Page 26 of Dangerous Deception

I can’t even finish my drink.

“Hold on,” I groan. “I think… I think I need some air. Marie?”

Marie is mid-laugh, but she turns to me and her brows immediately pinch. “Adelina?”

“I think I need some air!” I yell over the music. “Can we…?” I tilt my head, and Marie nods quickly.

“Don’t you go anywhere,” she orders Geoff, then she steps away from the bar to take my hand. Out of nowhere, Marie overbalances and hits the floor in a fit of giggles, and when I reach to help her up, my world lurches and I nearly join her. The only thing that stops me is a strong arm around my waist, but the pressure against my stomach drives the hot nausea higher.

What is wrong with me?Sure, we’ve been drinking all night, but we’ve been on low-content cocktails, not hard spirits. I try to push the arm away while trying to explain that the pressureis making me ill and I just need some fresh air, but the words tangle on my tongue.

I blink and Marie is gone. A sea of people are in the way, and the heat of the club becomes smothering. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t think through a sudden fog in my mind, and when I try to focus on what I am doing—getting outside—the thoughts escape me like mist.

Another blink and suddenly, warm night air washes over me. My head tips back and the stars above me blur into moisture clinging to my eyelashes. I’m overheating. It’s like my blood is boiling, and the arm around my body is tightening with each passing second.

“Wait—” I try to push the contact away, and when I’m released, I overbalance and hit the wall. Rough brick grazes against my fingertips and digs into my palms. My purse slips from my wrist, and as I turn to try and catch it, a sobering sight freezes me to the spot.

Marie is completely unconscious, being carried over Geoff’s shoulder toward a black car.

“Marie!”

Oh, God.

Something is wrong.

My legs aren’t listening to me. My body is heating up to boiling point and pressure is swelling in my skull, making it impossible to see clearly. I watch as Marie is loaded into the back seat of the car. “Marie!” Is that even my voice? I can’t tell whether I’m screaming out loud or in my mind. As I stumble forward, a hand catches my forearm and I’m spun around to face Jim.

“Your turn,” comes his voice, although the sound seems to reach my ears long after his lips move. Alarm bells blare through my mind and I try to free my arm from his grip, but he’s unrelenting. Suddenly, he lets go, and I stumble right into Geoff.He spins me around, then slaps me so hard across the face that my entire cheek goes numb. My head snaps to the side and pain lances up the side of my neck.

I try to cry out, but I can’t get any noise out past my panting.

The last thing I see as they throw me into the trunk of the car is Jim with my purse in his hand and a cold smile across his lips.

11

RAFFAELE

“You want me to take you home?”

“Why the fuck would I want to go home?” I snap, glaring briefly at my driver. “Is she at home? Do you have information I don’t have? Are you fucking psychic and can tell me that she’s just hiding at home after all this time, huh?”

My driver pales slightly and immediately ducks back into his seat as Vito shoves my tablet into my hands.

“Look,” he says, tapping the screen quickly. “She made a call ten minutes before the smoke alarm went off and then she left out the side gate. She runs past there quite a lot, so something must have given her the confidence to leave that way.”

“Who did she call?” I grind out, gripping the tablet so hard that the plastic squeaks.

“Working on it.”

“Then work faster.”

Gone. Adelina is gone.

Is this my fault? Should I have prodded her silence more this week? Should I have done something with her tonight? If the disaster at the brothel hadn’t taken up my time, I would havebeen home hours before she snuck out and then maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

Is she gone? Was she so truly unhappy that her only option was to flood the bathroom, set the place ablaze, and sneak out like some unruly teenager?

My heart tightens and pain lances through my chest, like my veins are turning into barbed wire. A hundred horrible things could have happened to her in the hours she’s been gone, and I can barely stomach to think of them all. I know the darkness in this city. I know how cruel people get under the cover of darkness. Hell, it’s usually me who makes the shadows jump, but I would never hurt Adelina unless she gave me cause to.

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