Desperate Desires (Mergers & Acquisitions #3)

Chapter 41-y

T he thing they don’t tell you about being taken against your will was how fucking slow time passed by.

I mean, it had to be more than an hour since this fat asshole came to my front door, threatened me with a gun, and then kidnapped me from my front door.

“I don’t know who you are or what you think we’ve done to you, but my husband is going to find me, and he is going to kill you,” I told the man who stood pacing in front of me.

“Shut up, bitch!” he shouted and slapped me, sensing a wave of nausea rising in my throat.

Shit. I probably had a mild concussion from when he hit me with the butt of his gun. And really, I knew better than to talk to him, but I just wanted to leave.

I thought that maybe if he saw reason, but no. This was not a reasonable man.

The red discoloration around his nostrils, and the way he kept sniffing told me this track suit wearing dipshit was probably out of his mind on cocaine.

I pivoted, switching my focus from him to the room itself. It smelled like a mixture of bad cologne, stale coffee, liquor, and sweat.

I dry heaved a little, only for the jerk to shake the chair I was in while screaming in my face.

“Knock it off!” he screamed at me, but I couldn’t help it.

Bile rose swiftly, the acid burning the back of my throat, and all I could do was try not to vomit.

“Carmine, we should let her go,” a second man said.

“Shut the fuck up, Rico,” Carmine answered.

“I’m sorry! It stinks in here!”

I shouted back, obviously because I was a moron. I winced, waiting for him to strike again, but the phone rang, and he grabbed it.

“Yeah? No, I took his whore. Wife? Well, fuck him! I’m a made guy. He killed Freddy. He got no right,” he was shouting, and I had no idea what he was talking about.

The shitty little room where I was sitting, currently tied to a chair, had no windows save for the large one up front, but it was covered by a wooden shutter, and no one could see inside.

There were old pictures on the wall. Flags and trophies, too.

I felt tired, but I knew if I closed my eyes that would be worse. So, I forced them to stay open, hoping like hell I wouldn’t throw up.

“No fucking way. I want to be paid. He owes me! I don’t fucking care if she’s his wife. When Pop goes, I’m the head of this family.”

He slammed the phone down angrily and turned to me, wiping his nose, breathing heavily.

“Hey you, bitch, you married that fuck?” the second man, Rico asked me like he couldn’t believe it.

I nodded. I didn’t know why I answered, but even that small movement of my head cost me. I groaned and closed my eyes.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” he said, and I flicked my eyes open.

“Yeah. We’re m-married,” I said lowly, my voice trembling.

“Yeah? You good enough for Mr. Fancy Pants Bottarelli, maybe you’re good enough for me,” Rico sneered.

“What do you think, Rico? Think he’ll mind if we go a round or two with her? Nah, I don’t think so,” Carmine said, and he moved closer to me, grabbing my knees.

“He won’t fucking mind I get my rocks off, will he? He won’t be alive long enough to mind,” Rico answered, giggling like the sick fuck that he was.

My chest rose and fell in frantic, ragged gasps as fear coursed through every nerve in my body like wildfire.

A scream ripped from my throat—raw and desperate, filling the air with the sound of my terror.

The two of them loomed closer, a nightmare in the flesh, and instinct took over.

I lashed out wildly, kicking with everything I had—one foot still encased in my silly, but precious to me, gold Croc, the other bare and vulnerable.

The absurdity of it would’ve made me laugh if I weren’t fighting for my life.

The impact barely fazed them, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t just lie there and let it happen. I couldn’t be helpless.

Every cell in my body screamed at me to fight, to thrash, to claw— to do something.

Because the alternative?

The alternative was unthinkable. No, I wasn’t going to let these men just do whatever they planned to do.

I wasn’t going to be their victim. I just couldn’t bear the thought.

So, I did what I could, kicking and screaming, struggling against my binds to get free.

“Stop it!”

“Fuck! Hold her down!”

They both yelled, crying out when I hit them, and backing away. Carmine turned, grabbing his gun from where he’d dropped it on the table.

Then he pointed it at me, an ugly sneer on his face.

This is it. I’m going to die.

Ono!

My heart cried out for my husband, a silent plea that reverberated through every broken piece of me.

Sadness slammed into me like a Mack truck, cold and crushing. I closed my eyes, ready—willing—for death to take me.

But death never came.

Instead, a deafening explosion shattered the room, ripping through the air like a thunderclap.

My eyes flew open just in time to witness the carnage.

My attacker’s face—his ugly, monstrous face—erupted in a grotesque spray of blood, bone, and flesh as what must have been a dozen bullets tore him apart.

The world slowed.

Time splintered into jagged fragments as his body crumpled, lifeless.

Blood painted the walls, the floor—everything. But none of it mattered.

Because standing behind him, like a god of wrath incarnate, was Ono.

My Ono.

And he looked like the very embodiment of vengeance.

His cobalt-blue eyes blazed like ice lit from within, wild and unyielding.

“No! It was him! It wasn’t me!” Rico lied, but Ono wasn’t buying it.

He turned, grabbing his blade from his back holster and slicing it up and across Rico’s belly.

“Ono! I swear,” he sputtered.

“You swear? You fucking pig. A quick death is too good for you,” he growled, then turned to me.

“Did he touch you?”

I nodded. Then Ono turned back to Rico, and I couldn’t help it. I watched as he grabbed his hands, slicing them both off at the wrists.

Rico screamed, and Ono leaned down and whispered to him.

“I hope you bleed out slow, you sonovabitch.”

Then he slapped him with his own hands and grabbed his jaw, forcing it open as he shoved them both in his mouth.

Rico sputtered, choking on his flesh as he bled out on the floor.

I was a doctor. I took an oath.

Maybe I should have felt something. Some compulsion to help the men who’d hurt me.

But all I could feel was relief. Relief and vindication.

My man had come for me. He’d protected me. And I never loved him more.

Ono stood up. His chest rose and fell, each breath a storm barely contained beneath his ink scarred ivory skin.

Blood—not his own—streaked his jaw, and his hands gripped the still-smoking gun like it was forged from his very fury.

He wasn’t just a man in that moment.

He was retribution given form—unstoppable, terrifying, and utterly mine.

A sob clawed its way up my throat, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

All I could do was stare at the man who had just torn through Hell itself to save me.

Because no one—no one—brought me back from the brink of death but him. And the way he looked at me...it wasn’t just love.

It was possession.

A silent vow that death wouldn’t dare touch me, not while he still breathed.

“Ono!” I called him, and then he moved, dropping the gun and coming for me.

He took his knife from his pocket, slicing through the telephone wire holding me captive, and then I was in his arms.

“I got you,” he whispered in my ear as I sobbed against him.

“Ono?”

“She’s okay. Take care of this,” he told someone, Sammy I thought. But honestly, I wasn’t paying attention.

I just wanted to go home with my husband.