Defying Her Mafioso

by Terri Anne Browning

  With anyone.

  As I weaved through traffic, I called Desi. “Get the security footage for the Red Prism. I don’t care who you have to bribe, fuck, or kill. I want everything they have.”

  “They might have it on a Wi-Fi feed that I can hack, capo. Give me twenty minutes.” Desi hung up and I laid down on the gas.

  With each minute it took to get to the club my heart beat harder, faster. I called Paco, told him to get his ass to the Red Prism and take every man we had with him. I didn’t want to call Cristiano yet, or Vito, but I called my father and told him to be ready because I knew shit was about to get ugly.

  By the time I reached the club I was sure I was on the verge of a heart attack. My hands were clammy, my face covered in sweat, and I couldn’t fucking breathe because of the weight that was pressing down on my chest. I found Victoria immediately, since she’d shut the entire club down. The bouncers were guiding people out, while Victoria stood in the middle of the club, her face pale and her eyes wild.

  Seeing me enter, she ran across the room and threw herself against me. I didn’t have time to comfort her. Grabbing her shoulders, I made her meet my gaze. “Tell me everything.”

  She swallowed hard. “We danced for about an hour. A few guys tried to dance with us but she wouldn’t let them. They lost interest after a while. Then she had to use the bathroom and walked me to the bar so I could get some water before she left me. I haven’t seen her since. I checked the bathroom, and found her phone. No one can remember seeing her.”

  I pushed her away before I did something stupid. Like shake the life out of her for being so careless. How could she let Scarlett just go off unaccompanied like that? They knew better than to go anywhere alone. Fuck, they shouldn’t have even left the compound. Vito had told them repeatedly that they needed to stay close to home especially with Santino running around unchecked.

  My phone buzzed and I pulled it out. “You’d better have news for me.”

  “I got the feed,” Desi was quick to assure me. “I found Scarlett on there, capo. Saw her go into the bathroom and what looks like a guy in black follow her in. Don’t see her again until five minutes later from the back entrance feed where he was carrying her to a van. The guys size is close to Santino Jr’s. It’s probably him.”

  “Fuck,” I roared, causing Victoria and several of the club’s security guys to jump.

  Someone had taken her, just as I’d feared but had prayed I was overreacting. No, not just someone. Jr. I walked away from Victoria and the other people, trying to breathe through my suddenly tight throat.

  Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.

  I’d never been scared before. Never really understood terror until right in that moment. I was the boogeyman everyone was scared of, but right then I was about to fall on my knees. Nothing could happen to Scarlett. If I lost her, they might as well kill me too.

  Breathe, I mentally commanded myself. Breathe. I sucked in a deep breath and clenched my hands into fists. There was no time to break down and act like a pussy. I had to find her.

  I would find her.

  Chapter 13

  Ciro

  Two hours. Three minutes. Fifteen…sixteen…seventeen seconds.

  Each second that passed, my heart beat four times. She’d been missing for two hours. Two. Fucking. Hours.

  I’d already gone through five men to find answers.

  None of them had given me what I wanted.

  None of them had lived to lie to me again.

  Every one of my men was out looking for her, for any sign of Jr. For some miracle that she was still even alive. Vito and my father had joined me while Cristiano was out looking for his sister with his own men. Desi was searching traffic and ATM cameras. He’d been able to hack into Santino Senior’s financials, but there was no sign of any New York activity on them.

  We were coming up empty-handed and with each ticking of the clock, I became colder. Deadlier. I’d flipped a switch, turned off everything so that I could focus on getting Scarlett back. If I hadn’t, I would have gone insane by now and killed every person who so much as looked at me. I was a cold, emotionless monster and right then I didn’t care who had to die to give me what I wanted.

  I was scaring my own men, had made one of my father’s piss his pants as I’d attempted to beat information out of one man after another. My knuckles were bruised and bleeding. I was pretty sure my left hand was broken, but I didn’t feel the pain. The man I’d broken it on wasn’t even recognizable now but soon there wouldn’t be a body to have to identify. I kept a full supply of acid in the warehouse and soon he would be nothing more than a tub of goo that my men would dump into the Hudson.

