7. Leona
LEONA
T he only way we knew time passed was because of Max’s watch. Another day crept by, no food, no water. We were quiet, barely even speaking to one another, but the Albanians didn’t leave us alone.
When they came back, we didn’t go down to the cargo hold. This time, they forced me to leave the cell, and they caged Max in so he could watch from the other side of the bars.
“Such beautiful skin,” Buzz Cut had whispered in my ear, his breath a revolting caress down the bare skin of my neck and chest. By now, the cold had sunk inside my skin and taken permanent root.
I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. I could only see the blinding flashes of their camera phones.
“Your fans want to see what they’re purchasing. You’ve already got interested buyers.”
I closed my eyes and swore to forget what they were doing. It didn’t matter. My guys would come, and we would go home, and everything could go back to normal.
I’d kill every single Albanian trafficker I could get my hands on. My guys would rip them to shreds. When I retreated into my head, I imagined their vengeance, and the time passed around me.
“Leona, wake up.”
No .
Let me sink back into the dark. It was quiet here. Comforting. I floated around in blissful non-existence. There were no memories. No fear. No pain. No bone-chilling cold.
“Leona.”
Something grabbed my arm. My body moved on its own before my cheek pressed into something soft.
“ Piccola , per favore.”
“No,” I murmured. “I can’t.”
The sound was like a hook in my brain, pulling me back out of the watery darkness. I could do nothing but let it pull me along.
“You’re fine. Everything’s going to be fine,” it said. “Open those eyes for me.”
I blinked, and everything came rushing back. My mouth tasted of cotton and copper, and I started choking on the taste before I coughed bloody spittle onto the surface my face was currently pressed against. Max’s shirt.
“There you are, piccola ,” he murmured against my head. His arms were wrapped around me again, his chest supporting my body as he leaned against the wall.
It only took two seconds for fear to claw its way back up my neck. I sucked in deeply, shuddered, and then couldn’t contain the tears from spilling down my cheeks.
“Max,” I whimpered. I couldn’t get my body to stop shaking. Even his warmth struggled to chase away the chill embedded beneath my skin.
“It’s going to be okay,” Max whispered, running his hand softly down my hair. “You’re going to be okay. I’ll kill him. We’ll get out of here, and we’ll kill him for everything he’s done.”
Despite his assurances, my chest felt gnawingly hollow.
Every moment the memories tried to creep back up, I shoved them deep down back into their box.
All I focused on was the steady movement of Max’s breaths beneath my head.
When I tried to pull away, his grip tightened around my body.
Gentle enough not to hurt my already busted upper body, but firm enough to keep me from moving.
“Stay.”
I shook my head. Max was my enemy. Max was everything I hated. He wasn’t supposed to be a comfort here. He wasn’t supposed to be trying to make me feel better.
“Please,” he urged. I couldn’t look at him. “Just for me.”
I let him press my head back to his chest.
“Do you remember after our mammas died when I’d hold your hand?” he murmured.
More tears spilled down my cheeks. “Yes.”
“You had that stupid nightlight.”
“Shut up,” I laughed through the pain. The visions in my head faded. “I loved that nightlight.”
He was quiet for a moment. “We got through it, didn’t we?”
I nodded.
“We’ll get through this, I promise.”
His words broke something inside me. I didn’t want to fight against what he was offering, even if it was just for the moment. I clung to him, burying myself deeper into his arms.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I whispered as my tears wet his shirt, right next to the bloodstains.
“I know,” he responded. His arms tightened around me. His cheek pressed against the top of my head while his chest rumbled. I knew Max well enough to know he was trembling, barely holding back emotion.
“I’m still going to kill you,” I added. I wanted the words to bite, to sting, but there was no venom. My brain rebelled, but my body gradually calmed. My heartbeat slowed. My breaths evened.
“I know.” His fingers smoothed my hair away from my face as he pressed me firmer against his chest.
“Signal jammer,” I blurted, jerking awake again.
I’d been in and out of sleep. My body was shutting down. Not fully dying, but slipping into sleep mode. If I wasn’t awake, if I was pressed against Max’s body, I didn’t have to think about this ship. I didn’t have to think about the cargo hold. I didn’t have to think about the men who hurt us.
