Page 43 of Filthy Dirty Dom

“Who sent you?” he demanded.

The man wheezed, but shook his head.

“What’s your end game? Who are you after? Is it Branden Duke?”

Blood spewed from the man’s lips and a deep gurgle rattled in his chest. Alex must have shattered a rib or two, the shards of which had pierced the aorta. The man was dying, and fast.

“Who are you working for? What do you want with this woman?”

The man shook his head, then worked his jaw. Between the foamy blood coming out of his mouth, he grated out, “You saved one girl. But you can’t save them all.”

What the fuck? In seconds, Alex calculated the possibilities. Were Leslie’s four sisters in danger, too? Were they even now being taken prisoner?

But the man went silent. The awful rattling stopped. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling, unmoving.

Alex’s only source of information was dead.

He turned to Leslie, who slowly stood, her gaze fixed on the dead man. He saw the moment her knees gave out. In an instant, he was at her side, holding her quaking body tight to his.

Alex held Leslie, one hand cradling her head against his shoulder, ensuring her gaze was away from the dead men. Her heart thundered so hard he felt the rapid beat against his chest, could clearly hear her lungs desperately sucking in air.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “You’re safe. Leslie, do you hear me? You’re safe.”

Almost imperceptibly, her head moved against his shoulder—a nod. He waited a long moment, simply holding her against him as he willed his own heart to beat normally. Hers began to slow, as if seeking to reach consensus with his. She pulled back slightly and stared at him with eyes shimmering with unshed tears.

“Who are they?” she whispered. “Why did they want me?”

He had no clue how to answer her question. And now wasn’t the time to discuss conjecture. He had to get her to safety. “Are you too shaken to walk?” he asked gruffly.

“No. I can walk.”

“Good. Let’s–”

A cell phone ring cut through the quiet, halting what he was about to say.

“That’s not your phone, is it?” he asked Leslie.

“No.”

Reluctantly, he let go of her and listened. The ring came again, and this time he pinpointed its location: directly under the man he’d just killed.

“Don’t look,” he ordered Leslie.

He went to the man and pushed him with his foot until the man was fully on his back. The man’s eyes were bugged out, his face mottled in purple, and his tongue distended, thick and ugly. He fished around the pockets of the man’s leather jacket and pulled out a phone. The call came again, but the phone was locked.

He held the phone up to the dead man’s face. The phone immediately unlocked. He pressed the Accept icon and held the phone up to his ear.

“You have not called to report.” A man’s rough voice, again thick with a Russian accent, came across the line. “Do you have the woman?”

Alex held a finger up to his lips to remind Leslie to keep quiet. He waited a second, holding the silence.

“Do you have the woman?” the man repeated, louder this time. When Alex again didn’t answer, the man suddenly began shouting—not into the phone, but at someone by his side. All Alex heard before the man hung up was an order for others to go.

Then the line went dead.

19

Leslie thought she heard a freight train charging down on her only to realize she wasn’t hearing anything in the house—she was hearing the pressure build in her head. That was her heart pumping wildly. Her knees buckled and she reached out to steady herself on the sofa.