Chapter 39
39
Layne
F rom out of nowhere, my life gets flipped upside down. Again.
The men who took me knew what they were doing. When it was happening, they barely spoke, but by the way they anticipated each other's movements, they had planned out how it was going to happen and what role each of them would take. The man who appeared in the bathroom was responsible for my welfare. Once he’d disarmed me, he zip-tied my wrists, then silenced my screaming by slapping tape over my mouth before he stopped my struggles by barking in my face and ripping my submission to pieces. I’ll kill him for it.
The driver barely looks at me when I get into the van. A heavy canvas is dropped over me, further alienating me. My stress explodes because I can’t see, I can barely breathe, and my fear makes my temperature rocket.
If I don’t get a handle on my anxiety, the shitty situation I’m in is going to get a hundred times worse.
The fact that I’m alive probably means I wasn’t taken by anyone associated with Pack De Luca. As harsh as it sounds, it’s the truth. It’s the way their world works. Disposing of a dead body is easier than hiding and moving someone who is alive.
They talk in a heavy accent that comes across harsh and fast, and I’m almost certain it's Russian. Every now and then, a phone rings, and they talk in broken English before reverting back to their native tongue.
After one phone call, the two men get into an argument with each other. The grip I had on my panic slips as I think this is where I am going to die. When the van slows down, I start to hyperventilate.
I’m blinded by the sudden light when the canvas is ripped away and I come face-to-face with the man who took me. He snarls in my face, and even though I can’t understand a word he’s saying, his abuse is as loud and clear as if he was talking in English.
I wave my hands around my face, trying to protect myself, and he snatches my hands with one of his, squeezing my wrist painfully, and stops me from moving. Then the asshole rips my engagement ring off my finger.
Before I can even blink, the door behind him slides open. And when he doesn’t spin around in surprise, I realize this, too, is planned. My heart literally plunges to my feet when I see who they stopped for. Diego. The Alpha from the plane, with the bitch of a wife. Valentine and Dante’s cousin.
The asshole Alpha who kidnapped me squeezes my wrist again. I whimper but stay still, trying not to move, in case he decides he wants to hurt me more. He laughs and starts talking in Russian to the other man who was driving us.
I shift my focus to Diego. He’s beaming at me, absolutely thrilled to see me at the mercy of the man in front of him. He likes how scared I am.
Like all asshole Alphas, Diego intentionally uses his presence and sense to show me how strong he is. I whine as he keeps rendering me helpless. The roiling taste of his scent has my throat getting thick with the feeling I’m about to puke.
The more I struggle, the more he laughs. When I can’t raise my head, or even raise my eyes past my ring in my kidnapper’s hand, Diego speaks, even using his voice to thunder under the last of my defenses. “I hope he fucking destroys you painfully. Daily. Until you are nothing but a husk.”
Diego takes my engagement ring, and with a final shove of his Alpha designation against me, he leaves.
And almost immediately, the van starts moving.
It’s the tipping point. I spiral.
Half of me is aware of the second tracker still hidden under my skin. The other half is more realistic and knows the more time that passes, the harder it will be for Pack De Luca to find me.
I try to stop the exodus of hope, but I’ve been let down too many times before. And Diego’s parting threat hits home like the final nail in the coffin.
My breathing becomes so difficult, it’s nearly impossible to get any air into my lungs. I squeeze my eyes shut, accepting that my death is inevitable. And I’m so fucking angry at Diego for using his dominance to rip my faith, but he did. The painful thought of not seeing Matteo, Dante, and Valentine is so visceral and real, I suffocate.
My lungs stop working, and spots dance over my closed lids.
Pain explodes on the side of my head. My eyes burst open when I realize the car is no longer moving. And then my pain is replaced by panic.
Another man appears in front of me. It has to be the driver, but I can’t understand a word he’s saying, either. He’s screaming in my face, and I can read the rage in his eyes. But my fear has me locked up. I try to raise my hands defensively, but he backhands me, smashing me against the seat.
Time segments. Parts of it go fast, other bits are long and drawn-out, but in both versions of my reality, it’s impossible to miss the driver has lost control. He’s a weak Alpha, but any Alpha in a rage is a dangerous one.
He presses my head against the back of the seat, so I can’t move, and with his other hand, he wraps it around my throat and squeezes.
I try to bat him away, but with the spots in my eyes and him choking me, moving is like trying to crawl through drying concrete.
The harder he squeezes his hand, the faster my fear and terror drains away.
I lose my emotions and dive into survival mode. Things are black or white, good or bad, there is no room for anything in between. It is live-or-die time.
The Alpha in front of me continues getting off by hurting me. He’s excited by the power. But he’s lost in it too.
He can’t see past the tunnel he is in, but I’m already on the other side, looking for a way to live another day.
I’m waiting for my one chance. It’s a dangerous game, but if I want to survive, I have to beat him. The longer it goes on, the more his hold on me hurts, but he’s also getting off on what he’s doing so much that his breathing hitches, his eyes dilate to black, and he gets jittery. And that’s when I act.