Max had told story after story of when we were kids, soothing me from waking nightmares.
I’d closed my eyes and tried to picture us back then.
Tried to believe that we could be kids again.
That maybe this was just like that one time when our parents had taken Cas, Max, and me to that cabin in Vermont over Christmas.
We’d stayed up all night playing games, and as soon as dawn broke, we’d passed out in the giant fort we’d made in front of the fireplace.
When I’d woken up, I’d been tangled between the two of them with Max on one side and Cas on the other.
But it wasn’t a cabin in Vermont. It was a ship in the middle of who-the-fuck-knew, and I was so cold that I’d stopped shivering.
We hadn’t been given food or water. My mouth was sticky and disgusting; my stomach was so painful it was nauseating.
The dehydration headache combined with the headache from crying had left me a husk.
No wonder I had forgotten.
“Max,” I whispered, croaking like a frog.
He didn’t answer. His arms were still wrapped around my back, but they weren’t as tight anymore. I looked up, and he was asleep .
He looked so peaceful in his sleep. I hadn’t seen him look so vulnerable since before his father had died. He had changed after that. Cas and I had always thought it was because he’d lost both his parents, and that still would have been perfectly reasonable for what he went through.
Something about what he said earlier—how he buried his younger self along with his dad, and how he’d been hiding all this shit from us—made me feel like it all originated somewhere else.
There had to be a missing piece he was still hiding from me, but my brain struggled to link two thoughts together.
When had he found out about what my dad was doing? How long had he known?
Even as I asked myself the questions, I knew he’d never tell me.
I looked at my ring, silently praying that the guys were getting close. It had been days by now, hadn’t it? Surely Ciel would know where I was. But then my eyes flicked up to the signal jammer nestled right behind the camera with the flashing red light. I’d seen it before, but had forgotten.
Would the tracker even work with that signal jammer in place?
I had to get rid of it.
That was how we could get out of here.
I couldn’t reach the jammer by myself. It was too tall, and I was too short. Even if I somehow climbed the bars—I barely had enough energy to lift my head—I still didn’t think my arm could reach it.
But Max might.
“Max,” I whispered again.
This time he shot awake, eyes wild and frantic, reaching for a weapon that neither of us had. “What is it?”
“Shh.” My fingers brushed his cheek. “It’s okay.”
He breathed heavily, looking down at me between his arms. He blinked for a few seconds, then let go of his grip, and I sat back.
“What’s wrong?”
I kept my voice low in case the camera had audio. “Don’t look at it, but earlier I saw a signal jammer behind the camera in the corner.”
To his credit, he kept his eyes locked on me, but I saw his body shift slightly. “So?”
I glanced down at my hand, rubbing my finger over the ring. “Ciel put—my guys put a tracker in my ring.”
He looked down at it, and his features schooled into his mask. Back to the old Max, again. I sat back farther, outside the ring of his arms.
“Do you think they can find you if we can get rid of the jammer?”
I nodded. “They will stop at nothing to bring me back.”
His face twisted momentarily before it smoothed back to passivity. He sat silently for a moment before he looked at his watch. “We’ve been here for about two days. If the ship left a port in New York, and we’re headed to Dürres in Albania, we might be deep into the Atlantic by now.”
“So if we take out the jammer, the guys would still have to get here. Most likely in their own boat. If they can get a signal from my ring.”
Max gusted a breath. “That’s a big if.”
“Ciel knows what he’s doing,” I said confidently. He would have made it so the ring could get a signal anywhere across the world, because that’s the kind of man he was. He always put maximum effort into his work.
“So you need my help to get that jammer down,” Max said. He sized me up. “You can’t reach it on your own.”
I pressed my lips together and jerked a nod.
“What happens to me when your guys get here?” His voice went sour. “They’ll either kill me, or leave me behind. ”
I narrowed my eyes. “Or I will.”
He snorted and glanced away. “Or you will, yes, excellent point. So then why should I help at all? Maybe I should just take my chances.”
