Being mindful to not cut Johnathan, Cat carefully brushed as much glass as she could from his little body. Tiny fists balled into the air as Johnathan wailed, calling for his Mamma.

The sound of a seatbelt unlatching from the front reminded Cat of Tino.

"Principe okay?" the enforcer asked gruffly.

"Seems so," Cat replied. "My phone is somewhere. I don't know where. Call Dante back and let him know what happened."

"Got it." Tino grunted as he moved around up front. "Shit, at least we landed back on the wheels, huh?"

"That's the good thing right now?"

"Just saying, reginella."

For once, Cat didn't bark at Tino's teasing because it didn't feel like he was poking fun at her that time. Cat continued picking the smaller pieces of glass from the still crying Johnathan. She was too afraid to move him from his seat for fear he might cut himself or worse, have some unseen injury that might be worsened with movement.

She swiped the dark curls from Johnathan's forehead, wincing at the inch long scratch his hair had kept hidden. It wasn't deep enough to bleed, so Cat thanked God for that small miracle.

"Damn," Tino swore quietly.

Cat perked. "What?"

"We rolled over the damn guardrail. And you didn't have your fuckin' seatbelt on. Dio, don't tell Boss I allowed that shit, Catrina. He'd kill me. Fuck, he still might anyway. This is bad."

Cat wasn't paying Tino's rambling any mind. She was too busy staring out the broken back window of the SUV. A tall male figure dressed in dark clothing was making their way down the twenty foot embankment that led from the highway. She could see where their SUV had bent the guardrail behind the person.

It wouldn't have bothered her to see someone coming to help, except she had the distinct feeling this person wasn't there to offer assistance. Especially considering another person jumped lithely over the bent guardrail and like the first man, he also had what looked like a gun in his hand.

Cat's mouth went dry, threatening to keep her quiet. She never showed fear-didn't know how to allow the emotion to cull her natural fearlessness, but this was not the same. Nothing could protect them. Cat had no gun of her own, only the knife at her thigh, and she had to consider little Johnathan, too. There was nowhere to run.

"Tino," Cat whispered, turning fast in the seat to hit the enforcer on his shoulder.

The phone he held dropped from his hand to the front dashboard. "Jesus, Catrina! What in good fuck did you do that for?"

"Tino, answer me!" A familiar, dark tenor yelled from the phone.

Cat grabbed Tino's shoulder, her nails digging in through his thin jacket to focus his attention on her. "Tino, look!"

Tino glanced over his shoulder where Cat pointed out the two men who were dangerously close to the back of their torn up SUV.

"Shit!" Tino threw the unbuckled seatbelt off his shoulder while he leaned over and hit the compartment on the dashboard where his gun was kept. Very clearly and in a loud tone, Tino started talking. "Dante, two. Both male. Probably six feet, give or take a couple inches. Both have guns. Unknowns."

Tino slid a clip into the gun and clicked the safety off. Cat fumbled with the damned buckles on Johnathan's car seat. It didn't help that the child wouldn't stop screaming and flailing. Not that it was his fault. He didn't have a clue what was going on or the danger they were in.

A scream meant to warn Tino caught in the back of Cat's throat as one of the men reached the back of the SUV, his arm already lifted to aim.

"Tino-"

Cat's words cut off at the same time a muffle pop rang through the space. Blood and matter splattered across the front windshield. Tino's large frame slumped over the steering wheel, his gun clattering to the SUV's floor. Instantly, Cat sunk down over Johnathan, needing to protect him.

If there was ever a time Cat wished she knew how to pray like she meant it, now was it. She didn't even have the goddamn time to figure out what to ask the God she visited every Sunday. The back door of the vehicle made an awful creaking noise as it was pried open.

"Move!"

Cat was flung from Johnathan as if she weighed nothing more than a feather. Her back hit the side door with a snap, her head bouncing off hard plastic. Her vision, still swimming with darkness from the earlier smack to the head, blinked out briefly. She couldn't focus on the figure snatching Johnathan from his car seat.

Feeling blind and in a slow stupor, Cat searched for the sharp, small knife in the sheath at her thigh under her dress. When the tip of the blade was cutting into the tips of her fingers, she had to hold back from showing the weapon and tossing it at the man. A wiggling Johnathan blocking her target was the only thing that stopped her. She wouldn't take the risk of hitting him.

