Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
“Hey man, you need something?” I asked.
“Sorry to interrupt.” His smile was sinister. “But orders are orders.”
“What?” I painfully swung my legs over the edge of the bed, jerking in shock when he pulled out a tranq gun and shot me in the neck. With deft movements, he reloaded and hit Katya next.
The last thing I remembered was seeing her fall to the carpet next to me, face full of terror.
And me, knowing I was unable to stop the nightmare ahead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I am an undisputed gangster. To me, that means playing by my own rules.” —Katherine Ryan
Katya
The first thing that hit me was the familiar smell, then the click-clop of footsteps. It was like I’d traded a dream and walked directly into my old nightmares. I kept my eyes closed as the footsteps stopped somewhere close and then began again and kept going. I let out the breath I’d been holding in and finally opened my eyes.
It was dark except for the moonlight streaking in through the small window in the corner, and it looked exactly like the cell I was in before, though that one had not had a window. But the wet, moldy smell and the echoing water dripping in places and sliding back into the ocean were the same.
Even the dampness from being on the lighthouse island.
I could smell it and feel it all.
I pinched myself to make sure I was awake.
I was.
The last thing I remembered was seeing Santino collapse to the floor after a dart went into his neck and then a sting in my neck and sudden darkness.
Why this place? Why did I have to come back? And how did this even happen? I shivered and tried to get up. My head was pounding, and I was freezing, still wearing nothing but the white lingerie I’d been modeling for Santino earlier. When I looked down, it already had a few tears and smudges of dirt all over it. My hands looked the same. I got to my hands and knees and faced the metal door, then looked around.
There was a small concrete slab for sleeping, a threadbare blanket, and what looked like a small tin collecting water from the ceiling.
Was I supposed to survive off that?
“Katya,” Santino’s voice sounded.
I quickly turned fully around.
Next to my cell was another, I could reach through the bars and touch him, but I couldn’t save him, and he couldn’t save me. Santino was leaning against the bars reaching for me.
I ran over to him and fell to my knees. “I’ll get us out. I’ll find a way out.” His teeth were chattering.
I was almost afraid to look. I reached through. “May I?”
His nod was jerky, his eyes uncertain but trusting as I reached for the bandages on his stomach and lifted them up.
They were already getting infected. And without medicine and treatment, it would just weaken him more and more. I put the bandages back. “How are the ribs?”
“Broken.” He laughed and then sobered. “But I’m alive, so we should at least celebrate that.”
“How did this happen?” I reached for his hand.
He took mine without questions and squeezed it tight. “I’m not sure, nobody knew. It has to have been a plant who had been working for Tex for quite a while, someone who got paid off. Most likely, my brother’s behind it. I might be able to reason with him—”
“You won’t,” came a loud voice as the door to my cell opened, revealing a man in his late thirties with greasy jet-black hair, a freaking eye patch over one eye, and a sinister smile right out of the movies. He seemed fit, but he was much shorter than Santino, and his face carried scars down its left side, maybe from a knife? I wasn’t sure.
“Mattia.” Santino ground out his brother’s name. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Grandfather would have your head on a spike if you—”
“Grandfather will never need to know the means by which I got his attention, only the result.” Mattia grinned at me. “You’re just as pretty as Jonny said, you know, before his very untimely death at my brother’s hands. And to think, had you just waited a little longer, I would have been the one to rescue you and kill him. I had it all planned, you know, and then my brother had to ride in on his white horse sent directly from the Cosa Nostra.” He spit on the floor. “Fucking traitor is what you are, Santino!”
“Leave this pathetic woman alone, or let her suffer; I don’t give a shit,” Santino growled. “This is between you and me. Let her go.”
“But that wasn’t part of the plan.” Mattia grinned and took another step toward me. “The plan was to take the last Sinacore heir and marry her, come home the war hero, and tie ourselves to the Five Families, then infiltrate from the inside out. It would take years, of course, but it’s doable. People will practically do anything if the price is right, and maybe in a decade, I could be the Capo. Who knows?”