I swam in and out of consciousness. Everything came in bursts between the jostle of the car and then the strangers dragging me into a house. I recognized the place, even if my drunk brain couldn’t pick it apart.

Adrenaline started to pour into me, cutting some of the haze from the whiskey. My stomach rolled and angled my head to throw up on the sidewalk. When they stood me up, I could barely keep my legs under me, but I made it. They led me inside and shoved me to my knees on a ten-thousand-dollar rug. My hands were tied tight enough to cast tingles up my arm. I laughed against my will. Only an Italian bastard would execute a man on a one of a kind Persian rug.

The Italian I met the other night, the condescending one. His name rolled in my head like dice in a cup. Adam…no…something weirder…a-something.

“Welcome to my home, Mr. St. James.” In my head I heard, welcome to my home, Mr. Bond.

I gave him a salute from my place kneeling on the floor. My fingers were bleeding. A warm trail of blood dripped down the side of my forehead. I could taste it in my mouth. Right now, after what I went through with Kat, this seemed like some ironic physical manifestation of the same pain. Maybe I was passed out at Murphy’s dreaming this. It seemed more fun, so I’d go with that.

“Do you know why I brought you to my home?” he asked, hands clasped in front of him, his Armani suit as immaculate as his gleaming shoes.

“Because you’re an asshole?” I supplied the first thought trailing through my head.

Something hit the side of my face, slicing pain up into my eye socket. I squeezed it closed, worried my eyeball might pop out from the force of the pain in my cheekbone.

“Do you want to try that again, Pierson?”

I kept my eye closed. “Seeing as your probably about to kill me, you should call me Pierce. No one but my father really calls me Pierson.”

Something the man wanted to be a smile curled up at the corner of his mouth. I didn’t tell him he wasn’t there yet. His villain smile needed work. “They told me you were a talker and that you were a funny bastard. I’m glad I get to see for myself.”

I teetered from the pain, trying to relieve some of the ache as the numbing qualities of the booze began to lessen.

“Can we get on with this? If you’re going to keep talking at me, I’m going to need a drink to get me through it.”

“I think you’ve had enough for now, Pierce.”

He gestured behind me, and the guy I assumed hit me in the head lifted me up and dragged me into another room. This time, he dropped me on hard stone, and I kept the groan inside. A door closed, and some shuffling to my right alerted me to others.

“Rodrigo?” I asked, eyeing the kid tied on his knees next to me. Then my drunk brain clicked with my sober one, and I remembered seeing him before. “Wait, you’re the Cambio kid. Is Bianca here?”

“No, she’s fine. They caught me as I was headed to see her, thank God.”

“I don’t think God has anything to do with this place,” came a deep gravelly slightly accented voice from the shadows.

Another man, his hands tied behind him, his feet tied in front, sat in the corner. Lucien scooted closer to Pierce. He must have only been brought here, too, if he hadn’t noticed the other one.

He looked harmless enough. Early thirties maybe, his hair brushed the blood stained collar of his shirt. His mouth and face were caked with bruises and wounds. “Who are you?”

“Prospero Biondello.”

Clarity cracked through me like the breaking of the sunrise over a mountain ridge. “Fuck, that bastard is making a power play. Thinking he can take out the opposition. Since Litio isn’t here, I assume he’s on this asshole’s side?”

Prospero inclined his head.

“How long have you been here?”

“A day maybe?”

“No one alerted us you were missing…” Or maybe Kat hadn’t told me.

He shook head slowly and dropped it back against the wall. “No, they wouldn’t know. I was at my cabin alone when his men came for me.”

“Why were you alone? Don’t you have family, a guard?”

Lucien shifted again, his roped creaking behind him. “He doesn’t like them,” he supplied instead of waiting for Prospero to answer.

I focused on the kid. He didn’t look as beat up as either of us.

“Did they get Katherine?” Prospero asked.

The idea of Kat in the hands of these dicks shot a fresh burst of anger and adrenaline through me. Then I remembered.

I remembered. And it hurt all over again.

“No,” I said, and cleared my throat to answer more clearly around my fresh grief. “I wasn’t with her, and I think we’d hear her by now if they had her.”

Lucien snorted. I glared and then shook it off. Defending Kat was no longer my job.

The door opened behind me, and I shifted on my pained knees to look. One of the guys who grabbed me entered first, then another. Finally, the Adam or A-something Dick followed after him. Someone else trailed in behind and closed the door.

