Page 168 of Carnal Wagers

“That’s grand. That could work. Text me his number and have the clan doctor ready to go. Shiner’s going to need him.”

“Phone number coming your way.”

I glanced back at the facility hangar as Paulie strapped Shiner in. The pilot was inside, waiting for us. Question was, was he the one who betrayed us to Sosa? Or was it one of my employees instead? Either way, we needed the pilot before we could do anything else. Not to mention everything Alizé and I left behind in the locker room.

“Oh, and Brody, find out who revealed our position today. Someone talked. I want their tongue and every finger from their dominant hand. I want them to live feeling helpless, like she did when they took her, for the rest of their short life.”

“I’ll do some research. Good luck. And I’m…I’m sorry.”

I snorted in disgust, not believing that forced apology for one second.

“Lying’s not in your deck of cards.” I hung up and ran, feeling each ticking beat pass with every stride away from the helicopter.

We were airborne fifteen minutes later. It was too long a delay, but that was after threatening the pilot at gunpoint to pick up the pace. The only upside was that I’d gotten in touch with the prim French bastard known as my brother-in-law. Brody was right. Alizé permanently wore a tracker.

From the transmission and the speed at which she traveled south, Adrien De Villier gathered she was airborne. However, without a final destination, all we could do was regroup before heading out the moment her speed slowed. He was sending his jet to Boston with a team of his men, with the request that I pick up his second-in-command on my way to the airport.

All mo síbhean had to do was hold on and give them her special brand of hell in the meantime. We were coming.

Chapter 41

Sleep and I had a difficult relationship. I tended to get so immersed in my projects—whether it was creating a new formula, pairing perfumes, learning a new language by watching an obscene number of soap operas, or stalking my husband—that I often woke up in the middle of lucid dreams with no idea where I was. Those long, terrifying seconds before I got my bearings threw me for a loop each time.

But waking up in the confined trunk of an unknown car? That was substantially worse. Not because it was dark or tight, stale or cloying. It was worse because the reality didn’t change.

When my eyes fluttered open to blinding darkness and suffocating heat under the rumble of a moving engine, I waited for my mind to catch up. Twenty seconds in, forty seconds, a minute later, I remained in the trunk, but not the same open-spaced trunk I vaguely remembered being shoved into.

Garbled music vibrated at my back. Road grit crunched and popped loudly over the repeated squeaking of worn suspensions as my body swayed and jolted with sudden drops, lurches, and jerks. Sharp aches shot up my skull from every thwack of my cheek against the hard, felt-lined flooring.

With a groan, I reached up to press my fingers to my temples, but zip ties cinched my wrists together, the same for my ankles. Every jerk of my limbs dug the ties deeper into my skin as panic seized my lungs.

“This was what you wanted,” I whispered to myself.

Lies, a cruel voice croaked back. That’s nothing but a dirty twist of the truth.

I had only planned to get captured for a short time. Long enough for my brother to consider this hit on Cillian a threat to my safety and force his hand in eliminating Sosa. Then I’d make a quick escape.

Except the drugging caught me off guard. Ironic for someone who made a secondary career out of weaponizing chemicals, but here I was. Trapped in the dark, tied up, vulnerable, and alone. With only me, myself, and I to rely on while a dozen different scenarios carouseled in my thoughts.

Hit in the skull with a shovel. Buried in a ditch. My head severed from my body. My manicured fingernails pulled out. My legs broken. My limbs chopped off. My body burnt to a crisp.

Nausea roller-coastered its way up and down my throat, and my heart raced against the swoosh of blood in my clogged ears. Each beat pitched over the other. Each one demanded more air to feed its work. More air that I couldn’t supply. My lungs burned as the car sounds dissipated into a muffled droning against my head. The clatter of my teeth and knocking of my knees against the trunk was all I could hear. The mashing of my bloody lips between my teeth was all I could taste. Before one little detail kicked back in. Pain.

The more my body jerked, the more the zip ties bit into my skin. They chafed and chafed until the numbness faded. Until the sharp sting spasmed up my limbs, and every ache and throb in my body sparked back to life.

I lived, they reminded me. Nothing was set yet.

I was a resilient, capable woman. The badass Toxic Fiend with a perfume empire to expand and the beginnings of a loving relationship to fully explore. I hadn’t finished learning Gaelic yet, and I wanted to give Arabic a try. I hadn’t yet won a Fragrance of the Year, Universal Prestige award. Plus, I wanted kids one day. This was not how my story ended.

As that truth settled into my bones, the panic lulled. Sounds filtered back in. My stomach settled.

“Just another challenge to overcome,” I panted.

I took a breather to assess myself. Cillian’s knife remained as a lump in my shoe. My clothes were intact and untouched, which meant I hadn’t been searched. I still had the emergency miniature knife in my bra lining, my transmitting belly-ring locator, the vials in the rubber heels of my tennis shoes, and the sharp pins in my hair.

In this situation, I took zero offense to being underestimated. It was their loss.

With a little contortion, I pulled out a hairpin. I fiddled it against the locking tab of the tie around my hands, but with one hard jolt from the road, the hairpin slipped from between my teeth and fell to the floor.