"He's not Michel!" Cat cried when the man turned away with her nephew. "Please don't take him! He's not Michel!"

"Doesn't matter to Bruno. The Marcellos will deliver Michel to us if they want their little principe and their new queen back."

"No!"

Cat lurched from the seat in an attempt to get to Johnathan. An arm encircled her neck through the window, choking off her air supply and pulling her back. Fingers clawed into her hair and scalp, pulling her head back. Dark, familiar laughter echoed in her ear, sending chills down her spine.

"Hello, cagna. Have you missed me?"

Vomit threatened to gag Cat. That voice-oh, God that voice.

Bruno's right-hand man Marc was a cruel, cold bastard. Cat only met him once before. The first time she tried to help her sister get away from Bruno. That encounter left both Cat and Marc injured. Marc sported a scar above his eyebrow from Cat's knife. Cat took two broken fingers for her troubles.

Marc stuck his nose into Cat's hair clenched around his fist, inhaling deeply. "Ah, you still smell like strawberries and honey, ragazza. Just like your whore sister."

Disgust raged a war through Cat's insides. She dug her fingernails as hard as she could into his forearm around her neck. She could feel his skin break under the force of her nails. It didn't affect him in the least. The tighter Marc's arm squeezed, the angrier she became. She couldn't speak, scream, or breathe, but she was pissed off like nothing else. The knife hidden in her hand down at her thigh burned into her fingertips.

"Guess what Bruno's instructions were for you, Catrina?" Marc breathed in her ear, his breath hot and foul in her face.

"You're a bastard," Cat hissed.

"S, we know this well, don't we? Keep digging those pretty nails of yours into my skin, cagna. You know how much I enjoy a little pain."

Marc chuckled, the sound rumbling somewhere in his chest. "Bruno promised I could teach you whatever lesson I liked while we waited for the Marcellos to answer our demands. I have waited a long time to do just that, Catrina. I owe you for the scar you gave me two years ago."

A finger drew a pathway down her cheek, digging in the whole way until he came to the corner of grimacing lips. "I think I'll start cutting here, just to mess up your sweet face. And when you're good and fucking hurting, I'll shove your mouth full of my cock just to teach you how to properly serve a man like the whore you are."

His words didn't frighten Cat a bit. If he thought differently, she had a newsflash coming to him. His next ones, however, chilled her to the fucking bone.

"I did that to your sister once while Bruno watched. He got off on it-sharing her when she misbehaved. Merda, who knows? Maybe he'll want to keep you even after he gets his son back, Catrina. You look a lot like her and we both know you need to answer for your misdeeds."

"Go to hell, Marc," Cat wheezed, her oxygen supply depleting with every word. "My husband will cut your balls off and feed them to you for touching me. But only if I don't do it to you first."

"You can try."

Cat didn't give Marc the opportunity to do anything else. She twisted the knife at her side so the blade was out of her palm and swung it up with damning force. The sharp metal sliced into his forearm and Cat yanked the moment it cut into his arm, making the wound jagged, deep and long. She pulled the knife out of his arm just as fast, not wanting to chance the risk he might somehow take it from her.

A howl filled with agony and shock answered her attack, but the arm holding her tight let go. Cat wasted no time flinging her body away from the door. She practically landed on top of Johnathan's empty car seat. Turning around, she watched as a red-faced Marc pulled on the twisted door. The accident must have bent the metal enough that he couldn't get it open.

When Marc roared in his rage and looked up to glower at Cat, she was smirking. The tip of the knife's blade was between her index finger and thumb and her arm was already pulled back, aimed and waiting for the right target. The warm, slick blood on the sharp tip did nothing to loosen her grip.

"You fucking-"

"Missed your chance again, Marc," Cat said cruelly.

The knife left her hold with a speed nearly too fast to see. It sunk to the hilt in Marc's left eye, sending him flying backward from the broken window. His screams reverberated as he grappled at the four-inch blade stuck inside his head.

Cat laughed when the idiot grabbed onto the hilt of the knife and pulled it from his eye socket. Blood began to pour in a thick stream down his face, and even when he pressed the heel of his palm to the bleeding hole, his life source still leaked out.