“You know I can’t remember your name again, what was it? Something about a sweater?”

Lucien chuckled softly behind me, and the first goon clapped him on the head with the end of a handgun.

“My name is Argyll Aristo.”

“Great. Thanks for clearing that up.”

The goon lingering near Lucien stepped up behind me and wrenched my head back, his hand tight around my throat. It could have been erotic in better circumstances.

Argyll waved his hand and the man let me go. I sagged forward, sucking in air until I could breathe again, well, the best I could with pain slicing up my side. The kicks at my ribs in the bar likely broke or bruised something.

“Here is how this is going to work,” Argyll said, extending his hands as if addressing his subjects. “We are going to let one of you live.”

“The kid,” both I and Prospero called out at once.

Lucien shifted behind me, but kept quiet.

“Noble of you gentleman, but this is a test. I’m going to call a ransom to your family. The first to show up and pay the fee will get to take you home. The other two will die.”

I laughed out loud this time. “You are going to invite my brothers here to get me. You better have a whole hell of a lot more men than this.” I eyed the goon and the other guy monitoring the phone.

My mouth earned me another crack to the skull. Ringing started in my ears, but I shook it off.

“I mean the family who will represent you here. I’ve already placed a call to Mrs. St. James. The others have been made the offer as well. We shall see who cares the most, shall we?”

I hoped Kat told him to go fuck himself. The sight of her here would not be good for my sanity right now.

The men filed back and out, and I toppled onto my ass to relieve the ache on my knees. My pants were ripped and shredded, my jacket long gone at the bar, and my shirt blood stained and dirty. A warm trickle of blood still poured down my face, and I tried to lean and staunch in on my shoulder.

“So what are the odds we get out of here?” I asked my companions.

Lucien didn’t answer. He sat and stared at empty fire grate across the room.

Prospero broke the silence. “I couldn’t say. A power play of this kind hasn’t been seen since Katherine’s father pulled one. I am curious what your wife will do.”

Knowing Kat, she probably had Bianca under lock and key in a safe house somewhere as she contemplated how much I’m worth losing.

The money didn’t matter, but Kat wouldn’t show her face here unless she had the upper hand. I shrugged. “I have no idea what she is going to do. She won’t leave me here, but I don’t exactly know if she’ll come and get me either.”

“A rough patch so soon?” Prospero asked.

I glared through the darkened room. He had no malice etched in his features, and no humor. His face a blank canvas dotted with blood and dirt.

The door opened again and slammed against the other wall. Goon number one thrust a phone at my face and held it on my ear. “Pierce?”

Gerry’s voice came through the line. “Yeah,” I ground out, my disappointment at not hearing Kat’s voice a living breathing thing inside my chest.

“Glad you’re alive. Stay that way, okay? We’ll be there soon.”

“She doesn’t come here. I don’t give a shit what happens to me. She does not set foot in this place,” I said, my voice gravelly on a new register. I didn’t give orders often, but when I did I expected them to be followed.

The goon took the phone and left, closing and locking the door again.

If Gerry was spearheading my rescue, I did have some hope. The man could negotiate. I didn’t think it would appease Argyll and his world domination plans.

A commotion erupted from outside the room. A gun shot went off and then another. We all scooted across the dirty floor away from the door. It wouldn’t be good to get saved only to be shot in the rescue attempt.

Voices and shouting came next until the door was thrust open again, and Argyll entered hands on up by his ears a large desert eagle pointed to the back of his head.

I saw her arm first, then her delicate elbow, her hair, the curve of her waist under her t-shirt, my black leather jacket. My heart stopped. It broke. It shattered into ground glass. She couldn’t be here.

I speared Gerry a glare as he followed her in hauling the two goons with him.

Kat struck out quick, and Argyll dropped to the concrete. “You move, I fucking kill you.”

Her voice went beyond snow and ice. This was the burning pain of something colder. “Kat,” I called.

She didn’t look at me, just stood there holding the gun to the back of his head. As if trying to decide the best place to put a bullet.

Gerry shoved the goons in further. One struck out toward Kat, and I swung my legs under him, caught him by the knee and brought him down on top of me.

My last sight was Kat turning to look at me, the dim light haloing her riotous curls.

As unconsciousness claimed me a second time, I thought she look like an angel. Not the kind from the happy biblical stories. The ones who brought fire, brimstone, and the God damn cavalry.