But it’s when the man who took me first acts too.
He twists around from the front seat at the same time I throw my hands up to break the choke hold. While I try to fight my way free, my original kidnapper executes the driver.
The blast of the gun scares the absolute shit out of me.
I scramble away, screaming from behind the tape, but I’m desperate to escape the blood and being the next one killed. He catches and hauls me closer, barking in my face until I resemble a rag doll. I can’t do anything to stop myself from falling when he shoves me sprawling backward over the dead man.
The van lurches as he speeds us away.
The driver must be confident that his barking left me in a brainless mess of hysteria again, but I’m far from it. I’ve been in awful situations before, and it’s when the shit is the worst that I find the smallest opportunity to survive.
Without moving too much, the first thing I do is pull off the tape from my mouth, and then I stretch out my fingers, only letting the rocking motion of the car guide me until my fingers graze over the gun strapped to the now dead driver's leg. It’s hard but not impossible to pull it out of the holster. It feels like it takes forever, but one sharp turn works in my favor.
In the next sweeping turn the car takes, I use my feet to slide the body away to give me the space I need.
It would be incredibly dangerous to take a shot now—the likelihood I die in a car accident is pretty high—but I still fucking line up the shot. The van takes another turn. It feels like we slow for a moment before he stomps on the accelerator again.
I close my eyes and think of them .
And when I open my eyes, I take one last fortifying breath before I empty the gun into the headrest, killing my kidnapper instantly.
His body slumps forward, and his dead weight on the accelerator has the van picking up speed.
With my hands still tied, I climb over one dead man to get to the other. It’s really fucking hard to move like this, and it’s made worse because of the instant pain of pins and needles in my legs, but my survival instincts flare. Scrambling through the middle of the seats, I pop up to see where we are. I’m both relieved and horrified when I see the van is speeding out of control and headed toward a private jet. There’s still enough distance for me to stop the van, or to at least swerve to not hit the jet. I hope.
The dead Alpha is huge. Being next to him while the van is traveling at full speed is seriously scary as shit, but before I think too hard, I start doing what needs to be done, not questioning if it will work.
Reaching through the space between his dead body and the steering wheel he’s slumped over, my fingers find the door latch after a couple of attempts. The door opens, and the wind catches it.
There's a huge bang, and I scream, but it was just the hinges of the drivers door snapping as it folds backwards against the front of the van.
Sitting with my back against the passenger door, I use both feet to kick the man.
His hands get caught on the steering wheel, making the van rock side to side, and I think we’re about to roll, but I don’t stop kicking. As soon as his center of gravity shifts, he drops from view.
I make a grab for the steering wheel. I just need to hold it straight and avoid hitting anything until the van runs out of speed or I can get my foot on the brake.
Somehow, I manage to do both from the passenger seat. Thank fuck, because there’s no way I was sitting in the driver’s seat. His blood and what’s left of his brains is splattered everywhere.
Like a stunt driver, I steer the van away from the other runways and pull it to a stop in front of a hangar.
I probably should get out and run, but first, I need a fucking moment.
Shock and elation blasts through my veins, making me laugh. I can’t believe I pulled that off.
I know I need to move. I’m a sitting duck in the van, but I need to work out my next move and find something besides the empty gun to use for protection.
Using my teeth, I try to break the zip ties, but it’s obvious it’s a waste of time. Searching the van for another gun, I pull out a backpack hidden under the front seat, but it’s full of documents and bundles of cash. I dig my hand back under the seat and search for anything to use.
The hope I had of everything being over is extinguished when the shadows in the hangar start to move. From the other side of me, there is more activity as two men climb out of the jet and start approaching the van.
They’re both armed, but instead of stopping, they run faster and start firing inside the hangar.
I don’t stick around to watch. I haul ass.
But my legs are like rubber, and now that I’m so close to escaping all the bullshit going on, it’s like something inside of me breaks or got broken, because I can’t run in a straight line to save myself. In fact, I can barely run at all.
Behind me, the distinctive popping of guns firing continues, and I risk a look. My heart sinks. Only one man is standing at the hangar entrance now; the other one is racing after me.
And he’s fast, so fucking fast.
He’s big too.
I twist back around and pump my arms harder.
I go from wobbling over the tarmac to running mid-air as I get hoisted off my feet. I buck and thrash, trying to escape, but he holds me to his chest while he cuts the zip-ties. As soon as my hands release, I bolt. Or try to, but I barely get one foot in front of the other before he catches me again and throws me over his shoulder.
I use both my arms and legs to try to escape.
“Fuck me, you’re a bloody firecracker,” he mumbles, easily dodging my hits. “Settle down,” he barks suddenly. Viciously.
He unleashes the full effect of his designation and renders me voiceless.
I whine in anger at the way he drains everything from me in a single, powerful command. No matter how hard I try to fight through his compulsion, I end up limp over his shoulder.
And I hear him swearing under his breath in frustration when he turns around and starts walking back toward the aircraft, which makes no sense. There’s an eerie silence that accompanies us, kind of like he’s annoyed at himself, except he doesn’t let me go. He just keeps walking toward the private jet.
