Chapter Seventeen
Sunny
I open my eyes and find myself tangled up in Bones’s arms. It’s still dark behind her blackout curtains and I have no idea whether it’s morning yet or the middle of the night.
Carefully untangling myself, I wonder what woke me, and tip toe to the ensuite.
I blink in the light and tilt my head to the side, inspecting the dark hickey on my neck with a smile.
When I’m done fawning, I pour a glass of water from the tap, then go to the toilet.
When I emerge from the ensuite a flicker of movement catches my eye from beyond the bedroom, somewhere out in the open plan living area.
My brow furrows. What the hell? I tread silently back to the bed and reach out cautiously, blindly in the dark.
My warm hand finds Bones’s arm in the darkness and I frown.
If she’s in bed ... then... With my heart racing in my throat, I grab my phone from the bedside table and turn on my little light.
Shining it out the door and into the rest of the apartment as I linger in the frame, heart pumping.
“Sunny?”
I hear Bones’s whispered voice behind me, then I feel her naked body pressed behind mine. “I thought I saw something...” I whisper back, unable to stop myself from trembling.
Bones grips my shoulder tight, guiding me back into the room and away from the door. “Take this,” she says, pushing the smooth handle of a knife into my palm. “And lock yourself in the bathroom now,” she hisses. “Don’t come out until I give the all-clear.”
My heart leaps into my throat at her reaction. This could be real. Oh, god. Have we been broken into? Is it him? I suppress the urge to puke and take a deep sobering breath. “But I can’t leave you,” I protest. “What if you get hurt?”
Bones’s command brooks no further protest and sends a chill down my spine.
“Get in the ensuite, or I’ll drag you there myself.
You can’t help me if you get hurt. Now, go,” she insists.
Then she steps out in the darkness of her house, naked as the day she was born and without a shred of fear, a protective heroine like the Valkyries of Norse legend.
“Please be careful,” I whisper after her, before turning off my phone light and retreating into the darkness.
Locking the bathroom door, I leave the light off and step away.
My breathing is quiet, but ragged, as I back into the furthest corner of the room, the space between the built-in tub and the vanity unit.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I curse under my breath, hugging my knees to my chest as fear rakes its cruel talons over my heart.
“Please be okay, Maria.” Several breathless minutes pass and I hear a scuffle in the distance and the distinct sound of something breaking.
My nerves ignite, rubbed raw by adrenaline, and I clutch my phone.
“Please come back to me, Bones. Please come back.” A second later I hear a gunshot and then a silence so deeply profound that I can hear the pieces of my shattering heart tinkling to the floor like broken glass.
Stricken, I can feel my face drain of blood and then the ensuite door is kicked wide open, the sound deafening in the small space.
“You’re coming with me,” says a familiar voice and my world stops spinning on its axis.
With panic flooding my veins I forget the knife and scramble in the darkness to get past him.
But my scalp screams with pain a heartbeat later as he reaches out, yanking me by my hair with brutal force.
I’m pulled backward and my head hits the door frame.
Disoriented, pain flares, distracting me, and I lurch sideways as I reach for my head.
I try to escape again, thrusting myself toward Maria’s bedroom, but it’s no use.
The bastard grabs me by my waist, and I’m lifted bodily from the floor. His breath is hot and harsh in my ear as he snarls. “Oh, you stupid girl. Did you really think you could get away from me that easily? You should know me better than that, chubby bunny.”
Luka. With my worst fears confirmed, I scream as his arm wraps around my throat and the pressure increases until it really starts to hurt. Dear god, he’s going to kill me. “What did you do?” I cry out into the blackness as I kick and writhe, fighting for my life. “Where’s Bones?”
“The chick?” he drawls derisively. “Let’s just say we need to mind the blood on our way out.”
No. “No! Bones! No!” But it’s too late. My throat feels thick and swollen. I can’t breathe. There’s no air... A moment later stars burst behind my eyelids like showers of diamond in the Void and darkness consumes me and my last conscious thought. Bones.
****
“Motherfucker,” I groan as consciousness returns to me and my head aches.
I hesitantly crack one eye open, keeping my lashes low to see what I can discover about my whereabouts without being noticed.
