Kidnapped by the Italian Mafia Don (Possessive Mafia Kings #21)

1. Contessa

1

Contessa

It’s not every day that you find yourself blindfolded and hogtied in the back of a Range Rover, but for me, that day has come on April 16 th , with overcast skies and a setting sun that seems to hang low in the sky for hours, bleeding out the day. Perfect weather for your casual weekend abduction.

I mentally track every bump in the road. I count each turn and every red light…or are they stop signs? Did we merge onto a freeway, or are we still navigating city traffic? I can hardly hear myself think over the roaring of the unseasonable Christmas music pumping through the speakers. The manic glee of “Jingle Bell Rock” vibrates through my bones as I roll blindly around the back of the SUV.

A tarp stretches over the back window. I can’t work my fingers around to try and pull it down. We sling around a corner and I go toppling over again, taking the brunt of the impact on my shoulder.

My father said this would never happen to me.

He promised me that.

Just like everything else he promised that turned out to be a lie. I seethe, fighting the urge to kick and scream against the back seats. I need to save my strength.

I can’t tell if it’s been 20 minutes or 200. Time distorts when you’re facing down certain, miserable death. The car swings in somewhere and rolls to a stop. The engine dies. The last screams of Bobby Helms fade into a ringing silence.

I brace myself. By my best calculations and the mental map I have intricately drawn out in my head, I have no idea where I am. God, I really am hopeless.

Footsteps circle the back of the car. I can’t make out the muffled talking through my newly discovered tinnitus. I steel myself and work into a position to jump out. When the men report what happened and this story inevitably makes its way back to my father, they won’t tell him I fought back. They’ll tell him I pleaded for him like a baby. By the time this is over, maybe I will. But I will know, and they will know, that I tried to go down swinging even with both hands tied behind my back.

The trunk lifts open with a pressurized hiss. I spring out—toppling—and headbutt straight into a strong chest that barks out a startled ‘woah!’ I am swept up into multiple arms, caught in a spin and put on my feet.

There’s laughter, giddy laughter, and then—

The blindfold is ripped off my face.

“Happy birthday!” voices shriek.

I stare, numb and dizzy, at the familiar faces of my friends. My adrenaline spikes and crashes faster than a motorcycle into a guardrail. I have gone from certain, painful death to standing with my closest friend group, on my birthday, on a very public sidewalk. Our group is washed in the neon lights of a club entrance.

I am caught somewhere between laughing, crying, and puking. Kaydence crushes me into a tippy-toed hug. We totter back and forth, and I’m grateful for a chance to hide my face in her shoulder and get myself under control.

It’s just a little near-death experience, Tessa. Pull it together.

My tears are mistaken for tears of gratitude as excited hugs go around the group.

Kaydence, her boyfriend, Cole, Lindy, Josh—I recognize each face. None of them know my heart is beating in my throat. That I can taste my own fear on the back of my teeth.

It’s exactly the kind of prank you expect on a birthday evening, the kind of thing I would have expected if I was just another person. Someone, anyone else.

It being my birthday hadn’t even registered when I stepped outside my art studio and the blindfold slipped over my eyes. It was, in that moment, all my old fears coming back to life. If my friends knew anything about the truth of who I am or the place I come from, they would have never done it, but they don’t know. No one can know.

“Guys…” I reach for my first words of the evening, and only come up with a strangled, “ I can’t believe it .” They laugh again, and I make myself join in. I can’t bear to yell at them for a good deed. Cole and Josh high five. No doubt they did most of the heavy lifting. I wipe my eyes before the tears can fall. A little trauma is no excuse for running eyeliner.

“Where are we?”

“Let’s go find out,” Kaydence urges, steering us into the club that is our surprise destination. My head is still reeling. “You thought your birthday was over? It’s just getting started. All that pampering was just prep for my real birthday present to you.”

Oh, God.

Kaydence and I had spent my birthday doing a girl’s day out, and she’s already done too much for me—I know what her financial situation is like and she still went all out. We’d gotten our hair and nails done, and shopped for new clothes and heels. I opted for a Hollywood vintage glam look, and we ended the day with a mini photoshoot for our socials. I had a great time, which should have been my first clue something was amiss just over the horizon. Our reckless spending spree had all built up to this night out.

I don’t know how I didn’t put it together.

Her hand catches my wrist and holds it fast as she stops us just past the bouncer. I can always tell when Kay has something genuine to say. She has to touch you somehow, your shoulder, your wrist, your hand. It’s like the genuineness of her words can sink in through skin-to-skin contact. Our eyes meet, and I see the earnest care in those dark, glossy eyes.

“Tess, I know you said you were staying out of the dating scene, but just hear me out.”

“Oh, no—”

“—it has been months ,” she continues, over my complaining and shifting around, keeping me grounded with her hand on my wrist. “Tonight, you’re moving on. I’m not gonna have your twenty-fourth birthday ruined by the past. Not on my watch. That man, and I will not speak his godforsaken name here, he took a year of your life, and I’ll be damned if you give him another day of it.”

I grimace at the mention of the past and my not-so-recent ex , James. The man who was almost the man of my dreams but turned out to be the man of my nightmares. Not even Kay knows the whole ugly story, and she still hates him. Kay shakes me back to attention.

“This is your birthday, Tessa. You’re hot enough to fuck any dude in this place, including the married ones—”

Sleeping with married men isn’t my style, but I’m flattered by the point she’s trying to make.

“—so, go get one. Fuck him tonight and throw him away in the morning or get hitched in Las Vegas over the weekend. Whatever. I don’t care. Just take a chance on somebody . Whenever I think about how dry your dating life has been, it makes my pussy hurt. Think of my pussy, Tess.”