I stared at him as Buzz Cut’s face flashed in front of my eyes. “He’ll rape me, Max. He’ll get even worse, and he’ll keep hurting those women in the cargo hold.”
His face hardened, and he reached a hand to grab my elbow. “I won’t let him.”
“You won’t have much choice, and neither will I. If not on this ship, it will happen when we get to Albania.”
His jaw clenched as he dragged a hand down his face. “Fuck.”
“Please,” I murmured. We were still trying to keep our voices low to avoid the camera. “Help me. Temporary truce until we get off the ship.”
A war of emotions flashed across his face in quick succession. “One condition. When they come for you, you will take me with you.”
The guys would fight that. But if Max and I didn’t take out that signal jammer, they might never find me. Working together was the only choice.
“Fine.”
He huffed a laugh. “Don’t look so disappointed, piccola .”
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped, voice quiet. “I’m not a girl anymore. I’m a fucking queen, and when we get back to New York, you’ll get the full force of my wrath.”
He tilted his head back. “Pinky promise?”
I rolled my eyes, but didn’t respond.
He glanced over my shoulder at the camera. “There’s one big problem, though.”
“What?”
“If we get close to the signal jammer, they’re going to see on the camera.” He locked eyes with me again. “They will come back again, and there will be punishment. I can try to get their attention on me, but…”
I let a slow breath out through my nose while squeezing my eyes shut. My hands trembled, but I jumped on that rattling box over and over to seal it down and bury the fear. If I didn’t do this, it would only get worse. I could survive whatever they threw at me, and when I did, I’d kill them all.
“I know,” I finally responded. “But it’s our only play here. We have to do something, or we’re both going to die.”
“We do it quick, then,” he said, moving to stand. “And hope your guys are paying attention.”
“They’re paying attention.” I grabbed his outstretched hand and let him pull me to my feet. I bit back a hiss at the shooting pain running through almost every single one of my nerve endings.
Max’s gray eyes appraised me. “I’ll lift you up? And you grab the jammer?”
“Yeah.” The camera wasn’t too far away from the cell bars, but even with Max carrying me, I still wasn’t positive that I could reach it. We’d just have to try. “How’s your arm?”
“It was just dislocated,” he responded, avoiding my gaze. “I popped it back into place when you were passed out.”
I paused. “That would have hurt.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been through worse. Come on. Let’s get this over with. When they come back, we should fight back to distract them.”
Dread pitted in my stomach, but we had to take this risk.
I had to get back to my men .
That thought fueled me as I let Max lift me onto his back. I repeated it over and over as I shimmied my way onto his shoulders. And I tried to ignore that my arch-enemy’s head was currently between my legs as I reached through the bars.
“Hurry,” Max urged.
“Too weak to hold me up, Max?” I said through clenched teeth as I reached toward the camera. The red light flashed, and I was positive the Albanians were watching. “You need to hit the gym more.”
Max’s hands squeezed my thighs. “You know very well that’s not true. Hurry before they see you messing with the camera .”
I glanced down, eyebrow raised. He raised both his eyebrows in some sort of message.
“Yeah…I’ve gotta get this camera down.”
I stretched as far as possible, and my fingers wrapped around the jammer’s antenna. With a hiss, I yanked on them. The first stick broke off easily. “Shit.”
I slid the antenna into my bra and then reached again. This time I got my hand around the box. It detached from the wall with a gentle pull. “Got it.”
Max slid my body down his, anchoring his hands around my waist to spin me away from the camera and lower me to the floor at the same time. I flinched at the pain of his grip on my ribs, but I knew he wasn’t trying to hurt me.
“Break it, and give it to me,” he murmured. We still didn’t know about the audio, and we couldn’t take any chances.
I yanked the rest of the antenna out and handed him the pieces. He shoved them in his pockets, then grabbed the box and ripped off the back panel before plucking out a bunch of wires.
My heart swelled with hope. I prayed Ciel would get a signal now. And I prayed that they’d find me before Buzz Cut broke me.
Footsteps echoed outside. Max and I locked eyes. The door to our room screeched open just as he was sliding the box into his other pocket.
“I thought you’d learned your lesson last time. Looks like we need to be more clear.”
That voice would haunt my nightmares.