Chapter 1 Ransom
RANSOM
Everything fucking hurts.
My lungs burn, and my muscles are screaming from doing this much exercise this early in the morning, but with that Jeep gunning for us, it’s not like we can stop. The headlights of the black Jeep flash somewhere behind us, and we duck down another side street, desperate to get away.
At this ungodly hour of the morning, the only sounds on these little roads are our harsh breathing and the beat of our feet against the concrete, but that’s not even close to comforting right now.
Someone could leap out of the shadows and intercept us, and we have no real idea where we are or what we’re heading into.
Nuevo Laredo isn’t a massive city, but there are houses sprawled out everywhere, and none of us are familiar enough with this area to make any kind of guesses about what we’re heading toward.
It flashes in my brain that maybe the Jeep is herding us into some kind of trap, but I shake that off before it can take hold.
At this point, it doesn’t really matter.
We just have to keep moving and deal with whatever happens.
The Jeep’s engine roars behind us, and we pick up the pace, taking advantage of the fact that we’re more nimble on foot than the Jeep is. But it’s still a damned close thing.
“Fuck this,” I curse with feeling as we stumble out onto the main road again a few minutes later. “Olivia can go fuck herself.”
If anyone were to look out their windows right now, they’d see four grown-ass adults running wild through the streets in the predawn hours of the morning, trying to get away from a Jeep.
Part of me hopes Olivia herself is in that Jeep so I can punch her right in her smug face if I get the chance.
Almost as soon as we pause to look around, there’s another flash of headlights. I don’t know how the hell the Jeep is moving so fast, but it’s right there behind us again, downing us in the glare from its brights.
Willow gasps, and before I have time to turn around and see what’s up, we’re moving again. Vic grabs her arm and yanks her off to the side, and we duck into another alley, sprinting as fast as we can.
“I saw… who was in the… Jeep,” Willow pants breathlessly, sounding like she’s having a hard time breathing and talking at the same time. “It was… Troy.”
My head whips around as I stare at her.
“What the fuck?” Malice growls. He turns to look at her, not slowing his pace. “Are you sure?”
Willow looks like she’s going to be sick, but she nods. “I saw him. He’s not dead. He must have… must have survived.”
Vic grunts breathlessly. “That means Olivia had help. Fuck, I didn’t know. I wasn’t counting on that.”
None of us were, but we don’t have time to dwell on that right now. If that asshole Troy has been hunting us the same way Olivia has, then we have to keep moving. I’m sure that bastard has a grudge against us too, considering we almost killed him and ran off with the woman he was supposed to marry.
“Come on!” I tell them, picking up my pace a little bit more, even though it feels like my heart is about to explode. “We can figure it out once we get out of here.”
Even though I’m the one who said we’ll figure it out later, letting go of it is still one of those ‘easier said than done’ kind of things.
Even as my arms pump and my feet slap against the pavement, my mind starts conjuring up memories of all the shit Troy has done.
All the ways he’s threatened Willow. The way he was planning to marry her, even though he sure as hell knew she didn’t want it.
I think about their engagement party, when he had that proprietary look in his eyes, acting like he had the right to decide who Willow was allowed to speak to, barely standing down because he didn’t want to cause a scene.
Olivia might be in this for the money, and she’s clearly willing to use her only living heir as a bargaining chip, but Troy is one of those assholes who’s just vindictive and petty. He’s not chasing us because of money, since he doesn’t need us for that the same way Olivia does.
He’s chasing us because he can’t stand to lose.
Anger wells up in me, hot and intense. I think I might hate that fucker even more than Olivia.
The idea of running from him turns my stomach, and I’m half tempted to stop and try to take the cocksucker out, but it would be a bad idea.
We’re at a disadvantage, and a pretty big one at that.
The thing that matters the most here is keeping Willow safe.
Anything and everything else can come later.
So we keep running, sprinting along and ducking through more small spaces.
We climb over garden beds and duck under someone’s clothes line, trying to put as much distance as we can between us and the Jeep.
The more we run, the quieter it gets, and after several agonizing minutes, it seems like maybe we’ve managed to get away.
There’s no more roar of the engine behind us, and the streets are only lit by a few streetlights instead of the glow of those headlights.
But we’re still running blindly through this unfamiliar town in Mexico, not sure where we’re going.
It’s not like Vic had time to plot a route for us.
Those bastards caught us completely off guard.
Wherever we manage to hole up next, we’re going to have to be a lot more careful.
And that opens the question of where we can even go.
Unless Troy and Olivia somehow guessed we were going to Mexico days ago, they probably haven’t been here for longer than we have, but they have more resources than we do.
Hell, they might even have people on their payroll living here, eager to help them.
It’ll be hard to know which places are safe to go to.
We need more distance between us, and we need to throw them off of our trail so we can regroup and come up with another piece of this plan.
We were supposed to have more time for that, but here we fucking are.
My mind churns, trying to figure something out as we finally slow our steps. Vic glances around like he’s trying to find some sort of landmark to help him orient himself as we step out onto another street.
