by Ali Parker
I hated sitting on anything cold. Whenever I did, my next period became so much worse. It had something to do with the cold.
Thinking about my period made me suddenly panic. My period was set to start soon, wasn’t it? What was I going to do if it started and I was still here? I counted the days since my last period. It was ridiculous that I had been kidnapped and what worried me was when my period would start, but it was something to fuss about. I had had so much fear over the last half hour that I had tripped out. I could only run on adrenaline for so long.
I leaned my head carefully against the wall behind me and closed my eyes. I was pretty sure Burly over there would stay put. If he’d wanted to do something, he would have done it already.
At least, that was what I hoped.
Hopefully, whatever Victor had been talking about would be resolved soon so I could go home. I wanted to go home. I was cold and scared, and Victor looked like he loved to spill blood.
Who had cut me? I glanced at Burly. He was still just standing there, but his eyes were on the opposite wall, now. He was in thought. Turned out the big guy had a brain if that was the case.
My mind wandered back to what was going on. I had no idea how I was leverage in this picture, but I hated it. These guys could kill me.
The moment I thought about it, my stomach dropped. What if they did? What if they ended up killing me? I had heard stories about kidnappers getting their ransom money and still killing their victims. Was I going to be one of those? A story in the news, a statistic? I couldn’t imagine what my parents would go through.
And Jerrod, God, we hadn’t spoken. What if I died and never had a chance to fix things with him?
I suddenly wanted to cry. The idea that I wouldn’t be able to reconcile with my brother seemed worse than everything else. I had been strong since I’d been kidnapped, but I was tired, my courage wearing off. Tears rolled over my cheeks, burning the cut. I dabbed at it with the hem of my shirt, careful not to hurt myself.
Burly glanced over at me. His face was carefully blank. If he felt sorry for me, he didn’t show it. I doubted that he cared at all. You didn’t work with a man like Victor when you had compassion or sympathy in your bones.
My head ached, and the pain only got worse. I closed my eyes and lay down on the concrete floor. It was freezing but staying upright made me feel sick. It was definitely a concussion. I ran through all the medication I administered every day. I listed what I would have given myself if I was a patient. For the concussion. For the cut. For the trauma.
That kept me busy. In my mind, I treated myself as if I were a patient in my ICU ward and it grounded me, made me feel a little more stable.
Chapter 49
Ben
The Rat & Parrot was a shitty hole-in-the-ground kind of pub in a bad neighborhood that I would never have gone to if my hand hadn’t been forced. The lighting was low, but it wasn’t for ambiance. When I stepped in through the doors, everyone looked at me. It was clear I was far from home. I was glad I hadn’t put on a suit, which I had considered for this meeting.
Then again, Victor Brantley was nothing more than a piece of shit at the bottom of my shoe, as far as I was concerned. He hadn’t deserved a suit. And judging by his meeting spot of choice, I had been right. No one who kidnapped and killed people was worth respect, in my humble opinion.
I had no idea where to find the guy. I had hoped he would stick out to me, but everyone in this joint looked like they had crawled out of the gutter. That had been the plan. At least half of the guys in the bar were people I’d paid to be there. Money could talk all kinds of languages.
Someone at the bar lifted a hand in a wave to me. A pair of hauntingly dark eyes rested on my face. The guy was tall and skinny, with long fingers wrapped around a black bottle without a label on it. He brought the bottle to his lips and drank without breaking eye contact with me. Two men stood on either side of him. They were almost as tall as he was and three times as wide. It wasn’t hard to spot bodyguards, no matter how hard they were trying to blend in. I wondered if there were more of them around.
Not that it mattered. I had brought more than enough muscle myself. Two could play at this game. Or ten, as the case was.
Party time.
“Victor,” I said, walking to tall-dark-and-ugly.
“You see? I knew you were a smart man.”
Cue the condescension.
“I’m going to make this very simple,” I said. “Tell me where she is, and no one gets hurt.”
Victor laughed, and that raspy voice was the one I’d heard over the phone. He’d fucking hurt Mila, and I wasn’t in the mood to play games.
“You walk in here and start calling shots like you’re in charge. I admire courage, I can say that much.”
“You heard what I said. I’m not going to tell you again,” I said.
Victor laughed and looked at his two bodyguards.
“Can you believe this guy? And here I thought this was going to be the kind of meeting where you wet yourself, and I would go back home and tell the boys what a pussy you were. You surprise me, Atwood. You’re a lot stronger than your father ever was.”
I was a little irritated that he brought up my father, but my dad had done all sorts of bad things, apparently.
“And that business partner of his, he screamed like a girl all the way to his grave.”
When he talked about Uncle Dean, I saw red. How fucking dare he! Uncle Dean had done nothing wrong. He hadn’t known about the money or the deals or anything. He had died purely because he’d been associated with my dad, and his death still stung.
Instead of attacking Victor where he stood, I held back. I was sure his bodyguards weren’t going to let me get close to him. I took a deep breath and swallowed my rage.
