Chapter Four
Present Day
Frankie released her throat with a light shove before he turned to get back to his bike. He rummaged through a side pouch before facing her again. He waved a scalpel in his right hand and urged her to sit with his left.
“Where’s the tracker?” he asked as she sat cross-legged against the bike.
“Tracker?”
He rolled his eyes. “The tracker Sergei put on you.”
“Oh.” She crossed her arms. “I don’t know.”
Frankie released a long sigh of aggravation. “Look, you can tell me or I can search you. We still have a long night ahead of us so if you’d just…”
“I don’t know,” Gloria repeated, slower this time. “He inserted it while I was out. Said it would be better for me if I didn’t know. It would be better if I couldn’t divulge its location.”
Frankie stared at her for a moment, his shoulders relaxed and his head craned slightly. He sighed.
“Fine.”
He turned to his bike again and continued to search through his pouch until he procured what looked like a handheld metal detector. He raised it up to her chest and, with one eyebrow raised in curiosity, swiped the scanner slowly across her breasts. Her eyes slowly rose from the detector to his calm face in disbelief. His brow arched higher as he ran the scanner down to her crotch and between her legs.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“I know. No one likes to have fun anymore,” Frankie responded in annoyance as if that was what she meant. “Turn around. I know where he put it.”
Gloria tentatively turned her back on him. With a roll of his eyes and a quick raise of his hand along the back of her arm, the detector alarmed right where he guessed. He sighed with boredom as he flung the detector over his shoulder and gripped her upper arm.
“I would have thought the great Sergei Vasiliev would be more creative than that,” Frankie muttered to himself.
Gloria felt a tug on the skin of her upper arm and then the pain rolled through her. She hissed and tried to pull away but Frankie had been expecting that. He held her firmly as he cut the tracker from the muscle of her arm. A moment later a metallic looking pill covered in blood appeared in her periphery. She looked over at it only for Frankie to flick it over his shoulder to join the detector.
“Right. Let’s go then. Get on the bike.”
He held out the helmet for her and Gloria took it with shaky fingers. She turned the helmet around to put it on when she noticed a name emblazoned on the back in gold: her name. She looked up at Frankie only to find his eyes focused on the GPS on his phone. She ignored the roll of anxiety in her belly and fastened the helmet over her head. She was immediately cocooned in warm fabric with the sound of his soft humming ricocheting around the space through speakers embedded in the helmet.
Gloria tentatively placed her leg over the bike and scooted as far back as she could away from his heat. Her back pressed into a duffel bag that felt as though it were filled with rocks. She wiggled a bit to try to get her nightgown to cover as much of her legs as she could, knowing the cold Illinois air along with the speeds he would be pulling to outrun Sergei would most likely leave her shivering. She hugged her arms to her chest. Then she felt his large palm smooth over the bare skin of her thigh. He reached back with both hands, grabbed her under the knees and pulled her snugly against his body. Her thighs cupped against his, her back molded to his own and her center pressed firmly into his ass. Gloria gasped at the heat she felt along his body and fought the urge to wrap every limb around him in response.
“Hold on to me,” Frankie’s voice sounded through the speakers in her helmet. “Move with the bike, not against it. Don’t let go.”
Frankie revved the bike and took off. Gloria gripped the sides of his vest in her fists. As they sped down the gravel road, she found herself wrapping more securely around him until her arms were encircling his waist and her head was pressed firmly between his shoulder blades.
He stuck to the backroads. The bike constantly weaved between lanes as he rounded tight corners and over hills and dips in the terrain. She wasn’t sure how long he intended to drive for. However long it was, she needed a break. Just as her eyelids threatened to stay down, a ringing phone startled her awake.
“Hello?” she heard Frankie ask through the speaker as he answered.
“Frankie?! Why the fuck did I just get a call from Sergei Vasiliev telling me my second-in-command has reportedly torn his way through a safehouse in Illinois?!”
Gloria flinched at the angered voice of the deadly mafia boss known as Accardi. The bike slowed and Frankie pulled it to a stop on the edge of a dairy farm.
“Excuse me, I have to take this,” Frankie told Gloria as he stepped off his bike. Frankie took a few steps away.
“It’s been five fucking days, Frank,” Mr. Accardi continued.
Gloria looked his way, surprised that he hadn’t ended the call on her end. Had he meant to? Did he forget? She couldn’t tell by his body language. He faced away from her with his hands on his hips, looking out at the cows crowded together in the field.
“Yeah, and Vasiliev ran for the hills the moment I got out. Just like I knew he would.”
“He had a meeting in Russia.”
“And you believed that? Come on, give me some credit. You’re wounding my ego here.”
“Shut the hell up, Frankie. I’m not in the mood.”
“Just get Gen to rock you to sleep and you’ll feel better.”
“You know that’s not how she does it,” Accardi responded in a tone that made her think he had reluctantly smiled as he said it.
“What did the fucker say?” Frankie asked the mob boss.
“He said you killed a shit ton of his men and took his fiance,” Accardi argued.
Frankie chuckled darkly. “Did he give you a count?”
Accardi sighed. “Fifty-six.”
“Wo! Come on, Man, that has to be a record. You can’t be mad at that.”
“Where are my guns and explosives, Frank?” Accardi asked.
“Guns? Explosives? Hm, not sure. Do you have a list of the serial numbers? I can call the cops first thing in the morning to get…”
“The drugs?”
Frankie rubbed the back of his neck as if he stood in front of his disapproving father rather than a heifer who seemed to be annoyed that he was disturbing her rest.
“I wasn’t going to use them,” Frankie argued.
“On yourself?” Accardi asked, causing Frankie to chuckle. “Have you kept the girl alive, at least?”
Gloria’s skin tingled. Had he been planning on killing her? Did he tell his boss his plans? What drugs?
“She’s perfectly fine,” Frankie answered. “You want to play case-worker and have a chat with her yourself?”
“I would like that,” a female voice said from Accardi’s end. “Let me talk to her, Frankie.”
“Uh, sorry, Donna, she’s a bit indisposed at the moment. You’ll have to chat favorite nail polish color when you get a chance to meet later on.”
“She’s probably scared. Just let me…”
“Weakness, go back to bed, you need rest,” Accardi interrupted. She heard a long feminine sigh.
“Man, you must’ve just finished giving it to her if she’s that willing to listen to you,” Frankie said with a chuckle.
Accardi ignored him. His voice was stern as he said, “I told Sergei we would meet with him. When will you be back in New York? I’ll arrange a meeting to sort this all out.”
“There won’t be any sorting out, Matteo,” Frankie warned.
There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Frank. What you’re doing… You understand what this will start. It won’t be a one and done deal. This will start a fucking war. Like the one we just fucking finished. Remember that? Is it worth it?” Accardi asked. “Is she worth it?”
Frankie put his right hand in his pocket and for a moment she thought he’d disconnected the phone as both lines went statically quiet. Frankie turned to face her. In the darkness of the night and the moon at his back, she couldn’t read his expression.
“I’ll see you in four days when my vacation time has run out,” Frankie finally said.
A heavy sigh filled her helmet. “Alright, take care of yourself. Make sure you’re feeding her and keeping her warm.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll tuck her in real nice at bedtime, Daddy,” Frankie taunted walking back to her. Then she heard the call go genuinely dead.