“I understand that, but I feel it's necessary,” I said. “No offense, Mr. Drucker, but when this college can't even stop a psycho killer like Vincent Drake from harassing me through the official email channels, I'm having trouble putting my focus where I should have it. Drake violated my safe space, and the college has not done a lot to help restore that. Until he's caught, I'd prefer to not put myself under that sort of unwanted pressure. It triggers me too much.”
I couldn't believe the sort of bullshit streaming out of my mouth, and even Daniel's lips twitched in a fraction of a smile before he reassumed his stoic demeanor. I mean, I'm the daughter of a Mafia family, and here I was talking about triggers and safe spaces? What next, a little diatribe about micro aggressions? Still, it was the language that these type of people spoke, and it got through to him with the minimum of explanation.
“I see,” Drucker repeated. He sighed and turned to his computer. “Well, it says here that your tuition is fully self-funded—no significant scholarships or grants that require you to do extra paperwork—so this shouldn't take too long. Let me print out the proper forms for your signature, and we should have you on your way. Just a minute.”
Drucker tapped at his keyboard, then got up. He had to squeeze past Daniel, who scooted over to let him by, closing the door behind him. As soon as we were alone, Daniel broke down, chuckling under his breath. “Safe spaces? Triggers?”
I smiled back. “Hey, not everyone can pull off the intimidating badass look and get things done like you can. I try it, and I just come off as a bitch that people don't want to work with. No thanks.”
Drucker came back a few seconds later with a small stack of papers in his hands, which he quickly stapled together. I couldn't help but reflect humorously on the fact that he had a red Swingline stapler on his desk. It's the sort of little thing that makes me laugh. “Okay, Miss Bertoli, I'm going to need you to sign in three places,” Drucker said, taking a pen out of his desk and starting to point at the front page of the documents. “This one says that . . .”
“Mr. Drucker, can we speed this up?” I said, pretending to be scared. It wasn't that hard, once I tried. “The more time I'm on campus, the less safe I feel.”
He chewed his lip for a second, then nodded. He flipped to the third page. “Okay. This one says you understand you are taking time off, and that you will get no credit for the classes you are dropping this semester.”
I signed, and he flipped more. “This one says that you understand that when you come back, you will have retained your credits, but nothing more. You will have to start right back where you were at the beginning of this semester. Miss Bertoli, again, are you sure? Picking up again when your courses are going this fast and furious is very difficult.”
“I'm sure,” I said, signing the next page. “What's next?”
He flipped to the last page, and pointed. “This one says that you would lose any scholarships or time dependent grants under this decision, but since you're self-paying anyway, it's just boilerplate.”
I signed, and Drucker took the documents and put them in a manila folder. “Okay, Miss Bertoli. I do hope that you feel safe enough to rejoin us soon. The deadline for telling us about winter semester is Thanksgiving. You can do that via email if you wish.”
“Thank you, Mr. Drucker,” I said, standing. I slipped my backpack on and offered my hand. “I'll be in touch.”
Heading downstairs from his office, I glanced over at Daniel. Reaching over, I took his hand, which I had to admit gave me a thrill. It was the first time in public that I'd taken his hand as his girlfriend. “See? Don't worry, we're doing just fine.”
“Still have a hundred meters to go,” Daniel said. He paused just inside the doors to the outside and pulled me tight for an embrace. “But I do feel better.”
We left the building, the bright sunshine dazzling us for a moment, and started across the small grassy area that led to the parking lot. Suddenly, Daniel grabbed my hand, pulling me to a stop. “Damn.”
“What?” I asked before I saw it too. Coming toward us, looking as out of place as I would at a Black Panther rally, were two of my uncle's men. Both of them were trying to be quiet about it, but they knew they'd been spotted. “What do we do?”
“Run!” Daniel said, pulling me off to the right. We took off down the sidewalk and away from the two men, one of whom yelled as they took off after us. We rounded the corner, heading deeper into campus, where I hoped that our greater knowledge of the layout would help us lose them.
