Chapter 14 Harper
I’m stiff and sore. My mouth feels like a desert at noon during a drought.
I don’t usually fall asleep sitting up, so I’m confused for a moment.
Trying to adjust my position, I realize I can’t move.
I’m bound to a chair. I keep my eyes closed and try to stay as still as possible.
My brain hurts as I try to remember what happened.
Vin getting shot. The hospital. Fucking Vin after he woke up. Nic getting there. Getting coffee. It all goes blank after that. I hear a sound but force my body to stay still. A door closes somewhere and then the click of heels and the scuffing sound of feet. So at least two people.
“Shouldn’t she be awake by now?!” a voice I recognize demands.
“It’s not an exact time. Some people stay under longer than others,” a man answers. His voice sounds familiar too, but I can’t place it.
“I’m done waiting. They’re already looking for her. She needs to get up now,” Ivy says.
“You could have just killed her while she was out. You don’t have to wait for her to wake up,” the man tells her in an almost bored tone.
A scoff leaves Ivy. “I already tried this the easy way. Now she gets to suffer. Besides, she touched what belongs to me. She needs to suffer.”
So, they’re not planning to let me live.
I’m going to need to try and live as long as possible.
If the guys are already looking for me, they can’t be too far behind, right?
Someone like Ivy can’t possibly be that hard to outthink.
And Vin has a whole criminal organization to back him up.
I just have no idea what kind of tactic to use for a woman like her.
I doubt telling the truth about being kidnapped would do any good after the show Vin and Nic put on in front of her.
Something just tells me that knowing I don’t mean anything to them would make her kill me faster.
I need to be useful, no, I need to piss her off so badly that she keeps me alive just to make me hurt.
I need to make sure she thinks I have something she never did.
From what little I know, Vin and Ivy dated briefly in high school when she got pregnant.
She pushed for them to get married, and Vin wouldn’t go for it, even though his Catholic family was furious.
Catholics. The mafia and pedophilia can be forgiven, but apparently children outside of wedlock can’t.
Make it make sense.
I hear the click of her heels move around the room.
When I know she’s behind me, I peek one eye open just enough to see a man in front of me.
I can’t see anything above his hips, but I can tell he’s huge.
So, fighting my way out of this isn’t going to happen.
I need to get out of this alive. Never seeing Nic or Vin again isn’t an option.
At some point, my traitorous heart got attached to those two idiots.
I hear something shifting behind me. Metal rubbing against metal.
Adrenaline rushes through my body, and I force my muscles to lock into place, which was a mistake.
With my muscles tense, I feel an intense pain through my calf as a charley horse radiates pain through my leg.
I try to relax my muscles and stay still while the cramp goes away, but then the guy speaks.
“She moved. I think she’s waking up.”
Shit. Guess playing dead is over. My head snaps up, and I look at the man in front of me. I let the fear I’m already feeling show on my face and in my voice.
“Where’s Vin?” I demand. “Did you do something to my fiancé? Where is he?”
“Your fucking what?” Ivy snaps.
I jerk in my restraints to be able to see her over my shoulder like I hadn’t expected to find her there. “Ivy? What is going on? Why am I here?”
She abandons the tray of literal fucking weapons to stomp over to me. Torture weapons are on a tray behind me. How much more cliché could this possibly get?
She stops in front of me. “What did you just call Vincenzo?”
My brows furrow. “Vin?”
Her teeth grit. “No, after that.”
“Oh, my fiancé. He asked me earlier tonight.” I shake my head like I’m confused. “But what is going on? Why am I here?”
She grins at me. “You’re here because you think you can take what belongs to me.”
I blink. “I haven’t taken anything from you.”
My head whips to the side when she slaps me. My cheek burns with the pain.
“Vincenzo! He’s not thinking clearly, obviously. He’s mine and always has been.”
Fire burns in my stomach, and I realize that I’m jealous that this woman would even think she could have Vin. I work my jaw to make sure she didn’t break anything and look up at her.
“He’s not yours. You barely dated long enough to get knocked up. He doesn’t want you… He wants me.” I know the hit is coming before she even pulls back her fist.
