Cosimo leapt to his feet and made a wall between them and Paolo, stopping them from advancing past the entry.
Paolo recognized them at once as Pinkertons. They had a look about them—a peculiar cross of military, Wild West gunman, and citified dandy. Essentially, they looked like savage apes dressed up in finery. Pinkertons.
His first thought was a confirmation of his worst fears. If these men had Mirabella, they had likely not been kind to her.
His second thought was that the timeline didn’t work out. The Pinkerton he’d had interrogated and killed had been off the streets only since that afternoon. He’d had Deller brought in later than that. It had been drawing toward sunset when Paolo had left them to do the work of disposing of the bodies.
Even had the detective triggered some kind of warning the second he’d been taken, still that was only a matter of a few hours before the last time anyone had seen Mirabella. They would have had to go for her almost immediately—which would indicate that they’d been ready for it.
But what did that mean?
He was too tired and stressed for his mind to sort out the gaps in his understanding. And now, with these three strange men in his house, despair was gaining its own foothold. He was missing something, something important, but for now, he let it brew. Forcing it wouldn’t work.
He went to the entry and faced the men. Before any of them spoke, he asked, “Where is she?”
The largest of the three—almost as tall and broad as Cosimo, with a shaved head and heavy grey brush mustache—made an expression that was either a snarl or a smile. Seeing as he was packed into a garish houndstooth suit, the effect was bizarre, like a homicidal circus clown.
“If you want her alive, you come with us,” Il Pagliaccio said. His voice was rough with smoke but surprisingly high-pitched for someone so large.
A bit of panic eased from Paolo’s chest; she was still alive.
Cosimo growled like a bear, somehow became even larger, and shifted his body to put it between Paolo and the intruders again.
“Call off your trained ape, Romano,” said the clown.
“Where is she,” he repeated, removing the questioning lilt from the sentence.
“You’ll have to come with us if you want to know that.” The clown glowered at Cosimo. “Alone.”
Paolo had his soon-to-be—in three weeks—father-in-law at his back and Cosimo at his front. All of his other men were out searching for Mirabella. Under normal circumstances, he’d be perfectly confident in the odds of him and Cosimo besting three men. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and these weren’t normal men.
“How do I know she’s alive?” he asked, and sensed Cosimo’s surprised flinch. His guard didn’t like what his question portended. Well, neither did Paolo. It portended a very unpleasant evening. Probably his last.
“You’re gonna have to trust me on that one, hoss,” the clown said with a nasty grin.
“Pinkertons don’t have much reputation for trustworthiness.”
That grin went wide. “You’d be surprised what you can trust me to do. Wanna give it a try?”
Paolo took a good look at these three men. The clown was clearly in charge of them, but the other two—one scowling ferociously, the other looking like he’d taken a big whiff of something foul—were more interesting. The scowler had two long scratches—bright red with beaded blood, crusted but obviously fresh—and the smeller’s lip was split and swollen.
He had a sudden urge to smile. Under the best of conditions, that urge rarely came on him—but Mirabella made it happen routinely. Apparently even under conditions such as these. His woman had put up a fierce fight.
That proud realization came with a kick of anxiety. If she’d hurt them, then they had certainly repaid her in kind.
There was no choice here. He had to go. They had her, and they were here, bold enough to stroll right into his home. There was no way around them to get to her, so he’d have to go through.
He set his hand on Cosimo’s arm. “Keep Luciano safe.”
His guard’s broad face paled and his eyes went wide. “Don, don’t.”
“You know what to do,” Paolo said to Cosimo and then turned to the clown. “I’ll come. But if she’s hurt, or worse—”
“Yeah, yeah,” the clown cut him off and slammed his beefy hand over the back of Paolo’s neck. “Let’s go, don.”
He didn’t resist, but the three men dragged him from his home as if he were kicking and screaming. There was a parcel truck on the street, and another Pinkerton threw open the back doors. Before Paolo could climb, or be dragged, into the truck, pain blasted at the back of his head and his eyes filled with stars. Dazed almost but not quite to unconsciousness, he felt himself heaved like a sack of potatoes into the truck and his hands yanked roughly behind him. He was being bound.
Things didn’t add up; there was something missing.
Then somebody hit him again, and it didn’t matter.
“We know he’s dead. Tell us where you took his body.”
It wasn’t the clown asking questions. There was another Pinkerton here, significantly older and obviously the head of this little gang.
Paolo’s head thumped with molten pain, and his thoughts tried to wander far afield, but when he’d first been brought here, he’d tried to understand where ‘here’ was.
The sulfuric reek of sewage and rotten fish was strong, so he was fairly sure he was near the East River, but that didn’t narrow it down much. But the building they were in had the look and feel of a derelict shipping warehouse, so he thought they weren’t terribly far from the Five Points.
They were on his turf, then. Something far at the back of his overtaxed mind tried to shout for his attention, but he could only see it waving.
They’d dragged him in here, stripped him from the waist up, chained him up, and commenced beating him. At first his feet had been solid on the floor, but after a while they’d turned a winch, and now he dangled, with his toes barely brushing the stone beneath them.