Unfortunately, our appearance had been anticipated, and I saw another man closing in from the far side of the quad, dressed like a college jock. As he got closer, I saw that it was Roberto. “Fuck!”
“Yeah,” Daniel grunted, pain in his voice. He'd just started to get over his beating, and his body wasn't ready for this sort of stress. “Cut left!”
We tore across the grassy area into a tunnel that, if we continued on, would lead to the campus athletic grounds. “Here,” Daniel said, reaching down to his pants and pulling out his keys. “When we reach the end, Roberto will most likely be there. You cut left, I go right. Circle around, get to the car, and get back to Carmen's place. If they're still on your tail when you leave campus, get on the Interstate and head north. When you're safe, call me. I'll come to you.”
“Dan . . .” I gasped, the air hot in my lungs. “But—”
“They want to kick my ass more than they want you,” Daniel said, slowing. He came to a stop and turned to me. “Ade, these idiots still don't understand how strong you are. They think that if they get me, you'll just come back home with your tail between your legs and be the pretty little princess all those idiots think you are. I know, because even I underestimated you. So go, I'll be okay. Come on, three guys? I've dealt with worse than that.”
Daniel leaned in quickly and gave me a kiss and a smile. “Now go!”
I could see in his face that he wasn't sure about this plan, but I obeyed anyway. At the end of the tunnel, I sprinted left as hard as I could, heading toward the wooded area that ringed that part of campus. I heard Daniel yell out behind me, and Roberto replied, but that was it as I went hell-bent for leather to the trees.
I didn't slow down until I was within the shadows, surrounded by the pines and bushes. Panting, I leaned against the trunk of one of the bigger pines and looked back, wishing I could see Daniel. Unfortunately, the entire scene in front of me was more or less peaceful. There were students heading to class, a few still looking around, wondering what the hell had just happened, but no sign of any Bertoli men.
I walked quickly through the trees, keeping to the edge of campus as I brought my breathing and heart back under control. Still, I was sweating profusely as I came around to the far side of the parking lot, where I saw Daniel's car. The BMW looked ignored, so I got ready for one last dash. Fifty yards, no more, and then I would be able to get out of there.
I was so focused on the BMW that I didn't hear the footsteps behind me until a fraction of a second before wiry arms, pipe cleaner scrawny but with the strength of the insane, dropped around my waist. “Hello, baby,” a reedy, whiny voice that I had dreaded ever hearing again whispered in my ear. “Good to see you again.”
I fought against Vincent's grip as hard as I could, but before I could even scream, something was jammed over my mouth and nose. The pungent, almost alcoholic scent hit my brain for a moment, then everything started to go dark. I tried to fight, kicking my legs back, but they were only talking to my brain long-distance, and the force wasn't enough to hurt a fly.
“That's it, mama,” Drake said again from the end of the tunnel that was my hearing. “Just sleep. We'll talk after you have a nap.”
Darkness followed me next, inky and endless. In it, I could hear laughter, screaming, and in the background . . . Genesis.
Daniel
I hadn't lied when I told Adriana that I could handle three men. Even a week after catching a hellacious beating, I was confident about that. Esp
ecially since I didn't need to actually fight them, just evade them. Roberto was the fittest of the three, and I knew that I could outrun him, even as worn out as I was.
What I hadn't anticipated was a fourth. I had literally just stepped onto the sidewalk that bordered the campus when something that felt like a truck blindsided me. Considering that I played football in high school—all conference linebacker, in fact—I knew what happened, but knowledge didn't make the pain of being tackled to the sidewalk any easier. The wind was driven out of me, and I felt my ribs, which had just started to let me breathe without pain again, groan warningly while my nose thudded sickly at the jarring, even if it didn't get hit at all. I wasn't sure if something was broken anew or not, but I certainly wasn't wanting to find out.
“Sorry, Daniel,” Julius grunted as he flipped me over. Taking my stunned arm, he yanked my wrist back, and I felt something being slipped over my hand before the zipping sound of the quick-tie told me what was happening. Another yank and another zip, and I was handcuffed just as effectively as if I'd been wearing metal.
