If she could get Marty out of the apartment, they could probably work themselves free and get Cash. Marty wouldn’t hurt her on purpose, not if he didn’t want to mess things up with Mack even more. She couldn’t necessarily say the same thing about Mack when he discovered she really was alive, but she’d cross that bridge when she got to it.
Once they were both tied, Marty finally seemed to relax a little, retreating to the wet bar and one-handedly pouring out a shot of whiskey. “Might as well make yourself nice and comfy,” he said, gesturing with the gun toward the couch. “That’s your specialty, ain’t it?”
Carefully, Maddy straightened, but she only made it a step before vertigo swept through her system. Though she had rested the remainder of the afternoon, the events of the morning and the up and down with the ropes had worked to drain her reserves again. It took all her strength to walk a straight line without wavering. She had no doubt he would have loved to see her break down and beg, but she’d be damned before she gave him the satisfaction.
“So how did I get so lucky to have this visit?” She curled into the corner of the couch farthest from Ava and Gino. She wanted Marty’s attention on her, not them. “Don’t you have puppies to torture or something?”
Marty knocked back the alcohol in a single gulp, then poured himself another. “You got to give Gino the credit for that. I thought you’d bought the farm. I was just going to make him tell Mack how things went down last night.” He grinned. “But this is much better. The boss won’t care about none of it once I give you to him.”
“And you’re just standing around, getting drunk on my whiskey?” She put as much disdain as possible in her tone. “That’s stupid, even for you.”
“Nope.” The P popped when he uttered the word, and he smacked his lips, chasing after stray droplets, before setting his glass down. He tugged at his tie and pulled it free of his collar. “This is a pretty posh spread you got set up for yourself here. I want to enjoy some of it while I can. So I’m going to phone Mack up, and tell him I got a surprise for him.”
The jacket came next, though he had set the gun down on the wet bar to shrug it off. Unfortunately, the gun remained well within reach, close enough for him to grab if he wanted to. Maddy wasn’t quite desperate enough yet to make a play for it.
“You are one stupid broad,” he was saying. “Playing Mack like that. But then, you hooked up with Vinci, so I guess that says a lot about the fact you got eggs for brains.”
“Cash is a thousand times the man Mack could ever be,” she said automatically, every nerve stretched wire taut.
A sound of disgust ripped from Marty’s throat, and he yanked up the shirtsleeve he’d just unbuttoned. “Know what I hope? I hope Mack sees you for the trash you are and kicks you to the curb when he finds out you double-crossed him. Even better, I hope he pulls you out of your cushy job at the Sun and sticks you someplace where the patrons aren’t nearly so shiny.” His lips curled into a vicious smile as he rolled up the other sleeve as well. “Pretty girl like you will attract all the best sort of customers, I’m sure.”
“You can’t talk to her like that!”
Gino’s outburst drew Marty’s amused attention and Maddy’s chagrin. Stay out of it, she wanted to say, but too late, Marty had picked up the gun and sauntered back to stand in front of his hostages.
“You got a soft spot for pro skirts, don’t you, Paonessa? Some might consider that a character flaw.”
She had never seen Gino look so menacing before. “She’s good enough for Mack,” he said flatly.
Marty’s amusement vanished. “Not anymore.”
“Really?” Maddy pushed herself up, ignoring the way the room dipped around her. She had to get him away from the others, if not out of the apartment. “You don’t think if I crooked my finger, I could have Mack back if I wanted? He was ready to pay Cash a small fortune just to go away. You really think his feelings would have changed that quickly?”
She got her wish. Marty turned his back on Ava and Gino and took a threatening step closer.
He thrust the gun toward her, his eyes narrowed to slits. “I think you’re just a little too full of yourself, that’s what I think. The boss don’t like being shined on, especially not by a dumb whore.”
“And yet, I’m still here, and you’re the one scrambling to cover your butt.”
“Not for long.”
“You haven’t made the phone call yet.” She adopted an innocent smile. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“I got no reason to—”
He heard the key turn in the lock a split second after Maddy did. Her head whipped around, and the world went with it, forcing her to grab the back of the couch or risk toppling onto her face. She only knew one person who had a key to the apartment. Her heart plummeted.
This time, she didn’t have the strength to leap forward to protect him before the shot rang out.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The force of the bullet slammed Mack into the door, fresh blood soaking into the weft of his jacket. Cries of alarm echoed throughout the apartment, though none quite as loud as Marty’s, and the next few moments blurred as he rushed forward to keep Mack from crumpling to the floor. Maddy watched in wide-eyed shock as he and Sammy hoisted Mack to his feet, each taking an arm and guiding him to the couch.
“I thought you were Vinci,” Marty kept babbling.
