by Kiera Silver
She nodded, encouraged by his assessment agreeing with her impressions, even as it added to her worry. “I don’t think I do either. I’m still pretty new to all this, but my instincts were screaming at me to get away from him.”
“Follow your instincts, and they usually won’t steer you wrong,” said Isaac.
At that moment, the limousine drew up, and Jake and Isaac led her from the coffee shop, both looking around carefully. Jake opened the door for her and handed her in, about the slide in himself when the car accelerated from the curb and raced off. Still without a seatbelt, she tumbled to the floor as the door swung wildly back and forth, not having been closed. A second later, Baker collided with a newspaper stand, which closed the door, but still left her sprawled on the floorboard.
Her eyes fell on a pair of shoes, and she slowly followed the tailored slacks upward, past knees, to mid-chest, recognizing the lime-green tie she had seen just a few minutes before. With a deep breath, she looked into the dark eyes of Gio Peretti. He offered her a hand up, but she disdained it as she slowly slid backward before pushing up and making her way to the bench across from his.
The car was driving erratically still, and she belted herself in reluctantly, deciding it was better to take a moment to have to fumble with the release if the chance to escape arose than risk being injured in a car accident that seemed inevitable from Baker’s poor driving. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
“As I’m sure you figured out by now, Baker works for me.”
Her heart jumped in her throat, and she swallowed thickly. “And my bodyguard, Scott?”
He smirked. “Let’s just say he wasn’t amenable to calling in sick for the day, so he had to take a little vacation.”
She scowled at him. “What does that mean? Are you holding him somewhere?”
He laughed softly. “Yes. I’ll release him when our business concludes.”
“I still don’t understand what’s going on here. Do you want a war with the Irish mafia? You’re going out of the bounds of all the rules with this maneuver, Peretti.” She spoke with an authority she didn’t actually feel, simply guessing that was how it worked. Having Patrick’s name should have protected her from all of his known associates and enemies. The only thing that would be accomplished by kidnapping her was to start a war, and she couldn’t fathom why the Italians wanted to go to war with the Irish.
“I’m aware, but let’s just say I have an old debt to settle.”
“What kind of debt?” she asked cautiously.
“A debt with Howard Welsh that I never got resolved to my satisfaction. In our world, babe, you inherit the sins of the father, and your father’s sins were heinous.”
She shook her head, wanting to deny his words. “He was an imperfect man, and I know he was a criminal, but what did he do? More importantly, why is it my crime to inherit? I haven’t done anything to you.”
“That’s just our way, Lauren.”
“Mrs. Murphy,” she snapped at him. It was an ineffectual defense, but she didn’t like the way he spoke her first name. Plus, it couldn’t hurt to remind him a few hundred times that she was Patrick’s wife, and under Patrick’s protection. Briefly, she thought about mentioning the baby she was almost certain was growing inside her, but held back the urge. She sensed Gio Peretti wouldn’t give a damn about such things.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“We can have some fun.” His chilling smile left no doubt that all the fun would be on his side, not hers.
Chapter Ten
They were in some kind of warehouse, of that much she was certain. They had drawn up outside a large building in an industrial area, though she hadn’t gotten much of a chance to look around until they’d come inside it. The large walls and cavernous feel to the area, coupled with the cement floors and the coolness in the dim room, led her to that conclusion. There was an empty, vacant sensation in the atmosphere, which made her more fearful. It seemed like it was just her and Gio.
She shifted in the office chair to which she was tied, hating the way her back twinged. He had hit her pretty hard when he’d tried to drag her from the car, and she had fought him. The punch had landed solidly in her lower back, sending her sprawling to the gravel outside the large building. He’d left her there for a second before bending down to jerk her to her feet and practically drag her the last steps into the building. After that, he had shoved her in this chair and tied her to it before disappearing.
She was frantically tugging at the plastic zip ties binding her forearms to the chair arms, but was having no luck. All her frantic motions seemed to do was make the restraints dig into her skin, and she knew she’d have to stop before she cut off circulation. The same applied to her ankles, both bound to the post underneath the chair, her feet positioned neatly on the footrest. It was all very posed and precise, and she learned why a moment later when Gio returned with a camera. It was a camcorder, and he pointed it straight at her.
“Say hello for the camera, Lauren Welsh.”
“Murphy,” she insisted, glaring at him, or at least at the camera lens. “Release me at once.”
He let out a chuckle of amusement that reverberated around them in the abandoned warehouse. “Aren’t you just queen of the underworld? You’ve gotten comfortable with your new role, I see, but your new position doesn’t usurp the debts owed.”
She shook her head. “What did my father do?”
The camera lowered, Gio clearly having grown bored with the game for a moment, or perhaps too angry to worry about filming it. He stepped toward her, bending down near the chair and grabbing a handful of her dark-blonde curls, jerking her head backward as far as the chair allowed to look into her eyes. “Your father kidnapped and murdered my mother. It’s the whole reason Murphy put a bullet through his brain, and it’s the reason you’re sitting here right now awaiting a similar fate.”