A van pulled up, the door opened, and Julius got me to my feet and threw me inside headfirst. I ducked my chin in enough time to take most of the impact on my shoulder and back, but my neck caught some of it, and I was woozy for the next few minutes.
When I could focus, I saw that Roberto had joined us in the back of the van. “Where are you taking me?”
“You fucked up, Daniel, you know that?” Roberto said, giving me an incredulous look. “Bringing her back to campus? Seriously, what the fuck were you thinking?”
“About the value of higher education,” I replied, leaning my head back against the bare metal of the van. “Not that you'd understand.”
“Not trying to. Now lie there and shut the fuck up. I don't want to have to knock you out,” Roberto replied. He didn't say anything the rest of the trip, which through the little I could see in the window, led not toward the Bertoli mansion, but toward the docks. That worried me.
The Port of Seattle isn't the largest port on the West Coast—far from it. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland all have serious ports too, and problems back with the labor movement back in the thirties had shunted a lot of the surface tonnage away from Seattle. Still, it was quite a port and handled a lot of stuff that came into the Pacific Northwest. And of course, ports need longshoremen, and since time immemorial, longshoremen meant Mafia involvement. Carlo Bertoli controlled the longshoremen of Seattle and even owned a couple of warehouses out on the edges of the port, places where he could do some of the more unsavory parts of his business. I'd only had to come here a few times, and each of them hadn't ended well for the person in the position I was now in.
The van pulled into one of the warehouses, and the driver turned off the engine. “Let's go.”
Roberto looked over at me. “You gonna walk, or are Julius and I gonna have to drag you out? Makes no difference to me.”
“Does it matter?” I asked, then shook my head. “Fuck it, I'll walk.”
Roberto nodded and opened the door. Julius, who'd been sitting up front in the shotgun seat, came around, his beagle eyes full of sadness. Roberto, on the other hand, looked happy. I could understand. He was the guy in the Bertoli enforcer group who was closest to my age. With me out of the way, he had the best chance of advancing, of making a bigger impact. Of course, what Roberto didn't realize is that the biggest thing holding him back was that he was pretty much an idiot. Carlo Bertoli was a loyal boss, but he didn't suffer fools lightly. It was why Roberto was kept on the low-level operations and stuff. He just didn't have the brains for more.
Carlo was waiting for me deeper in the warehouse, wearing his work suit and sitting in a hastily positioned office chair with a side table sitting next to it that looked like it had once been a TV tray. He was calm, the sort of calm that I knew meant he was highly pissed on the inside. “Free his hands, then tie them overhead.”
I started to struggle until Julius caught me with a knee to the gut that drove the wind out of me while at the same time made my hurt ribs scream in pain. Not a sound other than the explosion of air left my mouth, though, and I was quickly tied up. “Now, I'm going to ask you some questions, Daniel, and you're going to answer them,” Carlo said when I was fully trussed. “I don't think you want to refuse answering, do you?”
I stared at Carlo, then shook my head. “You stupid, stupid man, Carlo. What does it benefit you to beat me some more?”
“Where is Adriana?” Carlo screamed, jumping up and kicking me in the thigh. The heel of his shoe dug into the big muscle in my quad, turning it to wood, and I groaned, not worrying about saying what needed to be said. Carlo Bertoli and I had needed to talk for a long time.
“I don't know,” I answered when I could talk again. “Why, is she not coming home immediately like you expected?”
Carlo stopped and nodded to Julius, who pulled out an expandable baton. It was one of those nasty ones too, with a body that is mostly a tightly wound spring with a bit of weight at the end. Swing that thing right, and the whole baton flexes, whipping into the body at point of impact. And, the flexed metal leaves a nasty fucking welt. I knew that from personal experience using one, but this was the first time to be on the receiving end. Julius knew just where to hit me too, a full-on shot to my back that mostly hammered into the big muscles of my lats and mid-back. It wouldn't break anything . . . not yet.