Mack’s cold gaze never warmed. He didn’t even wince when they laid him down, just reached up with his uninjured arm to touch his blood-soaked shoulder. “I suppose I should be glad he’s taller than I am, then. Otherwise, I might not have enough breath to fire you.”
Marty blanched, but he at least had the sense to shut up, working at tearing away Mack’s clothing to get to the wound beneath.
The sound of voices in the hall tore Maddy’s gaze away from the couch to see Aaron calming down the neighbors who had come to investigate. “There’s no need for alarm,” he said, his all-American smile firmly in place. “We’ve got it covered.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked after he’d shut the door.
Though Aaron lifted his shoulders in apology, Mack interrupted before he could offer an explanation.
“I knew I wasn’t dreaming you’d visited me.” He peered around Marty’s arm, gray eyes inscrutable. She suppressed the shiver his gaze evoked, refusing to let him see how much he scared her. “Odd how you are the one person I’ve been able to trust to te
ll me the truth today.”
“I wasn’t lying,” Marty spluttered.
“And you’re here with her as a show of loyalty? Even you’re not that foolish.”
Abruptly, Marty rose to his feet, sweeping his arm out toward the bound Ava and Gino. “I found out it was all a scam. I was just getting ready to bring Maddy down to the hospital. I swear, boss.”
Aaron ventured further into the room. “You seem to be doing a lot of that lately, Marty. Let them go.”
Maddy’s hope flared, only to die again when Mack ordered him to stop.
“They’re part of this,” he added. “Leave them for now. We need to know the extent of this little conspiracy.”
“What little conspiracy?” Summoning the last of her strength, Maddy rounded the end of the couch, crouching next to Mack. She could still fix this if she played it smart. The situation wasn’t totally out of control quite yet. “You’re not thinking straight, Mack. Let me take you back to the hospital so they can look at your shoulder. You’re losing too much blood.”
“I don’t need a hospital. My boys can take care of the bullet.” Already, Marty was rushing for the kitchen, though Mack’s focus remained on Maddy. His good hand grasped her wrist, his touch scorching and surprisingly strong, to guide her to his shoulder. Sammy withdrew from where he’d been applying pressure, leaving Mack to push Maddy’s hand into its place. “Don’t question my state of mind again, Maddy. Considering what I’ve gone through for you these past couple days, I might not be as generous to forgive you the next time.”
His chilling words stopped her from pulling away, locked in this silent battle of wills with his warm blood seeping through her fingers. Her emotions were a tumult too tangled to simplify. There was fear for what Mack might yet do, what orders he might convey that Aaron wouldn’t be able to stop in time. There was relief that it hadn’t been Cash at the door instead, that she didn’t have to kneel here and try to stop the bleeding in Cash’s shoulder. There was guilt, for feeling relieved Mack had been shot and not Cash. And there was so much more, because for everything that they had to do to get out of this place, even though she knew a life had to be sacrificed in order to save theirs, she wished she didn’t have to hurt Mack even more than she—or her alter ego—already had.
“Do you really hate me that much?” he asked, his voice low and even. “Did you for a moment consider how it would destroy me to find out you were dead?”
Her lips were dry, but the last thing Maddy wanted was to lick them and send the wrong signal to Mack. “It was never about you.”
His jaw hardened. “Of course not. Because you never think of anyone but yourself.”
She had to remind herself he knew the person she’d been, not the real Maddy Cardinale, not the woman Cash knew and loved, but his words still stung. “Why would you even want to be with someone who didn’t love you?”
The grip around her wrist tightened to painful proportions. “The better question is how can you love someone with a past such as Cash’s, but you can’t love me? His hands aren’t clean either, Maddy. Yet…you choose to ignore that small but important detail.”
It constantly surprised her how the magic of this place could take pieces of their lives and twist them into something unrecognizable. Though she knew Mack was referring to something entirely different, his assertion called forth echoes of Cash’s confession about his past, how he’d spent his youth and how he had moved on afterward. Except…had he? He’d run away from the pain, become something he wasn’t in order to put it all behind him. It had come back to haunt him, of course. Denial always had a way of doing that.
But she still knew the answer to Mack’s pressing question. She’d known it as soon as she realized the depth of her feelings for Cash.
“The difference is in how you look at what you’ve done,” she said. “You kill men, and you don’t see anything wrong with it, because for you, it’s a means to an end. Yeah, Cash has hurt people too, but he spends every day of his life understanding the mistakes he’s made. He’s remorseful, Mack. To me, that’s all that matters.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched, and his mouth tensed to speak. Maddy braced herself for whatever icy recriminations might come, but Marty saved her from them with his reappearance, pushing her out of his way.
“It looks like it’s mostly a flesh wound, boss,” he said, setting down the bowl of water he’d brought with him. “I’ll have that bullet out in no time.”
