Carving Graves: A Dark Mafia Romance (The KORT Series Book 2)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CELESTE

Choice is a butchered pipe dream.

My breathing is labored, muscles tense. Senses overwhelmed.

I’m dumped onto a lap and suddenly wedged between the thick thighs of a masked man—who smells like beef jerky and feet—while still outfitted in my sex dress. The jolt of the van wheeling forward throws me against him. He tightens his hold on my mouth, a gun spearing into my waist.

Vomit coats my tongue.

The whole ordeal unfolded like a fast-forwarded movie, frame by frame sped up so that the focus was dimmed, muddled into smeared chaos.

That explosion at the front of the shop was enough to knock me down, banging my head against the crashing dressing-room door and rattling me. When I was extracted seconds later, I thought I was being rescued from the carnage.

Until I saw the masks.

Everything inside me twisted, just like it had when my brother’s Dodge Viper whooshed into flames.

“I’ve never believed for a second that your brother’s death was an accident, Cee.” My mother’s words flit around me, as though they have meaning here.

I’m so damn dizzy.

Once I saw the monsters, I kicked and bit as they carted me away.

My father used to warn me to never let a perpetrator change my location. “If you leave with them, you’re as good as dead, Cee.”

I tried. There were so many. I fought. Will my family know I fought?

My heart thrashes with regret. With terror. Blood swooshing in my ears. Head pounding. There are six men in here with me. All of them yelling and cussing as the asphalt begins whirring by. It’s utter mayhem outside. A haunting sight, like news footage of a terrorist attack. Not something I ever thought I’d be in the midst of, certainly not as the intended target.

There’s an army of masked men, automatic weapons slung across them. A bunch of vans like this one. These must be the Skulls.

Bad news, as Liam put it, seems mild.

They want something. My fight isn’t over. Maybe that will keep me alive until the guys get to me.

Unless …

“Death has already touched you tonight, and it won’t be the last time.” Liam’s words slice through me with more meaning than they held in the still quiet of kisses and cuddles—even after the attack. I’m pretty sure I glimpsed Keith’s lifeless body.

Keith.He has a girl back home, a girl he parted with for far longer than planned to keep me safe. Just last week, he beamed because she’d agreed to move here. He’d worked for my father for a long time, but he wanted to stay on as my guard and was willing to uproot his life to do it.

My chest shudders, tears welling. Are all my guys gone? Rena? Ivy was okay. I heard her yelling for Wells and Liam. Was she yelling because they didn’t …

My shoulders convulse as more of Liam’s words clobber me. “There’s always threats and danger and the question of how many tomorrows we’ll have.”

No. I can’t … he has to be okay. They all have to be okay.

He’s the sunrise. That’s what he promised.

He’ll always show up.

One of the men grips the handle of the door to seal us inside from the chill of the whipping winds and pandemonium. It’s halfway shut when an unmistakable blur of ginger hair flies inside, landing with a thud a second before the clang of the lock sounds. What the hell?

“The fuck is that?” the driver belts out as he peels away, winding around another van.

“Some chick dove in here,” another answers, tackling and patting down Ivy, who snarls like a savage beast at him.

“I’m not armed, asshole! I pitched my gun!”

“So, a stupid chick.” A guy to my left barks a laugh as the van swerves, so aggressively that it feels like we tip onto two wheels, jouncing us all into the side.

There are three bench seats, all facing the center. Beef Jerky and I sit alone against the back.

“Not so stupid, motherfucker,” Ivy hisses, wriggling enough to keep the pervert at bay. “You’d have shot me if I was armed.”

That’s a good point. They probably would have shot her if she’d jumped in here with a gun. How the hell did she think of that while chasing me down? And will herself to leap into a van filled with psychopaths without a weapon?

The handsy asshole chuckles darkly, dragging his knuckles over her cheek. “This one’s feisty. She’s mine.”

“Gross.” Ivy retches, spitting in his face. “In your fucking dreams.”

He smacks her across the face, and my body tenses, but she barely flinches with a shadow of pain even though her head rolls to the side from the force.

“Stupid bitch!” he sneers. “You know we’re going to kill you, right?”

“Not until we all fuck her,” the guy in the front passenger seat muses. “Think you can handle forty or fifty guys, darling?”

My gut wrenches at his threat. I didn’t have a plan to get myself out of this, let alone the both of us. What was she thinking?

Ivy squirms until she’s resting against the back of the driver’s seat, legs tucked against her chest, calming gaze set on me, even with guns pointed at her and blood trickling down from her scalp. “I’m here because, if you’re going nowhere, I’m coming with you.”

Tears pool in my eyes with that proclamation. This is certainly not what we meant when we came up with that little ditty. And we are undoubtedly going somewhere. I hate that she did this, but love her all the more for it. The tables sure have turned. All growing up, I protected her from the brazen words hurled by cowardly bullies. Now, she challenges armed lunatics accosting me without a blink. Not exactly an even trade.

She whips her head to the guy asking the questions, the one who smacked her, who has retreated back to the bench by the door. “You won’t kill me because I’m your only hope, cocksucker.”

“How the fuck do you figure that?” he snipes. “Fucking dirty whore. You got a golden pussy or something?”

“Like a fucking leprechaun,” another guy to my left bellows. “A cunt with a pot of gold inside.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” She shrugs like she doesn’t have a care in the world, relaxing in her silky pantsuit with the tags still on. “Every last cell of my body is like a damn brick of gold. Those bricks can buy your freedom or drown you in the depths of the sea. Your choice.” Her head tips to the side in quiet consideration. “Well, not exactly. That’s if I choose to extend the exoneration.”

And the butchered pipe dream is revived.

That causes an uproar. Apparently, Ivy is the funniest girl they’ve ever spoken to, and yet they think she’s full of shit. She’s not. Her being here makes this war on KORT.

She’s brilliant. Rash and reckless. But fucking brilliant.

Part of me wants to kill her myself for putting herself in danger, for risking her life here, but aside from that, I’m in awe. She’s just as formidable as Tom must have known she’d be—an unflappable woman, willing to wage war in the pits of Hell.

One of Liam’s fellow fallen angels.

While the masked thugs are still howling at their own ignorance, Ivy rubs her index finger over her left wrist. It’s a sign we’ve used for years when she needs me to keep time or alert her to zoning out. I can estimate minutes like a stopwatch because of her, but there’s also a clock on the dash I can make out from here. I raise my brows so she knows I’ve got her covered.

“You’re right, Red,” Beef Jerky yields in response to Ivy comparing herself to bricks of gold. “You’re our bargaining chip.” He finally drops his hand from my mouth, trailing his pudgy fingers over my neck. The touch is like a serrated knife, sawing me open to the horrors they have in store. “The reason your friend here is going to cooperate before we fuck her too.”

Ivy puffs an exaggerated sigh with a roll of her icy blues before I can speak. It’s every bit a groan of both disgust and pity. “If that’s the way you want to see it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She shakes her head with feigned disappointment. “Fuck, you seemed smarter as the Gimp. At least you were mute.”

Leave it to Ivy to reference a movie amid being abducted—a leather-clad sex slave from Pulp Fiction, no less—the same movie that kicked off our visit at the start of the new year. Even a few of the guys snicker in response. She’s always been able to compartmentalize emotions, detach herself from a situation. Who knew it would be a super strength?

It suddenly occurs to me that, in spite of her confident demeanor, she has me estimating the minutes, not because she’ll zone out. But because she thinks there’s a limit to how long they’ll keep us both alive. Time ticks louder than it ever has.

Like a bomb strapped to my chest.