Page 26 of Soulmate of the Mafia King
I shouted the code into the intercom and rammed through the metal gate as it rose as a glacial pace. More metallic screeching. More paint to repay. Fuck, I hadn’t had more than three conversations with Paige in the months she’d been a part of Tommaso’s life. I only knew her secondhand, through his glowing reports and Sera’s constant updates on her quest to win Paige’s friendship again. I knew she was a thick-shelled woman,hard to crack, and I respected that about her. I just hoped her shell was thick enough to withstand Zahur a little longer.
When I skidded up to the elevator into the building proper, the helpful bellhop and burly guard Tommaso had mentioned both lay on the ground in pools of their own blood, and the elevator doors showed obvious crowbar dents. Motherfucker. I didn’t bother checking whether the men on the floor were alive or dead. Zahur was smart enough to leave guards at the elevator door to ensure he had an exit, and that meant I needed to take the stairs to the penthouse.
I hadn’t been fast enough to stop Mattia. I hadn’t known Paige well enough to know she belonged on the raid with us. Now, I needed to repay some debts. I pulled my pistol out, flicked off the safety, and began running up the stairs.
CHAPTER 21
PAIGE
Istared into Sam’s blank, lifeless eyes, just visible past Zahur’s legs through the crack in the cabinet door, and tried not to breathe loudly. Maybe him walking over here was a fluke. Maybe he didn’t know where I was. I huddled smaller in the darkness.
“Come out,” he crooned. “I will find you,azizati, but I promise you will find me better mannered if you turn yourself over.”
His legs disappeared again, and I exhaled shakily. I had a moment, a second to get myself together. What would Lauren tell me to do? Breathe, obviously. In for three, hold for three?—
The air gasped out of my lungs as Zahur barked an order in sharp Arabic. Even the sound of the language cast me back to his house. There, guards had yelled to each other constantly, maybe checking positions, maybe just keeping us aware they were there. But somehow, they still managed to sneak up on me sometimes. The muscles in my arm tensed as I remembered the furious grip of one who caught me accidentally wandering too close to the edge of the women’s quarters on one of my first days.
I shook my head. These memories didn’t have power over me anymore. I’d come to terms with them, or fucking something. I’d put in the work, the time, faced my demons.
Sharp shoes clacked over the tile outside my hiding place, and my brain tumbled back through time again. Zahur’s shoes had sounded like that during one of his rare visits to the women’s quarters. McKenna had called them check-ups. We were expected to line up in the middle of the room, completely naked, and stay totally still while Zahurinspectedus. His inspections ranged from a cursory glance to doing everything he could to make you laugh, cry, or react in one way or another. Any reaction broke the rules, and any rule-breaking had strict consequences. Bruises that had long since healed pulsed on my skin. The only warning we ever had for check-ups was his shoes clacking along the floor outside the room.
Hot tears filled my eyes and overflowed. I’d faced my memories, but never in detail, and rarely of him, the final bastard to touch me. Somebody answered back in Arabic, and Zahur sighed.
“I don’t like asking twice,azizati,” he said, “but if you’re particularly pleasurable, I may let you live. Your escape wasn’t really your fault, after all. That brute stole you away.”
He’d said nearly the same thing to me on that last night. Some brute was coming to steal me away. I should enjoy my final moments with him while I could. The last, he’d said while tracing the wickedly sharp knife he kept in his nightstand along my cheek. I’d closed my eyes, and he’d chuckled softly, then told me to open up before he got jealous I might be picturing another man. If that happened, he’d take my eyes.
I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle my gasp. The bastard had always been jealous. Most of them were. Other memories tumbled through my mind, but those I could push away. His presence, the sickly sweet cologne he wore when he set up his “dates” with us, kept thoughts of him at the forefront. If he was jealous when he owned me, I couldn’t imagine what he’d do when I was happy with someone else.
Tom’s face burst through the noise in my brain, but it wasn’t a real memory of him. Instead, I saw the blurry, half-lit version of him who’d rescued me in my nightmare the first time I’d started to think he might be…something more. I clutched the image as tightly as the knife in my sweat-slicked palm. He had promised to always find his way back to me. I had to hold up my end of that bargain.
I’d trained for this. I wasn’t helpless. I hadn’t been helpless since Dad started training me at age eight. And as much as I’d been training, it was Dad’s advice I needed. At the very beginning, he’d told me to use everything I had to my advantage. Anything they underestimated or wouldn’t look twice at was my secret weapon. Zahur liked us naked. But I’d heard more than enough stories to know that when he got women who hadn’t been trafficked before, he liked to leave them mostly clothed the first time he assaulted them. He’d told JJ it taught his women there was nowhere they could hide. With shaking hand, I slid the knife into my shirt, up under the back of my bra, and prayed the elastic held. My loose T-shirt would hide its shape. The bastard’s monstrous nature would do the rest.
No, I had to do the rest. I had to keep my eyes open for the moment to strike.
Cabinet doors started banging open next to me. I’d run out of time to give myself up. But I’d never really expected mercy. The door to my cabinet flung open.
“There you are, you little bitch,” he spat.
He grabbed my arm and yanked me forward. I screamed, tried to brace against the sides of the cabinet to stay inside, but his grasp was inexorable. I tumbled out onto the floor and stared up at him.
I’d forgotten the details of his face. He was so oddly plain, so unmemorable. But as his thin mouth twisted into a sadistic smile, I remembered that with perfect clarity. How he had suchneat teeth, such professional bearing, until he unleashed the monster inside of him. A few of his men nearby snickered.
“For making me find you,” he hissed, “I will not grant you the scant comfort of watching your dead lover while I remind you who you really belong to.”
The knife would be wasted with his men watching. If I could kill him, it would still be worth it when they took me out. Nevertheless, I sank my teeth into the meat of his wrist. Blood, hot and metallic, poured into my mouth. I choked and released him as he roared. His grip on me loosened. I tore away and scrambled across the floor, sliding in Sam’s blood. Quick curses in Arabic and the sounds of frantic reloading chased me. If I could just make it to the door, a few inches outside the kitchenette, I could?—
The bastard caught me by the hair, tearing clumps from the roots as he yanked me back. I shrieked.
“Now,” he said, “you are really going to pay.”
CHAPTER 22
TOMMASO
Iblinked. The world was black around me.
“—twelve ccs of?—”
