Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ANDIE
I come to quickly and with a gasp. Like having a bucket of ice water dropped over you when you’re fast asleep. My brain is foggy and sluggish as if my senses are covered in thick molasses. Why am I conjuring analogies that remind me of the guys? Keane dumped a bucket of water over me at the cabin right before my first initiation test, and Rafe remembered that I liked molasses with my biscuits when we were in the kitchen making breakfast.
My memories of the guys suddenly get replaced with scenes from the crash. My screams. Liam shouting my name. Someone railed us off the road on purpose. I’d reached for Liam as the SUV went topsy-turvy. My head had smashed into the passenger side window. I remember how bad it hurt, and then everything went black.
Bringing my hand to the side of my head, I wince when I touch the huge goose egg there. Fucking great. The last one just healed and now I have another almost in the same, exact spot. Wait.
“Liam.” My voice comes out as a scratchy whisper. “Liam, are you okay?”
My eyes are still closed because they refuse to open. I reach a hand out… and jerk it back when I feel cold, thin, metal bars and not the warm, muscled arm of the man who’s supposed to be next to me in the driver’s seat.
Like at the warehouse when I was strapped to the chair before Keane, Jax, and Rafe found me, I can hear a faint drip, drip, drip . Unlike that room, it doesn’t smell musty or earthy. I expect to smell car exhaust or gasoline fumes from the crash. Instead, I pick up a metallic scent and something else that smells similar to rubbing alcohol. But the worst smell of all is me. I finally open my eyes and look down between my legs. I notice a dark bloom of stain spreading out between my thighs. Did I piss on myself? How the fuck long have I been out?
With every bit of strength I have using muscles that scream in agony when I try to move, I shift my position and force my eyes to open. The lashes are crusted together, and I wipe across my eyes with the backs of my hands. Tiny, hard pieces flake off my eyelashes and skate down the bridge of my nose. My tongue reflexively licks my dry lips to moisten them, and I swallow. Shouldn’t have done that. The burn down my throat steals my breath, and I begin to cough.
I can hear movement near me, the shuffling of feet. I wish I never opened my eyes. Because the sight before me is one from my childhood nightmares.
I’m in a cage. No. No no no . Panic sets in and I grab the bars, shaking them with all my might, which isn’t much right now. How is he still alive? I killed him. I cut off his dick and shoved a knife down his throat.
Long, tanned fingers brush over the bars of the cage where the tips of my fingers poke through. Like I’ve been touched by acid, I recoil back and knock my head against the side of the cage. Fuck! That hurt!
“Alexandria.”
I freeze when he says my name. I must still be loopy from hitting my head because at first, I think it’s Rafe, and I’m about to curse him out for calling me that. But the accent is thicker, darker. Deadlier.
A tall body folds down in a squat and a face covered in tattoos and scars stares at me with a look of mania shining brightly in his cold, dead eyes. I’d never met Alejandro before until this very second. He’s nothing like my imagination thought up. He’s actually so much worse up close and in person. The man watching me with unblinking, soulless eyes is a nightmare of death, blood, destruction, and pure evil.
“ Finalmente nos conocemos, mascota peque?a .”
I don’t understand what the hell he’s saying.
His face hardens, black brows drawing down, making the snake tattoo across his left eye writhe as if it’s alive.
“You do not speak Spanish?”
I shake my head no, not willing to utter a word in reply, and scoot back as far as I can in the corner of the cage to give me as much distance as possible from Rafe’s older brother. My eyes frantically dart around, taking everything in. There has to be a way out of here. But where is here exactly? Am I still in the States, or has he taken me back to his home in Mexico?
The metal prison I’m trapped in is larger than the one Max used to lock me inside. I have more room to stretch out and sit up without having to continually hunch over. The irony of my enclosure isn’t lost on me. Max must have told him or Julio about it. The threat of being locked inside of one, a way to keep me pliant and controllable. Joke’s on him. I’m not that weak bitch anymore.
I’ll play the role of scared, timid Alexandria for now. Something hard digs into my lower calf and I internally smile when I become cognizant that it’s Jax’s knife secured in its holster. Stupid mistake not checking me for weapons, especially while I was incapacitated and couldn’t fight back.
When I find a way out of this thing, Alejandro will see who Andie McCarthy Levine really is, when I pluck his eyes out with Jax’s knife and slice him from groin to neck.
Alejandro hasn’t stopped staring at me, and I meet his gaze head-on with one of my own filled with defiant fire and hatred. Whatever he has planned for me, I’ve had much worse. Bring it on, motherfucker.
“Are you hungry?” he asks in that raspy accent that makes me think of nails down a chalkboard. “Thirsty?” He gives me a tsk ing cluck of his tongue. “Such a strong will. One I will very much enjoy breaking.”
“Fuck you,” I spit, and he smiles wide, showing a couple of gold-capped teeth, a round diamond sparkling in the middle of one of them. I stop myself from rolling my eyes. Why are all the bad guys such narcissistic, pompous jackasses?
“Not the language my wife should use,” he replies.
A startled bark of laughter erupts from deep in my throat. “You wish,” I retort. And because I apparently like to poke vipers with a stick, I add, “I’m already married, asshole. To Keane Agosti.”
I flick my rings at him and grin when the flaring of his beady eyes lets me know I’ve caught him off guard. Did they not search me at all? Clearly someone should have noticed that I was carrying a weapon and had a rock the size of Texas on my ring finger. Do they think just because I’m a woman that I’m weak? Can’t strike back?
“And he’ll be coming for you, you piece of shit. My husband doesn’t like it when other people touch his stuff.”
I have seconds to brace for impact when Alejandro stands up and starts kicking the cage in a fit of rage, denting it in on one side where his boot meets the metal bars.