  “Where the fuck is Volkov?” Vito thundered as he paced through the warehouse where my men had dragged the last idiot who had dared to lie to my face. Vito was pale, his entire frame seeming to tremble as he moved. His children were his kryptonite, but Scarlett was his biggest weakness of all. Scarlett was his favorite child and I couldn’t blame him for picking her over the other two.

  She was my favorite too.

  No one had been able to reach the Russian. If it were for any other reason but finding Scarlett, I wouldn’t have even bothered with the bastard, but he had a few different resources than I did. He could help me find her and, by God, he would too or I’d put my knife through his heart.

  I’d forced Victoria to call him, knowing he would talk to her. She hadn’t hesitated, willing to do anything if it meant getting her twin back. Her fingers had been shaking as she’d dialed, her teeth chattering as she spoke quietly to him.

  “I need your help,” she’d whispered brokenly as I’d stood beside her like a warden.

  That was all it had taken. Volkov had put his resources to good use and said he would call her back. Twenty minutes later Anya had shown up at the club and taken Victoria with her. I hadn’t questioned it. Victoria was not my concern. I barely tolerated her and only then because she was Scarlett’s sister.

  Vito didn’t even seem to care that she was with Anya. Whether he was as pissed at her as I was, he just didn’t care, or no one else was on his mind right then, I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

  My father put a hand on Vito’s shoulder’s to steady him. “He will call as soon as he has something.”

  Vito paused, sucked in a deep breath and nodded. His dark eyes went straight to me. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” I was beyond ready. As soon as Volkov called I would be out the door with six of my men and all the MC guys. Jet was on standby with his brothers and I had plenty of guns to go around. All I needed was a name. A location. Anything to point me in the right direction.

  “Good.” He nodded again, his face turning into the same blank mask Scarlett had learned to perfect. “You go get her and you bring her home to me. And when you’re done, you’d better fucking marry her or I’m going to gut you like a fucking fish.”

  I didn’t even try to pretend I was shocked. I wasn’t. Vito might have helped me put distance between me and his daughter, but he’d always known I loved her. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d told me to marry her or not. I was going to. As soon as I had her back I was putting a ring on her finger and making sure no one ever doubted she belonged to me.

  Especially her.

  Vito’s phone went off and he jerked it up to his ear. “Vitucci,” he growled, then listened for a long pause. I saw the way his eyes dilated, his nose flared. “Got it. Keep your eyes on the place.”

  Lowering his hand, he met my gaze. “Go get my daughter, Ciro.”

  The switch I’d turned off tried to come back on. A small margin of relief filled me, but I quickly banked it down. Volkov had found where she was. That didn’t mean she was just sitting around being pampered in the lap of luxury. She could be hurt…or worse.

  I pushed that thought aside and turned my emotions off again. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be because my heart was still beating in my chest. I grabbed the two duffe
l bags full of guns that I always kept packed. Outside, I handed them both over to Paco and jumped in the driver’s seat of the SUV.

  I didn’t wait to see if my men followed. They would. As I drove, Paco sent a text to Jet after I told him the address Vito had given me. The closer I got, the colder I grew until I was nothing more than a flesh-and-blood robot.

  I found Volkov on an old abandoned road twenty minutes later. We were just outside the city and the drive would have normally taken close to an hour, but I’d hauled ass. Pulling to a stop beside the older model van where Volkov was sitting behind the driver’s seat with four of his men, I looked around for a sign of where Scarlett might be.

  “Where the fuck is she?” I demanded as I got out.

  There were no buildings that I could see. The road didn’t even look like a road any more, but part of the overgrown fields that surrounded it. Thinking that this was just a setup and that Volkov had wasted valuable time that Scarlett might not have, I went for his throat.