But before he can say anything, a loud roar cuts through the air.
Fuck. The Jeep.
There are no headlights this time, but there’s no mistaking the sound of the engine. The driver cut the lights to blend in with the darkness around us, and the Jeep is gunning toward us, barreling down on us fast.
“Shit!” I shout, and I feel both Malice and Vic move beside me. Vic throws himself in front of Willow protectively, and in that exact second, a gunshot rings out.
Then Vic crumples the ground, going down hard.
Willow screams, the sound high pitched and terrified, and the Jeep’s engine roars again.
It doesn’t stop or even so much as slow down. It veers slightly off course, whipping past us. The sides are open, and a hand shoots out, grabbing Willow up as it goes by, pulling her on board the speeding vehicle.
She screams again, fighting the hold of whoever the hell grabbed her, but it’s not enough.
“Fuck, no!” Malice shouts.
“No you fucking don’t!” I bellow, right there with him.
I put on a burst of speed, trying to chase down the Jeep, but it tears away into the night, moving so fast I don’t have a hope of catching it on foot.
Come on, I urge myself, gritting my teeth. Willing my body to move faster, to at least keep following the Jeep so it can’t disappear on me. Come the fuck on.
But it’s no good. It gets farther and farther away, and eventually, I have to stop running, my lungs burning. With the headlights still off, I can’t even see the damned thing once it gets far enough away.
Shit. Fucking goddamned shit.
The Jeep is gone, and Willow with it.
For a long moment, it feels like time stops entirely as my mind grapples with that fact, refusing to believe it. Every breath is like inhaling shards of glass, and I fight for air, trying to keep the anger and desperation from clouding my brain.
The only thing that finally cuts through the haze of panic and fury in my brain is a noise from behind me. I turn to look back at Malice, who’s returned to the spot where Willow was snatched from us.
He’s on his knees on the ground, hovering over Vic’s body, and a sickening feeling lurches in my stomach.
Fuck, no. No, no, no.
We can’t have lost Vic and Willow in the same night. That would just be…
No.
They’re several blocks behind me, almost indistinguishable from the darkness around them, and despite the way my muscles and lungs protest, I turn and start to run again, making my way back over to them.
My chest is tight, and it’s not just from the exertion.
I don’t know what I’m going to see when I reach the two of them, and if Vic is dead—
I swallow hard against that thought.
As I get closer, I see Malice keeping pressure on a wound in Vic’s side. Vic groans, and even though it’s a pained sound, it loosens the knot in my stomach a little. He’s still alive.
Thank fuck for that.
Malice looks up when I approach them, an obvious question in his eyes, and I shake my head.
“They got away,” I say, voice hoarse. “Willow is gone.”
“Fuck!” my older brother curses. “Fucking—fuck.” His dark eyes flash with emotion, his jaw going tight.
On the ground, Vic doesn’t look much better off.
His shirt is soaked with blood, but it doesn’t seem like he even notices or cares.
He closes his eyes and lets out a shuddering breath, and I can see his hands clenching into fists, squeezing rhythmically as he counts under his breath.
He has to be in pain from getting shot, but it’s losing Willow that’s wrecking him now.
Wrecking all of us.
For a moment, we all just stand in silence, staring after the place where Willow disappeared.
It’s so fucking hard to process everything that’s happened.
Last night, we were dancing, happy and free for the first time in a long time.
We thought things were going to be okay.
We thought we could stop running for a bit. Everything felt perfect.
We all fucked Willow, and it was like the final piece of a puzzle clicking into place. Like everything was the way it was supposed to be. And now she’s gone. Snatched into a Jeep by her asshole of a ‘fiancé,’ and we have no idea where she’s being taken.
It makes me feel sick just thinking about it.
“Malice,” Vic rasps, sounding exhausted but determined. “Help me up.”
“Vic—”
Victor cuts him off, shaking his head. “It’s not that bad. He just tagged me in the side. And we can’t stay here. The longer we stay, the farther away she gets. We need to get moving.”
“Where are we even going?” I ask, moving in to help Malice as we get Vic to his feet.
“We know Troy took her,” Vic grits out. “So that’s somewhere to start. We just need to figure out where the fuck he’s going to take her. Come on. Let’s go. We need to find a car to hot-wire. You can stitch me up once we’re on the move.”
That’s how I can tell how serious he is about this.
He’s willing to let someone stitch him up in the back of a moving car.
There’s no way that’ll give him the nice, precise stitches he prefers when it comes to shit like this, and he usually likes to handle this kind of thing himself.
But right now, finding Willow is more important.
Important enough to cut through the mental hang-ups Vic gets sometimes.
Malice drags in a deep breath and lets it out. “Okay. Right.” He glances at me. “You’re the best at hot-wiring, so you take point. There’s got to be something decent around here we can steal.”
I nod.
There’s still an empty, gaping wound in my heart, but I try to push that aside for now. We have a goal, and I need to focus on that instead of letting the agony in my chest overwhelm me.
I need to focus all of my energy on one unalterable fact.
My brothers and I will do whatever it takes to get Willow back.