They hadn’t asked him anything for a long time. He understood this tactic: softening him up. They would find him to be very difficult to soften—especially since he’d had no sign yet of Mirabella.
He heaved as much air as he could into his aching lungs, and made his voice as normal as he could manage. “Where is Mirabella?” It was the only thing he’d said yet, and he’d yet to get an answer except further punishment.
For his efforts this time, he got the lead pipe across his back again. By now, after what seemed like hours in chains, he was so full of pain the blow barely registered, except that it forced out that tiny trickle of air he’d worked so hard for.
The inability to breathe was the worst of it. Aside from its own frothing panic, it brought forth horrific memories of that first night in the city, and the long days after it, when he’d lain in helpless agony, his chest half caved in and infection raging through his blood. Those red-hazed memories filled his mind, blended with the pain, and made it utterly impossible to think.
And guilt—there was a great heap of guilt, too. Remembering what had happened to Caterina that night, and how he was failing Mirabella now. They could have done anything to her. They still could be doing anything to her.
He fought for another breath and said, “Where is Mirabella?”
“I don’t think you understand the situation, Don Romano. I’m the one asking questions. Without answers, all you get is more pain. Where is our associate?”
Paolo stared at the man through a bleary, rapidly swelling eye. “Fuck off back into your mother’s callused cunt, you son of a whore.” He said it in Italian first, for reasons his fragmenting mind couldn’t explain. When the old Pinkerton only looked at him without reacting, Paolo realized what he’d done. It seemed a shame to waste all that air for nothing. He fought for another breath and repeated himself in English.
The old Pinkerton reacted then. He didn’t ask another question. He stood back while the other three showed P
aolo what they thought of his insult.
Eventually, he couldn’t hold onto consciousness any longer.
Pain was Paolo’s first awareness. From the roots of his hair to the soles of his feet, he hurt. Each breath came in shallow, phlegmy chugs that sent blades of pain through his chest.
Cold was the next thing he knew. As if his blood had turned to ice, he felt frozen straight through. He wasn’t shivering, perhaps because he was beyond it.
As he woke more fully, he understood he was lying on the cold stone floor, still mostly undressed. His hands were bound, and his ankles—with rope; he could feel the rough fray of the hemp.
He knew this tactic, too—they’d set him aside, relieved him of the stress of hanging by his wrists, so that he could recover a little before they started in again.
They didn’t want him dead, at least not yet. He hadn’t given them the information they were after.
His eyes wouldn’t open much, and his mouth and nose were full of the taste and scent of blood. His ears rang steadily, and his heartbeat made the wall of sound ebb and flow.
But under all that, he thought he heard something. When he tried to focus, it made no more sense.
Mustering strength from the dregs of his soul, Paolo forced his eyes to open as wide as they could and tried to look around.
An utterly empty room, it seemed. Stone floor, stone walls. Not dark, but the light was different. It took several attempts at thought to understand that this room had a window, embedded high in the wall, suggesting they were in a basement. The light was daylight through that window.
Daylight. The next day? Longer than that?
Again, there was a sound that wasn’t his own body’s pain.
He tried to move, to see more of the room, but each shift sent those vicious blades of agony through his chest. He was sure one or some or all of his ribs were brok—
Blades.
He was lying on his right hip, and he could feel his switchblade, still in his pocket.
Pinkertons loved their guns. They’d gone through his suitcoat and vest, looking for one, but Paolo had never been much for guns. Many of his men carried them, but he had only one, a gift from Aldo, which he kept it in a case in his bedroom.
Guns were loud and drew too much attention. Besides, in most cases, shooting a gun was a coward’s violence—from a safe distance. When he had cause to use a weapon himself, he preferred stealth, and to be intimately close to the man he was killing. To hold life and death literally in his hands.
Looking for a gun, the Pinkertons had missed his switchblade—not that it mattered, with his hands bound at his back.
Still, it was something. He spent some effort testing the ropes at his wrists. Sadly, his captors had not been so incompetent with their knots.
Again, the noise. Or, not a noise exactly, but something outside himself, drawing his attention. He forced himself to sit upright, swallowing groans as his broken body protested its further abuse.
And then he saw.
Mirabella lay on the floor at the opposite side of the room, under the window. The slant of light left her in shadow. Paolo honed his skimpy focus more, and saw she was awake and watching him. Paolo and God were not on speaking terms, but he sent up a prayer of thanks anyway.
This was the Pinkertons’ way of answering his dogged question. No doubt they meant this, too, to be a torture—to see her in such a state, to be so close and so unable to save her.
But it would be a torture only if he gave up.
Finding strength far beyond what he’d thought he had, he began to make his way to her.
Bound hand and foot, all he could do was scoot like a beached seal, and every piece of every motion was an agony, but he didn’t care. He’d survived horrors greater than this.
She was bound and gagged. A swollen gash on her forehead was covered in crusted blood; her hair there stood out stiffly with it.
Her blouse was badly torn, showing most of her shoulder and the top of her corset.
