Chapter 38
OLIVIA
I never wanted to hear Italian again, and now it poured into my ears, all around me, inescapable. Closing my eyes only exacerbated it, so I opened them and watched the other gunman drag Ethan back to the couch. He’d stopped resisting once the gun was on me.
What was he doing here? I was torn in two at the sight of him. He’d walked right into his death, and for what? Me? I was pissed and overjoyed that he’d come.
There was discussion with Carlo about Gio, and once Carlo retrieved his black rod from where I’d kicked it away, the cold, hard barrel against my temple eased up. Carlo’s heavy footsteps approached and he said something to Vitale.
“Look at me,” Ethan said in English, his face white, and seeing him like that . . . I couldn’t imagine anything worse. My stomach bottomed out. “It’s okay,” he said. “Help is coming, just hold on.”
“Help is not coming for you,” Carlo said. I remained down, bent over the desk, my bare stomach cold against the lacquered wood as he stood to the side of me. “Tell us what you’ve done to Giovanni.”
“I didn’t do anything to him,” I said.
“Wait, Jesus. Per favore,” Ethan pleaded.
Carlo’s hand closed around the links of my metal handcuffs and he moved to the far end of the desk, stretching my arms out, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when the rod was passed to Vitale like a scepter.
Carlo probably couldn’t use the rod on me anymore because he clutched a bloody hand to where I’d stabbed his arm.
The other men had their guns aimed at Ethan and their attention on their boss, awaiting his command.
Vitale teased me. Oh, so slowly, he began dragging the thin pole over the skin of my forearms. It rose behind his head, then came thundering down with a magnificent crash. It landed against the desk, just shy of my arms, shaking the desktop, and it almost rattled me apart.
“Tell us what you did to Giovanni.”
“I drugged him,” Ethan said.
Everyone turned to stare at the intense man who was bleeding all over the couch.
Couldn’t he see that his lie was pointless? He’d been tied up, and I’d been the one to bring Gio the wine. The look in Vitale’s eye said he didn’t care who’d done it. Both of us were going to suffer and then die.
He reared back with the rod. An elegant Italian man in a perfectly tailored suit, about to destroy me. He was serious now. He was going to hit me. Oh God, oh God, oh God—
“No!” Ethan’s voice was filled with panicked agony.
The impact sounded different and was joined with a horrifying crunch of bone, and it took a lifetime for my body to register the pain. I blinked at least once in disbelief before it thundered into my brain and overtook me.
He’d severed my right hand, I was sure of it, even though I looked at my wrist and saw the hand still attached. I couldn’t feel anything beyond the rapidly swelling line on my forearm near my wrist.
I screamed, letting loose a tremendous cry that didn’t sound human, and my eyes slammed shut. Then the nausea came in a wave so strong I was almost powerless against it, and I swallowed back a mouthful of burning bile.
Lying on the desktop, my arms still held out in front of me and pinned down, I began to worry that maybe Vitale had succeeded. I would give or say almost anything to be somewhere else now.
Even on that mountain where I’d been so alone.
Yet I wasn’t alone here. I could still see Ethan with my eyes closed, and now I could hear him speaking to me over my whimpers.
“It’s okay, Olivia, they’re coming. Please hold on.” His soft voice was distracting. Mesmerizing. “You’re going to make it through.”
My eyes blinked open, and through the blurring, unavoidable tears, I could just make him out. Not lying. This was truth.
“I’m here, and they’re coming, I promise you.” The deep voice held me together, kept me going. “Rescue is coming. It’s coming.”
It was what I had repeated over and over on the mountain after the grenade exploded and I was lying face down in the frozen dirt, my back on fire. Rescue is coming.
And like then, there was the rumble of hope in the distance. The same sound that had signaled I was going to make it. As it grew louder, I considered weeping with joy. Helicopters.
More than one.
The oppressive hand holding my handcuffs was gone and there was a burst of language. The couch was knocked back, banging to the floor as Ethan suddenly stood. Handcuffed and stabbed, yet these men were no match for him. Shit, he was dangerous.
He disarmed the guard closest to him in an instant, and the other guard was laid out with the grip of the gun to the face.
Without a weapon, the first guard ran. Vitale seemed to want to run, too, but the gun in Ethan’s hand went off, aimed at Carlo, and fixed back on Vitale right after. In a single breath, Ethan became the most powerful person in the room.
Carlo folded unnaturally sideways as his knee erupted in a burst, and he fell in a heap, screaming in agony. Outside the front windows, the rotors of the landing helicopters beat the bushes against the house.
The gun was outstretched in Ethan’s bound hands, pointed dead center of Vitale’s chest, and he turned to stone under Ethan’s cold, detached gaze.
I slid off the desk like I’d been poured over the side, collapsing painfully to my knees on the unforgiving floor. I cradled my wounded arm to my chest like a bird with a broken wing.
“Do you want me to kill him?” he asked.
My brain refused to comprehend the question. “What?”
“If you want him dead, I need to do it now.”
The icy pinpricks that slid down my skin were paralyzing. He waited for my command, for me to give him permission. My broken arm definitely wanted the bastard dead. But what about Ethan? What he was asking was murder. What about his soul?
I was a survivor, but I wasn’t sure how we could survive this.
“No,” I said on a shaky breath. “No.”
I didn’t want to lose him now that he’d found me, but my gaze drifted to the Italian king who had put us, and the Dunns, through hell. He couldn’t come out of this unscathed. He needed at least some amount of pain.
