Page 17 of The Mafia’s Fiancee

Chapter 7

Luke

I fell to the floor, stunned. My muscles were already protesting the pain from the fight. My back spasmed with dull throbs from the hard impact on the concrete. I didn’t have a chance to brace the fall, and without that simple form of protection, I was vulnerable to smack my side, too.

Groaning, I rolled and tried to curl into my side. Anything to ball up and fend off any other hits. They just kept fucking coming.

It wasn’t enough to have to face a man in an unfair match, someone clearly sent to kill me? Now I had to withstand further aches and suffering from being tazed?

They didn’t wait. The two masked men must have been waiting in here as a contingency. In case I survived the fight I shouldn’t have walked away from, they had a backup plan to ambush me.

Now, they rushed to roughly grab me and pick me up. It was more like a drag, but I supposed my dead weight wasn’t the easiest to maneuver.

My energy was spent. Catching my breath, I moaned and grimaced as they dragged me toward the doors at the back of the room.

If I had an ounce of energy, any scrap of levelheadedness, I would’ve called out. I would’ve fought back. Jimmy was in there. Sean was supposed to be hanging in there as well. They would be my backup, on my side. My uncle should stand with me, and when he realized I was no longer here, he’d have to care. Or wonder.

The pair of brutes put their effort into hauling me out and into a van too suddenly, too swiftly, and I didn’t bother to regret not having someone to rescue me.

I was the one who had to pull off that task. I was supposed to be the hero, hunting down Emma. I’d only come here for Jimmy to get a better read on the Marchese men. He’d promised me answers or suggestions about where I could find Emma—after this rigged fight.

And here I was, beaten and tired. Captured. These men forced me into the backseat of a car and sped off, taking me who the fuck knew where.

Some hero I was. Some rescue I could offer Emma. She was depending on me. I was the one who told her that nothing could pull us apart. I was the one who vowed to make sure we stayed together, in love and against all the odds stacked up in our way.

I never should’ve gone to that fucking fight.

It had been nothing but a diversion. A waste of time and something that pulled me off the track of looking for Emma.

Instead of being matched against a killer, I should’ve been demanding Jimmy or Sean for where Emma might be. Instead of getting so tired and worn-out from fighting for my life, making me vulnerable to get tazed and captured, I should’ve been out there scouring the city for Emma.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Emma.

I hadn’t tried hard enough, and that disappointment in myself was all that I needed to snap to. To force my body past this fatigue and hazy mental state of defeat.

I was defeated. I was breathing. I was awake, able to move, if slowly.

On the ride, I steadied my breaths and tried to will my exhausted muscles to relax. To shore up the energy and fight to stand and strike back when I could.

I wouldn’t quit on Emma. Not now, not ever.

Eventually, after a confusing amount of time because I wasn’t sitting upright to look out the windows, the car stopped. I was able to move and sit, but I opted to play into the image of looking numb and hurt. If they assumed I was whipped and too beat to react in defense, I could count on surprising them. Anger and wrath built within me. They fueled me, priming me to attack. If they dared to hit me with a fucking taser, trying to take advantage of me when I was down, they’d regret it severely.

They parked, and I let the swaying momentum of the car rock me from my supine position on the backseat.

“Out.” One of the two men stepped out and yanked off his mask.

I didn’t recognize him, but I would remember what he looked like for future reference. If he was taking his mask off because he didn’t count on me identifying him later, he would be wrong.

They weren’t going to kill me. Not like this. I was too determined to save Emma and be with her to ever lose. Her love—our love—was all I had to bank on to stay strong and survive this, too.

I slumped out of the car, keeping up the appearance that I was weak and almost ready to collapse. Fortunately, they bought it, dragging me into a warehouse. Other, better maintained buildings surrounded it, so I figured we weren’t in the thick of a crime-ridden area. Once they brought me inside an empty room with stained blood coating the floor, I realized this was, in fact, a site of many crimes.

“So this is the stupid fucker who thinks he can sleep with my fiancée,” Antonio Marchese said as he walked closer, sneering at me slumped on the high-back chair. It reeked of piss and sweat, likely embedded and sunken into the wood from all the others they tortured here.

“She’s not your fiancée,” I replied.

“Oh.” Antonio tipped his head toward the right. “You hear that?” he asked the few thugs in the room with him. “He thinks that Emma isn’t mine.”