“What do you want?” I asked. The point was to play along. It was why I had come. To get angry wasn’t going to make any difference.
“I want you to pay.”
“I’ll give you everything,” I said. Mila was worth so much more than every single penny I had in the bank and in the business. “I’ll pay it all and shut down the business.”
Victor laughed and shook his head. “So eager. At least you’re cooperating, now. I was worried you were going to do something stupid.”
God, this guy knew how to rub me the wrong way. He had to have some serious leverage to be this arrogant when he was built like a twig, with a face ugly as sin. I imagined he was the type that was bullied at school because he was so weird.
“I said I want you to pay, but I don’t mean money. I want you and your pretty little woman to pay for what your dad did.”
“Come on, Victor. Just because you got fired? I think this is a bit extreme.”
Victor barked a laugh that was both amused and surprised.
“You think this is about getting fired? He really didn’t tell you anything, did he?”
I shook my head. “My dad and I weren’t close.”
“I can see the lack of his influence in who you are,” Victor said. I wasn’t sure if it was an insult or compliment.
Victor drank more from that black bottle. I wondered what was in there. When he lifted his hand, I noticed cuts around his thumb, curved toward each other. As if it had been caught in something.
“It’s so much more complicated than just getting fired. I worked with your dad as his advisor.”
Without Uncle Dean knowing? Or had he been involved, too?
“I was the contact point between your father and Donny Pirelli. We all worked together. Your dad was deep into the criminal world. We did jobs together on a regular basis, and as payment, your dad agreed to give us a big cut every month. Instead of doing that, he stole our ideas, branched out on his own and refused to pay the cash. When we confronted him, he cut me out of the business.”
I was shocked. Not only had my dad been a criminal, he had also been a dick. It was a lot to come to terms with. I had always seen my dad as some kind of hero. Sure, he’d left mom
and me behind, but he’d gone to the big city and created an empire. I had seen him as a king of sorts.
Now, it turned out it had all been a lie. My hero had feet of clay.
“You look shocked,” Victor said.
“My father and I weren’t close,” I reminded him. “He left my mom and me when I was very young, and I hardly saw him. My dad and stepmom were a bit of a legend in my life, but I had no idea who he was.”
Victor pulled up one shoulder, leaning on the bar with his other elbow.
“What I don’t understand is what you want from me,” I said. “I told you I would give you everything I have to make it right. My dad fucked up, but I don’t get why you want Mila and me to pay for his mistakes.”
Victor shrugged again. “Because I can do whatever the fuck I want. And I want this.”
As simple as that? The guy was one step down from being the Top Dog in the mafia. And judging by what he’d told me about my dad, he had been the Top Dog in the company for a long time. He had delusions of grandeur.
“Make me pay, by all means,” I said. “Take it all out on me, take everything I have. But let Mila go. She has nothing to do with this, and she doesn’t deserve it.”
“That’s the thing about life,” Victor said, turning with his back to the bar and leaning both elbows behind him. “It doesn’t matter who’s involved in this, there will always be collateral damage.”
“Like my stepmom? And Uncle Dean?”
Victor barked a laugh. “Uncle. Isn’t that cute? We all risk something by being involved with someone.”
I thought about Mila. She had risked a lot to be with me. Jerrod, and now her life.
“Sometimes, shit happens.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. I was getting angry again. I’d just about had enough of Victor and his games. “Shit does happen, but you’re making it happen.”
“What can I say?” Victor said with a smirk. “I’m not the good guy.”
Victor had been a bad guy for a long time, I could tell. But since the moment he’d hurt Mila, he’d become my target. He just didn’t know it yet.
“I’m going to say what I said when I came in,” I said. “I’ve heard your story, and I’m not impressed. So, tell me where Mila is, and no one gets hurt.”
Victor shook his head with a half-smile. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to do here, Ben,” he said. “You don’t seem to understand how this works. I’m the one calling the shots. If you don’t do as I say, Mila dies. It’s all really very simple.”
“I don’t think so,” I said and waved my hand.
Two men jumped up on either side of the bodyguards and wrestled them down to the ground. Victor hadn’t expected that. I had hired some muscle of my own. The bodyguards tried to fight back, but my men had guns, and the guards couldn’t fight or go for their own weapons before they each had a muzzle against the temple.
Behind me, there was a scuffle. Some of the guys sitting down had been with Victor’s party. And the rest had been a part of mine. When the bodyguards had been jumped, Victor’s men had jumped up to help, but my men were all trained in special combat, and I had made sure they each had the guns they wanted. I didn’t believe in bloodshed, but if it came down to it, they wouldn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done.
Victor’s guys realized they were outnumbered and put their hands up. Every man in the room that didn’t belong to me had a gun against his head.
Victor’s eyes were wide, rolling around as he took in the damage that had been done.
“I underestimated you,” he said.
It was the only reason I had the upper hand right now. Victor hadn’t brought enough manpower to stand up against mine because he’d thought I would come alone.
