Owned by the Mafia Bad Boy (Books 1 - 4)

by Raven Dark

  “You were FBI?” Anika. “Why am I not surprised?”

  David barely seemed to hear her and went on. “I don’t know him, but I checked him out. He’s been working for Vincent Ferrara for a number of years by the looks of it. Making witnesses disappear before their court dates and the like.”

  My brows lifted.

  “Remember that waitress who was raped by one of Ferrara’s soldiers a few months ago? Her kid was hiding in a closet and saw the whole thing. Hadler killed them before they could testify, and the scumbag got off.”

  “So he’s a bottom feeder. Good, it’ll make it easier to squeeze him.”

  “No, listen to me.” David shook his head. “Agent Hadler has a few other credentials.”

  I felt an adrenaline rush. “What kind of credentials?”

  “His records say he’s the foremost expert in intense interrogation techniques. Mr. Davros, this isn’t going to be easy. You’re going to have to work to break him, and it’s going to take time.”

  Anika’s face lost even more of its color, and she held her stomach, sitting down on the couch slowly. I went to put my arms around her, and she held up her hand. “I’ll be okay.” She nodded to David and I. “Whatever it takes to protect my dad. And you.”

  I took her hand, unable to ignore the tidal wave of emotion for her that filled me. I kept my face stony and looked at David. “I’ll do it. I’ve seen my father and Dominic make some of the hardest men crack like eggs.”

  “You won’t have a lot of time. It’s only a matter of time before Gavini realizes you were the one who ordered the hit on those men at the dance club.”

  “Wait, dance club?” Anika looked at me, alarmed.

  “I—” I didn’t get a chance to finish. A knock on the hotel suite door cut me off, and I went to answer it.

  A waiter carried in a box about the size of a birthday cake and set it down, having me sign for it with a nod and a smile. When he was gone, I brought it into the room, noticing it was wrapped tight with cellophane.

  “What is that?”

  I shrugged and got a knife, cutting the top of the box open. Why the cellophane?

  Anika stood up and she and David gathered around the coffee table while I opened the box. I glanced inside.

  “Son of a bitch…”

  Anika covered her mouth, her eyes huge. “Oh my God…”

  I only half registered what she said, or David bending down to examine the box and its horrific contents.

  In the center of the box, wrapped in the same cellophane as the outside, Tony ‘The Inferno’s’ severed head stared up at me.

  9

  As soon as I saw what was in the box, my stomach tried to migrate into my throat. David and Kane both came to my side, but I turned and fled to the bathroom before they could say anything.

  The image of the man’s head glaring up at me, face frozen in a dead look of bloodless horror, slashed at my thoughts and I couldn’t shut it out. I emptied my stomach, feeling like someone had punched me right in the gut. I didn’t know the man, or recognize him, but it didn’t matter. The idea of doing such a thing to anyone made me heave all over again.

  That sort of message could only have been from Gavini. It hit me hard just what kind of messed up life Kane lived, and that I was part of it.

  Walking back out of the bathroom on shaky legs, I held up my hands when both Kane and David moved to help me. Both men looked so calm, so collected, humiliation somersaulted through me for being such a wuss. “I’m fine, both of you. Just back off.”

  David went back to the living room, I assumed, to take care of the box. Kane ignored my protests and lifted me into his arms. Sometimes I loved when he took care of me, but in moments like these, it only made me hyperaware of the position he seemed to think I held in his world. I was too fragile, too weak and helpless to handle the violence and the horrors of his life.

  “Kane, just put me down. I don’t need babying.”

  He held me tighter, cradling my knees and my back until he reached the bedroom, where he set me on the bed. Which, as I happened to notice, was as far away from the severed head as he could get me while still being in the suite. A mix of affection for him in his protectiveness, but also anger for the same thing. swirled through me.

  “Just lie there and take it easy. The nausea will pass.” He sat down beside me and I scoffed, rolling off the bed.

  The room spun a little and I hoped he didn’t notice my wobble. I’d felt exactly like this cutting up the mook who’d tried to shoot my dad.

