“Let me go!”
“Not a chance.”
“You’ll never get away with this!”
Damien cocked his head. The DA’s daughter. She was probably as dirty as her old man. She didn’t deserve his sympathy.
The faint wail of a siren interrupted his thoughts. Shit. “Time to go.”
“Where?”
“To sleep.” He gripped his pistol by the butt and slammed it down on the side of her head.
3
DAMIEN
Damien crouched at Mia’s side. One blow to the head and he had knocked her out cold. It was his first chance to really get a look at her.
Damien brushed a lock of dark hair away and traced the defined angle of her jaw, the slender slope of her neck, the swoop of her collarbone beneath the strap of her tank top.
She barely wore anything at all. A scrap of see-through black lace for a shirt. Pink terry cloth shorts that didn’t quite cover enough.
Between her perky little tits that stared at him through the lace, to the firm, sexy ass peeking out from below, Damien didn’t know where to look. Any other situation and he would have called her baby and pinned her to the wall for a different reason all together.
But the District Attorney’s daughter would never go for a thug like him. Especially not once she watched him put Angelo out of his misery.
Damien scratched the stubble on his chin. He had two options.
Kill her and be on the run forever.
Kidnap her and hand her over to the cartel.
Both options had their merits. If he killed her, the cartel wouldn’t protect him. He would have failed at the job. It was a one strike and you’re out kind of family.
If he handed her over, she would be beaten. Tortured. Grilled for information only the DA could provide. Marcelo would use her up before he got a single answer. No way did daddy’s darling little girl know what her father as up to.
He watched her chest rise and fall with her breath. Killing her wouldn’t get him anything but a life sentence. Kidnapping…If he could use her as leverage…
It might set him free.
Damn it. He was running out of time.
Before he could change his mind, he scooped Mia up and navigated through the mansion and back outside. Her body was too easy to carry. Light and delicate and nothing like Damien. Where he was rough around the edges, she was soft. Where he was scarred and tattooed, she was untouched. Pure.
His teeth sounded like sandpaper as they ground together. It hadn’t been that long ago that he had held another woman like this in his arms. Only she wasn’t passed out.
Her brown hair and blue eyes. Sad, small smile. The image of her burned inside his mind. Damien shoved the memories down and squeezed through a gap in the shrubbery. His trunk beeped open and he dumped Mia, still passed out, inside.
Kidnapping it is.
He hurried to the driver’s seat, started the car, and pulled into the lane. As he left the crime scene behind, he relaxed. Little by little the rush of adrenaline faded and Damien could breathe.
He unzipped his hoodie and peeled off his gloves. Better not to look like a criminal when you were carrying around a hostage. He checked the rear view mirror and softened his expression.
No furrowed brow or shifty eyes. Just an ordinary driver on his way home. Not a murderer. A kidnapper. A thug.
Damien checked his mirror and merged onto the highway one mile an hour under the speed limit. Kidnapping wasn’t part of his game. He stuck to the simple things like easy targets and no witnesses.
Marcelo deemed him worthy because he never fucked up. No one ever had to clean up his jobs. It was why he had been allowed to stick around so long.
He chewed on the inside of his cheek and put on his blinker to change lanes. If Marcelo knew the reason he had insisted on following Angelo wasn’t to make sure the job was done right…
Damien couldn’t think about it. He would take the DA’s daughter to a safe house and come up with a plan.
The ring of his cell phone made him jump. “Damien here.”
“We hear the intimidation didn’t go according to plan.”
Shit. They knew already? If Donny, Marcelo’s right-hand man was calling, it wasn’t good.
Damien tried to sound calm and matter of fact. “The DA had a concealed weapon. Angelo panicked.”
Silence on the other line. Damien scowled. It wasn’t like Donny to be so reserved.
“I cleaned up. Took care of Angelo. It’ll look like a robbery gone bad.”
“Marcelo is upset. The cops are all over the place. His inside man isn’t responding to his calls. He wants you to come in.”
Damien cursed under his breath. He needed a game plan before he showed up carrying his little bundle of joy. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Are you questioning Marcelo’s judgment?”