“You know, Daniel, I thought you were a smart boy,” Carlo continued as if nothing had happened. “You took your first whipping like a man, and according to what Pietro told me afterward, you left like a man as well. I hoped that you would obey the rules and get out of town. Even when whispers came that you were staying with that stripper from the Starlight Club, I let them go. After all, you needed time to rest up, and I'm not one to hold that against a man.
“But when Adriana ran and has done nothing to answer her phone or her email, drops off the face of the fucking planet, only to find out this morning from her own mother than she had run to you? Of all the people in the world, she ran to her lover who left her for a fucking stripper? Oh no, that's too far. Now, one more time, where is Adriana?”
“I . . . don't . . . know!” I replied, smiling. My smile was cut short when Julius caught me with a hook punch that loosened two of my molars, and I spit them out, my grin coming back bloody. At least he hadn't hit my nose, although that too was throbbing. “You can punch me all you want. The answer's going to be the same. I don't know where Adriana is.”
“You LIE!” Carlo yelled, picking up a .45 from the table and pointing it in my face. “Tell me!”
I gathered up all my energy and spat, splattering Carlo's face in blood and spit. “Fuck you, Carlo! For fuck's sake, all she wanted to do was have her own life! We fell in love, that's it! I asked her to marry me, you stupid, arrogant wop, and you and your pride are the only things stopping her from still being a part of your life! If YOU hadn't butted your nose into things, I'd still be out there protecting her. If you had just let your fucking pride go and seen that Adriana might actually love someone who is just another one of your Mafia thugs like myself, then maybe we wouldn't be having this fucking conversation!”
The look on Carlo's face pierced through my anger, and I saw his gun waver. “Wait . . . where is she?”
I could see the barrel of Carlo's gun tremble some more and the doubt creep into the man's eyes. “We . . . I don't know,” Carlo said, dropping the gun to his side. “One of my men, they figured that your plan would have you circle around to your BMW, but he's had eyes on the thing from inside the nearest building the entire time, and nobody has approached.”
Fear crawled down my spine, and my mouth dropped open, panic starting to grip my insides. “No . . . no, she's supposed to be at Carmen's or heading down the Interstate right now.”
Carlo looked at me, and I saw the family man that I'd come to know for the past few years. He set the pistol down and slumped into his chair. “I sent men to the apar
tment as well, as soon as Julius and Roberto and the others started chasing you. Other than a very pissed off Latina, they found nothing. They're waiting too, and they haven't heard or reported a thing.”
I thought and put myself into Adriana's shoes. Cutting left, she would have paralleled the athletic grounds for a while, then come up to the . . . “Oh no.”
My tiny whisper got through to Carlo, who looked up. “What?”
“Drake,” I whispered, cursing my damn decisions. “The pictures he took of us. He took them from the trees that ring that end of campus. When she cut left, she could have come close to him without knowing it.”
Carlo considered my words, then nodded. “Cut him loose.”
Julius pulled a knife from his pocket and sawed away at my bonds. When I was free, I still staggered, going to a knee as my leg seized up again. “Let me find her. I know Drake better than anyone else, Carlo. I've been studying him nonstop since I left your house. If anyone can save her, it's me.”
Carlo got out of his chair and came over. When I looked up, he had his hand extended, offering me assistance to my feet, which I gladly took. I swayed on my feet, and Carlo looked me in the eye, for the first time in his life not as Don Bertoli, the Godfather of Seattle and Tacoma, but man to man. “You save my Bella, and everything is forgiven. Maybe, just maybe, we'll discuss your relationship.”
I nodded. “What changed your mind?”
“Nobody, not even Margaret, has cursed at me in years,” he said with a small chuckle. “And nobody has called me a stupid wop since Gianni. You've got balls, kid, and heart. I'm sorry I didn't see that earlier. Find Adriana, Daniel. I need her as much as you do.”
“I will . . . Godfather.”
Twenty minutes later, I was back in the van, this time seated with Julius in the back. Roberto was driving up front, while the other man, the first driver, had stayed behind to help with the cleanup. Julius looked at me, somewhat in awe. “I ain't ever seen that in all my days.”
Over the Middle: A Sports Romance Page 37