“Babies?” Zio rasped.
“The crash knocked me out, and I haven’t felt any of them moving,” she explained. “They just started to flutter around in there recently, but I’ve felt nothing since I woke up. One of them is always jumping around. I-I’m scared, Papa.”
“How many babies are we talking about, Ciana?”
“Papa, please. We can talk about this later. I hurt all over. Please, can we go?”
I heard him pick her up, the rustle of something being draped over her, their voices as he carried her out of the basement with several of the men following. And the entire time, my eyes were still on the pieces of what everyone kept saying was left of Nova.
Sheena O’Brion did this. She took away the best thing to ever come into my life. She stole my heart away, then chopped her into unrecognizable pieces. Leaving me with nothing. If she’d wanted to punish me for being the reason her favorite granddaughter was no longer among the living, then she’d succeeded beautifully.
But she’d made one fatal mistake.
She hadn’t killed me.
Wherever she was, I would find her. And turn the streets red with her blood.
39
Nova
My head felt as if it were going to explode. The pressure at my temples made it seem as if my eyes were going to pop out of my skull if I opened them. But that was nothing compared to the pain in the rest of my body, especially my shoulder.
Pitiful whimpering drew my attention, and I struggled to focus as I cracked one eye open. The room was dim, only a single bare bulb hanging from the middle of the room to see by. I shifted and had to bite my lip to keep from crying out as my shoulder protested the move. Tilting my head back, I looked up at where my hands were cuffed to chains that hung from a rafter. The bottom half of my body was free and hanging like a wet noodle, my knees barely supporting me.
That sad, pained noise came again, and I drunkenly shifted my head to find Cali directly across from me. Like me, her arms were chained above her head, her legs unrestrained. Her head fell forward, her hair falling on either side of her head like a curtain, shielding her face from me.
Slowly, the fog began to dissipate from my brain, letting me think a little clearer, and instincts that had been drilled into me by Anya began to take over. Quickly, I assessed the room, looking for every danger and exit simultaneously. Other than the whimpering girl across from me, I was alone in the room that only had a single door. No windows, no skylights, not even a vent that I could see.
I tested my restraints, hurting my shoulder yet again in the process, but I fought through the pain as I determined if I could use the chains as a weapon should I need to.
The rattling of my chains drew Cali’s attention. She lifted her head, causing her hair to fall away from her face. I gasped at the sight she unveiled. The swollen eyes and obvious broken nose, the bruises along each cheek, the mouth that was split in several places that were openly bleeding down her chin and neck. She had bruises along her arms, slash marks over her legs as if someone had whipped her until she bled.
“I thought you were dead,” Cali muttered in a hoarse yet emotionless voice.
“Where are we?”
She licked her lips, only to grimace at the taste of her own blood. “Home,” she said with a shudder. “Colombia.”
“What? How did we get here?” Fuck, how long had I been out? I didn’t remember the trip to Colombia.
“I don’t know.” She shifted, but when she tried to put weight on her left leg, it folded on her, making her fall forward again, her arms pulling so hard she cried out. “When I woke up, we were on some cargo plane. Manuel started running his mouth, then to relieve some aggression, he started his favorite pastime—using me as his personal punching bag. Next thing I knew, we were in this stupid room. It’s his favorite place in the house. The torture dungeon, as he likes to call it. I’ve never been a guest, but I’ve heard plenty of people screaming from this room over the years.” She shuddered again. “We’re going to die, Nova.”
“We’re not going to die,” I promised her. “Ryan and Garret are probably already on their way to get us right now.”
A humorless laugh escaped her. “Sweet, innocent Nova. You think they will come and rescue us? What world do you live in? We are nothing to them. Out of sight, out of mind. They probably already have replacements for us.”
“No,” I denied vehemently. “Ryan will come for me. Both of us. Just wait and see.”
“From what I can determine, it’s already been two days. Over forty-eight hours with no sign of your precious Ryan. If they were going to save us, they would have been here by now.” She bowed her head, her hair falling forward and shielding her face from me once more. “Just accept it, Nova. We’re going to die here. Stop fooling yourself and thinking that any man is a knight in shining armor. That is fairy-tale bullshit our moms tell us when we’re little girls to give us hope of a better life.”
“You’ll see,” I vowed. “Any minute now, Ryan will come through that door and get us the hell out of here.”
“Keep dreaming, princess.”
We drifted into complete silence again. It made me sad that Cali had been let down so many times that she thought no one would save her. But Ryan would prove to her that not every man was the same.
Time ticked by slowly. I realized I needed to pee, but obviously, there was no place to go, and I wasn’t expecting a nice guard to come in and take me to the bathroom if I called out that I needed to relieve myself. From the smell of urine coming from the other side of the room, I was sure Cali had already been forced to go on herself, but I wasn’t about to embarrass her by asking.
I figured an hour had gone by since I’d woken up, possibly a little longer, and my bladder was starting to scream for relief. Every inch of my body hurt, but it appeared I didn’t have any other choice. We needed to get the fuck out of there, and I needed to use the bathroom. It left me with only one option, and I wasn’t all that sure with the way I felt that I could pull it off, but it was do-or-die.
“Hey, asshole!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
“What are you doing?” Cali hissed, fear tingeing her voice. “Are you insane?”
“I have to pee,” I told her calmly, while inside, I was terrified. If this didn’t work, we were both dead.
I heard rustling outside the door, but no one came in. Sighing, I shifted, clenching my fingers around the chains above my cuffs. This was not going to be fun. “Yo, cocksucker. I’m talking to you, you dickless pussy.”
“Nova, you have a death wish,” Cali whispered. “Please don’t get him in here. He will only beat me again. I can’t take much more. The baby…”
“You will both be fine.” With everything else going on, I’d forgotten she was pregnant, but I’d make sure nothing happened to my baby niece or nephew. With that giving me extra incentive, I adjusted my hold, taking more weight on the arm that wasn’t injured, but there was no way of not causing more damage to the dislocated shoulder.
The door was kicked open, and a seething Manuel Ramirez stomped into the room. His face was twisted with hate, his pupils blown out, letting me know loud and clear he was hyped up on coke. Was there anything more pathetic than a drug dealer who was addicted to his own product?