I think my fight really gives out at that point. Maybe because I’m so empty of everything, I’m more sensitive to the way his designation affects me, but whatever it is, I don’t miss when he pulls back his hold. With each step, more of me returns. Along with sharpening awareness, my panic lessens and sound returns.
And I realize someone is in the middle of a good old belly laugh.
It’s weird because I have heard it before.
Just recently too.
“Oh feck, Santiago, ya fucked up. If Valentine sees what you’ve done to his wee wife, he’s going to beat you stupid.”
And then I put the laugh and the Irish brogue together. Ronin.
I feel a shuddering sigh from the man still carrying me like a sack of flour over his shoulder. “How was I to know she’d be able to fight so hard? I told you, you should go get her.”
He has an accent as well. It’s hard to place what nationality he is, but on top of it, there’s also an air of education to his voice. English isn’t the only language he speaks; you can hear it in how his words are overly practiced.
“Yeah. Clearly, I’m seeing the error of your ways now,” Ronin says, and without looking up, I know he’s still smiling. “You’re on your own there, and you’ve got to know you’re feckin’ screwed. And so are we if we don’t get in the air in the next few minutes.”
I get jostled around, nearly forgotten, as the Alpha under me argues with Ronin. “We can’t leave her here. Valentine will murder me!”
“It’s still on the cards, no matter how you explain it, Santiago. Do what you need to do, and feckin’ apologize for barking in her face. But we need to fucking go before he gets here for about a hundred or so reasons, ya wee bastard.”
The man holding me makes a noise, like a frustrated grunt, but in the next breath, he lowers me to my feet. Not dropped. There’s a careful gentleness to his movements, and when I come face-to-face with Santiago, I’m completely robbed of the ability to speak. Again.
He is absolutely stunning. There would not be a person alive who would say he isn’t, either. He’s one of those people who would turn heads wherever he goes. His skin is like steeped tea, his hair is jet black, and his brown eyes are so dark, they’re like molasses. He might be drop-dead gorgeous, but his beauty doesn’t do anything for me. Not in the least.
Looking past his features, I can also see very clearly, and easily, that he has the aura and presence that only really strong Alphas do. Valentine has the same quality, and without checking, I know Ronin does too. I’m sure it’s part of the reason why they bonded over a shared vision, but it’s also why Ronin and Santiago are bickering now, and why Santiago is worried about Valentine.
Santiago doesn’t keep his eyes on mine for long. Even in the flickers I get, the regret I find in them is surprising. Given he knows Valentine and also can’t pretend he didn’t bark in my face, it kind of makes sense. But Alphas don’t generally go around, admitting they’re wrong. Which he also hasn’t done.
“I left you something in the hangar, by the way,” he says softly, his accent still impossible to place, and it’s hard to read him, as his gaze keeps moving.
Ronin yells out, interrupting Santiago. “Don’t believe a word he says. I’m responsible for the present. Call it a gift, since we won’t be able to attend your wedding reception anymore. Not that we were before. But in spirit, we’ll be with you.”
Santiago growls under his breath, ignoring Ronin. “Don’t trust the Irish. So, you’re a De Luca now, which means we’re basically family. Please remind Valentine of that when you tell him I may have barked at you.”
I go to argue that he did bark at me, but he waves me quiet with another smile before he keeps talking.
“And it seems you’re apparently my new attorney. Client privileges and all, you can deduct this from my first bill. Still, I apologize.” He moves unexpectedly, scaring me as he grabs my hand and wraps my fingers around the butt of his gun.
His movements are fast but don’t hurt me as he manipulates my hand, twisting it around to shoot himself point blank above his waist.
I scream.
Ronin leans out of the cockpit window, slapping the side of the jet, laughing even louder, before he starts yelling again. “Did ya do it well enough? It needs to look convincing!”
“Fuck’s sake,” Santiago hollers back, twisting around to seemingly have a freaking chat with Ronin, while still making me hold the gun. “It’s bleeding like a fucking leaking faucet, pretty sure that means she shot me good enough!”
Santiago finishes yelling and turns back to me. He doesn’t say another word or explain what the hell is going on. He just winks as he stands, then leaves.
He limps back to the private jet, holding up his shirt, so Ronin can see what a good shot it was for himself. Without a backward glance, Santiago races up the stairs. A moment later, the door gets slammed shut, and the aircraft starts to taxi away.
The plane picks up speed as it bounces down the runway before it does a turn and sits, waiting for clearance. A few minutes pass, and as soon as the sound of its engines pick up, I take it as a sign they really are leaving. I turn around and go to stand up, but sink back onto my butt, unable to move, rocked by sheer relief as an Escalade chews up the distance.
The headlights flash, the horn blares, but my pack doesn't need to raise my attention; I feel their presence like a battering ram. A gentle battering ram.
I think that’s the part where the whole day and everything that happened all becomes a little bit too much. I manage a feeble wave as the Escalade screams to a stop next to me before Bella and Edward burst out of the door, my pack following straight after.