She gasped at the revelation, paralyzed for an instant. Of all the information suddenly whirling through her brain, the fact that stood out the most was Murphy put a bullet in his brain. Lauren shook her head, desperate to deny what he was claiming. “Patrick wouldn’t do that.”
He arched her brow. “Patrick? What the fuck? I just told you your father murdered my mother, and you’re worried about Patrick?” A second later, his expression lightened, and he seemed terribly amused.
“Oh, I see. I guess your darling husband didn’t bother to tell you he was the one who killed your father? It was his man who stepped over the line, so it was his problem to deal with. That was to keep the peace, but nobody asked me for my input. They should’ve turned that fucker over to me to be tortured and murdered for what he did to my mother.”
Emotions whirled through her, and she couldn’t clearly define any of them, but knew they were a mix of rage, fear, sadness, and disbelief. Had Patrick really been the one to kill her father, or was the claim simply more of Gio’s torture game? She wanted to believe that, but the other man’s words made an odd sort of sense. If her father had done something against the Perettis, something Patrick hadn’t sanctioned, then Patrick would have been the one to deal with him when he went rogue.
Sadness was blotting out the rest, but anger was giving it a run for its money. She was suddenly blindingly angry with Patrick that he hadn’t bothered to tell her the truth before taking her to bed, putting his ring on her finger, or giving her his name. Or giving her a baby, she thought with a small pang in her stomach, for a second hoping she hadn’t conceived his child.
She snorted aloud, remembering the punishment he’d given her for lying. He had some gall, considering he’d been lying to her this whole time, and her fib was nothing compared to the secret he’d kept from her.
She hated him almost as much as she loved him. Tears flooded her eyes, and she blinked them back as she struggled not to show her weakness in front of the man still hovering beside her, kneeling down and looking at her avidly, as though memorizing each change of her expression with g
lee and anticipation. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” He said it with a sneer, clearly not apologizing at all for being the one to tell her the truth about her husband’s involvement in her father’s death.
He stiffened and stood up at the low sound of footsteps approaching, growing louder as they got closer, interspersed with a thump every other step. She was unsurprised to see Sal Peretti emerge from the shadows, his cold eyes raking over her with satisfaction. “Well done, nephew.” Sal strolled closer, not bending down. Instead, he chose to loom over her. “I wanted to do it the old way, take you out with a hit, perhaps bomb your car, but Gio persuaded me it could be done with less fuss, maybe even no bloodshed.”
She tried to jerk away when his hand cupped her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes, which showed no spark of emotion besides anger.
“No bloodshed except yours, of course. You have to pay for what happened to my darling niece.”
She wrenched away from his hold, mainly because he let her rather than because she’d found enough strength to do so on her own. She glared up at him. “I still don’t see any proof that he did it, but even if he did, it’s not my fault. You need to let it go.”
Sal scowled fiercely at her. “I should just let it go that your father kidnapped Alessandra, stealing her from her family and leaving this boy without either parent?” He clapped his nephew on the shoulder, though there was no true paternal warmth in his expression. He was still watching with the gaze of a hawk, ready to pounce on prey.
She had to fight the urge to hyperventilate, taking slow and steady breaths that in no way eased the urge to panic. “Just take me home, and I’ll persuade Patrick to forget this whole thing. This doesn’t have to end with some kind of war between both families.”
The sting of Sal’s hand colliding with her cheek made her whimper before she smothered the sound.
“This war has been going on since before you were born. It was only in a temporary cease-fire for the past five years, but we’ve waited, marking the time until revenge belonged to us again. Your father took Alessandra, and she was killed in the attempt to rescue her. That demands retribution.”
“Patrick already took care of that.” She hated to accept it, to believe it was true, but much as she wanted to, she couldn’t bring herself to doubt the man she loved had been the one to take her father from her. He would have done so to avoid a turf war and escalation in bloodshed, but it didn’t make it any easier knowing he had killed his friend, taking away her father. Even worse, he had hidden it from her, allowing her to build a life with him without knowing all the facts.
Something teased the back of her mind, and she looked up at Peretti with a frown. “What did you say her name was?”
“Alessandra. She was my favorite sister’s daughter, and Helena died giving birth to her. She was like my own child, so there will be revenge. You can’t talk your way out of this.”
She shook her head, knowing she wouldn’t get through the blazing hatred on the old man’s face. In desperation, she turned her attention to Gio. “Did people ever call your mother Alessa?”
He froze before nodding stiffly. “How did you know about her nickname? It was only for the family.”
“For the family and her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s daughter.” She closed her eyes, forcing her brain to conjure an image of the woman her father had introduced her to shortly before his death. She could still visualize the love between them, though she’d only been seventeen and inexperienced with the emotion herself. The closest she had come had been a strong case of hero-worship for her father’s friend, Patrick.
Still, she had seen the way they’d looked at each other, and she’d been expecting Alessa to become her stepmother. When she opened her eyes, she saw Gio’s confusion. “I don’t know the whole story, but shortly before my father was murdered, he introduced me to a woman about whom he cared very much. Her name was Alessa. She had long dark hair, and I think she had your eyes, Gio.” It was difficult to tell, since they both had dark eyes, from what she could remember, but it sounded like a good line. It was a way to connect with the other man, she hoped.
