But Ronny?
Ronny was that smart.
And cruel.
And ruthless.
She wasn’t working alone.
It certainly hadn’t been Ronny to break into my home. Or chase me through the woods. Or inject me with the needle.
But it could have been Danny.
He was Ronny’s other son, who immediately, and without question, was eager to do his mother’s bidding.
As for the place I was being held, though, that was all Tom Ferraro. Though I didn’t know if he was aware he was involved or not.
He was the Ferraro I knew the least about. And, (perhaps a bit ungenerously), I just concluded that he simply didn’t have muchtohim. He was a man who drank cheap beer, yelled at the TV during all the sports games, and worked long hours.
At the cruise terminal.
Where I was being held.
At the indoor parking garage.
The second floor, if the windows were anything to go by.
It gave me a lot of room to run, to escape.
If only I could get up.
But it felt like a Herculean task just to turn my head to look over at Ronny. I didn’t seem capable of getting up, let alone running.
I rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, trying to get it wet enough to speak.
“Always knew you were a bitch,” I said, words slurring and slow, but clear enough for her to hear. I hoped.
“And I always knew you weren’t anywhere near as smart as you liked to think you were.” She flashed the light down my body, making me painfully aware that Nico’s shirt had ridden up to expose the slash of color that was my panties. “Or as classy. I know a common whore when I see one.”
“From the stories I heard, you used to be one,” I shot back, enjoying the gasp that escaped her. “You cheated on Tom, what, eight times? It’s no wonder he never wanted to be home. You made a cuck out of him.”
“Watch your mouth,” another voice snarled, making me aware that Danny had slipped in behind his mother without me realizing.
“Easy,” Ronny, never usually the cool or collected one, demanded. “You’ll have time to play with her later.”
This time, the way my stomach rolled had nothing to do with the drugs. Because while Matthew had been careless, Danny had some genuinely wicked tendencies. Always fighting, grabbing women’s asses, getting involved with fellow troublemakers, going in and out of prison ever since he was a teenager.
I didn’t know what he was capable of doing to me. But if he was given a free pass, the sky was the limit.
“Being a bitch won’t save you here,” Ronny said. “The only thing that’s going to save you is to tell me where the files are.”
My brain was foggy, my thoughts sluggish.
But I wasn’t an idiot.
The second she knew about the laptop, she had no reason to keep me alive.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