“Tell him,” I said, “what you did to Constantine.”
It wasn’t the same smile I loved that crossed Ethan’s face.
This was more of a satisfied smirk laced with evil as he told Vitale he was looking at the man responsible for the death of one of his sons.
And if Gio didn’t get medical attention soon, I suspected I would kill the other.
I’d dumped the whole bottle of Ethan’s drug into the glass.
Just beyond the wall of the office came the sound of the front door breaking open, and hurried footsteps stomped into the entryway.
Figures moved in, flowing through the doorway and shouted in both Italian and English, looking like a strike team with military-grade weapons and armor.
Ethan dropped his gun and held his bound arms up, grimacing in pain, his face pale.
The last guy into the office pulled up short, his face full of surprise as he lowered his weapon. “Foster?”
Ethan took one look at the man, balled his fists and swung them together, unleashed a ferocious punch that struck the guy’s jaw and knocked him sideways.
“Where the fuck have you been, Tragar?”
The man righted himself, putting a hand on his jaw, his other still gripping the gun. Was it really a good idea to punch someone armed? This impulsive action from Ethan was shocking.
Then, the man he’d referred to as Tragar noticed me hunched on the floor beside the desk and rattling in the aftermath of adrenaline. His focus flew back to Ethan with something like sympathy edging his expression.
A knife was pulled from a pocket, the blade springing free, and it sliced through the plastic binding Ethan’s wrists. Tragar was wise enough to ask it with a touch of restraint, probably still annoyed about being blindsided. “Everyone okay?”
“Does she look okay to you?” Ethan demanded.
That was the moment he must have remembered I was wearing only a bra and underwear. He peeled off his suit jacket carefully—
“So,” Tragar said, flatly, “you need medical, too.”
I gasped. The dress shirt that clung to his back was a bright crimson, soaked in his blood, but he barely seemed to notice. His gaze flicked to Vitale with a sneer before returning to Tragar. “Can you clear the room?”
“I need some hands in here,” Tragar announced to the men outside the office.
He stepped over Gio’s body like it was a minor inconvenience on his way to securing Vitale and began to pull him from the room. He didn’t hold my attention long. It returned to Ethan, who knelt in front of me and slung the bloody jacket gently around my shoulders, taking care not to bump my arm.
“You got a lock pick?” he asked one of the men who filed past, and the man handed over a skinny tool that looked like a screwdriver.
Ethan said nothing while the men hauled the Italians out the door, two men hefting Gio’s body. Instead, he focused on undoing my cuffs as delicately as possible, gauging my reaction for pain when he freed my shattered wrist.
When he dropped the metal cuffs to the floor, it was like everything around us didn’t exist anymore. He focused on me. And, holy shit, he had my attention, too.
Because he was shaking.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, my teasing voice quiet and soft. “Pull yourself together, Foster.”
He gave me a sad, lopsided grin. “I’ll try.”
Then he smoothed his hand over the back of my hair and leaned forward to press a kiss to my forehead.
“How are you still able to move?” I asked.
“Adrenaline.” He shifted so he was no longer kneeling, but sitting on the floor, and the face he made announced the move wasn’t without side effects. “I think it’s beginning to wear off.” He looked down at the arm I braced against my body, the hand hanging limp. “How bad does it hurt?”
“Not that bad.”
He exhaled slowly and gave me a look that made the pain fade away. “I appreciate the effort, but you’re aware I can tell when you’re lying.”
“Yeah, okay. How’s your back?” I asked, challenging him not to lie right back to me in an attempt to spare me the concern.
The muscles along his jawline flexed, and the need to touch him propelled me forward.
I was desperate to have a connection to him, and sighed in satisfaction when I pressed my uninjured hand to his chest. I could feel the drum of his heartbeat beneath my fingertips, the rhythm soothing.
I felt like we were alone again, even when two men approached, both carrying boxes with medical symbols on them and began snapping on latex gloves.
Finally, I pulled the hand back to give the medics space to work.
“They’re cutting off your shirt,” I said, my gaze following the scissors as they separated the already-ruined shirt from his body.
“Yes,” he said.
His hardened chest came into view as the fabric was pulled away, and the spike of chemicals my brain had released to help me survive this night had left me shaking and giddy.
“Can’t say I mind that,” I whispered.
The medic working on stabilizing my wrist shot me a sideways glance, but the comment worked, and I got the smile from Ethan that I loved. I tried to focus on that rather than the pain. I needed to think about something else. Anything else.
“I never asked. Which language is your favorite? Besides English.”
He didn’t hesitate. “My mother’s language, Croatian.”
“Okay, say something in Croatian.”
This time he did hesitate, searching for the right phrase, and his breathing picked up. I expected something long and beautiful, and he didn’t disappoint. It sounded heavenly rolling out of his mouth. Plus, the tone was hushed and sexy, like a lover’s whisper.
“You’re right, it’s pretty,” I said, trying to look unaffected. “And it means?”
His smile was diabolical. “My father is a ski instructor.”
“What?” He knocked me down ten thousand feet, and that was where I leveled off. “You’re lying.”
“You’re right. Randall Foster is not a ski instructor. He owns a construction company that builds custom homes in the Ohio River Valley.”
“Ethan,” I started, then gasped with pain as the man working on my arm pulled the strap tight on the temporary brace. “Tell me what you just said.”
“No. You can try to get it out of me . . . later.”
So, it was something sexy.
I couldn’t wait to work it out of him.