“She’s lying,” a familiar female voice shouts from the other side of the room, and Alejandro stops.
Standing in the now open doorway is Rita, looking expensive in her silk blue blouse and dark navy pin-striped pencil skirt, five-inch Jimmy Choo stilettos on her feet, and thin gold chains draping around her neck and circling her wrists.
I snarl like a rabid animal when she steps fully into the room.
“I was with Keane last week, bent over his desk,” she insinuates with a lithe smile.
She wishes. I’m not the only liar. I know Keane. I trust him. He wouldn’t betray me or Rafe like that by dicking her over a desk.
She sees that I’m not believing what she’s trying to sell and switches tactics. Hand to hip and with a flip of her long, black hair, she scoffs. “There’s no way she’s married to him. They could barely stand one another.”
“It’s called foreplay,” I reply. “Ever had a good old-fashioned hate fuck? Highly recommend them. Maybe if you got laid every once in a while, you wouldn’t walk around with such a giant stick shoved up your ass. I know damn well Rafe didn’t touch you. He’d rather finger-fuck me in the pantry than lay a hand on you.”
“You skanky bitch!” For a woman on five-inch stilettos, she can move very quickly.
Alejandro catches her by the throat before she can get to me in the cage. He lifts Rita up like a ragdoll and squeezes until her eyes bulge and her face turns a mottled shade of tomato.
“Whatever deal you made with my father, you did not make with me,” he whispers softly, and I quiver at the pure evil radiating off him.
“Julio won’t return my calls, and there’s something important he needs to know,” Rita chokes out as she struggles to pull in air.
Alejandro releases his grip, and she drops like a stone to the floor. Her cry of pain when she lands hard on her ass is music to my ears. Rita also just gave me vital information. For her to be here means we’re somewhere close to the city.
“He’s busy. Tell me.”
On shaky legs, Rita slowly picks herself up off the floor and smooths down her skirt. Her eyes flick to me, then to him. “In front of her?”
A muscle in the side of his jaw ticks, and she hobbles back a step.
“They, um… they took out the New York families. They’ll be coming for me next. I know it. Julio promised me protection. I can’t go back.” She looks at me again. “They’ll kill me once they find out I’ve been passing information to your father.”
My insides warm. Keane and Jax killed the Barones and Riccis. Half my work is already done. Now to exact vengeance on Julio and Alejandro.
“Do you even care that he had his man shoot Rafe? Rafe could die, Rita.”
It’s tearing me up not knowing how he’s doing. Has he woken up and asked for me? Does he think I’ve abandoned him? Or did he slip away in the night while I’ve been gone? I must have been out for more than a day. How many? How much time have I lost? I should be with Rafe by his bedside. I want to be the first person he sees when he opens those gorgeous blue eyes. Because he will wake up. I won’t accept any other outcome.
“Of course I care! He was my fiancé!”
“He was never your anything,” I growl, growing angrier the longer I’m forced to look at her. “Rafael Santiago Manuel Ortiz has always been mine, you cunt.”
“Enough!” Alejandro shouts, making Rita jump. She backs away another step. “Leave. Now,” he commands, and her mouth gapes open.
“But… but I have nowhere to go.”
“Not my problem.”
“But Julio?—”
It’s over before I can blink. Alejandro whips out a gun and shoots my cousin in the head. I cover my mouth with my hand to stop the gasp from escaping.
He spits on her dead corpse. “Like I said. Not my problem.”
When he turns around to face me, I flinch at the crazy in his eyes. Standing before me now is the older brother Rafe would tell me stories about. The remorseless killer. The sadistic madman.
He walks over to the cage and circles it one time, scraping the barrel of his gun along the side as he goes. I never take my sights off him.
“Jesus Christ!” I yelp when he shoots the lock off and it clatters to the ground.
“Come here,” he commands me.
I don’t move a muscle.
Throwing open the cage door, he points the gun at me. “Come here, Alexandria. You won’t like it if I have to pull you out of there,” he warns me.
Perhaps this is my chance to escape. I can knock the gun out of his hand and then lay him flat. He doesn’t know that I can fight. He has no clue the things I can do.
Crawling on all fours, I inch my way to the door and carefully climb out. The bastard must know I’m about to do something because he smashes the hilt of his gun into my temple and I topple over onto the floor, dazed and seeing stars.
Flipping me over to my back and shoving the gun in my mouth as I lay exposed and vulnerable, he lifts my left hand, thumbing Rafe’s bracelet I’m still wearing around my wrist, while his forefinger taps the rings Keane gave me.
Looking up into those black, empty eyes, I make a grunting noise and he pulls the gun out so I can talk.
“Why did your man shoot Rafe? Why not shoot me?” It’s a question I’ve been asking myself.
The stench of Alejandro’s breath fans across my face as he leans closer. He runs his nose up the side of my cheek, and the revulsion of him touching me in any form has me struggling to get out from underneath him. But it’s useless. He has me pinned in a way that I can’t move at all.
Alejandro inhales sharply through his nose like he’s smelling me, and I almost vomit when his slimy tongue licks across my right eye.
I don’t have any time to prepare when he whispers in my ear, “Such a pity,” then grips my ring finger and twists, snapping and breaking the bones. I cry out at the unexpected slice of pain, but it comes out as a whimper.
His knee bears down harder on my chest to keep me in place until my lungs can no longer expand behind my ribcage. He violently jerks Keane’s rings from my broken finger and palms them.
“No!” I scream, trying to get them back. Those were his mother’s rings. “You fucking?—”
“You’re mine now,” he tells me, creating a fist around the rings and punching me in the face with it.
I slide into oblivion of unconsciousness with one thought. I’m going to enjoy killing him.