  “Kane, who is he?” I gestured to the living room, where I heard David talking on the phone and saying something about disposal. My stomach lurched.

  “Don’t worry about that right now. As soon as David takes care of that package—”

  “Package?” I hissed, conscious of the patrons in the other rooms who might hear. “Is that what you Mafia guys call severed heads now? Packages?”

  “Anika.” But there was a softness in his voice I wasn’t used to hearing. He started again, overly calm, and somehow the rational tone only made me madder. “After David takes care of that package, I’ll have him drive you as far from here as he can. I have a villa in Mexico—”

  “Mexico?” I gritted out. “You’re going to ship me off now?”

  He knifed to a stand. “I am trying to protect you. Damn it, just—”

  “No. No, don’t do that. I don’t know what you did to piss Gavini off—”

  “What I did?” His voice was a livid, if hushed rumble. He marched around the bed and seized my arm. “That bastard kingpin was extorting me because he thinks I stole from him and fingered his crew for rats. I had to do something.”

  “Oh? And what did you do? How many men did you kill this time?”

  “Don’t make me sound like some monstrous killer, Anika. You think this is easy for me? This is how the family works. I have to make things right. Retaliation is part of my world. If I don’t strike back, I’m the pussy in the next body bag.”

  He didn’t seem to realize he’d released me, and I sighed. The urgency in his words drove the point home hard. He’d only been doing what he had to protect himself and those associated with him. I shuddered. Kane would never admit it, but he was as trapped in his own situation as I was. He’d only done what he had to in order to survive.

  “Okay.” I put my hands up. “Fine. You have to play it tough. I get it. But you don’t get to ship me off and treat me like the little woman. If this has to do with my dad, I’m staying to protect him. I’m staying to help you and David.”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but then a ghost of a smile played with his lips. The shaky expression made him look almost boyish for a moment. Then it disappeared and he crossed the space between us, taking my face in his hands.

  “Look. I just don’t want to see this life destroy you. Once you get in too deep, there is no coming back from it.”

  I took his face the way he held mine and met his eyes. “It’s too late for that. I am with you. I am in this. All the way. The sooner you get that through your boneheaded brain, the better, Davros.”

  He slid his hand around the back of my neck, squeezing just hard enough to imply force. “You never cease to amaze me, angel.”

  “Get used to it.”

  He grinned. “We’ll deal with your calling me a bonehead later, though.”

  “It was worth a little butt hurt, because you were being one.”

  “Oh really? We’ll see about—” He stopped when his phone rang, and pulled it out of his blazer. “Yeah.”

  The caller spoke on the other end and Kane froze, silent. I looked up at him. Adrenaline made my blood rush to my head, watching the masked expression that fell over his face. He released me slowly.

  “Kane? What’s wrong?”

  He put a hand up for me to be quiet, but it looked automatic, like he was operating on some kind of autopilot mode. My throat tightened until I could barely breathe.

  After a long moment, he hung up
, and the phone dropped from his hand to the floor with a thud. His face was completely deadpan. Too stony.

  “Kane?” I rested my hands on his chest. I wasn’t sure if he even saw me or not. “Kane, talk to me. What’s happened?”

  “Dominic. That was Dominic. He knows I was the one who had his men killed. He’s changing the rules.”

  “What do you mean?” Panic started to writhe in me.

  “He said my two weeks are up. He wants me to deliver your father’s head by midnight tomorrow, or he’ll kill you both, and me.”

  There is something that happens to you in this life. At some point, you realize that there’s a cycle of violence, one that, once started, can’t be stopped without your own heart stopping.

  It didn’t matter how hard I tried to avoid becoming a Don, or allowing myself to do the vile things a Don must do to keep his throne. As I’d told Anika, retaliation was necessary, something you learned to do unless you wanted to end up picked apart by the big game predators in the Mafia world. And once you fell into that trap, there was only one way out—in a body bag.

