Leon then had a black hood thrown over his head and his own arms and legs tied. He was thrown into the back of a different SUV and driven here.
Leon had known his own death was imminent the moment he’d been brought inside what turned out to be a deserted and run-down building and been tied to a chair before the black hood had been removed from his head. That allowed him to see and recognize Roberto Russo, Sebastian’s younger and more hot-headed brother, and the half a dozen men he had with him. A recognition that meant Roberto intended to kill him rather than have Leon identify him as being part of the plot to kill him.
Roberto sneered. “Big words coming from a dead man!”
Leon shrugged. “Words are what I have at the moment. So tell me, was it your idea or Sebastian’s to import the drugs from banned cartels, along with the organized trafficking in women and children destined for your unapproved brothels?” Leon would never, ever be able to forget the haunted look in the eyes of the woman who had thanked God her daughter had died before they reached the States.
Roberto relaxed back against the wall. “That was all me,” he admitted proudly. “Sebastian leaves all those little details to me.”
“Sebastian is a fucking idiot to trust a loose cannon like you to organize anything beyond finding your dick in the morning so you don’t pee on the floor!”
Roberto slapped Leon hard across the face with the back of his hand. “You’re alive right now only because after our idiot nephew-by-marriage failed to eliminate you, Sebastian decided he wanted the added kudos of killing you himself.”
Leon flexed his bruised jaw, checking for lost or loosened teeth. There weren’t any.
Inwardly, he was relieved he hadn’t allowed Carla to come with him earlier. Part of him had wanted to say yes to her, because he couldn’t bear to be parted from her so soon after she’d told him she loved him. But if he’d given in to that need, she would be tied up and a prisoner beside him in this abandoned building.
Or already dead.
Leon had already imagined seeing Carla with a bullet-wound in her head once before, on the night Benito Calabro had tried to kill him. The anger Leon had experienced then was nothing compared to the overwhelming fury and desolation he now felt at the mere idea of losing the woman he loved. Carla was now everything to him.
The air he breathed.
She was the last thought he’d had before he fell asleep last night and his first thought when he woke up again.
Carla was also the reason Leon was determined to live through this.
He wanted a future with her, maybe even more children, if she wanted them. He wasn’t going to give that up because of the greed of one of his dons and the man’s even greedier younger brother.
“Strange, I don’t see Sebastian here right now,” he taunted Roberto.
Roberto administered another hard slap, this time to Leon’s cheek. “He’ll be here. We’ve already sent word to your men and offered your life in exchange for Sebastian’s.”
Leon calmly ran his tongue across his cut lip, tasting the blood. “My men have instructions never to negotiate for my life.” They also had other instructions for the time they were all in England. Leon could only hope they had implemented them.
He had no doubt the London Russian bratva, primarily the head of the organization, Gregori Markovic, and his second-in-command, Nikolai Volkov, two powerful men who had become Leon’s allies several months ago, would be more than a match for Sebastian and Roberto Russo.
Roberto gave a confident smile. “Oh, we have no intention of actually going through with an exchange. We’ll just let your men think we are until we have Sebastian back. Then he’s going to shoot you in front of your men.”
Leon gave a confident shake of his head. “That’s never going to happen.”
The other man eyed him mockingly. “Your daughter is too well guarded, but maybe we should bring that puttana here, the one you’ve been fucking while you’re in London, and have a little fun with her in front of you— Ah, a reaction at last,” Roberto mused as Leon swore at the same time as he pulled and strained against the plastic binding about his wrists. “Perhaps she’s not just a puttana to you.”
Leon willed his fury down to a glowering simmer, knowing it was foolish on his part to show this man a moment of weakness, or reveal how important Carla was to him. Eventually he would make Roberto pay for daring to insult Carla in that way. “No puttana could ever mean anything to me.” It was nothing but the truth, because Carla wasn’t and never would be any man’s whore. “Do you speak to your mother with that same filthy mouth?”
Roberto looked unsettled by the change of subject for a moment, and then he chuckled. “I am very much going to enjoy watching Sebastian gun you down, you arrogant bastardo.” He straightened. “But Sebastian didn’t say I couldn’t have a little fun with you in the meantime.” He landed another blow. This time, it was his fist to the side of Leon’s jaw.
Leon had a feeling it was going to be a long, and painful, wait for him to be rescued.
“I want to know where they’re keeping Leon, you piece of shit.” Carla ignored all of Leon’s men standing about the warehouse. Instead, her gaze was fixed on Sebastian Russo as she marched across the cavernous room where he and his men were strapped to a row of chairs. Russo looked as if he had two black eyes, a broken nose, and swollen lips and jaw. No doubt he had other bruises on his overweight body that couldn’t be seen. “As for you, you chickenshit.” She