"Should have left it where it was," Cat shouted at Marc as he swayed further from the SUV. "Now you're going to bleed to death, you fool."

Marc stumbled forward. Out of instinct, even though there was a metal door between them he couldn't open, Cat lurched back over the car seat until she fell out of the other side of the vehicle. Wobbly on her stilettos, she forced herself up from the ground, around the back door, and pulled on the driver's to open it. When it did, Tino's body fell from the steering wheel to the ground with a dead thump. The back of his skull was blown apart.

For a brief moment, Cat hesitated. She could hear Marc shouting and thrashing. The blood from his wound was likely pouring at a steady pace and blinding him. She didn't care about him at all or worried about him.

It was Tino she hurt for.

Get a grip, her mind ordered. Move on. Too late.

Still, as she stepped over Tino to climb into the front seat, Cat whispered, "Reposa in pace."

Rest in peace.

Cat found Tino's gun on the floor, made sure the safety was off, pulled back the hammer, and got back out of the SUV. She walked around the vehicle until she came to where Marc was lying on his back and holding his face. The fat, useless pig groaned, his good eye blinking rapidly as Cat stood above him.

"It's too bad," Cat murmured, aiming the gun with her finger wrapping the trigger. "I so wanted to watch you eat your balls."

Marc didn't say a word and he didn't try to run. The bullet entered his hand covering his eye and his head smacked back into the ground from the velocity of the shot. The echoing sound of the gun going off traveled over the small, snowy field where the embankment led to.

Cat turned at the sound of a shout. Over her shoulder, she could see the other man who had taken Johnathan. He stood beyond the guardrail with no baby in his arms. Cat's heart thudded painfully in her chest.

"Give me my nephew!"

"I can't do that. You took Michel, now pay your dues."

"You're making a mistake!" Cat shouted, heat flooding her body as her hand clenched around the gun.

The man shook his head. "Inesatto, Catrina. You have made the mistake."

Cat's jaw ticked. "No, the mistake is Bruno's. And you will die for this; the Marcellos will make sure of it."

"Not if they want their principe back, cagna."

With that, the man spun on his heel and disappeared. Cat screamed her frustration, hearing the squeal of tires not three seconds later and the sounds of sirens.

Cat staggered back to the front of the SUV. Her vision was still blurry and her mind seemed slow. The ache in her wrist had yet to ebb. Climbing into the front seat once more, she ignored the blood and matter sprayed everywhere as she grabbed Tino's cellphone on the dash. Her heart stopped when she looked at the screen.

The call was still open.

Oh, God.

How much had her husband heard? He probably didn't hear the conversation outside of the car, but the things she yelled he might have.

She should have told him ... and not like this.

Cat pressed the bloodied phone to her ear. Slow, ragged exhales whooshed into the receiver. "Dante ..."

"No baby," she heard him growl.

His voice was a mixture of rage and fear. Like unaltered violence swirling in a pool of words.

"W-what?"

"When the cops get there, you have to say Johnathan wasn't with you."

Cat swallowed thickly. "But his car seat is-"

"Do what I said!"

"Okay. No Johnathan. I'm sorry, Dante."

"A lawyer will meet you at the hospital. I will meet you at home."

The phone call hung up. For the first time since her sister's death, Cat cried.

Chapter Sixteen.

The moment Catrina walked into the condo, Lucian was on his feet. Anger colored his features dark as he made a move toward Dante's wife. Catrina didn't even flinch the closer Lucian came. She simply stood straighter and kept her eyes locked on the man all the while, totally unafraid. There was pain in her stare, though. Dante could see it and it cut him to the bone.

Regardless of how mad at his wife and betrayed by her he felt, Dante would never allow someone to hurt her. Not that he thought Lucian would, but in his panic, Dante knew his brother would do just about anything if he thought it would get his son back.

At that very second, Catrina was the only one with any answers.

Dante moved fast, stepping in front of his wife to stop his brother from coming any closer. "Don't, Lucian."

"I want to know where my son is!"

"I'm so sorry," Catrina said quietly. "I never thought-"

"Where is my son?" Lucian roared.

Dante bristled at the treatment his wife was receiving, but held back from snapping at his older brother. Lucian was warranted his anger. "Leave, Lucian."

"What in the fuck did you just say?" Lucian hissed through clenched teeth. "You can't seriously-"