Claimed Mafia Bride by Mae Doyle

Jane

They leave me alone for long enough that I start to fall asleep, but then the sound of someone walking up to where I’m still tied down wakes me up. Shifting, I try to move my arms and legs a little bit to get more feeling back in them, but everything hurts and is cramped up. It doesn’t matter that I want to shift position—I just can’t.

“Jane, you awake?” A soft touch on my cheek makes me jump and my eyes spring open as I turn and look at whoever is touching me. This time there’s enough light in the room that I can actually see them, see the cold look in their eyes, see the way their jaw twitches as they look at me.

“I’m awake,” I manage, even though my mouth feels like I’ve been sucking sand. “Please, let me go.”

All I’ve been able to think about while I’ve been here is my sweet Annie. I know that my mom will do whatever she can to take care of her if something happens to me, but I refuse to not be there for my daughter. I’m all that she’s ever known and I’ve done a damn good job protecting her up until now.

Up until I got involved with Trevor again.

The irony isn’t lost on me that the only time my daughter has ever been in danger has been when her father is near her. I was doing a great job keeping her safe out of town and then I fucked up and brought her back.

Anything that happens to her is on me, and that’s almost too much for me to bear. Sure, there is part of me that wants to blame my mom for calling me and telling me to come home in the first place, but I’m a grown woman. Ever since I saw those two pink lines on my pregnancy test, I knew that I had to do whatever it took to keep the baby safe.

Even before I knew that I was pregnant, I’d locked myself away the best that I could to avoid Trevor and the other Bonannos. Part of me knew that letting him get too close to me was dangerous. I didn’t know that I was pregnant, but I did everything that I could to avoid him, leaving town as quickly as I found out the truth.

And now where am I? Back in the thick of it, but this time unable to do anything to help Annie.

“Oh, Jane, we can’t let you go. You see that, don’t you?” The man’s voice is breathless, like he’s excited about what’s going to happen. “You’re the key. The key to baiting the Bonanno family. The brothers took their families and moved them away, but not Trevor. Why do you think that that is?”

Because I was too stupid to listen to him.

The voice in the back of my head is screaming at me that I brought this on myself, and I have no reason not to believe it. I did this. I put myself in this danger. I could have listened to him, let him protect me. But I’ve gone my entire life without having anyone to protect me, and it didn’t make sense why I would need that now.

“Then you’ll let me go?” There’s hope in my voice and I know that this man is going to hear it and crush it, but I can’t help it. I just need to know if I’m going to get out of here in one piece or not. I need to know if I’m ever going to get to see Annie again.

“Sure, I’ll let you go. After I spend a little time with you.”

I don’t have to ask him what he means by that. I know what he means, know that he’s going to hurt me and there isn’t anything that I can do about it. Turning my face away from him, I stare at the wall, letting the tears drip down my cheeks. If he’s just going to rape me and kill me then I don’t know why he can’t just get it over with.

I’m never going to make it home to Annie, and that thought kill me, but at least I’ll know that she’ll be safe. My mom will do everything that she can to take care of her, and...

Oh, fuck. My mom.

It’s coming back to me in bits and pieces—how it was when they took me from the house. There was screaming and a gunshot, then something slammed down hard on my head, knocking me out and making it impossible for me to fight back. Did they shoot my mom?

Did they find Annie?

The question is on the tip of my tongue but I’m afraid to ask it in case they didn’t find her. If they don’t know that she’s there, if she somehow managed to stay hidden while they took me then she might be safe. I want to scream, want to know if they hurt my baby girl. Panic courses through my body and I tense up, but I’m not strong enough to break out of the ropes tying me to the hard slab under me.

“Just relax, Jane. This will all be over soon.”

The man sounds like he could be a doctor, his voice is so soothing. I can imagine what it would be like to go to him for medical treatment. He’d tell you that everything was going to be fine, that you were in the best possible hands, then he’d kill you while you were asleep on the operating table in front of him.

