Merciless Love: A Dark Romance(70)

She joined us after he explained the plan, passing my sister off to temporary care with a nurse she trusted. Honestly, she was more worried than I was, asking me every hundred miles if I really wanted to do this.

I did. I had to.

“The girl's not stupid. She knew what she was getting into when we agreed to set this shit up. Better shut your fucking mouth, and I'll shut mine.” His words rumbled with warning. “We don't need any bullshit right now. No arguments. I need you to look alert, get my boy in the truck, and drive. Let me off at this mark and keep on going. If you don't hear from me in the next ten hours, you just keep going, and don't stop 'til you hit the Canadian border.”

From the side, resistance and discord lined Izzy's face. But she didn't mutter another word.

The whole landscape dropped into shadows. Our SUV rolled on down the unpaved road, up and down bumps that rattled my stomach.

“How're we doing?” He was looking at me in the mirror again.

“Good as can be. Ready to get this over with.” I barely recognized my own voice, so dull and calm. Numb, just like my nerves.

They'd shorted out early on the drive, and I didn't worry anymore. Fate was in control. If him and I were meant to be, then I'd come out alive. If we weren't, then at least I'd sacrificed myself for an innocent child. At least I'd done something good with my rotten life.

He managed a tiny smile. Tight, yet infinitely grateful, mirroring the same fears and hopes I had about the future in one pale line.

“There! Right where the asshole said he'd be.” His voice lowered. “Okay, ladies. Look alive.”

I leaned forward and saw the big white BMW through the windshield. A man was standing up, looking out the sun roof with binoculars the way I saw soldiers in old photos steering a tank.

Our SUV ground to a halt and stopped about twenty feet away. The white car's doors popped open.

Neat dressed men with cinnamon brown skin and hard faces stepped out the back. At first, I thought one of them was Borzia, but they were too uniform, too bored looking with the whole exchange.

A lighter skinned man slid out the left side. His suit was clearly a higher grade, white like it had been tailored from pure ivory. And his face...everything about it was cold and dead. Everything except the eyes, boring straight through the car and past my skin, down to bone.

I forgot to breathe when it was my turn to get out. Izzy and Evan were already outside, waiting impatiently. My hand shook as I gripped the handle, undid my seat belt, and slid out.

Taking several tentative steps to Evan's side, I reached out to take his hand. My insides lurched as he began to lead me toward the men waiting between our vehicles. Four demons circling their master, plus one little boy.

Ty was just as small and helpless as I imagined. He was in a little white suit that matched Borzia's. I wondered if it was a sick joke.

If it was, the look in Evan's face said the point was made. The boy's face looked dumbly at his father for a second, and then lit up. His little feet clattered on the ground and he began to run toward us, but one of the Mexicans quickly snatched him back with a cruel flick of the wrist.

“Daddy!”

Evan's face went red. He didn't shout, didn't scream, didn't draw the silver gun I knew he had stuffed in a holster near his hip. He was eerily calm as the crime boss and two bodyguards approached.

Borzia didn't even look at him except for a quick glance. His eyes were on me, painfully heavy.

Don't look away. Don't look away. Don't look –

“This is her?” He spoke with the faintest foreign accent, an intensity on each syllable that betrayed the bored impression he was trying to give. “A little shorter than I imagined.”

“I want my son,” Evan said coldly.

His fingers incrementally tightened on my palm, and it had gotten so tense I nearly cried out. Message received. He wanted Ty so bad, but it was killing him to let go of me, to pass me to this devil.

God, I would've given anything just to share one more look with him right then, even though I knew it would've been totally devastating.

Instead, I was drowning in Borzia's pitch black pupils, eyes that opened wide and devoured. Without breaking his dead eyed gaze, he nodded.

“This will do.” He raised one hand and snapped his fingers. “Pronto! Let him have the boy and see that he leaves us. Thirty seconds. No more.”

One more squeeze and Evan's hand was gone. It was Borzia's turn to reach out and grab me. I held in a gasp.

He didn't have anything close to Evan's strength, but he knew how to make it hurt. His fingernails were just a little too long, and he pushed them deep against a nerve in my wrist, as if to say welcome, bitch.

“Daddy...you came!” The little boy's astonishment boomed behind me.