Renata
I scream at the top of my lungs as I’m picked up and thrown into the rear compartment of a large black vehicle. Three men climb into the back with me. The windows are tinted, so there’s barely any light coming through at all—at least, not until the youngest guy switches on the light attached to the ceiling between us and then settles down opposite me.
The two men sitting guard on either side of me are older. Neither one is paying me any attention. But the young guy seems curious. His eyes rove over my face with interest.
I ignore him in favor of baring my teeth and lunging towards the black partition separating us from the driver’s cab. Hammering my fists against it, I scream, “You can’t fucking do this! Let me go!”
Without so much as a word, one of the men at my side grabs me and shoves me back into my seat. I hit hard and slump against the wall as the breath whooshes out of my lungs.
The younger guy raises one eyebrow.
“What the fuck are you staring at?” I demand.
He seems amused by my tone, but he doesn’t smile. It’s hard to pinpoint his age. He could be as young as twenty, but there’s a kind of worldly experience on his face that far outweighs my own. His eyes look like they’ve seen the same kind of shit mine have—blood, violence, hatred. That can age a person.
“Fighting is pointless,” he tells me predictably. “You’d be better off—”
“Better off what?” I snap. “Letting you all kill me without a fight?”
He shrugs. “At least then it’ll be painless,” he remarks, without even bothering to deny the fact that killing me is on the docket. “If you fight, your death might be drawn-out.”
“I’m not afraid of pain.”
“Then you haven’t experienced much of it,” he responds instantly.
“And you have?”
“Enough to know what it can do to a man.”
He has an unsettling gaze. Maybe because he barely seems to blink. It’s intense and, despite my best efforts, I’m the one who ends up looking away first.
“Who are you?” I rasp.
“Nobody.”
“Nobody’s a nobody in this world.”
He laughs softly. “You may be right about that.”
I change tack. “Where is he taking me?”
“Wherever he wants.”
“Thanks,” I reply sarcastically. “Five stars for you. You’ve been extraordinarily helpful.”
I look to either side, trying to get a read on the men flanking me. They’re both large, burly men with expressionless faces. Not much very promising there. “I have nothing to do with any of this,” I say to all three of them. “Why take me at all?”
“You have something to do with Drago Lombardi,” the young, dark-eyed man points out wryly.
“I can’t help my DNA.”
He raises his eyebrows again. “Ah. His sister? Poor girl.”
I frown, taken back by his tone. “What did you just say?”
“Lombardi’s been on the Clan’s radar for a while now. We didn’t know the sister was still in the picture.”
“Yeah, well, women aren’t ever considered important by men like you,” I say accusingly. “So I’m not surprised.”