by Zoey Parker
“Fancy digs,” I muttered.
“Nothing but the best for the Bonaccorsos,” Bard answered tersely. “Growler, was Giovanni there too?”
Growler wrote four more words. “First day. Not after.”
“Shit,” I snapped. I should have known that would be too easy. And Giovanni would have been too smart to leave any clues at the house where he'd kept Growler, especially after Growler escaped. “Did you overhear anyone saying anything about where he was staying?”
Growler thought for a long moment, then wrote on the board again. “Charles Bunker.”
Bard and I exchanged a confused look. “Charles Bunker?” Bard asked. “Who is that, Growler? Did they say?”
Growler shrugged and shook his head sadly.
Bard started to pace the room nervously, typing on his cell phone screen. “There are fourteen Charles Bunkers in Illinois, with six of them in Chicago. What's this person's involvement? It's not as though we can go through the phone book calling each one and asking if they happen to be hiding a gangster. For all we know, Charles Bunker could even be an alias. We could be chasing our tails with this name for days.”
I snapped my fingers as the clues suddenly fell into place. “What if Charles Bunker isn't a person? What if it's a place?”
“Go on,” Bard prompted.
“There used to be a bunch of old military bunkers and missile silos all over the state back when the Cold War was still a thing,” I said. “After the Soviets went kaput, most of them were shut down and all the computers and shit were taken out, so they were basically just a bunch of big empty concrete holes. One of them is up near Mount Charles at the Indiana border. In high school, my friends and I used to go up there on weekends to fuck around. It'd be a perfect place for someone like Giovanni to hide out.”
Bard looked at me, clearly impressed. “Well done, Nic.”
Growler gave me a thumbs-up and then slapped his fingertips against his palm lightly, over and over. For a moment I thought he was asking us to hand him something. Then I realized he was trying to clap one-handed.
“So now what, Bard?” I asked. “What's our next chess move?”
Bard shook his head. “No more chess moves. No more games. We're going to ride, we're going to fight, we're going to kill, and if we have to, we're going to die. But one way or another, this ends tonight.”
“Good,” I said. I grabbed the sides of Growler's head, looking into his eye. “And Growler, you have my word that if there's any way at all we can grab that son of a bitch Giovanni alive, we're bringing him back here and you can do whatever the goddamn hell you want to him. You can off him quick, or you can make that shit last for days if you want to. His fat ass belongs to you.”
Growler banged his hand on the table in agreement, baring his teeth in a snarl.
Sperm knocked on the door and walked in. He was pale and slack-jawed, and I realized he was having trouble looking me in the eye. “Guys, uhh...we got another package.”
I turned to look at Growler. “They take anything off you that we didn't already know about?”
Growler looked down at his own body as though he was making sure, and then shook his head.
“Bard, has anyone else gone missing?” I asked.
“I've been checking with each group of Reapers every hour,” Bard answered, sounding confused. “They've barely even been going to the bathroom alone, and they haven't left their safe houses in groups of less than three. So far, everyone seems to be fine.”
Then what the hell did they send us? I thought.
Bard and I walked out of the back room and into the bar. A small, narrow box was waiting on a table near the front door. We'd stopped checking these things for bombs long ago. Clearly, that wasn't Giovanni's style.
I opened the box and a lock of hair slid out. I recognized the color and scent immediately.
It was Lauren's.
A note was wrapped around it. “Keep Growler. We've found someone prettier to play with! Guess which parts we'll cut off her next?”
My body suddenly felt sick and feverish, and for a moment I thought I'd throw up or pass out. The room was spinning around me and everything seemed to be growing darker. My stomach felt like someone had wrapped greasy chain around it and was pulling it tight. My jaw throbbed with pain and I realized I was clenching my teeth until they ached.
I'd never known a rage so all-consuming and murderous. Most of it was directed at myself for being stupid enough to believe Caleb when he said the Bonaccorsos hadn't known who Lauren was or where she lived.
She was in trouble now because of me. And not just because she'd gotten involved with me to begin with. No, it was because earlier this very day, I had simply let her walk away like I was some kind of idiot instead of doing everything in my power to keep her safe. Even if it had meant taking her to a safe house and locking her in like some kind of prisoner. Even if she'd ended up hating me for it.
If I had, at least she'd be safe now. My baby would be safe too.
So yeah, most of my rage went toward hating myself.
But I still had plenty left over to kill every last motherfucker who stood between me and Lauren.
I turned to Bard. “Do you still have the Pig stashed behind the bar?”
He nodded.
“Good,” I said. “We're gonna need it and every other gun we've got.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bard
It was easy to see how badly the package had messed with Nic's head, as it was obviously supposed to. Giovanni had probably expected us to figure out his location based on the intel Growler had given us. As I'd said to Nic, Giovanni hadn't initially counted on a prolonged war with us and he almost certainly wanted it over as much as we did.