  “The house is about a mile up the road,” Volkov said with calm coolness. “Jr isn’t with them, but there are seven or so men outside the house. I’m not sure how many are inside. If it were just the seven, my men and I could have handled it ourselves, but I didn’t want to put her at risk in case I was wrong.”

  I sucked in a harsh breath just as the sound of another vehicle filled my ears. I glanced away long enough to confirm that it was the MC guys, then turned back to Volkov. “How big is the house?”

  “It’s a small farmhouse. One story. Old and decaying. The place belongs to one of Santino’s mistresses.” I didn’t even try to second guess that information. I knew Jr had a few mistresses, but the few I knew of and had questioned hadn’t known shit. Obviously Volkov had better intel than I did. “There are two entrances. The front door, of course, and the back door that is right off the kitchen. There are men posted at both doors, with the others walking the perimeter.”

  Jet and his brothers had joined us by the time he was finished. No one spoke, just listened.

  “Paco, you and two of the Hannigans take the front door. Jet, you and Hawk come with me.” They were better shots so I wanted them with me. “The rest of you take out the other men. But be careful where you put a bullet. We don’t know where Scarlett is in the house and I don’t want her hit by a stray.”

  “We will help you,” Volkov informed me as I pulled out three guns and a flashlight. I tucked them into my belt and then grabbed a sawed-off shotgun. This was my favorite because it could put a hole the size of a bowling ball in a man’s chest.

  I wanted to tell him to fuck off. His job was done. I’d found Scarlett. But as he’d said before, there was no way of knowing how many men were in the house. I wouldn’t put her at risk by turning him down. “You and one of your men come with me. The others can go with Paco.”

  I grabbed a box of bullets and started loading. Once everyone was armed, we quietly made our way through the field, keeping to the dark shadows since the moon had come out after it had stopped raining. There were enough trees to keep us out of the line of sight.

  Paco and the other men moved into place first, and we moved toward the house. Santino’s men must have been half asleep, because when I put my gun to the first fucker’s head, he jerked in surprise. I saw a flash of fear and pulled the trigger, watching as his brains hit the side of the house behind him.

  From the front of the house I heard guns going off. Men cursed, some in Italian, others in English, but they didn’t last long. Beside me, Jet put a bullet in a man that came running from the front of the house. The man dropped to his knees and then fell on his face, the life draining out of him as he bled onto the rain-slickened ground.

  Hawk opened the door and entered first, calling an all-clear before the rest of us entered. There were no other men inside, though. Each room we came to was empty. No furniture. Not even any electricity. The house smelled like dank rotten wood, week-old garbage, and stale cigarette smoke. I could hear mice and rats in the walls and walked into a dozen spider webs before we’d even cleared the kitchen.

  Each room we checked, we came up empty. As each minute ticked by, I grew more and more tense. My finger itched to pull the trigger on my gun, to put a hole through something—or preferably through Jr.

  There was only one more room to check. Not wanting to scare her, I stopped Jet and Hawk at the door. “Stay here. I don’t want to startle her.”

  “She might not even be in there,” Hawk told me in a low, rough voice. “Volkov might have gotten it wrong.”

  “I didn’t,” Adrian growled. “She’s here. I swear to you she’s here, Donati. I wouldn’t risk Victoria’s sister like that.”

  I held up my flashlight, shining it in their eyes, shutting them all up. “She’s here.” I could feel her.

  Reaching behind me, I turned the doorknob and stepped back. Keeping my flashlight pointed down, I slowly stepped inside the room. The smells weren’t as bad in here, but the smoke lingered more there than any other room. Trying not to scare her, I lifted the flashlight until I saw the bed.

  Her feet were tied to the corners at the end of the bed. As I shifted the light, I saw that her dress was still on. I’d seen the aftereffect of a girl Jr had raped before. She had been a bloody mess, with her clothes slashed off. He’d destroyed her emotionally as well as physically and the girl had committed suicide while still in the hospital recovering. As far as I could see in the dim lighting, Scarlett hadn’t been sexually assaulted.