  The truth was, I’d likely fallen into the trap long ago, and with the amount of people I’d had to hurt on my father’s behalf, I have no way of being sure when it had happened. Perhaps I was born into it, the poisons of this life already flowing in my veins before I even entered this world.

  When I was in my early twenties, when David first started working for me, my father had sent me to beat on a man who refused to pay Dominic protection money. I was too young to even realize how odd it was that Dominic wanted me to do it instead of one of his wiseguys. When it was over and I got back in the limo, David told me something I have never forgotten.

  Be careful how deep you let your father or Gavini pull you into their business, young Mr. Davros. They only want to corrupt you, and once you go too deep, there is no getting the blood off your hands again. You will never wash them clean.”

  When exactly had I crossed the line? When had I become someone who killed people on a daily basis just to stay ahead in Dominic’s game? And just how much of a monster would I have to become before it was over?

  My thoughts spun, awareness of the things I might have to do to Agent Hadler suddenly hitting me with a sickening clarity. I hoped the hell he’d cave easily, but if what David said was true, he wouldn’t. Fuck, had torturing people become my life?

  “It’s over.” Anika’s voice drew me out of the tornado of dark thoughts.

  I looked at her just as she swayed. I grabbed her under her arms, pulling her against me. Weird how protecting her gave me a sense of focus. How it restored order to the chaos my world had been thrown into.

  This time, she didn’t fight me when I held her, keeping her standing. “My father. Kane…”

  I held her tighter and lowered her slowly on the bed. I could just imagine what she thought. After seeing The Inferno’s head out there, it would be all too easy for her to imagine what Dominic expected me to do with her dad. Worse, we had only just over twenty-four hours to make Agent Hadler talk. I cradled her head against my chest.

  “I won’t allow any harm to come to either of you, angel. I promise. Everything is going to be okay.”

  She drew back looking at me, shaking. “But I don’t understand. That head is like a declaration of war, right? He wouldn’t want you in his ranks anymore. If Gavini wants us dead, why doesn’t he kill us himself? Why is he still getting you to do it?”

  “Because. It’s nothing for Dominic to put a bullet in your’s or your dad’s head. He wants to break me. Turn me into a monster like him.”

  “What about you? God, Kane, if you don’t kill my father, Gavini will destroy you.”

  “Don’t do that, girl. Don’t worry about me. You can’t do that to yourself.” I pushed her thick, soft curls back from her face.

  “But if Gavini is declaring war on you, won’t he tell the other families?”

  Shit, I could feel the panic, the worry for me radiating off her. I couldn’t help smiling a little at her protectiveness. “Is that concern for me I hear, angel?”

  “Kane.”

  I closed her hands in mine. “Dominic may know it was me who took his men out, but there’s a difference between knowing something and being able to prove it. He doesn’t have any real proof. If he did, there’d be bullets flying at our heads right now.”

  Her shoulders dropped in relief.

  “Look, we have that agent now. He’s the key. All we have to do is get him to tell us who the rat is, and we’ve got Dominic where we want him.”

  “But what if you can’t make him crack? What if he won’t talk? What will you have to do to him?”

  I closed my eyes, pulled her close and rested my chin on her head, lest she see the guilt tearing through me. “Don’t worry about that. Let me handle it.”

  “But you can’t… What if you have to…” She sighed. “God, what is this life turning you into? How do you stay sane?”

  “By remembering why we do it. Remembering who and what you’re fighting for.” I drew a long breath and released her, getting to my feet. “We need to focus on Agent Handler. I’ll cancel dinner with my father, or at least put it off for a few days until we deal with Dominic.”

  “No!” She stood with me. “Don’t cancel. Don’t.”

  I gave a bitter laugh. “We have until midnight Thursday—that’s tonight and all of tomorrow—before I’ll have to either kill your father, or find someway to blackmail Dominic. Interrogations like this can take hours, even days. The last thing we need to be doing is sitting around a table eating lobster and playing a game of Whose Dick’s Bigger? with my dad.”

  “But, would your father know about what’s been going on with Gavini?”