He scowled, his confusion clear now. “I don’t understand. Are you claiming my mother knew your father before he kidnapped her?”
Lauren lifted her shoulders as much as the ties would allow. “I don’t know the circumstances, as I said, but I did know Alessa. It seemed obvious to me they were in love, and she even mentioned having a son who was away at college. That must have been you?”
Gio’s eyes darted from her to Sal. “I was away at school when she was murdered, Uncle Sal.”
Sal nodded, his expression betraying nothing. “It’s all very convenient though, isn’t it?” He looked at his nephew before glaring at her again. “The whore has no proof.”
There was something definitely going on, something of which she remained ignorant. It seemed obvious to her that Sal had some kind of agenda, one he didn’t want to share with Gio. Once again, she focused on the younger man. “Why would my father kidnap the woman he loved? I don’t understand that.”
Gio seemed less certain, rocking back on his heels as he stared down at her. “It doesn’t make sense. From what I heard, he kidnapped my mother and held her for ransom. Uncle Sal found their location, and he tried to rescue my mother, but she was killed in the crossfire.”
“And was Patrick there with you, Sal?”
Sal nodded abruptly. “I had to let him know his man had gone against our truce, kidnapping my niece for profit.”
Lauren took a deep breath as she prepared herself to utter a theory that probably wouldn’t be greeted well by either man. “Is it possible she wasn’t kidnapped? Could she have just been with my father voluntarily?”
Sal scowled. “That’s impossible. Alessandra had an arranged marriage waiting for her, and she knew it would cement ties with another family in Sicily. The Santos don was generously willing to accept a widow instead of a pure young woman for a wife.”
She arched her brow. “Was she expected to relocate to Sicily?”
Sal lifted a shoulder. “Of course. The wife goes where the husband is.”
She glanced at Gio again, catching his gaze this time. “Is it possibly your mother didn’t want to go? Might she have had an American lover that she wanted to stay with? Could she have run away rather than been kidnapped? Do you think you might have wrongly assumed she was abducted?”
Sal slapped her again, as hard as he could. Blood flooded her mouth, and tears stung her eyes as she glared up at the hateful old man. “You can hit me all you want, but you can’t hit the truth. You have to at least entertain the idea that maybe you misjudged the situation. Maybe they were in love, and you got your niece killed for no reason, and my father was murdered by his friend for loving the wrong woman.”
Sal shook his head, his lips clamped in a straight line as he glared down at her. “Lies. She was a good girl. She wouldn’t have done that to her family.”
“What about the ransom demands? How did they come? What did he ask for?”
Gio stiffened beside his uncle, looking at the older man. “How did that play out, Uncle? I don’t think I ever heard that part of the story.”
Sal’s posture was rigid. “He didn’t have her long enough to make his ransom demands. We found her too fast for him to do that. There was a tracking device in her locket, and my men tracked her down. If we hadn’t moved so quickly, it would have been only a matter of time until the ransom demands came in.”
She closed her eyes, dragging in a ragged breath as his words seemed to absolve her dad of the accusations. In a way, that was so much worse, since Patrick had murdered her father to placate this ignorant old man, essentially having tried and convicted him without even a cursory trial. She didn’t know how justice worked in their world, but it was clearly fucked up.
Gio cursed softly and began to pace. “Uncle Sal, we’ve just started a blood war, and it looks lik
e for no damn good reason.”
Sal turned on his grandson, stabbing a vicious finger in his direction. “There’s plenty of reason. Even if she’s right, that Irish scum had no right to put his hands on my niece. No right to steal her away from her family and turn her head from her duty. If he seduced her, he still betrayed the Perettis, just as she did.
“There was a great deal at stake with the joining of the Peretti and Santos families. It would have meant the last of this tenuous truce we must endure. We would’ve finally had enough numbers to wipe out the Irish and drive back the Russians. So don’t tell me it was for no reason. The cunt is going to die, and things are going to resolve how they were supposed to.”
In a fast motion that belied his age, Sal pulled his pistol from his holster and pointed it at her, though he wasn’t looking in her direction. “So what will it be, Gio? Should I kill her, or do you want the honor? After all, her father dishonored your mother, whether it was with her cooperation or not. We deserve revenge.”
Gio looked at her, his gaze assessing. There was anger blazing there, but she was strangely not afraid of him. Could it be the anger was directed at his uncle rather than her?
Her lack of fear gave way to pure terror when Gio also drew a sidearm from the holster at his waist. With the weapon pointed precisely at her, she couldn’t help but be afraid. She had misjudged the object of his anger. They were clearly beyond reason, determined to deny there could be another solution or explanation for what had happened to Alessa.
She closed her eyes, resisting the urge to beg for her baby’s life, mainly because she knew it wouldn’t sway them. She couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes as one of them cocked his pistol, presumably Gio. She didn’t want to know who was going to kill her, or from where it was coming. She just wanted it to be over.
In a way, it might be for the best, because she wouldn’t have to face Patrick again and process his betrayal. He’d killed her father, and then he had hidden that from her. How could she ever forgive her husband for that?