Risky: Torn Between Two Lovers (10 page)

When the first spasm of pain wrapped around his chest and squeezed, he groaned in agony. “I can’t breathe,” he rasped. No one heard.

Next to him, Anna was still chatting with the other woman. “Is that right? Let me ask Joaquin.” She must’ve turned to him, though he couldn’t see her. “Honey, are we going to be free Tuesday—”

“Anna.” His voice was barely a whisper. Thank God she caught on fast.

“Joaquin, what’s wrong?” she asked, her voice rising in alarm. Her fingers wrapped around his arm.

“Can’t breathe.”

Another spasm wrapped around his chest, and his body went limp. He was barely aware of slumping sideways, hitting the floor as Anna cried out. Shouts of alarm were raised. He heard Rio yelling his name, but his voice was distant.

Shock held Joaquin immobile for long seconds that stretched out as he realized what was happening. He and his brother and their men, they’d been prepared for the hit to come in the form of guns. Knives. Fire. Even a staged accident.

But this? They hadn’t seen it coming.

He would’ve laughed bitterly if he’d had the breath. But he had no choice but to surrender as he managed the single word: “Poison.”

And the darkness took him to the deep end of the ocean.

“Poison,” Joaquin murmured, and his dark eyes closed.

“Oh my God.” Anna grabbed frantically at his shirt, shaking him. Then she pressed two fingers to his neck. “He’s got a pulse.”

“Call 911,” Rio yelled to someone nearby.

“On it!”

“Don’t you leave me,” Anna said, the directive hitching on a sob. “I can’t lose you, too. You’re going to be okay. Please, honey.”

“Anna!” Through her tears, she spotted Deno Santos crouched nearby, looking grim. “Go outside and wait for the ambulance. Someone needs to show the paramedics where to go.”

“But I can’t leave him!”

“You can be of more help to him this way. Go on, he needs you.”

Deno was right. She didn’t want to leave his side, but if she could aid her lover in some small way, she had to do it. Reluctantly, she rose and glanced at Rio.

“I’ll be back with help.”

“Okay. Hurry,” he ordered.

“I will.”

Taking off her spike heels, she tossed them aside and ran down the hallway and out into the lobby. She got a few strange looks, but she didn’t care. She had a simple job to do, and in this way she could help Joaquin. She ran out through the front doors to wait for the ambulance.

It didn’t occur to her until it was much too late that any one of the casino staff could have shown the paramedics where to go.

A dark SUV screeched up to the curb, and the side door closest to her flew open. Two men barreled out and grabbed her, and she screamed bloody murder as they dragged her toward the van. A nearby security guard yelled.

“Hey! What the fuck? Stop!”

As they dragged Anna inside, she caught a glimpse of the guard drawing his weapon—but her attackers were faster. Near her ear, a deafening gunshot sounded. Blood blossomed on the guard’s chest as the SUV tore from the curb and shot into the night.

“Let go of me!”

She kicked and screamed, kicking any part of them she could reach. Grabbing the door handle, she fully intended to fling herself out of the moving vehicle, because that was surely preferable to whatever they had planned for her.

Instead, she felt a sting in her neck, then a burn that spread down her arm. In seconds she was boneless, sliding against the door in a heap. All so fast. They’d been having such a wonderful time. Had such a good thing together.

And now it was gone.

Someone had tried to kill Joaquin. Had poisoned him. He might be dead by now. They’d planned this and had taken her in the chaos, knowing that nobody would notice her absence for some time.

Joaquin.

She saw his handsome face in her mind before consciousness slipped away.

***

His brain awoke, the world returning in fragmented shards.

He wasn’t sure what had happened. Why he hurt so badly, even down to his bones. Or where he was.

Sometimes he felt like he was liquefying, his body simply melting away until there was nothing left. People talked around him, but he couldn’t catch all of what they were saying.

There were doctors. Words like
heart
,
oxygen
,
resuscitate
… and
poison
. He’d been poisoned? At a party. He remembered! But there was something else vitally important, and he couldn’t grasp it. So tired, he had to sleep.

When he awoke again, someone was sitting beside his bed. Turning his head made him sick, and he breathed through his nose for a few minutes before he could speak without vomiting. “Rio?”

His brother’s head snapped up from the magazine he was reading, and his face broke into a smile as he grasped Joaquin’s hand. “God in heaven, don’t ever scare me like that again! I thought we’d lost you!”

“I’m sorry,” he offered.

“Not your fault.” Rio looked haggard, dark circles under his eyes.

“You’re still wearing that stupid shirt.” Even whispering hurt.

Rio gave a sad laugh. “Yeah, it’s hideous. I just wore it last night to get to you.”

“I know.” Joaquin’s eyes searched the room, and he frowned. “Where’s Anna?”

His brother swallowed hard. “She’s not here right now.”

Something about the way he said that made Joaquin’s blood go cold. “Where?”

“She’s, um, missing, bro.”

He tried to sit up, but the pain drove him down again. “What? Tell me!”

“She went outside to wait for the ambulance after you were poisoned. She didn’t come back,” Rio said miserably.

“Why would she go outside?”

“Santos sent her.” That statement said it all.

“He had his men take her,” he rasped. “As insurance.”

“That’s what everyone thinks, but there’s no proof he was involved. Especially since he was right next to you on the floor, making a big show of helping out.”

“Alibi.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“You’ll have to wait in line.”

“No. Santos is mine,” he informed his brother, rage fueling his recovery. The need for revenge would be his sole reason for getting out of this bed long before anyone thought he could.

“All right, agreed. But we’re going to need more help than our men can give. We need something big to bring him down, and it has to be legal.”

