Page 224 of Kissing the Villain

“Ten million?”

A beat passed where he listened, muttered a few words in another language, and then hung up.

“Put her back in the trunk,” he said to a burly man behind me.

The other man didn’t respond, only followed orders. He lifted me in his arms, the woodsy smell of his cologne burning my nostrils. When I closed my eyes, I listened to the waves.

Luca loved the sea. Every night, he drank scotch on his bedroom balcony. The sound, the smell, everything about the sea reminded me of my handsome devil.

As the man dropped me into the trunk, I closed my eyes and envisioned my Knights coming to my rescue. Someone slammed their hand into my shoulder and rolled me to the side. A needle jammed into my neck. By the time I counted to five, I lost my will to fight.

80

LUCA

Pacing backand forth across the helipad, I gritted my teeth as I stared at the lost signal on the tracking app on my phone.

I was losing my mind.

I was losing control.

Knowing I had put Alex in this situation made every sensible part of me shut down. I was becoming the thing I feared most—the uncontrollable psychopath who craved blood. Without Alex here to level me out, I was ready to explode from all the rage bubbling up inside me.

Marcello cupped my shoulder, snapping my attention back to reality. “We’ll find her. Give it time.”

I threw my hands in the air. “We don’t have fucking time, Marcello! They will sell her to the highest bidder. And that person will kill her to spite me.”

The sickos in our world never kept women long. They either hurt them so badly that they died from their injuries or put them out of their misery. The men who held the private auctions did not reveal the buyers’ identities. So we had one option—find Alex before they moved her to theIl Circolocation. My fingers itched as I waited for a text message with the details. Theydidn’t hold auctions in the same place more than once, making it harder for us to anticipate their next move.

“They must know there’s a tracking chip in Alex’s necklace,” Marcello said.

I nodded.

The local Knights gathered on the helipad at my estate, waiting for me to issue an order. Aiden stood beside his grandfather, who shot me a stern look. The Wellingtons had every reason to blame me.

All of this was my fault.

I should have told Alex the truth about her brother. What difference would it have made? She was going to be our queen and had every right to know. If I had been honest with her, she would have sat with Marcello and sketched a new Devil painting for me. My girl would still be here. We didn’t have a solid lead on Alex. If we moved in the wrong direction, we could lose her forever.

“I knew we would regret working with the Kurtis,” Marcello said through clenched teeth.

“I looked into their operation,” I told him. “Even I didn’t see this coming.”

“The Kurtis specialize in trafficking by water,” Sonny said. “Alex could be in a shipping container on a carrier halfway across the country by now. So far, no large vessels have left Connecticut, New York, or New Jersey ports. No unusual traffic reports from the Coast Guard. I think Alex is still on land.”

I turned to look over my shoulder at Drake, our tech genius. “What do you think, Battle?”

Drake looked up from his iPad. “The Mercedes van went into the Lincoln Tunnel and never came out. We lost Alex’s tracker a few seconds later. I’m still looking for them.”

Drake’s company, Battle Industries, created most of the weapons and high-end tech used by the United States military.He was on the verge of launching an artificial intelligence software that had attracted the attention of the Albanians. Our allies and enemies were dying to get their hands on Drake’s AI. That was their real motive for meeting with me, though they had disguised the meeting as a loan for weapons.

“Is it possible they switched cars before the Tunnel?” I asked Drake.

He shook his head. “No, I checked for loops in the feed and ran the CCTV footage through my AI to look for redundancies and inconsistencies. I don’t get it.” Drake sighed. “I didn’t see them switch cars. So, how did they disappear from the Tunnel? It’s not possible.”

Marcello tapped Drake on the shoulder. “Did you see any other Mercedes vans?”

He pressed his lips together, lost in thought. “Not that I recall.”

---