  “Probably. He always seems to find out. He’d be glad I killed those men. With him, it’s all about who’s on top.”

  “Then the safest bet is to go ahead with dinner and have someone else interrogate Agent Hadler while we’re at your dad’s, if he doesn’t crack before. From what you told me about Daddy Dearest, you shouldn’t be protective of my father or me enough to strong arm an agent. He can’t know. We need to behave as if nothing is wrong, and the most important thing tomorrow night is dinner with the parents.”

  I dropped my shoulders. She was right. I hated feeling like I was capitulating to my father by putting something like this interrogation onto someone else when I knew I should be doing it, but we had no choice. Besides, if things got ugly with Dominic, I’d need my father and all of his connections on my side. I couldn’t afford to alienate him now. I was about to agree when I heard David come back into the suite. A moment later, he was at the door to the bedroom, just as we were coming out.

  “The package is gone, sir.”

  I nodded, resisting the urge to ask him who he’d called and where the “package” would end up. David had his secrets and I had mine, that’s just the way it was. I hadn’t been close to Tony, hadn’t even really known him well, but Dominic killing him had still made it all the easier to do what I had to in order to nail him to the wall. I turned to Anika.

  “All right. Dinner goes ahead tomorrow as planned. But I’ll have to hire someone to start the interrogation. It can’t wait.”

  She nodded, remarkably, her cheeks only turning a little pallid. “We’ll have to find somewhere to put my dad until Gavini is dealt with.”

  “Agreed. There are a few private facilities I know of—”

  “Wait a minute, Mr. Davros.”

  I looked at David.

  “Let me handle Hadler. The fewer people involved in this the better, and I know how to get to him.”

  “David, no. I don’t want you risking anymore than you already have for me.”

  “Nonsense, sir. I know what I signed on for when I became your employee, even if you didn’t. I’m all in, sir.”

  He and Anika exchanged a look of respect and understanding. An unfamiliar warmth spread through me, realizing what I had right then, that both of them had
given me more than I would ever deserve. I clapped David on the shoulder and kissed Anika hard on the lips.

  I had no idea how I’d ended up with these two on my side, but I’d spend the rest of my life making it up to both of them.

  The next day arrived all too soon. The limousine ride across town to Victor Davros’ huge New York mansion seemed at once too long, and yet far, far too short. Kane’s father apparently wanted us there by late afternoon. I tried not to think too hard about how much time that gave his family to rip me apart even before dinner started.

  Throughout the day, I tried repeatedly to tell myself a few hours with Kane’s parents and his fiancée couldn’t be half as bad as I feared. Things were always far worse in your head than they ever turned out to be in real life. I tried to shut out the thought of what Kane’s father might say to me, but that only caused me to think about what might be happening to Agent Hadler.

  Late last night, Kane had sent my father on his private jet to some secluded private medical facility in Bel Air, one secreted away enough that he was sure the Gavinis would never find him. By the time my dad’s hospital gurney was wheeled into the cabin of the jumbo jet, it was just after midnight. We had less than twenty-four hours to save him. My stomach churned.

  My dad tried to ask a lot of questions, giving Kane the usual stink eye, certain he’d done something evil to make it necessary to speed him off somewhere, but I’d kissed him and hugged him until he stopped.

  “We’ll be out to see you in a couple of days, Daddy. Everything’s going to be fine, you’ll see.” For some reason my eyes stung and I hugged him tighter. It didn’t matter who the hell my real dad was, no one would ever replace him.

  As soon as I pulled back, he scowled at Kane who stood beside the gurney with me. “If this is some sick way of getting rid of me so you can have your way with my daughter, Davros, I’ll have your head.”

  Kane’s smile was pure evil. “Why would I have to do that? I already had—”

  “Kane!” My dad had chosen that moment to try to leap up off the bed at him, and I shoved him down, at the same time putting my hand out to keep Kane back. “Both of you, stop it. I’ll be fine. We all will, as long as you two don’t try to kill each other.”