The pain in my stomach isn’t too bad. My dad hit worse than that when he was too drunk to stand. “Maybe if you would have been more adventurous, he would have stuck around. You know Vin loves watching me fuck his brother. Maybe you should have tried that?”
This time, I don’t even see her pull her hand back when her hand cracks across my other cheek.
“That’s the father of my child you’re talking about with your whore mouth!” she seethes.
I spit the blood in my mouth out onto the floor. My teeth cut into the inside of my cheek with that hit.
“It’s fine. He’ll be the father to my children too. We’re planning to give Ava lots of siblings.”
Maybe that was too far, though I want to keep her mad enough that she doesn’t think about the sharp objects waiting there for her to use on me.
I have to live long enough to see them again because even if I don’t want to admit it to myself, I’ve developed feelings for them.
When she hits me again, she doesn’t stop; hit upon hit rains down on me.
“How dare you say such a thing?! I’m the only woman that will ever give Vincenzo children!”
This time, when she hits me in the face, it’s with a closed fist. She puts some weight into it too because the whole chair tilts, and I fall over onto my side.
The ropes on my left arm get loose, but I don’t pull at it.
I’m not strong enough to fight against the guy she has with her.
It’s not worth it unless I’m in danger of death.
“He would never marry someone like you. You must be lying!” she screeches.
I grunt, spitting more blood out of my mouth. “Then how do I know about his great-grandma’s ring? He promised to give it to me once he got out of the hospital.”
I took a total shot in the dark. But come on, a mafia family has got to have some serious family heirlooms.
She gasps in shock. “That ring is supposed to be passed down to Ava! How dare he promise something so valuable to a nobody like you?!”
Oh shit. There’s actually a ring. I’m pretty good at getting my ass kicked. My dad was right about that at least.
“He just loves me more than he ever loved you. I’ve known him for, what, a month, and he already asked me to marry him. You’ve known him for more than eighteen years, and he’s never even considered marrying you.”
“You’re a liar!” she screams, then kicks me right in the stomach.
The man in the room clears his throat. “Actually, I heard the nurses talking in the hospital. They kept referring to her as Mr. Moretti’s fiancée. So, I think she’s telling the truth.”
Thank you, mystery man. Never would have guessed that telling that nurse I was Vin’s fiancée would have prolonged my life. Two more kicks to the stomach have Ivy breathing hard from exertion.
“You’re nothing. You mean nothing!” she screams down at me.
I see movement at the edge of the room. It’s just a short glance, but I look up at Ivy and start to laugh. I laugh and laugh until my lungs hurt, which doesn’t take that long after being kicked in the chest and stomach multiple times.
“You can do whatever you want to me. I’ll die happy knowing that he’ll come for you. When he finds out what you’ve done, you’ll never be able to run far enough to get away from him.”
She seems to remember the tools then because she stomps away from me, and I can hear the clank of metal. Then she’s back in front of me with a scalpel in her hand. She points it at me.
“We’ll see how much he can love you after I fuck up your face.”
Before she can get to me, there’s a gunshot. There’s no silencer this time, and I can definitely hear the difference. The large man falls to the ground and doesn’t move to get back up. Ivy’s eyes widen. Then she drops to her knees and holds the scalpel over my right eye.
“Come any closer, and I’ll blind her!” she shouts.
At first glance, I think it’s Vin standing there pointing a gun at Ivy.
But then I realize that it’s Nic. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him look so pissed off.
He’d been angry after the mugging incident, but he was more relieved that I was okay than mad.
Right now, though, there is a fury running through his eyes like fire.
I give him a little wink. I hear footsteps behind us, and then Vin’s cool voice reaches my ears.
“Put it down and step away from her.”
His feet slowly bring him around to where I can see him. His eyes burn just as viciously as Nic’s when he sees my new beaten-to-a-pulp aesthetic. Sometimes a girls just got to try out a new look.
While Ivy’s attention is on the guys, since she seems to think they’re the biggest threat in the room, I manage to get my left arm out of the ropes that were barely restraining it. I look up at Vin and give him a smile. He realizes what I’m about to do a second before I do it.
“No! Don’t!” His shout startles Ivy, and the scalpel slips, slicing into my eyebrow.