When he had called me, I had made a few calls of my own, and I had made sure that everyone in the bar was either on his side or mine. And I had made sure there were enough of us to win. I may not have been in this underworld the way my dad had been, but money talked a big talk, and I had made it happen. I’d paid each of them up front, more money than they had ever made. Money could buy loyalty if it was only for a night.
“What are you going to do?” Victor asked.
I reached behind me and pulled a gun from the back of my pants. Victor grinned.
“I should have patted you down,” he said.
“You should have done a lot of things.” I pointed the gun in his face, only inches away. Victor swallowed hard, his Adam ’s apple bobbing up and down.
“You wouldn’t do it,” Victor said.
“Maybe not. But you have Mila, and you killed people I care about. Who knows how short my fuse is?”
“You don’t have the guts.”
I knew what he was doing. He was trying to psych me out of it. I put the gun up.
“You’re right, I wouldn’t do it. But every single one of these men will. I’ve paid them more than enough, and they have kills to their name. Each and every one of them.”
Victor swallowed again. He knew he had been beaten. I wasn’t just some city boy that he could fuck with. He had pushed me past my limits when he had taken Mila. I didn’t want anyone to die here, tonight. I still believed in saving lives rather than taking them, and I would never be one to pull the trigger. But I was past the point of thinking about what the right thing was if someone else pulled a trigger.
“Tell me where she is,” I said in a steady voice. In a movie, this would have been where I would cock the gun. But modern guns didn’t need to be cocked. It would have been amazing, though.
Victor sighed, and I recognized defeat. He reached for his phone.
“Slowly,” I said. Victor held up one hand and took the phone out with his other.
“I’m just sending you the location.” He pressed a few buttons, and my phone beeped a moment later. I took it out and glanced at the screen.
“I’m going to get her, now. My boys are going to stay here with you until I let them know she’s safe. If I find out she’s not here, or something’s already happened to her, you’re not walking out of this pub.”
I turned around, putting the gun back in my pants. My men stayed behind as I’d ordered them to do, watching Victor while I went to save Mila. I would probably need more muscle, but the men at the pub weren’t the only men I’d hired.
Chapter 50
Mila
I didn’t know how long I’d been in this basement, but I felt like it had been forever. I was getting weaker and weaker, and I was getting worried about the cut on my cheek. If it stayed untreated for much longer, it was going to create a scar, and I didn’t want to walk around with a reminder of what had happened to me on my face for the rest of my life.
If I even made it out of here. It wouldn’t matter if there was a scar on my face if I was dead.
No. I wouldn’t think like that. I had to stay positive that I would get out of here, that I would be able to look back on this, years from now and say, “I escaped.”
I hadn’t eaten since I’d arrived. They’d brought me food once, but it hadn’t exactly been edible. After a while, when I hadn’t eaten it, they’d taken it away. And that had been it.
My stomach rumbled as if to agree with what I was thinking.
I was still on the floor, shivering from the cold and uncomfortable. Every now and then I got up and walked in small circles, stretching and moving around so that my body wouldn’t be totally locked up if I did have the chance to escape.
The problem was that there would be no chance. They hadn’t taken me out of the basement once. There was a small bathroom off the left that I hadn’t noticed before, but it also didn’t have any windows. Only a toilet and a basin. Not even a shower.
Burly was back in his spot at the door, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes resting on me as if watching me was all that defined him. They had switched the guards three times already, every time with another big, bad guy with no expression and a seemingly limited vocabulary. They didn’t respond when I talked to
them, didn’t seem to care if I cried. It was like they weren’t even there.
If I tried to get out, they would probably do something.
Victor hadn’t come back to the basement once I had bitten him. I wondered where he was, what he was doing. Was he out making deals with my life? Or had he forgotten about me completely?
Shouts sounded upstairs. Burly looked up, unfolded his arms and widened his stance. Gunshots followed and then what sounded like a scuffle broke out.
“Fuck,” Burly said, the only word I had heard him use in total. He ran to the door, yanked it open and slammed it behind him again. For two seconds I had hope that he would forget to lock it. The moment I thought it the lock clicked into place. I could cry.
I heard him barrel up the stairs.
More gunshots sounded, more shouts. It sounded like war up there. What was going on?
Footsteps came down to the basement. More than one pair. Shouts followed. I cowered against the wall. I had no idea what was going on, but I doubted I was going to be safe in any of this.
Someone threw their full weight against the door. It didn’t budge.
“Stand back! Clear the door!” I heard someone shout.
I rolled to the side out of the line of the door completely, just in case they had meant me.
Shots fired, and the lock of the door ripped out of the wood. A big guy with hair shaved short and a gun opened the door and held it for someone else. And Ben walked through.
“Jesus, Mila,” Ben said, hurrying to me.
“Ben?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it was him. “What are you doing here?”
He chuckled through the worried look on his face. His eyes were on my cut, his fingers tentatively on my jaw.
“I’m here to get you, sweetheart.”
I shook my head. Tears burned my eyes.
“I didn’t think you were going to come,” I whispered. “You left.”