“I said I’m going to—”

“Kill him. I know, but it has to be done right. Santos has to be drawn out, into our web. Our actions must be above reproach. The question is, who do we turn to?”

The obvious solution was staring him in the face, and it just about killed him to admit it. But he did, however, because Anna’s life depended on it. She was counting on him.

“Grayson Sloane.”

His brother stared at him, then nodded. “I hate to get the feds in here, but that’s the best choice. They’ll help us if we help them.”

“Did I hear my name?”

Joaquin looked to the doorway, where the agent stood grim-faced. “That was fast.”

“I received a report about the attempt on your life and I got here as soon as I could.”

“For once, I’m glad. We need you here.” Admitting that was hard.

Gray glanced around, nodded at Rio, then met Joaquin’s gaze again. “Where’s Anna?”

He paused. “The person responsible for trying to kill me has taken her.”

“What?” Gray shouted, taking a menacing step toward the bed. Rio placed himself in the agent’s path, hand on his chest, but that didn’t halt his rage. “I warned you this would happen! But you just had to impress her, be the big man, didn’t you? You dragged her into your shit and got her caught in the crossfire, just like I knew you would!”

“I didn’t know it would go down like this!” Joaquin shouted back. “I never thought she would be taken!”

“Well, congratulations,” the agent sneered. “You were wrong. How did this happen? Who is it? I’ll fucking kill him!”

“We believe it was Deno Santos, but I don’t have proof. We have to get her back before he does something bad to her.” The image of what the sick fuck could be doing to her even now was almost too much to bear.

“Jesus Christ.” Jaw clenching, Gray glanced away. His fist closed, and he looked about two seconds from punching the wall. “I’ll make some calls.”

Relief hit Joaquin hard. “Thank you.”

“I’m not doing this for you, you stupid motherfucker. I’m doing this for Anna.”

“I don’t care. We just have to find her.”

“We will—and then Santos is going to pay.”

“Goddamn right he will.”

Gray stalked from the room. Joaquin and Rio sat without talking, one thought chasing itself around and around in Joaquin’s exhausted brain.

They were going to find Anna, safe and sound. And then he was going to castrate Santos with a dull knife and feed his balls to the dogs.

God have mercy on that bastard’s soul.

Because Joaquin would have none as the fucker’s screams faded into death.

She’s torn between two irresistible lovers …

RAW
or
RISKY
?

You can help her choose!

Your vote will decide who wins Anna’s heart! Are you #TeamGrayson or #TeamJoaquin?

Voting will be live between 19 November 2013 and 10 December 2013. Visit
www.facebook.com/eternalromance
for information.

And don’t miss REWARDED in March 2014 when Anna picks her hero!

Keep reading for a sneak peek at Book 3

in the TORN BETWEEN TWO LOVERS trilogy

Available from Headline Eternal March 2014

A rumbling noise and bouncing motion rattled Anna Claire’s brain, pulling her from a deep well of unconsciousness

She came to painful awareness of the stiff carpeting underneath her cheek, the sickening stale odor of motor oil and God knows what else permeating it. But the smell wasn’t as bad as the constant jarring of her head against what she suddenly recalled was the floor of a moving vehicle.

What exactly—

Kidnapped.

Oh, God!

The memory came rushing back to her, the awful truth of what had happened. She had been staying with Joaquin Delacruz at his estate, and her new lover had thrown a party in hopes of swaying the last of his late father’s cronies to the legitimate side of business.

The party started out a success, and then took a drastic turn for the worse. Cold seized her guts as she recalled Joaquin smiling and talking one moment—and the next, he was tumbling to the floor, struggling to breathe.

Poison, he had gasped.

Her handsome lover needed help, fast, and she’d been desperate to do something. So when Deno Santos had sent her outside to wait for the paramedics and bring them to Joaquin, she’d bought his ploy.

Before she could process what happened, she’d been grabbed, thrown into a van, and drugged. How much time had passed since then? Was Joaquin all right?

What were they planning to do to her when they got her to where they were going?

Fear coursed through her as she took stock of her situation. She was lying on her side, wrists bound behind her back, thick tape over her mouth. Her head was still pounding, probably from the drug they’d pumped her with, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. That could change very soon.

Desperately she tried to recall what Joaquin and his brother Rio had said about Santos and his men. Santos was old school, set in his ways when it came to his illegal dealings, unwilling to accept change of any kind. He had become suspicious of Joaquin’s efforts to legitimize his businesses; more than that, he was afraid, as so many were, that Joaquin was preparing to turn on them, give them up to the FBI.

Joaquin had said that he only wanted to clean up his own businesses, not rat on theirs; he had no intention of cooperating with the authorities. But that wasn’t reassurance enough for Santos. He’d obviously decided to take Anna as some sort of leverage

After wriggling to sit upright, she leaned against the van’s hull and sent up a prayer that Joaquin was okay. On the heels of that thought, however, came the knowledge of what would happen if he was, in fact, alive. Her lover had made no secret of the fact that he could be a ruthless man when crossed, and she knew he would move heaven and earth to exact his vengeance for Deno’s actions.

He’d find her. She was sure of that. The question was, would he locate her in time?

With trepidation, she studied the interior of the van. It was stark, just a shell inside, with a partition between her and the men she assumed were in the front. It was so much like a cage, she wondered how many victims they’d transported like this, bound and helpless. Maybe dead. She had to cut off that line of thinking or she’d be carried away by fear.

Closing her eyes, she let herself be lulled by the van’s motion—only to realize what a false sense of security it had been once the vehicle stopped. As long as they’d been moving, she was safe. Now the terror set in as she heard the men get out, shutting the van’s doors. Some footsteps moved away, while another set came to the side door and slid it open.