Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
He’d severed my right hand, I was sure of it, even though I looked at my wrist and saw the hand still attached. I couldn’t feel anything beyond the rapidly swelling line on my forearm near my wrist.
I screamed, letting loose a tremendous cry that didn’t sound human, and my eyes slammed shut. Then the nausea came in a wave so strong I was almost powerless against it, and I swallowed back a mouthful of burning bile.
Lying on the desktop, my arms still held out in front of me and pinned down, I began to worry that maybe Vitale had succeeded. I would give or say almost anything to be somewhere else now.
Even on that mountain where I’d been so alone.
Yet I wasn’t alone here. I could still see Ethan with my eyes closed, and now I could hear him speaking to me over my whimpers.
“It’s okay, Olivia, they’re coming. Please hold on.” His soft voice was distracting. Mesmerizing. “You’re going to make it through.”
My eyes blinked open, and through the blurring, unavoidable tears, I could just make him out. Not lying. This was truth.
“I’m here, and they’re coming, I promise you.” The deep voice held me together, kept me going. “Rescue is coming. It’s coming.”
It was what I had repeated over and over on the mountain after the grenade exploded and I was lying face down in the frozen dirt, my back on fire. Rescue is coming.
And like then, there was the rumble of hope in the distance. The same sound that had signaled I was going to make it. As it grew louder, I considered weeping with joy. Helicopters.
More than one.
The oppressive hand holding my handcuffs was gone and there was a burst of language. The couch was knocked back, banging to the floor as Ethan suddenly stood. Handcuffed and stabbed, yet these men were no match for him. Shit, he was dangerous.
He disarmed the guard closest to him in an instant, and the other guard was laid out with the grip of the gun to the face.
Without a weapon, the first guard ran. Vitale seemed to want to run, too, but the gun in Ethan’s hand went off, aimed at Carlo, and fixed back on Vitale right after. In a single breath, Ethan became the most powerful person in the room.
Carlo folded unnaturally sideways as his knee erupted in a burst, and he fell in a heap, screaming in agony. Outside the front windows, the rotors of the landing helicopters beat the bushes against the house.
The gun was outstretched in Ethan’s bound hands, pointed dead center of Vitale’s chest, and he turned to stone under Ethan’s cold, detached gaze.
I slid off the desk like I’d been poured over the side, collapsing painfully to my knees on the unforgiving floor. I cradled my wounded arm to my chest like a bird with a broken wing.
“Do you want me to kill him?” he asked.
My brain refused to comprehend the question. “What?”
“If you want him dead, I need to do it now.”
The icy pinpricks that slid down my skin were paralyzing. He waited for my command, for me to give him permission. My broken arm definitely wanted the bastard dead. But what about Ethan? What he was asking was murder. What about his soul?
I was a survivor, but I wasn’t sure how we could survive this.
“No,” I said on a shaky breath. “No.”
I didn’t want to lose him now that he’d found me, but my gaze drifted to the Italian king who had put us, and the Dunns, through hell. He couldn’t come out of this unscathed. He needed at least some amount of pain.
“Tell him,” I said, “what you did to Constantine.”
It wasn’t the same smile I loved that crossed Ethan’s face. This was more of a satisfied smirk laced with evil as he told Vitale he was looking at the man responsible for the death of one of his sons. And if Gio didn’t get medical attention soon, I suspected I would kill the other. I’d dumped the whole bottle of Ethan’s drug into the glass.
Just beyond the wall of the office came the sound of the front door breaking open, and hurried footsteps stomped into the entryway. Figures moved in, flowing through the doorway and shouted in both Italian and English, looking like a strike team with military-grade weapons and armor. Ethan dropped his gun and held his bound arms up, grimacing in pain, his face pale.
The last guy into the office pulled up short, his face full of surprise as he lowered his weapon. “Foster?”
Ethan took one look at the man, balled his fists and swung them together, unleashed a ferocious punch that struck the guy’s jaw and knocked him sideways.
“Where the fuck have you been, Tragar?”
The man righted himself, putting a hand on his jaw, his other still gripping the gun. Was it really a good idea to punch someone armed? This impulsive action from Ethan was shocking.