Kidnapped By The Italian Mafia

"Are we ready?" My eyes scanned the now empty room where Henri had once made his personal space. "I want to get to the airport before ten." I tapped my watch with a finger and kept my eyes trained on the man in the centre of the room. Henri was looking much better with his wound stitched up and mostly closed. The vibrancy had returned to him, much to my relief.

"Yes." He finished zipping up his suitcase and propped it up on the floor. "Are you sure this is a wise decision?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't it be?" I ran a finger over his desk and rubbed the pads of my thumb and index finger together. "I'm taking you away from the danger. It's for the best."

"I disagree."

"I don't pay you to disagree with me." I snapped, completely exasperated. He'd been arguing with me day in and day out about this decision I'd made to take him back to France. As my butler, he felt that I should be under his protection constantly. I had security detail that I'd hired, but after the scene with Salvador, he didn't trust them. I didn't trust them either but I wasn't going to risk him getting hurt again.

And also, I had some unfinished business in France.

Henri raised a silent eyebrow at me and I instantly felt terrible. He wasn't just my employee, and I knew he hated when I pulled the "I'm your boss" card. I hated pulling it too, but sometimes I felt like that was the only way he would hear me. Still, I felt like a complete bitch.

"I didn't mean it like that," I started, trying to salvage the situation before he started resenting me. "I'm so— Henri, I swear—"

"The car is waiting for us, people. Let's get a move on! Hurry up!" Claudette yelled from the foyer where she'd been standing since she arrived to pick us up. She would be accompanying us back to France because she wanted to make sure I was safe. Her involvement in my security still didn't make much sense to me, but I figured she must be getting paid a lot if she was this invested.

Henri pushed passed me without another word, and I bit my lip to suppress a defeated sigh. I s.u.c.k.e.d at apologising.

With Connor and Moira in Scotland doing damage control with Laird McBride, I was left to make my own choices without their voice of reason. The independence wasn't nice. I missed them.

Through the ride to the airport and the flight to Paris, Henri and I didn't say a word to each other, even though I kept looking at him for any trace of anger. His expressions never gave anything away, much to my disappointment. Claudette tapped into the tension, but she didn't ask what was going on between us, she just navigated the situation as best as she could.

"What did you do?" She cornered me as soon as we were in the bathroom though. "He isn't speaking to you."

"I pulled the 'you're just my employee' card." Claudette hissed with a grimace, further driving the headstone into my grave. I nodded solemnly as we washed our hands and resisted the urge to mess with my eyelashes. "I don't know what to do to fix it."

"You want the best for him, oui?"

"Oui." I nodded and waited for her to finish up as I freshen my lipstick. The private jet had an assortment of snacks at the bar that I kept snacking on to get rid of my anxiety. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"That's all. Just say you are sorry." Claudette messed with her face unnecessarily in my opinion. Neither of us were wearing anything other than lipstick and translucent setting powder to keep us from looking like lightbulbs, but she looked eerily perfect, as always. It was starting to get creepy. She was like a bloody doll. Every other woman in the bathroom had done a double take and was secretly checking her out.

"I'm bad at that."

"Then figure it out, amie." She gave me a look before urging me out of the bathroom. Henri was dutifully waiting for us by the wall we'd left him at, but he was looking down at his cellphone. "I am hungry."

"We can eat downtown once we get out of here. What do you think, Henri?" I made my first attempt to speak to him since my imprudent comment in Manc.h.e.s.ter.

"There are restaurants here that can suit your interests." He directed his words to Claudette directly and my heart sunk. He hated me. Great.

"Mm, non. Downtown is better." She leaned in secretively. "Less ears and eyes."

Henri nodded once and before I knew it we were off. After collecting our cargo bags, we headed outside to the rental car I'd reserved the week before. From Paris, we'd head to Saint-Étienne by train, so it made sense to me to pick up the car in the airport and drop it off at the train station.

Henri picked up the keys from the rental clerk, since he was old enough to rent a car and I wasn't. Even though I'd made the reservation, it had been under his name.

"Finally." I muttered when he reached us again, keys in hand. My own hand reached for the trunk handle and waited for him to unlock it so I could pull it open and deposit my cargo suitcase in there. Claudette followed my lead, and Henri himself topped it off.

"Oh, I cannot wait to see my beautiful honeycomb of a man!" Claudette sighed dreamily, something I'd never seen her do since I met her. "He must be so lonely without me."

"Are you sure?" I squinted at her. "He has a sculpture of me n.a.k.e.d."

"He is an artist, it's what he does. Who do you think gave him the idea?" She scoffed at me. "It's more of a forensic experiment. An exact replica of your body allows him to study you for recognition purposes."