He pushed his sleeves up even farther in preparation for his impromptu surgery. Something black along his skin caught Maddy’s eye, something inky and flourished disappearing beneath the material. She leaned sideways to get a better look, and though half of it was hidden under his shirt, the half remaining visible was unmistakable.
The mark. H’roven’s signature.
Mack wasn’t the safety, after all. Marty was.
Cash didn’t wait for the taxi to come to a complete stop as it approached the apartment building. As soon as it slowed, he poised with his hand on the door, ready to push it open as soon as it was safe.
“Wait here,” he ordered Kate. “I’ll be right back with the painting.”
“Keep your hands off Maddy until we get back!” she called after him.
Waving her off with a grin, Cash bolted through the front doors, ignoring the elevator to take the stairs instead. He couldn’t afford having to wait for the lift, or stalling if it stopped on intermittent floors. In and out, as fast as they could manage. They had twelve minutes left on Aaron’s promised hour. They didn’t have to be back before time was up, they just needed to have the painting in place.
He burst onto their floor with his legs burning and his heart racing. A familiar scent tickled his nose, unnamed until he was nearly there. Gunfire. When he saw the scarlet streak along the front of their door, his stomach lodged in his throat.
Not again. I promised her.
“Maddy!” He shoved the door open without pause, uncaring of the force that snapped one of the hinges. His fingers slid in the still-wet blood, but the reminder honed his determination to razor-precision. He didn’t give a flying fuck about the damn painting right then. Maddy was what mattered.
The tableau greeting him drove Cash to a confused halt, eyes wildly darting around to drink it all in. Ava and Gino tied to dining room chairs. Aaron hanging back, stiff and tense. Sammy hovering in the background. Mack stretched out on the couch, while Marty bent over his shoulder.
And Maddy, pale and shaking, with blood on her hands and smeared across the front of her blouse.
Their eyes locked. “What’s going on here?” he asked.
At the first step she took toward him, Mack tried to push himself up. “Don’t, Maddy.”
The look they exchanged raised even more questions for Cash, but Maddy took another step, and then another, ignoring Mack’s directive. As soon as she was within reach, Cash caught her wrist and tugged her the rest of the way, holding her hand up to look for the injury.
“It’s not mine,” she said. “Marty shot Mack when he let himself in. He thought it was you.”
For once, Marty’s itchy trigger finger had worked in their favor, but still, the sight of a bloodied Maddy brought back too-vivid memories of her bleeding out in his arms, and the helplessness choked him all over again. Beneath his fingertips, her pulse raced beyond anything remotely resembling normal. He searched her face for some hidden cause.
Her usual radiance was gone, replaced by paleness and a faint glimmer of perspiration along her brow. Stray golden tendrils clung to her cheeks, too tempting to ignore. Gently, he pushed them behind her ear, cupping the back of her head to tilt it upward. Her lips parted in invitation, but when he bent to kiss her, she turned her head at the last moment and rested her mouth at his ear.
“Marty has the mark,” she murmured in a voice only he could hear.
Though a tremor of excitement ran through him at her announcement, Cash contained his reaction and focused on the tender kiss he left on her
jaw. He would have much preferred killing Mack, but Marty was a more than welcome substitute. Vengeance would never be so sweet.
“The show is quite unnecessary,” Mack said from the couch.
Cash disagreed, but he disengaged anyway, prodding Maddy toward the kitchen. “Go wash up. I’ll take care of this.”
“You think you actually have any say here, Vinci?”
Marty’s belligerent tone irritated every aggressive instinct Cash had, enough that the magic coursed along the surface of his skin in readiness. At his side, Maddy inhaled sharply, but the light touch she had on his arm stayed in place, if anything, tightening even further.
Tenderly, he squeezed her fingers and pulled away, stepping closer to the group in the center of the room. When something happened, he wanted Maddy and the others out of the way. He would not have innocent bystanders hurt. Not again.
“Considering you’re the ones who barged into our home, I think I do.” He scowled at Sammy, who seemed far too smug to be just a casual onlooker. “And I have no bloody idea why you’re even here at all. Where’s Lombardi?”
“Too busy stabbing me in the back, it would seem,” Mack answered. “At first, I thought it had to be your idea, Cash. That you were the one to convince one of my most trusted employees to lie for you and Maddy. But Sammy says differently, and considering everything he’s told me so far has come true, I’m inclined to believe all of it.”
His palms burned, but Cash held the magic back, leashed until he could be sure it was enough. With his reserves so low, he would only have one shot, and it would have to be a simple one, at that. He had to play this smart. There were too many guns in the room, in too few friendly hands. As far as he knew, even Sammy was armed, and though Aaron had his own weapon, Cash couldn’t count on him being comfortable with it. Mack wasn’t a threat, not in his current state, but Marty was a wild card.