The Surrogate Mafia Princess

Chapter Three: Dead or Alive II

Iliana

The shouting was louder now, and I was wondering how I hadn’t been shot as the truck honked and sped up. The driver was f*****g insane. We were going to crash into the gate, and I was going to die. My fate was already sealed. There was no way I was surviving this.

I heard the driver scream, and I braced for impact and prayed to whoever it was above that I got reincarnated to a more stable life or got a good spot in the afterlife. Impact never came. The driver shouted something else, his tone of voice indicating he was British, and I knew we had somehow managed to pass my father’s estate without crashing into the gate. The how? I would question that later.

Whoever had hijacked the truck definitely didn’t know I was in it, and I was going to be dead once he found out. I didn’t survive my father’s house to die at the hands of a stranger but first the darkness was calling. And I answered almost immediately.

The piercing sound of my bladder shriveling up and dying slapped me out of my sleep reprieve and the first thing I heard were voices, bantering. The truck had stopped moving. The thought registered in my head again and I began panicking. Cold sweat slid down my back as footsteps echoed inside the truck and I heard the grunts of men being put to work at lifting the crates. I counted to ten in my head, willing my heart to stop its rapid beating and come up with a solution. I stayed calm as I felt my crate. Thank the sky daddy for my lithe frame and moderate weight because none of the men had raised an alarm. My crate was dropped, and I waited with bated breath, straining my ear to listen. My muscles were protesting at the inhumane position at which I had subjected them too for the past 24 hours. Hopefully, it wasn’t going to be another 24 hours before I could make my escape.

The voices stopped at once, and I could swear my heart was the only thing beating when the British voice let out in a purr, “My, my what do we have here? A stray”

I had been found.

My crate was torn open, and four torches were pointed at me, making me seem like a deer in headlights. The men turned off their torches and a faint glow highlighted their faces. Faces that didn’t look all too happy to be seeing a stranger.

“Hi, there”, the British voice purrs, and my head snapped to his face, my eyes widening at the s**t-eating grin on a face that should be illegal to have. I stared for what felt like minutes as I traced his Adonis face, his perfect aquiline nose and full mouth. Was this how all men looked like?

“That seems like a very uncomfortable position now, isn’t it?”, Adonis asked, tilting his face in wonder. The men grunted and two hands hooked under my arms, and I was hefted out. My muscles strained and I screamed out in pain.

“Yeah, I usually prefer my women screaming in bed and a little more experienced. I was so shocked by his words that I didn’t register the men dropping me until my bones connected with the floor. I screamed, the pain blinding me for a temporary moment.

“The boss ain’t gonna like this one bit”, one of the men said, his eyes leering at me like I was a parasite. Which I probably was. With the pain mildly thrumming through my entire body, I opened my eyes to note my surroundings, and it was safe to say that if they wanted to end my life at the very moment and get rid of my body, there would be nothing stopping them.

“Up you go”, British Adonis commanded, and I had no idea when my body obeyed. But before I could say Jack, a duffel was thrown over my head and everything went pitch black. The only thing I could hear was feet shuffling, mine included” as I was led. I could also hear the thrumming of my heart as I questioned every decision I had made that eventually led to me getting here. I cursed the day I met Adran and prayed with every fiber of my being that if I made it out of here, I would join a religion. Buddhism, Islamism, even the unconventional, anything. I just wanted to remain alive.

I felt tears leak down my face, and I sucked it back in without the fanfare of a sniff. My bladder was already begging to be free of its accumulated load but I couldn’t ask my captors to take a quick stop by the bathroom. That could get me killed quicker.

A door opened and I was pushed to the ground, my knees scraping on soft carpeting. The duffel bag came off, and I had to blink one thousand times to adjust my eyes to see. I had been brought to an office. There were no windows but two air-conditioning and a door separate from the one I had come in from. Everywhere was coated in a deep brown shade, including the desk and chairs accompanying it. Two men leaned against the wall in a corner, their hard eyes trained on me. It didn’t take a soothsayer to tell me what this office was. My father had one just like it. I moved my eyes to the carpet I was kneeling on, searching for signs of the ills that was done here and wondering if I was going to be next.

The second door opened and for the second time that night, my mouth dropped open. A tall, toned, and drop dead gorgeous man walked in and my heart began drum rolling. His midnight black hair was swept back from his face and tied with something, he was dressed in all black, marking a stark contrast to his gossamer skin but every inch of the cloth looked like it merged with his body. His dark eyes found me staring up at him like he hung the moon, and I felt like my soul was being sucked out of my body. I knew him. I could swear I had seen him before, at one of my father’s parties. That was the only place I could have seen him.

No that’s not right, my blood drained out of my face as I remembered where I knew him. This was my father’s number one enemy. He had a bounty on his head in our family. Jalen Winnetka.

I shook my head out of my reverie. He couldn’t find out who I was. There’s no way Jalen knew who I was. It was one of times I thanked my father for keeping me a secret. I felt Jalen’s eyes leave me, and my lungs suddenly remembered how to operate.

Well, until he spoke.

“I don’t like interruptions on my night off, Nico”, the god spoke softly, his eyes going to the Blonde British who had found me. Nico?

“I know but we had a bit of a collateral damage from today”, Nico said, and he tapped my head with his fingers. Five taps like a cat playing with his dinner.

Dark eyes clung to me again, and every nerve ending in my body went on high alert.

“Where?”, Jalen asked, short and simple.

“She was stashed in one of the crates in the truck”, Nico answered immediately, like he knew the person he was talking to hated his time being wasted.

“Get rid of her”. Final.