Claimed Mafia Bride by Mae Doyle
Jane
Time has no meaning any longer. I can’t see behind me, but I can hear the men shifting position as they wait on my rescue. Sometimes I hear the soft snick of a weapon being messed with, but whether they’re putting it together or taking it apart, I’m not sure.
It doesn’t matter, does it? Not in the long run, anyway. Trevor will come to save me and all I can do is hope that he doesn’t try to come by himself. If he does, then I have no doubt that he’s going to die.
The thought makes my heart hurt and I close my eyes, trying to breathe. It’s just so fucking hard in here to get a good, deep breath. I feel like I can’t breathe, like I can’t open up my lungs enough to get in the oxygen that I need and I let out a soft whimper.
The man I’m thinking of as a doctor is immediately at my side. Looking at him now, in the strong light from the outside that’s streaming in the windows, I know that I was wrong. He’s not a doctor. Doctors don’t have motorcycle grease under their nails. They don’t have faces that look like leather from years of being outside on a motorcycle.
This man is much more dangerous than a doctor. He’s here to hurt me, I know that.
“I have to admit that I’m disappointed, Jane,” he tells me, stepping in front of me so that he can get a good look at me. Even though I’m scared, I force myself to stare right back at him. I’m not going to let him bully me into looking away from him. He terrifies me, but I’m just as frightening.
That’s what I’m going to tell myself, anyway.
When I don’t answer him he continues, talking like I asked him what he was disappointed in.
“I thought that by now the Bonanno family would be beating down those doors to save you.” He gestures behind him at the huge bay doors that will open up to the outside. “But they’re not, and we don’t see any sign of them out there, so what’s the problem here, Jane? I thought that you had some magic pussy or something, but I’m beginning to think that maybe Trevor was just drunk when he decided to fuck you. Did he make you wear a bag over your head?”
“Fuck you, asshole,” I grit out. Then, even though my mouth is so dry that it’s almost impossible for me to swallow, I gather enough spit and hawk it at him. The loogie hits him right on the cheek, and although I’m partly thrilled, he suddenly looks murderous.
His mouth is in a thin line and his eyes grow darker than before. When he shifts his weight back on one foot, I glance down, horrified when I suddenly see that he has a scalpel in his hand.
This man is a crazy bastard. What the fuck did you just do?
I don’t have time to say anything to him before his hand flies out from his body and I feel the shape pain of the blade cutting through my skin. My mouth falls open and I scream as blood starts to run down my arm. He does it again, cutting my other arm, his face stoic like he’s simply cutting the grass.
“What the fuck?” I scream. The pain is sharp and intense, like getting stung by a bee, and so overwhelming that I almost don’t notice at first that I can finally breathe. He hurt me and now I can suck in a deep breath. I do, then scream again, the warm sensation of my blood on my arms unnerving.
“There you go, Jane,” he tells me, reaching out and getting some of my blood on his finger. I try to jerk my head back and away from him, but he wipes it on my cheek. I feel my blood there, warm and sticky, and I can’t even reach up and wipe it away. “Now maybe Trevor will come a little faster for me. If he’s out there and hears your screams, he’ll come. If not, then you’re useless to me.”
I know that I should stop screaming. I’m giving him everything that he wants right now and I have no doubt that if Trevor hears me, he might do something stupid, but that’s just the thing.
Ifhe hears me. I have no way of knowing if he even knows that I’m here in this warehouse, no way of knowing if he’s coming. He could know and just not be coming.
He could not know.
What if I’m wrong, what if I think that there’s something there with him, something real, and I’m wrong? What if I thought that we could have a family with Annie—a real family—but I’m just being stupid?
He’s in the mafia. I have absolutely no reason to think that he would do anything to help me out.
There’s part of my brain screaming at me that I’m wrong, that he will come for me and save me, but I can’t seem to focus on that right now. All I can do is scream, and I keep doing that until the sound is too much for me to bear. I want to stop, want to shut up, but the blood keeps running from the cuts in my arms. It’s drying on my cheek, pulling my skin tight.
I couldn’t stop screaming now if my life depended on it.