"Your decoys are making a lot more sense now." I nodded at her and placed my hand on the backseat door handle behind the driver's seat. As soon as I'd pulled the door open, I set my laptop bag in and prepared to get in myself.

"Wait." Henri held out a hand, as if urging me to stay still. "Don't move."

Obediently, I didn't move, however uncomfortable it was because I'd already placed one foot into the car. Claudette as well had a hand on the handle of the passenger door. We looked at each other in confusion, wondering just what the hell Henri was getting at.

A mere moment of silence went by when his eyes widened and he suddenly lunged at us, grabbing Claudette and my own forearms roughly before running toward the exit and throwing all of us to the ground to huddle together randomly. The only thing I heard amidst my confusion was a rapid beeping right before we fell on the ground and a deafening sound echoing through the parking garage as soon as we ducked below the window level. And then everything was orange.

The car slid a few inches and pushed us back suddenly, and I felt like the wind had been knocked out of my body. The two cars that had been parked on either side of ours had been blown to bits as a courtesy to leave nothing behind.

The three of us coughed violently as we groggily got up and tried to make out what the damage was. The car was now a heaping pile of flames, and remains were absolutely everywhere. No discernable skeleton was left of the thing we were supposed to drive out of here.

"Are you f.u.c.k.i.n.g kidding me?!" I screamed. "My laptop was in there!"

"Pressure bombs. It seems this one was designed to go off once all three of us were seated, but I think someone has a remote if it went off before any of us were even fully in the car." Henri squinted at the scene and started looking around. "We have to go. If we're caught here, the authorities will want to take our statement or we'll be thrust into the public eye."

He grabbed my hand and turned me around to make sure I was okay, then told me to check the floor for anything that might've fallen off of me. I looked, but in my search, I found Claudette tapping at something on her smartwatch. "What are you doing?"

"Disabling all electronic features within a two mile radius. The electromagnetic crash can be blamed on the explosion f.u.c.k.i.n.g with the wires or something because I'm pretty sure the building shook." Claudette continued tapping on her watch for a minute when I felt something hit the top of my head. I frowned and touched the crown of my skull only to pick up a piece of cement, or at least it looked like it.

I looked up above me and quickly snapped back down to drag my friend away when I saw the floor above us begin to crumble fragment by fragment, which was now falling around us. "The f.u.c.k.i.n.g parking level above us is about to cave, we have to go!" I wrapped my arms around her waist and started dragging her, despite her protests.

"Give me two seconds!" She squirmed and tried to get away from me. With her reaching arms, I saw her stick something to the bottom of the car and start messing with her watch again.

"We don't have two seconds! Let's f.u.c.k.i.n.g go!" I looked at Henri for help, at which point he stopped down and grabbed her, carrying her over her shoulder at the exact same moment she slapped her palm over her smartwatch and it initiated a beeping sequence.

I ran behind them in a beeline for the underground parking exit and barely paid attention when she ripped off her watch and threw it in the direction of the explosion.

"When the heat touches the watch, it's going to explode and it will burst our eardrums if we're not far enough away!" She tapped Henri's back and he put her down quickly, where we all began to f.u.c.k.i.n.g leg it toward the exit this time.

I heard a loud, rumbling crash behind us where the top level parking space had finally caved in and began tumbling larger pieces of cement onto the vehicles and ground below. The first large piece triggered a domino effect, and stupidly, I allowed my eyes to dart upward to watch the spider web effect of the cracking cement.

My distraction cost me. Looking up made me unaware of my phone tumbling out of my jacket pocket until it clattered on the floor, and by the time the sound registered in my brain, I was a few feet away from it. Without thinking, I went back for it, and the only thing I heard from my friends when I'd finally caught the device was Claudette screaming at me.

"KATARINA! COVER YOUR EARS!" She was frantically trying to reach me without turning back herself, but something was off. She wasn't looking at me, rather something behind me.

I covered my ears, but turned my head to look, and was met by a bone cracking shove that sent me flying through the air and skidding on the cement floor feet away from where I had been standing. My head felt like it had exploded, and I couldn't hear anything, just feel the pain crackling through my nerves and the feeling of my head being split in two.

I screamed, or at least I thought it did, and felt myself start to convulse on the floor, limbs trashing and internal organs spasming as I struggled to inhale a proper breath. A sharp ringing through my head kept me paralyzed, but my body thrashed in an inability to gain control. Thoughts ran through my mind at a mile per minute, jumbled and intelligible, except for one.

If I was going to die by convulsion, then this shit really s.u.c.k.e.d.