I find myself bound with cable ties, staring at the mirror opposite our queen-sized bed.
I recognize it instantly. The sunshine yellow, gold-trimmed comforter underneath me as familiar to me as the back of my own hand.
The psycho brought me back home to St. Augustine?
What the actual fuck? How could a prick so sick as to murder a woman in cold blood in her own home be so stupid as to take his fucking hostage back to her cage? It beggared belief. Fucking prick!
“Wakey, wakey, my chubby princess.”
My head aches anew at the sound of Luka’s voice. It’s like poison to my ears. I could have lived a hundred years without hearing it again quite happily. “You’re a fucking psycho, Luka,” I mutter under my breath.
“What was that, my muffin top? Aren’t you happy to be home?” he says, his gaze feral as he locks eyes with me. “You know, I shouldn’t...” he says, stepping into view—right behind me—I can see him looming in the mirror.
“Fuck you. You hit me! It’s over. I could look away and ignore the fact you were in bed with the mafia, so long as you didn’t bring it home.
But you did and now we’re done,” I say with more courage than I feel.
It’s probably just the American Honey still thrumming through my veins . .. but I mean every word.
Luka steps closer, then walks around our bed to my side, kneeling on the ground to look me in the eye, face to face.
“I shouldn’t forgive you,” he continues, his glacial blue eyes slicing into my soul like a blade made of jagged ice, “but I will. You’ve proven you can keep your fat trap shut, plus you put out and keep a clean house.
Besides, you need me to want you, fluffy cakes,” he says.
“Without me, you’re literally nothing but a weird little sunshine yellow wannabe rockabilly. It’s pathetic.”
I spit in his sneering face and glare at him with more hatred than I’ve ever felt before.
“If I’m so fucking pathetic, then why did you go to all the effort of hunting me down?
Why didn’t you just let me be? I’m sure you could lure some mafia mole in a silk dress if you wanted to.
Why me?” I demand, my pulse thumping as I try to control my breathing.
“Just because you’re not A grade in my opinion doesn’t mean you aren’t desirable to others. In fact, I have it on good authority that I’d stand to gain a lot if I let the mob share you around.”
My heart constricts in my chest, and my eyes widen with real fear as my insides turn to jelly. “Luka,” I say. “No.”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re willing or not,” he says, a foul grin on his face.
“They just need my word and it’s done. You’ll be the mafia’s newest piece of meat.
A fat, juicy steak thrown into the greasy dog pit.
Oh, you’ll have your work cut out for you, I imagine.
It’s just as well, they like screamers. It’s not really any fun if you don’t put up a fight. ”
“I will never!” I snap as the situation begins to spiral out of control. “You can’t make me! I’ll fucking kill you!”
Luka sneers and reaches out to stroke my cheek.
When I try to turn my face away in disgust, he grabs my face—hard—pinching my cheeks together with a vicious grip.
“They’ll drug you,” he assures me. “Or they’ll beat you.
Whatever it takes, really.” He grins and licks up the side of my face.
“Mm, I’ll miss you in some ways,” he says.
“I really did love the way you cried when I shoved my big, fat cock up your ass. The way you’d shriek and squirm and beg.
You’d swear I’d just impaled you on a knife.
” He laughs. “My dramatic little fat slut.”
The rage inside me grows, fueled by terror, it burns with a ferocity that threatens to consume me whole.
In my mind’s eye I see myself burning to ash like a phoenix, only to rise again, a glowing, self-immolating goddess of retribution and feminine power.
He killed Bones. My Bones. My Maria. My angel.
I feed it despair like I’m lobbing dry tinder onto a bonfire.
She’s gone. She’s dead. I’m alone. I’m going to be sex trafficked to the mafia, and I’ll probably end up buried somewhere in an unmarked grave—that or melted alive in a barrel of industrial-strength acid.
I’d be just another missing woman, forgotten, and discarded like so much trash—a rotting husk of once hopeful, bright humanity reduced to a shell of emptiness and despair.
There. That’s it. I lash forward with all my might, suddenly and without warning, and slam my head into his, headbutting the bastard with everything I’ve got left.
Pain explodes in my head and the last thing I hear before I succumb to the Void once again is the sound of Luka’s hysterical and manic, throaty laughter.