Arranged love

HAVEN

“HELP HER OUT,” Rossi orders the young man.

He grabs my upper arm and yanks me out of the limo and shoves me forward. I look around the area, and fresh tears sting my eyes. The lights of Vegas are miles away. He’s brought us to the desert. And that only means one thing. He confirms it a second later.

Opening the trunk, Rossi pulls out a shovel. “Start digging,” he orders and throws it at me.

I catch it before letting it drop to my feet. Pulling my shoulders back, I lift my chin. “I won’t dig his grave.” I refuse to do it.

He gives me a cruel smile as he takes a step closer. “Cute.” He grips my chin roughly and jerks my head back. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out at the pain. “This is for you, Haven. I won’t let a Rossi be a disgrace to this family.”

Is he going to bury me alive? “I’m not a Rossi,” I grind out. “I’m a Knowles, you sorry son of a bitch.”

He throws his head back, laughing as if I just told a joke. “You are just like me.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I spit out.

“You are. You’re just too stubborn to admit it.” He gets in my face. “Your mother was a coward. And Jimmy was a coward. Luca did me a favor by killing that spineless bastard.” He shoves me away.

I rub my chin. “Why do you care who I marry?” I demand. “No one knows that I’m yours. Why should it matter about the Rossi name?”

“The Bianchi family has been a pain in my ass for years,” he answers. “He stole from me. Embarrassed me. And you marrying his son is his last step at taking over Vegas!” he shouts.

I almost laugh. I hate John Bianchi more than anything, and I refuse to die because of him. Not like this. Not now. “Well, I think you should have done more homework,” I say.

“What does that mean?” His dark eyes narrow on me.

“My father signed a contract.” I hate Jimmy just as much as Rossi does, but I’m going to rub it in his face. I place my left hand out, showing off my ring. “It was a marriage license. I’ve been a Bianchi for two weeks now. The ceremony was just going to be a formality.”

I don’t even get to smile in satisfaction at the look of pure rage in his black eyes. He doesn’t even allow me a second to take in a breath. His fist hits my face so hard that my head snaps back, and the last thing I hear is him ordering the young guy to put me in the car before the darkness swallows me.

LUCA

“Anything?” I ask Bones as he enters my suite.Content is property of NôvelDrama.Org.

He shakes his head. “He must have turned it off before he ditched it.”

By the time I got back to Kingdom, Jasmine was in tears and crying on the couch in our hotel suite. The location was gone. And so was my wife.

I run a hand through my hair and remove my suit jacket. It was too hot and the expensive fabric too constricting.

“Thanks,” Titan says before hanging up his cell. “James said that he watched her on the monitor, and she got in a limo parked in the back of the alley. He followed it for as long as our cameras would reach, and he ditched the phone just a block down the street. Threw it out the window.”

“How many men were in the limo?” I ask him.

“A man was waiting for her outside of Kingdom and walked her to the waiting car. He got in with her. There could have been multiple men inside. The windows were too dark to see.”

“Fuck!” I kick the end table by the couch, knocking it over. The glass filled with scotch hits the floor and shatters along with the lamp.

“We’ll find her,” Grave assures me from behind the bar.

I shake my head. “That’s not my fear.” Rossi will take me to her, that I know. What I’m afraid of is the condition I’ll find her in once he decides to call me.

Jasmine rocks back and forth on the couch, hugging herself while she cries. Nite stands over in a corner trying to come out of whatever Jasmine fed him. I haven’t asked and don’t care about at this point. He will handle that once he fully comes around. Right now, I need to find Haven and save her before it’s too late.

I look away from him, but then go back. My mind wanders. Running over to him, I grab his upper arm and pull him into the spare bedroom. “Where did they take you?” I ask him. We never spoke about what happened to him. Not in detail. I knew he was taken from his house and then dropped off at mine. He chose to take a vow of silence, and I honored it until now.

He rubs the back of his neck. “The desert. They tied me up and threw me in a trunk. About an hour later, the car stopped, and they made me dig a grave …”

“Fuck,” I hiss.

“It took about thirty minutes. But once I was done, they told me that was where they would bury me if I didn’t give them the information they wanted.” He clears his throat. “I refused to say a word. That was when they changed their minds and decided to take my tongue instead.”

But they were stupid. When they dumped him off at my doorstep, they left his tongue. I made a call and had a doctor meet him immediately to reattach it. They couldn’t guarantee full recovery, but Nite beat the odds.

“Do you remember anything about the location?” I ask.

“Not really,” he answers. “I was disoriented. They had beat on me pretty hard. It was dark …”

“What about afterward?” I dig.

He shakes his head. “They locked me back in the trunk.”

“Maybe-” My cell ringing back in the living room interrupts me. I grab it off the coffee table to see it’s a blocked number. “It’s him. Stay quiet,” I order, then answer, placing it on speakerphone. “Where the fuck is she?”

He laughs. “Well, hello to you too, Luca. Or should I call you son?”

My teeth grind. He knows. Which puts her life in even more danger. “Cut the shit, Rossi. Where the fuck is she?”

“She’s here with me.”

I fist my hands. “Where? Let me talk to her.”

“She’s unavailable at the moment.”

“Goddammit-”

“But there’s still time,” he interrupts me. “I’ll send you an address.”

“Rossi …”

He hangs up.

“Fuck!” I go to throw my cell across the room, but Bones grabs my hand.

“You’re going to need that.” He takes it from me. “Break this.” And hands me a glass sculpture that looks like the Eiffel Tower. “We’ll get her,” he says, nodding his head. “We’ll do whatever it takes to get her back. Understood?”

I nod, trying to convince myself when my phone dings in his hand. He looks down at it, and his jaw tightens.

“What is it?” I ask. My heart picking up with adrenaline.

He looks up at me as he shows me the phone. “It’s the desert.”