  That wouldn’t save Jr from me, but I was thankful all the same.

  “Ciro!” she cried, and I moved closer to the bed, still trying not to scare her. I wanted to fall on my knees then and there and thank God that she was alive, but first I had to get her out of that disgusting place.

  “Is Victoria here?” she demanded, sounding a little unnerved.

  “She’s safe,” I assured her.

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  I was trying to keep the switch to my emotions off, but with each inch of her I revealed that was becoming harder and harder to do. My hands shook, causing the flashlight to flicker across her chest. Her arms were over her head, but it was her face that I couldn’t look away from. Her eyes were bright with pain, and no wonder. Her beautiful face was one big bruise. As I drew closer I could actually see his hand prints on her face.

  “Please put the light down,” she moaned. “I think I have a concussion and it’s making me sick.”

  “Baby…” I dropped the flashlight on the bed and reached for the cable ties that were keeping her hands tied to the headboard. Pulling out my knife, I made quick work of freeing her. A whimper seemed to be torn from her as I slowly lowered her arms to the bed.

  “I might have broken ribs,” she told me in a pained voice and I noticed how shallow her breathing was.

  “Fuck,” I growled. My eyes went back to her face, tracing over each bruise. Her eyes were slightly swollen, but she seemed to be able to see. Her lip was busted, but it had stopped bleeding for the moment. She would need a few stitches.

  The motherfucker had beaten her and it was taking everything inside of me not to hunt him down then and there and tear him apart with my bare hands. I had to take care of Scarlett first. She came first.

  Once her legs were untied, I lifted her into my arms. The pained sounds that left her gutted me. “I’m sorry, baby.” I pressed a kiss to her temple.

  “I have to pee,” she whispered.

  “Okay.” I picked up the flashlight and carried her to the door. “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked the men still standing there, their guns at the ready.

  “It was down the hall,” Jet said as he led the way. “Here.” Opening the door he shined his flashlight inside. “It’s pretty nasty in there though, man.”

  “I’m going to make a mess if I don’t pee soon,” Scarlett moaned.

  “It’s okay. I’ll help you,” I promised and stepped around the biker. With her s
till tucked in my arms, I put the flashlight down on the old sink that looked like it was covered in mold and smelled just as dank as the rest of the house.

  “Put me down,” she urged. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Not if you have a concussion. I’ll help you, baby.” I shifted her in my arms, my fingers sliding under her dress and finding her panties.

  I tried not to think about what I was doing, where I was touching her. Her outer thigh was silky soft, her ass warm and tight as my fingers skimmed over one cheek. It was harder than I ever could have imagined, but I kept a firm hold on myself as I pulled her underwear down and her dress up.

  “Well, this isn’t embarrassing at all,” she muttered.

  I pressed another kiss to her temple, more than a little overwhelmed now that the realization she was alive and actually in my arms was starting to set in. It wasn’t easy, but I held her above the toilet seat and she was able to relieve herself without causing a mess. When she was done I straightened her clothes and carried her back out.

  Jet, Hawk, and Volkov were still standing where I’d left them on the other side of the door. The rest of my men were outside, and we quickly made our way out to them. The clouds had covered up the moon and it was starting to rain again. Paco, the other two MC guys and Volkov’s men were already dealing with the dead bodies.

  “Anyone alive?” Volkov asked as he inspected the fallen men.

  “One’s got a gut wound. He won’t make it another hour,” Colt Hannigan assured him.

  “Good. Let’s see if we can get some information out of him.” The Russian walked over to the fallen man who was slowly bleeding out.

  It would have probably relieved some of my own tension if I helped get information out of the little fucker, but I had more important things to take care of. Scarlett needed a doctor. She was starting to relax against me as the events and her pain caught up to her and she was practically lethargic in my arms. “Paco, stay with Volkov. Keep me informed.”

  “Don’t worry about this shit,” Hawk Hannigan muttered beside me. “You take care of your female. We got your back.”