Giovanni wouldn't run and find another place to hide out once he knew we were coming. He'd lose the respect of his own people, not to mention every other organized crime syndicate in the Midwest. So the only thing left for him to do would be to surround himself with all the guns and enforcers he had and wait for the final showdown.
But Giovanni always preferred to keep an ace up his sleeve as a contingency plan. In this case, it looked like that meant goading Nic beforehand so he'd be too rattled to think straight and rush in blindly.
So far, based on the pure rage I saw burning in Nic's eyes, it seemed like a pretty good plan on Giovanni's part. I knew that even if we could come up with a solid plan of attack, it would be hard to rein Nic in and make sure he stuck to it.
I was enraged too, but I had more experience controlling my anger. Still, I was sickened by the thought of Nic finding love and fatherhood, only to lose it all at the hands of a scumbucket like Giovanni.
I'd told Nic that when it came to parents and their children, it was important to never say never. I believed that and I always had, other than the single glaring exception that I was far too acquainted with myself.
During the time that I'd served with Delta, I was married to Marlene. She was beautiful and funny, and a lot smarter than I was, which was what I loved about her the most. During one of my tours of duty, she emailed me to tell me that I was going to be a father. It was one of the happiest days of my life and I immediately arranged for a furlough so I could be back in the states when Marlene gave birth.
In the meantime, there was a Skype session so I could see the ultrasound, and dizzyingly-long email chains about what we'd name her and what college she'd go to and what she'd grow up to be.
And then I came home to spend the final month of the pregnancy with Marlene. Two weeks later, she started to cramp and bleed and I rushed her to the hospital. The baby came prematurely and only lived for six hours before dying from complications. I sank into depression and Marlene left me less than a year later. When I went on my next mission for Delta, I lost control of the rage that had been boiling inside of me for so long and disobeyed orders, beating an important enemy combatant to death with the butt of my rifle instead of taking him alive for questioning.
The dishonorable discharg
e came next. With no family and no military career left, joining the MC that my own father had helped to start seemed like the only option left to me.
I'd hoped that Nic would follow in my footsteps and become the president of the War Reapers himself one day. He was smart enough, and a natural leader. But when he told me about Lauren and the pregnancy, I wondered if he might end up choosing a different path for himself instead. If so, I'd certainly have understood. Not everyone could make a lifelong career out of being an outlaw, even if they were as good at it as Nic was. Sometimes people were called to follow other paths. Maybe Nic would decide to be a War Reaper forever, or maybe he'd go straight and find peace with a wife and a kid and a day job as a mechanic as others had before him.
But either way, Nic deserved to make that choice for himself. And I certainly wasn't going to let Giovanni take that choice away from him the way it had been taken from me.
So Big G wanted to play dirty? That was fine. He wasn't the only one who could come up with contingency plans.
I went into one of the back rooms of the Nest, pulled a crumpled slip of paper from my wallet, and dialed the phone number on it for the last time.
Chapter Thirty
Lauren
The trunk opened and rough hands reached in, grabbing my arms and legs. I tried to struggle, but with my wrists tied behind me and a pillow case over my head, there wasn't much I could do. Even if I could shake them loose and hop out of the trunk, what then? How many steps could I run before I crashed into something or got tackled to the ground by my abductors?
Still, their hands on my body doused me with fear like a bucket of cold water, and I couldn't help but resist. Anything felt better than just going limp and letting them do whatever they wanted with me.
It felt like we'd been driving for hours. I didn't even know if we were still in Illinois. The man who took me hadn't let me take my coat or shoes. My teeth were already chattering from fear, but the icy air on my skin made it much worse.
My knee accidentally made contact with what felt like someone's jaw and I heard a grunt of pain. A moment later, a fist slammed into my kidney savagely and I cried out. The intense pain spread through my back and sides like an army of biting ants.
“You stop wiggling those legs around or I'm gonna cut them off.” It was the voice of the man who'd kidnapped me, and I suddenly realized that he was probably the same man who'd done those horrible things to Growler.
And now he was free to do them to me.
I stopped thrashing as the agony burned throughout my back. I was led down a series of stone steps into an echoing room. Bright light filtered through the pillow case. I smelled dirt and brick dust and I could hear a generator whirring in the background. It seemed like I was in some kind of cellar.
Please, God, let me and my baby survive this. Please tell Nic where we are somehow so he can rescue us. Wherever this is, don't let me die here.
I heard a raspy voice ahead of me. “Is this her?”
“Yeah,” my captor answered.
“Good. Bring her in.”
They dragged me to a small metal chair, shoved me down into it, and snipped the zip tie around my wrists. I had a frenzied urge to flail my arms violently and try to get away, but before I could, more hands clamped around my wrists and held them down on the arms of the chair. I heard long strips of duct tape being peeled and felt them as they were wrapped around my limbs, securing them to the chair.
“I hope you do a better job with that than you did last time,” the raspy voice said. “We don't want her getting away.”
“It's a metal chair,” my kidnapper answered. “Unless she's got a blowtorch stashed in her pussy with an extra arm to use it, she ain't goin' nowhere.”