Sweat breaks out on my body, making my skin feel itchy and uncomfortable. Biting my lower lip, I do everything possible to keep from crying out, to keep from begging him to help me.

He’s not going to. I have to rely on the one man that I never thought I could trust to help me, and I don’t even know if he has any idea where I am. This guy said that I was bait, that I was there to make Trevor come, but if he doesn’t know where I am, then I don’t see how that’s possible.

“Okay, Jane, it’s time for you to get into position.” He’s behind my head now, in a spot where I can’t turn to see him, and I hear him unlocking something on the table. There are a few clicking noises and then the entire table starts to roll. I stiffen in fear until I remember that I’m strapped firmly to it and there isn’t any way that I’m going to slide off the end.

This entire time I thought that I was on a solid table, but it’s an operating table. He wheels me across the floor, our movement almost completely silent. The wheels don’t squeak and it’s only the sound of a rock or something stuck in his shoe clicking on the floor that I can hear.

Closing my eyes, I try to count to ten. When I was in therapy after Annie was first born my therapist talked a lot about being mindful and learning to live in the moment so that you didn’t fear the future. I have a feeling that she’d never been kidnapped and strapped to an operating table by a fucking psycho.

The deep breathing doesn’t help. I still feel like I’m choking on something, like there’s a huge rock right in the middle of my chest that’s compressing my lungs and making it impossible for me to suck in a deep breath. I’m breathing shallower and faster, doing everything that I can to get enough oxygen even though it feels like I’m about to pass out from the way I’m breathing.

The man must notice, too. “You have to calm down, Jane,” he tells me, like that’s ever going to fucking happen.

My hands are clenched into fists at my sides and I feel my nails dig into my skin. “You have to go to hell,” I finally spit back. It’s not my best retort by any means, but it feels good to say something to him.

He’s silent and pushes the table into a set of swinging double doors that open into a brightly lit room. Twisting my head away from the light, I close my eyes, but it still takes me a moment to adjust to the light. When I do, I carefully open them one at a time, then fear grips my throat.

We’re not in a hospital, which is what I’d thought at first. Never mind that I can’t think of a single hospital that would let doctors treat their patients like this, I couldn’t think of anywhere else that we might be. Now that he’s rolled me into this huge room, though, I have a better idea of where we are.

We’re in a warehouse. It’s obvious from the raised ceiling with huge steel bars across it and giant windows letting in tons of light. The floor here is damaged and chipped like heavy machinery was used in this space before, and I realize with a start that we’re probably in the abandoned warehouse on the outside of town.

I can’t think of anywhere else that would look like this and would have the space for what they’ve set up.

The man wheels me carefully into the middle of the room, then calls to someone else for help. Another man, one I’ve never seen before with a leather jacket on, comes over and the two men fiddle with locks on the bottom of the bed. A moment later, I’m being raised up so that I’m almost in a standing position.

Still strapped to the table, I slide a little bit thanks to gravity, but there isn’t any way that I’m going to get out of here. I’m unable to move from the table, but I do shift a little bit to look at the man. He’s standing in front of me now, his arms crossed on his chest, nodding like he approves of what he sees.

“Got something to say, asshole?” I ask, which makes him grin. “You’re a fucking creep, you know that?”

This makes the other man laugh, and the first one, the one that I’m thinking of as a doctor, walks up to me and lightly traces my neck, dragging his fingers up along my jaw, before dropping them back to my neck and squeezing.

Hard.

Panic shoots through me and I want to claw at his arm to get him to let me go, but I can’t move. All I can do is stare at him and hope that he isn’t going to kill me right now.

“I may be a fucking creep, Jane, but I know how to make you scream, and I’ll be doing that later.” As quickly as he grabbed me, he lets me go. My heart slams in my chest as I stare ahead of me at the wall.

There are doors there that I’m confident will lead to the outside. Behind me, set up like we’re in a fucking war zone, are huge blockades to protect the men. I saw all of the guns. I saw the weaponry and the men that they brought with them.

I’m bait.

And it’s going to be a fucking massacre.