Mafia Princess by Kennedy Slope

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Igroaned as I woke up. My head was pounding, and my mouth was dry. “What the hell?” I muttered. The last thing I remember was seeing Zane swing at the back of my head.

“There’s water on the table,” a voice called.

I screamed and jumped back slightly, my back hit the headboard of a bed, as I scurried as far away from the voice as possible.

“Zane,” I breathed out, placing a hand on my chest. “What the fuck did you do?”

The room that I was in was pitch black, and lit up only by some light streaming in from a window. I breathed out a sigh of relief. Zane may have kidnapped me, but at least I wasn’t in a basement somewhere.

“I’m sorry I had to hit you,” he said, though his voice lacked any sort of remorse. He didn’t seem to be the person who I had met at the party. There was a darkness that marred his all-American features.

“Why am I here?” I asked. I took a deep breath as I tried to calm my quickly beating heart. I had seen enough true crime to know that the best way to stay alive was to continue to remind Zane that I was a human being. I couldn’t do that if I was having a meltdown.

“You really have no idea? Do you?”

I bit the inside of my lip to try and keep calm. “I wouldn’t be asking you if I knew anything,” I said. “Why am I here? What do you want from me?” I wanted to stay calm, but I could feel myself spiraling. Zane had rubbed me the wrong way, but he hadn’t come off as dangerous to me.

Clearly, I had been wrong.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “So you can calm down.”

“You’ve already hurt me.” I pressed a hand to the back of my head. I had a knot, but I didn’t feel any blood on my scalp. I was thankful for that.

“I knew that you weren’t going to come with me willingly. Anastasia scared you for no reason.”

I looked closely at Zane trying to see if I recognized him, but I didn’t. There was only a few years difference between the two of us, and he was handsome enough that I wouldn’t have forgotten his face.

“Who are you?” I asked. I was scared. I knew that the mafia were my family's enemies, but now, I was the wife of the Don, and I knew that Zane wasn’t part of the family.

Was there a new player in town? I wondered. Even shrouded in darkness, Zane still looked like a typical Columbia frat boy. Clearly, he wasn’t, so that begged the question of who exactly Zane was, and why he took me hostage.

“I’ll let your mother tell you that,” he said. He looked at his phone, and his brow furrowed at whatever he read.

I stayed quiet. I wasn’t surprised that my mother was somehow involved in this. It made sense considering Anastasia’s presence. But I still didn’t understand what she or Zane wanted from me.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked. I hated how weak my voice sounded. I didn’t want to be so weak, but I was. I was truly scared of what Zane and my mother had planned for me.

Zane shook his head. “You should be grateful,” he told me.

“For what? For the fact that you have kidnapped me?”

Zane rolled his eyes. “You are being dramatic.”

My mouth dropped open in shock at his statement. I might be dramatic, but Zane was delusional. “I want to go home,” I told him. I stood up in an effort to show Zane that I meant business.

Considering I was so much smaller than him, the action was laughable. But still, I had to do something. I wasn’t going to just sit here and allow Zane to think that I would roll over and cry.

“You are home,” he said.

I pursed my lips. “That’s creepy and untrue. You are telling me that you haven’t kidnapped me, so please just let me go.”

“I can’t do that,” Zane said.

“Why?”

“Because your mother wants you with her.”

I shook my head. “My mother has lost it,” I said. “She wants a war.”

I was trying to appeal to anything about Zane that I could. He might think that he was doing the right thing, but I couldn’t imagine that he wanted New York to be ground zero for a mob war.

“If you let her kill Dom, then, you are going to be responsible for the hell that follows.”

Zane looked at me, and I did my best not to squirm under his gaze. There was something predatory about the way he looked at me, and despite the fact that I was completely clothed, I wanted to cover my body even more.

“Your mother would be angry at me for telling you this,” Zane said. He got up from his seat and walked towards me. I moved backwards as he progressed towards me. I hit the wall and tried my best to shrink myself even smaller.

Zane reached out and dragged a finger across my cheek. His thumb rubbed itself across my bottom lip.

“You were supposed to be mine,” he whispered. “Your mother promised you to me a long time ago.”

I swallowed. I felt truly fearful at the way he was looking at me, and I feared that if I made a move, he would take this a step further.

Zane leaned down, so that his nose was pressed against my neck. I cringed as his lips slid across the skin of my neck. The only man who had ever touched me was Dom, and I didn’t like that Zane was taking such liberties.

“Stop,” I breathed out. “Please.”

I wasn’t sure that Zane would care about my request, but to my surprise, he pulled away. He gave me just enough room, so that I felt like I could breathe again, but I still kept myself pressed against the wall.

“You aren’t ready yet,” he said.

“Ready for what?”

“For the future you should have had.”

I knew what that meant. Zane and my mother wanted Dom dead. Killing Dom and avenging my brother’s death was the only thing that my mother cared about.

“Zane,” I begged. I reached out and grabbed onto his arm. “You have to stop this. You need to talk to my mother. I’ll divorce Dom. I’ll be with you. But no one needs to lose their life.”

“I’m going to have you either way,” he said. Zane pressed a kiss to my forehead, and the feeling of his lips made me cringe.

Zane moved away from me and started towards the door.

“You should drink the water. It will help with your headache” Zane said to me. “I’ll have someone bring you up some food.”

“I’m not hungry.” I could feel myself getting more and more desperate as the possibility that I was going to be locked into the room.

Zane just shrugged. He didn’t care about me at all. It was clear that he wanted to own me, but that he didn’t actually care about me as a person.

“I’ll send someone up just in case.”

“Send my mother up,” I demanded.

Zane shook his head. “I’m sure that she’ll come and see you when she comes home.”

As he walked out, I rushed towards the door. I didn’t make it in time, and as Zane latched the door behind him, I heard the lock click. I slapped my open palm against the door causing a loud bang to resound in the room.

“Let me out!” I screamed kicking the door. I felt tears welling up in my eyes as I realized that my own mother had kidnapped me. I trembled as I tried to control myself. Tears streamed silently down my cheeks as I cursed myself for being so stupid.

I allowed myself a few minutes to fall apart before I began to pull myself together. I didn’t know what the hell Zane and my mother had going to together, and I wasn’t going to sit back and allow them to control me.

“Think, Sasha,” I muttered to myself. I started looking around the room. The furniture looked dated, almost Victorian, but it was clean and well kept. I turned towards the window and tried my best to pull it open. It didn’t budge, and I could feel myself growing more and more frustrated.

I tried to find something to smash the glass, but everything that I tried to pull up didn’t budge.

Whatever this room was, it had been designed to be a prison.

I collapsed on the bed completely devastated as I considered my circumstances. Not only had I been kidnapped by my own family, but I suspected that it was because my mother planned to kill Dom, and she wanted me out of the way. The fact that she didn’t want me caught in the middle should have been a balm for my soul, but instead, it just reminded me of the fact that I was a pawn in a deadly game.

I laid on the bed trying my best to think through the information that I knew. My mother somehow knew Zane. I wasn’t sure if she had recruited him or what. At some point, she promised me to Zane, which was disgusting, but also told me that my mother had known Zane for some time.

I couldn’t help but wonder what she thought to gain out of all this. My father wasn’t going to allow her to be Pakhan or to have a role in the Bratva outside the one that she already had.

Sighting, I closed my eyes. My head was aching to the point where I was starting to feel nauseous. I should feel relieved that I hadn’t been kidnapped by an enemy, but I was sure that I was also in more danger than I ever had in my entire life.

A few months ago, I thought that marriage to Dom was going to be the death of me, but now, I wondered if he was going to be the one to save me.