“Jesus Christ, Kay,” I squeak, trying to silence the yelling about her pussy. At least the music is louder than her insanity. “Is this a birthday party or an intervention?”

“Think of it like the only intervention you get to drink at,” Cole says, “And it happens to be on your birthday. Come on.”

I don’t know how any of them expect me to score with some dude out here when they’re watching me like I’m the next best thing to National Geographic. I can already hear Attenborough narrating my futile attempts to find a mate during the peak of the season. But Kay’s right. I’ve been hung up on my past too long…and avoiding the future, as if it won’t happen anyway.

But I will not think about her pussy, no matter how much she begs me.

Our Birthday-Party-Intervention spills into the club, and like the pull of the ocean tide, we are washed into the crowd of drinking and dancing. Tonight, I hit the alcohol straight away. I need it to flush the fear out of my system, and then, at Lindy and Kay’s insistence, I am dragged onto the sweltering dance floor. Men love putting their hands on me. They love grinding against me, pretending the crowd has crushed us together. I used to get excited about that part of the club—imagining how thrilling it would be to give in, and let instinct and raw, physical attraction do the talking. Then he happened. Now I just feel awkward, pushed around, leered at by career clubbers and frat boys.

Kaydence goes to get more drinks. I’m going to need them if she’s going to convince me any of this is a good idea.

By my next rum and coke, my mood is higher and my standards lower. I’ve caught the attention of a tall 20-something, young and hot-blooded, with his shirt ripped open at the collar. He grinds against me through the beat, mumbling half-heard questions in my ear. I don’t answer him. The crowd is too noisy, too frantic.

A voice in my head tells me this is a bad idea, but it has my father’s tone, and my days of listening to him are long gone. I slipped his leash at eighteen, fled from my tiny, elite private school where everyone knew my name and pedigree, to a massive university, where I could hide away from my father’s many rules and codes.

My first year out on my own, I met Kay, Lindy. Normal people. They didn’t want favors from my father, they weren’t sworn to be loyal. Like these dozens of silhouettes swaying all around us, I was just another face in the crowd. For the first time, I was around people who chose to be around me because they liked me, and not because of the opportunities they saw when they looked at me.

They were the first real friendships I’d ever really had.

Then, with my guard down and my heart wide open, James happened.

My body has just started to warm again, as if I have been cold for months. The thought of him brings back the numb chill. I push him out of my thoughts again, let the drink and the alcohol and the dancing keep the past at bay. I tentatively dare to feel something for the first time—even if that something is just drunk and indifferent. My nameless dance partner starts pulling me away.

“Where are we going?” I complain, my friends lost in the chaos of the crowd.

“I have a room.” My mystery man waves a key from his pocket and draws me toward a narrow, dark hallway labeled “Staff Only”.

“You work here?” I ask, still half-shouting over the music.

“Something like that,” he smiles crookedly. The music muffles behind us as the doors swing shut.

Another man passes us through the staff area, not looking twice at us. They share the same dark hair, dark eyes, and signature olive skin. The same dark hair and dark eyes that I have. I realize, in one blazing moment of terror— Kay never said what nightclub we were in.

This is the kind of mistake I was warned against growing up. Always be vigilant, always know your enemy’s territories. There are whole sections of the city where I simply cannot go—and for all I know, I am standing in one of them.

My handsy dance partner stops in front of another doorway, the plaque on the front faded and illegible. He tries to draw me in. My feet root to the spot. Like an animal, I sense danger.

“In here. They won’t mind.”

My urge to be polite fights my urge to not be murdered in the back of a shady club.

“I think I just want to dance,” I insist, smiling but pulling back on his firm grip. Our eyes lock and I know, immediately, my ‘no’ has fallen on deaf ears.

“Come on, pretty girl. You dance like you want to fuck,” he croons. He’s too close. He pushes me up against the wall, wedging his leg between mine. Panic springs up at the back of my mind. Do I go along with it to keep things quiet, just between us, before this can get any worse? Do I try to cause a scene, and risk attracting the wrong attention? I’m frozen in a moment of paralyzing indecision.

“Don’t you want to fuck?” He says, a question that doesn’t need an answer. The alcohol-fueled desire in my belly shrivels up and dies immediately. He’s all over me. My hands wedge against his chest as he tries to convince me with wet kisses at my neck.

I push away, but he clings to me and whines when I try to get him off me. He shoves me back into the doorway, and I go stumbling through it over my heels.

“No!” I yell, making a lunge for the doorway as it shuts. The bass still thumps here, like a living heartbeat in the floor. It’s a storage room, but it looks like it had once been a private VIP section. Mirrored walls reflect my own face back to me at every angle. A couch has been wedged into one corner, and I know what he wants to use it for.

I make another lunge for the door, and he matches me motion for motion. My back presses against the cold mirror as he crowds me against it.

“Don’t be like that,” he complains, as if we’re still negotiating something.

The door bangs open, rattling on its hinges.

The boy jumps away from me like a child caught with his hands in the cookie jar, but even that is too slow.

A man enters—a man who effortlessly takes the boy’s hair in one fist and slams his head into the glass wall. I scream as the shards crack and splinter. I fall to the floor, ducking away from the sudden violence, crawling to the safety of the other side of the room.

From the crater of broken shards, a bloodied streak runs down the glass. The boy lays crumpled on the floor at the base of it.

He got what was coming to him, but the way it had been done— was brutal. Ugly.

Savage . And for the first time in four numb months, I lock eyes with my savior, and feel my belly erupt into butterflies.