OWNED BY THE DON: 100 Filthy Debts

Chapter 2a: Caught Like a Little Dove

Ava's POV

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I was royally f****d.

The result of my attempt to escape meant that these men pointed their guns at my head immediately I got caught and struggling with them proved futile. Immediately they got me on my knees facing the wall, my wrists were instantly zip-tied.

I'd lived my young life seeing a lot of undercover things happen at this club — like when Layla, the blabbermouth was flogged by one of her sugar daddies and she had to be admitted to to hospital, and also when Zach, the male dancer slept with a senator's wife and the senator barged in and shot him in the butt — but I'd never been on the receiving end in any of those situations.

Now though, there was a direct threat to my life. And these men weren't playing, at all.

Professionals.

I understood that even through the fear — through the static noise in my skull that was either adrenaline or the beginning of a panic attack that I couldn't afford. One of them had his hand on my arm and the other was speaking into an earpiece and neither of them looked at me with anything as human as cruelty. I was a loose end. A logistical problem.

"Let go of me." My voice came out steadier than I deserved. "I didn't see anything. I won't say anything. I'm a nobody — I'm a college student, I work here, I have nothing to do with any of—"

"Stop talking." The one on my left said it without any particular heat. Like he was asking me to stop tapping a pen. He was a blonde, with a lip ring at the edge of his lower lip.

I pressed my lips together instantly.

The black Escalade idled at the mouth of the alley. They walked me toward it with the unhurried efficiency of men who had done this before, and I was calculating — exits, angles, the distance to the street where people and witnesses and help existed — when suddenly, the door opened from the inside and a man stepped out.

Tremor ran through me at the sight of the handsome man from earlier.

HIM.

He'd put his jacket back on. That was the absurd detail my brain snagged on — that in the time it had taken them to catch me, he'd straightened his jacket and his cuffs and composed himself into something that looked like a man who had just stepped out of a board meeting rather than a room where someone had just been casually shot.

He was taller than I'd clocked in the suite. Six-four, maybe more. The amber light from the alley's single working street lamp caught the angles of his face and turned them severe — high cheekbones, a slightly crooked nose that had been broken at least once, that extraordinary jaw. The tattoos that crawled up his neck above his collar were dark and elaborate and deliberate, the kind that said "I chose to be marked" rather than "I made a mistake at twenty-two."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"I've seen a lot of people run," he said. His accent was faint but present.

"Mhmm..." My lower lip trembled at the chill in his tone.

Definitely an American-smoothed Italian, like something that had been sanded down but not erased. His voice was low and even and somehow worse for it. "Most of them run because they think distance will save them." His eyes moved over me. Nope, not the way men's eyes usually moved over me in that club, hungry and impersonal. This was different. This was assessment. "How far did you think you'd get in that alley, little dove?"

"Little dove." He said it without a flicker of warmth.

"Far enough." The words were out before I could stop them. I mentally berated my mouth, but there was something about how he spoke that made me want to talk back, even if the recklessness caused me pain.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile.

"She's the dancer," the man on my left reported. "It was Tony's special booking."

The man's eyes didn't leave mine. "I know what she is." A beat followed. "What's your name?"

"Ava." And then, God help me, some survival instinct made me add pitifully (though with an ounce of defiance to prove I really wanted to live), "I'm pre-med. I have one semester of coursework left and a 3.4 GPA and I genuinely have nothing to offer anyone in whatever this is. I'm not a threat to you in any way so just let me go and I'll pretend this never happened."

"If I don't?" He asked, slight mirth dancing in his cold, pretty eyes as if I'd said a joke.

"Then I'll tell the uhm," I swallowed and wondered if it was a good idea to threaten someone who could put a bullet hole in my head. Still, I mustered up the stupid courage I should've just shut down, "The cops. And you'll go to jail for killing someone."

He considered my words, the slightest furrow of his brow giving away the fact that he was thinking about my words carefully while the other two men chuckled. Then he looked at the man on my right. "Put her in the car."

"I'm not getting in that car—" I gasped.

"You can walk to it, get tied and dragged or be carried." He said it pleasantly. Was it weird that regardless of how my life was in danger, I found his voice hot? I blinked in a mixture of fear and slight panic as my heartbeat managed to skip at the sound of his voice. "Either way, you're getting in the car."

"I— please, let me go and—"

The man on my right hoisted me on his shoulder and ignored my trashing as he carried me off into the sleek car, dumping me on the chair.

Then the car took off.

What have I gotten myself into?!