Page 169 of Broken Mafia Prince
GIULIA
“Wake up, baby,” a familiar voice says.
“Mama?” I call, searching around in the dark, trying to find her.
“Wake up!” she says more urgently.
A dot of light suddenly appears in the distance, growing larger and larger until it surrounds me, blinding me. I feel someone behind me, and when I turn around, I see my mother just as she looked the last time I saw her.
“Wake up, now!” she screams in my face.
All of a sudden, I’m being pulled away from her.
“Mama!” I cry. “Don’t let them take me. Mama, please!”
The warmth of her voice wraps around me like a childhood lullaby, but something feels wrong. The light swells too fast, blinding, burning. Then—cold. A terrible, suffocating cold. I’m falling?—
I shoot up in bed, my forehead slamming against something hard. Pain explodes behind my eyes.
It takes me a moment to realize I’m not in my bed. I blink, confused, trying to clear away the fog in my head. Where the hell am I?
The dark is oppressive. My eyes fly around in panic, trying to figure out what’s going on. Just then, my body is jerked to the side.
“Ouch,” I groan as my shoulder smashes into the side of the… car?
Am I in a car?
Oh god.
My eyes widen in realization. I’m in the trunk of a car, my hands and legs tied, being taken who knows where.
Panic slams into me. The trunk. The ropes. My heart pounds.
I was waiting for Raffaele. Isabella stepped away to make a call. Then?—
A twig snapped. A flash of pain. Darkness.
Isabella took a walk to get some signal on her phone while I opted to wait for Raffaele at the location in case he was running late. The last thing I remember is hearing the crunch of a twig, and as I started to turn around, there was a flash of pain at the side of my head, and the world went dark.
I’ve been abducted by someone who either doesn’t want the wedding to happen or intends to use me as a bargaining chip in this war.
This could be my father. Maybe he overheard Isabella and me planning my escape and decided to take matters into his own hands. Or Edoardo—using me as leverage to break my father.
But the last possibility—the one that makes my stomach lurch—is the Echelon Syndicate. If it’s them, I’m already dead.
Sweat rolls down my face, and my breaths are coming faster and faster.
“Hey, asshole!” I bang against the side of the car.
“Shut it!” a man’s voice calls back.
We go over another speed bump, and I gasp as I’m rattled inside the trunk. I wince when my forehead smacks the metal side. I grit my teeth in annoyance.
“Who’s behind this, huh?” I croak. “Tell your bastard employer that only cowards abduct people and toss them in car trunks.”
The man driving laughs. I cock my ear, trying to detect another voice. I can easily take out one man, but I need to free my hands first and find a way out of here.
If the Syndicate is truly behind this, then I know I’m in trouble. Forget being used as a bargaining chip, those assholes will slice me ear to ear and dump my body on the street for vultures. I hope Isabella managed to get away. Panic makes my heart pound harder. I try to regulate my breathing.
