The grunt and thud happened so fast, I barely witnessed what occurred.
I spun quickly on my heel and caught just a glimpse of the ski-masked man who’d taken down Dante in an instant. He had a cloth over Dante’s mouth as the big guy’s eyes rolled back in his head.
I gasped when I should have screamed. I froze when I should have run.
He moved with precision, like a trained professional. I’d always thought I’d prepared myself for something like this. I’d fought Dante in self-defense classes and slept next to dangerous men. I’d put myself in pretty bad situations where I knew I’d get slapped around. But I always outmaneuvered those men. I knew their emotions, that their feelings for me would hold them back from taking my life.
But this man, whoever he was, dressed in all black . . . I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of any markings before he’d pinned me to his muscular body with his arm around my waist and covered my mouth with the cloth.
I clawed instinctively at his hand, dug my nails in as I wildly searched the hall. No one was turning the corner. No one saw him drag me into the shadows.
“Be calm, Katalina,” he whispered.
Just as I remembered the knife in my dress, I blacked out.
25
Katie
Icame to, and the first thing that hit me was a migraine from the chloroform hangover.
I didn’t move. Waking up as a captive and waking up next to an angry, violent lover were very much the same.
I relaxed my body and kept my breathing slow. I listened for any sound—voices, TVs, footsteps, traffic outside; any clue that could tell me where I was.
I lay across a cushioned surface that felt much like a leather couch, and some cloth was draped over my body. I felt the tulle of my dress still wrapped around me, but the knife that should have dug into my ribs was gone.
My kidnapper had wrapped me in a blanket and laid me on a couch? Left me dressed? It seemed they’d be playing nice once they knew I was awake.
With just the sound of cars in the distance, I knew we must still be in the city, but whoever was with me, they weren’t giving much away. No one talked or walked around, and I couldn’t smell anything except . . . a hint of metal mixed with aftershave, like he’d washed away the blood of his kills but couldn’t completely shake the scent.
Rome.
My eyes shot open.
There he sat, leaning forward on a brown leather chair. The ski mask dangled from his large hands, and his head hung low as he looked at the ground. His brown hair fell over his forehead, damp like it’d just been scrubbed clean.
“What”—I cleared my throat at the pain of talking as his eyes sliced up to meet mine—“In. The. Actual. Fuck, Rome?” I winced as I pushed up on my elbow to sit and noticed that my wrists were zip-tied together. “Are you kidding me?” I lifted them in front of me and wide-eyed him.
“Take a minute to relax, woman. I’m going to explain.”
“Relax?” I screamed and then gripped my throat. The burn was excruciating.
He jumped up and grabbed a glass of water from a slatted end table next to the couch. “Drink this. It’s just the drug you inhaled.”
“Just the drug I inhaled? Do you hear yourself?” The shock was wearing off, and the rage was setting in. I snatched the water with my two bound hands and chugged it down. I was going to need all the strength the water could give me in order to kill the man standing in front of me.
“I needed to get you out of there quietly and quickly, okay? If it hadn’t been me, it would have been the Russians. I figured out their plan in just enough time to do what I had to do to get you out.”
“You made me breathe chloroform!” I choked at the burn. “My throat is in hell right now, and I could have died. Did you know—”
“That chloroform isn’t very stable within the body at high doses? Yes, I’m aware, Katie,” he said with absolutely no remorse.
“So you were willing to risk my life. And Dante’s?” My voice went up a notch at the thought of Dante smiling at me for one second and then—
“Dante needs to learn to take in the surroundings and not your ass.”
“Oh, get real, Rome. We aren’t even dating. Don’t act like a man can’t eye me up.” I wondered if I could stomp a heel into one of his boots.