That torn blouse set Paolo’s rage afire. If he survived this, he meant to make an example of each and every one of these Pinkertons, but if they’d touched her like that, he would make them eat their own cocks before they died.
The heat of his fury warmed his body and made him move faster.
“Bella,” he gasped. “I’m here, I’m here.”
She grunted, and he heard fury in the sound. His woman. Too stubborn to accept fear even now.
He ignored his own pain and kept going until he was face to face with her, almost pressed to her body. He leaned close and caught her gag with his teeth, pulling it from her mouth.
She retched as the rag came free—and then a rush of Italian spilled forth. “Paolo! They hurt you so much! Why? What’s happening? Those fucking bastards! I’m going to kill them all with my teeth!”
He might have laughed, if it wouldn’t have killed him to do so. “Shhh, love, shh. I’m all right.”
“You’re not!”
“Neither are you. Tell me what happened.”
“I was coming home from Pappa’s, and they grabbed me. I fought, but they were too big—and I think there were many. I don’t know. They grabbed me, and threw me in a … truck? They brought me here. They wouldn’t speak to me at all.”
“What did they do to you? Did they—” he couldn’t make that word, or any like it, come out.
But she knew what he meant. “No. My blouse was torn in the fight. I tried to scratch one’s eyes out, and he slammed my face into a wall, but they didn’t try to—they didn’t do that.”
“Can you move at all, Bella?”
“I … don’t know. The way they’ve got me tied …”
He looked more closely and saw that they’d tied the rope around her neck. He knew this—her ankles and wrists would also be tied together, and every move she made would tighten the rope around her neck a bit more, until she strangled herself. Those bastards.
Having her here with him, alive and so far mostly whole, was remarkably restorative. Paolo’s pain receded and his mind cleared. He thought he could manage to make a plan, so he was quiet for a moment and tried.
When he had at least the first part of it, he asked, “Do you think you can roll over, put your back to me, without tightening the rope?”
“Why?”
“My switchblade is in my pocket. If you can get it, maybe we can get out of this.”
She swallowed, and the rope bobbed over her throat. “I … can try.”
“Only try. At the first sign of the rope tightening, give it up.” He couldn’t bear lying here, utterly helpless, and watching her strangle slowly before his eyes.
She moved at a snail’s pace, each gesture measured, pausing after every inch, making sure she didn’t disturb the rope at her throat.
At any moment, the Pinkertons could come in and ruin everything. But they didn’t. Eventually, Mirabella put her back to him.
Paolo could tell that the rope had tightened after all—not enough to kill her, but enough to be obviously snug. He scooted up, bringing his pocket in line with her hands, then turned until he felt her bound hands at the right place. “Can you get into my pocket?”
She tried, feeling around with her fingers. He tried to move with her, make it easier, all the while growing more sure they’d be interrupted.
Finally, she worked her fingers into his pocket. He felt the seam go and was glad—it gave her more room.
“Yes, there,” he said as her fingers bumped the handle. “That’s it.”
It took another few tries before she got real hold of it, and then two more to get it from his pocket. Then the knife was out and in her hands. She didn’t wait for instructions before she popped the blade—stabbing him in the arm, but that didn’t matter—and worked it around so she could cut at her ropes.
That seemed to take longer than anything else, even crossing the room bound and broken. She dropped the blade once, and the effort to find it and pick it up tightened the rope at her throat a
gain.
By the time her hands were free, her face was beet red, moving to purple. Her back was to him, but he saw the color creeping over her cheek, onto her ear.
But she got her hands free, and then the rope at her throat lost its tension, and she sucked in a great noisy breath.
With her hands free, the rest of it went quickly. She cut her ankles loose and then freed Paolo.
They were in imminent danger. Paolo was in intense pain. But none of that mattered so much as pulling Mirabella into his arms and holding onto her as hard as he could.
She held him, too, wrapping her arms around his neck, and he tucked his face against her shoulder and found more breath than he had in hours. Sugared lemon—even in this place, in these conditions, she smelled like sugared lemon. Positively therapeutic.
“Ti amo, amore mia bella,” he gasped against her fragrant skin. “Ti amo tanto.”
“I love you, Paolo,” she answered in English. “I think I never see you again, and I want to die.”
He leaned back. “No. Not today. You’re not dying, and neither am I.”
“Can you walk?” she asked.
“They didn’t hurt my legs. The rest of me is a broken mess, but my legs work. I don’t think we can simply stroll out of here, though.”
Her battered, filthy, weary, beautiful face took on a thoughtful look. “Maybe we can.”
“What?”
She answered in Italian. “We’ve been in here for hours, and they’ve not come in. What if they’re sleeping—or not here at all? What if they thought we were bound up tightly and could let us stew? What if we can simply stroll out?”
Paolo thought that was aggressively optimistic, but she’d made some good points. They had been left alone for a long time, and there had to be a reason for it. She might have part of it right—they were busy, probably searching for their friend. Perhaps the old man, their leader, was away on the search. Perhaps he’d taken one or two of the others with him.
Perhaps they’d left only one guard for two battered, bound people.
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 29