The Woman at the Funeral (Costa Family #11) Read Online Jessica Gadziala

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Mafia Tags Authors: Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
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But the lights blurred into long streaks, too bright, like the world was smearing right before my eyes.

I blinked. Once. Twice. But everything went distorted—pulsing, breathing, bending inward at the corners.

Panic gripped my system. It was a tight pressure on my chest, a strangling sensation in my throat.

My heart hammered against my ribs—so fast I was sure it would give out at any second.

What was wrong with me?

I tried to sit up.

But gravity had changed the rules.

Up didn’t exist anymore.

In fact, the ground seemed to be trying to pull me down, deeper, into it.

The room around me felt stifling, the humidity making the air soupy.

But somehow, there was a cold sweat clammy on my skin, making my shirt cling to my chest and stomach.

No.

No, it wasn’t my shirt.

My gaze flew down, seeing the white shirt that wasn’t mine. Its sleeves were too long, its chest too wide.

As I looked, the buttons shifted, widened, grew irises that stared back at me.

With a startled cry, I squeezed my eyes shut.

When I opened them again, the buttons were just buttons again.

What was wrong with me?

Memories came back in fragments, little shards of clarity amidst the pain and confusion. But it felt like each time I reached for one, it sliced me enough to yank my hand back.

The weird coldness I was feeling seemed to be sinking deeper, making shivers rack my system.

I focused on forcing some life into my limbs until I rolled myself onto my side.

The sharp pain in my upper arm was what finally shocked a full memory loose.

Stab her already.

Then complete unconsciousness.

Someone had stabbed me with a needle, injected me with something that was messing with my mind.

My stomach rolled, making me heave. But there was nothing in my stomach to throw up.

Tears pricked my eyes, then flooded and spilled before I could blink them away.

But I wasn’t even sure why I was crying.

Was it the pain? The fear?

Or was it the drugs?

It certainly felt like it was out of my control, making me lean on the latter as I pulled my arms up and buried my face as the sobs racked my body.

I don’t know how long I cried. Time felt weird. Slow and expanding, like I was sucked inside it instead of experiencing it.

All I knew was I didn’t actively stop crying. They dried up. I sobbed myself dry.

I pressed my heels into my eyes, trying to ease the stabbing sensation behind them from the light in the room.

The light.

I lowered my hands, staring up at the windows that had light streaming through them not long before.

Except, it had to have been longer than I realized.

Because the bright yellow sun was now the pinks and purples of sunset.

How long had I been out of it? Hours?

How was that possible?

Hours, gone in a blink.

I had to focus.

I needed to get up, find an exit.

My gaze slid around the steadily darkening room. But the moment had my head spinning and my stomach lurching again.

“Damnit,” I hissed, pushing up until my back met a cold, hard wall.

I fought through the dizziness, the swimming vision, and the lurching stomach, just sucking in big, gasping breaths until I felt like I could think again.

When I could, little things came into focus.

The windows were abundant, but way up high—just under the ceiling.

Nowhere had windows like that.

Except warehouses, right?

I was somewhere industrial.

Even as I thought that, I could see several large, darkened shapes way on the other side of the cavernous building.

What were those?

Boats?

No.

Cars.

They were cars.

Cars.

It was all sharpening into focus.

Stab her already.

Right before I’d passed out, I’d realized I remembered that voice.

Oh, I knew that voice alright.

And that also meant that I knew exactly where I was.

But just as it dawned on me, footsteps approached somewhere to my side, making me jerk hard.

A flashlight sliced through the darkness before the torch illuminated my face. The pain ratcheted up, making me squeeze my eyes shut to try to ease it.

“Good. You’re not blabbering anymore.”

My blood turned to ice in my veins as the voice washed over me again. The same way it had in the not-so-safe house. When they’d been pinning me to the ground, their knee shoved in my back, holding me still as someone else injected me with something to knock me out.

Ronny.

Of course.

There wasn’t a single thing the Ferraros did alone. There was no way Matthew was involved with something serious and his family wasn’t in on it.

Ronny had been the one to help him haul those boxes of baseball cards into my apartment while praising him up and down, telling him what a genius he was, and how he was going to be so rich. And how he was such a good person because he would share his wealth.

She’d said that last part with a pointed look in my direction.

She’d also been the one to go with him on garage sales every weekend, grabbing more useless crap that would fill up my closets until I finally made him get a storage unit.


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