and the roll of duct tape and swears under his breath when my movement causes him to drop the tape.
“The man you’re about to make very rich,” Wannabe says. “There’s a price on your head, in case you didn’t know.”
At his words, everything inside me seizes. If what he’s saying is true, the contract is now a bounty, which means every two-bit thug with a gun will be looking for us.
I cut him a glare. “I wasn’t talking to you, fuckwad. I was talking to her,” I say, looking squarely at Adri. Her eyes flash confused, but I don’t stop. “And why do you have her pretty little ass tied up in my hotel room?”
“Don’t play stupid with me, Delgado. This is her hotel room,” he says. “She was flashing your picture around at the front desk, so I figured she was a friend of yours. Got a look at her room number and came up for a visit.”
“You figured wrong.” I look at Adri, harden my gaze, brush the guy’s hands away as he tries again to get a loop of tape around my wrists. “I’ve never seen her in my life. Probably another lowlife wannabe hit man, just like you.”
The guy trying to bind my wrists pistol-whips me again. “Stop fucking moving!”
Stars flash in my eyes and I fight to hold on to consciousness.
“Don’t knock him out, dumbass!” the other guy barks. “He can’t talk if he’s drooling on the carpet.”
As the guy next to me swears under his breath and tries again with the duct tape, the other runs the tip of the blade along Adri’s cheek. “If you don’t know her, you won’t mind watching me kill her.”
I shrug just as the guy gets a loop of tape around my wrists. The tape pulls loose. “Just don’t get any blood on the carpet. The cleaning fee for that is killer.”
“Hold the fuck still,” the guy hisses, putting his gun down and jerking my hands together.
Wannabe sets his knife on the table behind him and rests his hands on Adri’s shoulders. “Maybe I’ll just use my hands,” he says, sliding them together until his fingers are wrapped around her long, fair throat. “The ladies always say I’m good with my hands.”
I fight to keep the murder out of my eyes. “Whatever works.”
“Look at her. So young.” His hands glide down her neck, slip under the collar of her blouse. His eyes lift to mine and he grins. “Maybe I’ll fuck her first. You want to watch before you die?”
I cuff out a laugh. “I’d rather fuck her myself, if it’s all the same to you.”
“I’ll tell you what, Delgado. You tell me where the rest of your family is, I might let you have that dying wish.” A depraved grin spread over his face as his hands slide deeper into her shirt. “After I’m done with her.”
“Me too,” the guy binding my wrists says. “I want a crack at her too.” He’s nearly drooling. I’m getting that this guy’s not the brains of the operation.
I glance again at Adri, trying to relay with my gaze that I won’t let anything happen to her. But when my eyes connect with hers, I find her gaze just as determined. All the fear that was clouding it before is gone. A stone drops in my gut when I realize what she’s thinking. I give her a small shake of my head, but it’s too late.
She throws herself into the back of the chair. It topples over, knocks the guy behind her to the carpet. The guy in front of me looks up with a start. I lift a knee sharply, clocking him under the chin. He reels back. I stand. One good tug and I’ve torn the single layer of tape he’s managed to get around my wrists.
The moron with the duct tape lunges for his gun.
I grab the bottle of Jameson off the bar next to me and swing it like a baseball bat square into the side of his head. It smashes against his skull, leaves a gash in his face when it shatters. He drops to the carpet, out cold.
“So much for blood on the carpet,” Wannabe says. I look up and he has his knife at Adri’s neck, where she lays on her side on the floor, still taped to the chair. A bead of blood trickles across her throat and drips onto the carpet. “Doesn’t look like a little more’s going to be a problem.”