I shrug again like I don’t give two shits, but my stomach is churning. Gullible Antoni is about three seconds from becoming a lackey with hostage vomit on his shoes.
“You fucking bitch! I was nice to you. I bought you a fucking book.” He snatches Fifty Shades—a two-and-a-half-inch-thick paperback that feels like a brick—off the bed and smacks it across my jaw. My head whips to the side, and the pain vibrates from my face down my neck straight to my spine. My eyes water, and I bite my tongue as blood pours from the spot where the corner of the book’s spine caught my cheekbone.
He drops his literary weapon and reaches for his phone again, shaking it at me. “Fix it!” he screeches. “Fix it now!”
He’s shrieking like I maniac and I’m bleeding from the mouth and face, but I don’t care. I already won, and pissed-off, victorious Corinne is one brave chick.
“Fuck you.” I spit a mouthful of blood onto his face. “Tell your boss if he wants his money back, he’ll have to let me go.”
He shouts a growl, then turns and fires four fast shots, mortally injuring the TV and probably rendering me deaf for the rest of my life.
As if I’m invincible and not about to pass out from fear, I walk to the bathroom, shut the door, wet a towel to hold against the cut on my cheek, then turn to throw up in the toilet.
I guess that’s what you call a successful escape plan?
It’s not ten minutes later when I walk out of the bathroom, and Roberto Totti is waiting just inside my cell with Antoni. “You think you’re so smart.”
For being such a bad, scary dude, he doesn’t look anything like I would’ve expected. Not a DeNiro or a Pacino or even a Pesci. He’s mid-sized. Ordinary. Wears his suit jacket a size too big and his tie a neck-measure too small. His fingers aren’t laden with rings to be kissed. He has a thin gold band on the appropriate hand, not a sparkle of bling around his neck. Years of watching the Godfather and its sequels and rip-offs have given me the wrong idea of what a Mafia boss should look like.
But he sounds the part with his Old Country accent and dark, calculating eyes. Of course, maybe he saw the same movies I did and picked up a few role models. “Where’s my money?”
I shrug. “It’s safe. Don’t worry.”
“He gave you his phone?” Antoni, who hit me with a book, is pleading with wide eyes and a tilted head.
“I’m not Harry Potter. I didn’t spirit your money away with magic.”
I sound pretty brave, all things considered. The kid hit me in the face with a book. No way he could really think I’d protect him. Plus, I’m twenty-seven million dollars’ worth of confident.
Until Totti’s eyes go dark, wild, and dangerous. He yanks the gun from Antoni’s belt and shoots him point-blank.
I gasp as Antoni hits the floor, eyes open, dead.
Now the blood on my face isn’t all mine.
“Shit! What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? He was just a kid!” My voice is shaking. If I ever stop trembling, it’ll probably be only because Totti killed me, too. “Oh my God! You killed a boy. He was just a boy!”
“Stupid boy. My wife can have another one to replace him.”
He’s got to be fucking kidding. That’s his son? Holy shit. This guy is for real. Or maybe he’s lying and just wants me to think he’d shoot his own child. I’m not brave enough to take the chance he’s a good actor.
I crouch to feel Antoni’s throat, praying there’s a pulse.
“Oh, God.”
No pulse. No breath. He really is dead. I got him killed.
Totti puts his gun hand on my head, holding me down when I try to stand. “While you’re down there, you stupid bitch …”
I’m one hyperventilating breath from passing out. It’s my fault Antoni’s dead. My fault. My fault. My fault. And now this monster is going to make me suck his cock?
The tears are stronger than my will to hold them back. “You’re gonna have to shoot me first. And then you’re never getting your money back, and chances are, my jaw’s gonna lock from fear and pain, and I’ll end up biting your dick off. So … I wonder if a twenty-seven-million-dollar blow job feels as good as you’re imagining.” I shrug as nonchalantly as I can, my breath still too fast, my heart set to explode in T-minus one more long speech. “Unzip. Let’s find out.”
Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s how stupid I’m prepared to act in spite of my fear.
He yanks me up by my arm. “I want my fucking money back, whore.”
“I want to go home.” I pause long enough for him to shove me away. “Make your best deal.”
He stares at me. Hard. Almost like he’s trying to see through me. And he’s still holding the gun he used to shoot his son. His own freaking son.
“I see why you’re important to Dubrovsky.” He nods and manhandles me to the door. “Come on.”
If I give him the money back, he’s going to kill me. If I don’t give him the money back, he’s going to hold me captive until I do. Maybe even try to torture the information out of me as to where I put it or how he can get his disproportionately big, meaty hands on it. Then he’ll kill me.
But he’s walking me through the place. We’re in a warehouse, I see. It’s open and drafty. Even this area with a stained drywall ceiling and a narrow floor that could use a good leveling. Our footsteps echo down a hallway lined with doors—probably offices converted to cells. I slow down. The doors have no visible knobs or locks, If they’re electronic, maybe I can find the security program—assuming that one exists—on their network and wreak a little havoc on these Italian bastards at the very least.
At the end of the hallway, Totti makes a hard left, dragging me with him into a room with three computers.
I freeze when I see Peyton there. And I almost start vomiting again when I realize that he’s bleeding from a hole in the back of his head, body twisted on the floor.
To be honest, it’s a little anticlimactic. All the twists and turns and deceptions and betrayals, just for him to end like this—slumped over like a raw side of beef. I can’t say he didn’t deserve it, but still… I never knew the human body had so much blood.
I feel sick.
“Get over there,” Totti prods.
To get to the computer, I’ll have to step over Peyton’s corpse. I shake my head like there’s an award for the speed with which I can say no. “No. Nope. I can’t.”
He huffs out a frustrated sigh and lines up the muzzle of the gun with my temple. “It was not a question. I want my fucking money back.”
“And I want to go home.” This could go back and forth all day and I don’t want to be in this room that long. “I’ll put ten million back now. When I’m somewhere safe, I’ll email you the account number where you’ll find the rest of the money.”
We both know there’s never going to be anywhere safe enough for me to hide. I only hope I can stall long enough for Tomas to show up and handle this. And by “handle,” I mean I hope he puts a bullet between this crazy bastard’s eyes. I’m well aware that makes me a hypocrite. I’m okay with this specific hypocrisy.