Page 70 of Mischief Mayhem
If I thought dying was going to be easy, I had another fucking thing coming. They hauled me, KC, and Lore up, bound our hands and mouths, and forced us into the back of their SUV. I couldn’t see Coins, but I heard his angry shouts as they did the same to him.
I was pretty sure my rib was broken and every breath racked my body with agony, but fuck it, ya know? I’d make it through this with a broken rib, and if I could do something to protect Lore and KC, I would or I’d go down trying.
Lore held his shoulder while it leaked down his arm and KC’s leg had stopped oozing, but of the three of us, he looked like he was the closest to greeting Death. Not today, motherfucker. I just hoped if the bitch came for me, I was doing something that actually mattered. Trojan had gone out protecting Alba and Ru from these fuckers, and if I could do anything remotely similar, I’d make sure to hold out until I could.
I took a deep breath in through my nose, wincing when I struggled to inhale, and each bump in the road made my torso radiate with pain. I’d been shot three times, but none of those compared to this. On a scale of paper cut to “fuck-me-call-911,” I hovered somewhere around “put-me-out-of-my-misery.” Broken ribs were a son of a bitch.
A hard shove at my foot had me forcing my eyes open, meeting Lore’s stern gaze from the other side of the SUV. He gestured to his boot, hitting me in the arm again before glaring down at the thing.
I couldn’t remember if they checked us for weapons, but if they had, they’d done a piss-poor job. He had a knife sticking out of the top of the leather, right next to his sock. I tried to twist around so I could grab it with my hands behind my back, but I couldn’t move in the right direction to get it.
“Get your shit together, Matty,” came a deep, familiar voice in the back of my head.
“Trojan?” I thought, grimacing as more torment sliced through my body.
“No fucking shit,” he said. “Focus. Get KC’s attention.”
I nudged my brother next to me, nodding toward Lore’s boot and hoping he got the idea. KC’s face had grown almost as pale as his shirt had once been before blood and dirt soiled it. When he understood, he twisted his body so he could grab it, but his fingers kept slipping off the handle, too coated with sweat and crimson.
When KC finally palmed the blade, he twisted it around in his grasp so he could saw through the plastic zip ties on his wrists. These stupid fuckers had put the three of us together and given no one to watch us, so once he got his hands free, he turned to me so he could get mine loose, too.
Once Lore was out, KC set his sights on the driver, who currently argued with the passenger in Italian, gesturing to the roads like they didn’t know where they were or what they were doing. KC sat back in his original spot and held the knife like he was waiting for the right opportunity to use it. We turned into a driveway for a house I didn’t recognize, and when the passenger turned around to face us for the first time in however long, he realized we were out of our bindings.
“Hey!” He unhooked his seat belt and murmured something to the driver, causing him to slam on the brakes. The three of us careened forward, KC’s weight collapsing on top of mine, and I nearly screamed from how badly that fucking hurt.
But our cover had been blown, and KC hobbled forward, stabbing the knife into the driver’s neck three times before the passenger pistol-whipped KC in the face so hard that he collapsed on top of me. The driver lost control of the SUV and it hurdled off the road, slamming into a tree.
That sent scalding torture through my chest so badly that I lost consciousness. Pain ripped down my spine and through the back of my legs before everything went dark. I hovered in that strange peacefulness for entirely too short of a time before I heard shouts, beckoning me back to consciousness. My brother’s screams sounded from a distance, but they were too far away for me to make out. A hard smack to my cheek brought me back to reality, where two Caputi fucks dragged me out of the SUV and hauled me to my feet.
God. Fucking. Damn. It!
Everything throbbed and my head thundered so fucking bad I couldn’t focus. And if I couldn’t focus, I had no idea how we’d get out of this. They’d replaced the gag around my mouth so I couldn’t communicate with my brothers. Instead, I tried to take in my surroundings while we walked.
A rickety run-down house stood up ahead, the rafters hanging off the shithole and the windows long since broken and decayed. Several Caputi pricks stood on the porch out front, most of them carrying assault rifles or loaded down with pistols. The three of us were vastly outnumbered, even if we weren’t injured. Getting out of this was going to take a fucking act of God.
“That’s it?” one of the Caputi guards said, walking closer as he eyed us up and down. “The boss isn’t gonna be pleased about this.”
“I told her they were carrying an arsenal with them,” the fucker on my right said. “We lost five guys. We were lucky to bring in these four.”
I glanced behind me and saw another two Caputis hauling Coins toward us.
“Where’s the road captain?” another one said.
“Dead,” came the response.
My heart sank at the thought of our lost brother, at his family and wife left behind.
Fuck. We’re so fucked.
They pulled us up the wooden steps and across the porch, taking us inside the decrepit building. But my heart stopped when we got inside.
Kneeling on the floor were the girls . . . our girls. They’d been bound and gagged, and each had a Caputi standing behind them with a gun pointed at the back of their heads. Perpendicular to them, facing the front door, were four of my brothers—Skulls, Castor, Hollister, and Wheels. The first was supposed to be on guard duty at one of the storage locations where we’d planned to take our delivery from the cartel. I realized then that this had been a coordinated attack. We’d been outplayed.
Ru immediately met my gaze with an icy, pissed-off one of her own. Next to her, Selene silently seethed with her fury. I’d bet my left nut she was planning a massacre, even now. Alba saw KC and clenched her eyes shut, tears streaming over her cheeks as he struggled against the men holding him, screaming behind the gag, forgoing the fact he’d been shot in the leg in favor of trying to break free. But on the far end, staring up at me with those gorgeous violet eyes, sat my girl. My V. My Mistress.
I took a deep inhale and glanced back at KC, trying to tell him to calm down with my stare. If they were going to kill our girls, they would have already done it. More men walked in while our captors shoved the three of us to our knees, facing our MC princesses. They put Coins next to Skulls, right on the other side of V. He met my gaze with an angry one of his own, indicating he had plans of getting out of this as well.
My entire body shook with the effort to stay still, to not jump up and make a scene so the rest of them had a chance to get away. I’d have to find my opportunity and use it soon. Finally, the distinctive click-clack of high heels came down the hallway, and there she was.