“You're an extremely crude man, Tommy,” the raspy voice responded. “It's lucky for you that your talents are so formidable that you cannot be dispensed with.”
“Yeah, I'm a lucky guy, Uncle G,” the kidnapper said, dripping with sarcasm. “Leprechauns hanging out of my ass, that's me.”
By the time they'd finished putting the duct tape on me, I felt like a mummy. The tape around my chest was so tight that I could only take shallow breaths.
Someone pulled the pillow case off my head and I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the harsh light.
I was in a gray concrete room with no windows. I couldn't see a door, so I assumed the only entrance was behind me. A large lamp stood next to a small table and some folding chairs. There was a record player on the table, along with several records and a few plates that were half filled with food. There was a compact oven in the corner where a pot of red sauce simmered on a gas burner.
A middle-aged woman in black sat at the table, eating spaghetti and glaring at me. A hugely obese man in a white suit stood next to her, dabbing his sweaty brow with a handkerchief.
This is him, I thought. Giovanni. The one Nic told me about.
Giovanni scowled at me disdainfully for a long moment, then walked over to the table. He grabbed a crust of garlic bread, mopped up some sauce with it, and stuffed it into his mouth. Even his chewing seemed angry.
“How did it come to this?” he grunted through the mouthful of bread. “I try to be reasonable to satisfy vendetta. I try to make sure no one else gets involved, so this thing can be settled sensibly among men. And what does it get me? A ridiculous, months-long war with a pack of rabid junkyard dogs. It costs me money, lives, and worst of all, my reputation. And so, to end it, I must now involve helpless women like some kind of degenerate carogna. This is what your impazitti boyfriend has driven me to.”
“I don't have a boyfriend,” I said immediately. “Please, there's been some kind of mistake. I'm alone, I'm no one, I have no idea what you're talking about or what's going on. Please just let me go and I won't say anything to anyone, I swear.”
The scowl disappeared from Giovanni's face and he actually laughed, dabbing sauce from the corners of his mouth with a napkin. The woman continued to glower at me.
“Can you believe this lady, Marie?” Giovanni asked. “The lies in her mouth are like watermelon seeds. She doesn't know which one to spit out first!”
Marie didn't answer.
I heard my kidnapper's voice behind me, the one Giovanni had called Tommy. “You want me to take out her tongue?”
“No, thank you. This is no tough biker we have here who requires such elaborate tortures. She's just a harmless worm wriggling on a big hook.”
I understood then. Giovanni was using me as bait to catch Nic. He would come to rescue me, and he'd walk right into a trap.
I looked into Giovanni's pitiless eyes and instantly realized how wrong I'd been about Nic. Maybe Nic had to do some bad things sometimes because of the outlaw life he led, but from the time I'd spent with him, I knew instinctively that he wasn't a bad person. He only killed to protect and defend the people he cared about, like the other War Reapers.
And like me and our child.
I can't give up. I can't let this man keep me here, or once he's done with Nic and his MC, he'll make sure I die in this room. I have to get away so I can warn Nic. I have to tell him and the others where these cockroaches are so the Reapers can come in prepared to stomp them all to death.
“You're wrong,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “If this is about Nic, I haven't seen him in months. We just hooked up once, on Christmas. It was a one-night thing. I don't mean anything to him. He won't come for me.”
Giovanni nodded indulgently. “I see. Well, then I suppose you're right. I've made a mistake. You're not important to Nic after all. You weren't with him yesterday, and the two of you didn't go to the hospital together as I'd been led to believe. That must have been some other woman.”
I had a sinking feeling and realized that the man with the bow tie must have followed us.
“That's probably for the best,” Giovanni continued. “Because based on the information I was given, I was led to believe the lady he was with yesterday was carrying his unborn child. Since
you're not her, though, it won't matter if I do this.”
Suddenly, Giovanni punched me squarely in the stomach. The pain blazed through my abdomen like a fistful of knives and I could swear I felt a wet snap inside my belly. I imagined the baby being damaged, the life growing inside of me breaking apart and dissolving. I couldn't stay calm anymore—I opened my mouth and shrieked uncontrollably, my eyes filling with tears. I begged, the words tumbling out of my mouth.
“Please don't! Please not my stomach, don't hit me there, please! I'll do anything you want, just don't hit me there again!”
Giovanni threw his head back and laughed again. Tommy joined him. Marie remained silent, but a cruel smile tugged at the wrinkled corners of her mouth.
“There, you see?” Giovanni said to the other two. “She's nothing to worry about. One wrong move toward her stomach and she goes to pieces. Mothers and their babies. The oldest story in the world.” He leaned in to sneer in my face. “You stay in that chair and stay quiet and you'll be fine. Once this is all over, I promise you'll be free to raise your baby far away from all this and you'll never see me again. But if you misbehave or try to escape, I will kick you in the belly until you squirt out a squashed red mess on the floor of this room, and then I'll bash your head in with a rock. Do you understand?”