Page 7 of Mafia And Taken

I noticed the bruises and scrapes on her arms and, more worryingly, around her throat. Her translucent skin had been marked at the hands of the Russians, and that thought stirred up more anger in me.

She belonged to the Fratellanza, and the Russians had no right to touch her.

CATE

I squinted as I felt a bright light being shone into my eyes, but it was hard to close my eyes because someone was holding them open.

The blackness in front of my eyes was lightening to a gray. I opened my eyes more widely to find myself looking up at a man who was checking my injuries.

I felt his fingers running through my hair, gently massaging my scalp. I’d recognized him inside the warehouse. He was Alessio Marchiano—the second-in-command of the Fratellanza. I had never spoken to the man, but I had seen my father speaking to him on a few occasions.

“You’ve got a bump on your head. I’ll get the doctor to look at it.” His voice was like a velvet caress.

The relaxing rhythm of his fingers against my scalp made me want to fall into the oblivion of sleep, but I fought to stay awake and focused on the man in front of me. Even though we were sitting down, I could immediately sense that he was tall and strongly built. I looked up at his hands checking me over, noticing his strong wrists, olive skin, and the dark hair that trailed up his muscled arms.

Thank God he’d saved me from the Russians. I shuddered at the thought of what would have happened to me at their brutal hands.

When he looked down at me, my eyes flitted over his almost-black hair and rich brown eyes.

“Where are you taking me?”

“I’m taking you home.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. All I wanted to do was to be back in my own apartment. Back in the safe life I had built for myself away from this violent Mafia world.

I looked down at myself. A leather jacket was covering up my torn clothes. It hurt when I breathed; it hurt all over, my eyes ached, and my ears were ringing. Just being conscious hurt. “My father?”

He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “We’ve got him as well.”

But he didn’t say anything else about my father. His jaw was set in a hard line, and I felt like his dark eyes were searing into me. I felt unease prickle through my body. I had a bad feeling that my father had done something very wrong.

My father seemed to know our kidnappers. They certainly knew him and were determined to get some answers out of him—by torturing either him or me. As a Mafia daughter, I had been shielded from the finer details of our violent world, but even I knew that our kidnappers were the Bratva.

As the SUV turned a sharp corner at speed, I winced as my sore body was thrown against the car door.

“Take it easy with the goddamn driving,” I heard Alessio bark at the driver. But all too soon, he drove around another bend, and I let out a cry as my badly bruised arm hit the passenger door.

“For God’s sake,” said Alessio. Before I knew what was happening, he had undone my seatbelt and tugged me into his arms, setting me in his lap and holding my body against his chest.

My pulse started beating too fast as I felt most of my body in contact with his, and I was acutely aware of how little I was wearing under his jacket.

Sometime later, we pulled up outside a modern estate and I realized that he wasn’t taking me back to my own home—this was the Marchiano estate. “I want to go back to my own apartment.”

“Not yet.”

“Why have you brought me here?”

“We need the doctor to check you.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke.

I wanted to argue, but I didn’t have the energy to. Everything either hurt with pain or ached with exhaustion. I didn’t even want to have to think anymore.

As we reached the perimeter gate of the estate, Alessio rolled down his window and spoke to one of the soldiers on guard. “When Dr. Cotrone gets here and is done with Ovidio, tell him that I need him to take a look at the girl as well.”

“Got it, boss.”

The SUV pulled up in front of the mansion and I gazed at the modern white house surrounded by extensive grounds. But what caught my attention was the enormous stone statue of the Virgin Mary.

It was positioned on their front lawn, the traditional statue clashing blatantly with the modernity of the house.