“Dude. If you don’t get ahold of yourself, I’ll fucking throw you in chains. Does she know who you are?”
Christian sighs. “I think she understood that pretty well. Kerry told her more than what was good for either of them.”
“You need to go back and finish her. Who is she?”
His lips tighten as he meets my gaze. “I’m not gonna execute Kerry’s best friend.”
“Chances are you’ll never see your Kerry again anyway, so worrying about what she’d think is moot. This is about protecting the family.”
Christian stands so abruptly the chair topples and falls to the floor with a crash. “Go fuck yourself,” he growls.
I dart up and grab his collar, pulling him to me. “You better mind your fucking attitude. This is your final warning. I’ll do the girl. Forget about her. Clean yourself up and don’t show your face around here until you’re back to the Christian we know and love.”
He scoffs and shoves me off him. I let go of his shirt and straighten as I stare him down.
Downing the last of his coffee he sets the cup down too hard on the thick wooden table. “Fuck this shit,” he mutters and storms out of the kitchen. Half a minute later I hear the front door slam.
I sigh and sink back on the chair, making a mental list. One more thing to do today. Find the girl and off her.
Chapter 4
Chloe
“I don’t know,” I moan as they wheel me past my broken front door. I heard them knock. I couldn’t even scream. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. I kept whispering to the dispatcher that I was here, that they had to break in, that I couldn’t move. Finally, after a loud crash, cops and EMTs seemed to be everywhere.
“Who did this to you?”
“I don’t know,” I slur hoarsely.
What else can I say? Tell on the mob and die.
In the elevator, things begin to get weird. The ceiling spins, the walls expand. Their voices seem to come from farther away. I feel weightless.
“What’d you give—,” I try to wet my lips, “me.”
“A shot of morphine, hon—”
She keeps talking, but I float off. Being in not-so-much pain is amazing.
“I don’t know.” That’s my mantra the next couple of days. I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was dark. No, he didn’t speak. No, I don’t know anyone who’d want to hurt me.
I cry when I look at myself in a mirror for the first time. My face is blue and swollen beyond recognition. My right arm is wrapped in a thick, warm, itchy cast and sits in a sling. My broken nose has been straightened out and I’ve got bandages both across it as well as in the nostrils. Not being able to breathe through my nose is more panic inducing than I’d have ever thought. My mouth dries up and I feel like I’m choking. It doesn’t help that I have several broken ribs. Standing is hell. Lying down is hell. Sitting is a nightmare.
My emotions are all over the place, my mind a cacophony of images, voices, happy times, horrible times. One moment I long to talk to Kerry. She knows. She’d understand. The next minute I loathe her existence. It’s not a pretty feeling, the darkness that creeps into my heart when I think about my former best friend. It’s not her fault, but my rational side has given way to primal fear, and in that void she’s the root of this evil.
I don’t sleep. I feel his hands on me, hear his low voice in my ear, his promise that he won’t give up. I don’t know why I’m alive. Does he still think I know where Kerry is? Is it even safe to go back home? The realization chills me to my core. It isn’t. Of course I can’t go home. Oh my God. I can’t talk to anyone about this. I don’t have anyone.
If it hadn’t hurt so fucking much I would have curled up and cried. I cry anyway, flat on my back, the tears wetting my temples in floods before they soak the pillow.
I have a minor brain hemorrhage and they want to make sure it disappears, a small amount on the surface of my brain. My arm will heal, my bruises and swellings will subside as time goes by. The body is an amazing organism. If I’d have been a car, they’d have just dumped me in a scrap yard and dismantled me. I don’t know if I wish I’d have been a dead thing, or if I really want to be alive. I beg them for sleeping pills, but I still wake up around two a.m. from my own whimpering until I realize I’m not at home, and that I’m not being beaten.
One day they release me. I’m not ready. The hospital bed, the staff outside my room, they’ve become my safety blanket. I don’t want to go out there! Kerry was stupid. She went home. I can’t go home.
I call a cab, giving him directions to a hotel downtown, fighting the panic that’s clawing in my chest. There are too many people on the streets. My enemies can be anywhere. I need to plan how to proceed from here. I think of my friend, of her fear. She must have felt exactly like this. Or worse. That man, that monster that came after me in the dark night, in my own home – he befriended her first, he fucked her, he made her believe there was something going on between them. Then he tried to murder her. The only person I could have talked to about all this has disappeared because of him. I live in terror every minute because of him.
No, not him.
Salvatore. Luciano Salvatore.
As I sit in the taxi that drives fast through the streets, a wave of hate suddenly surges through me. My whole fucked up life flashes before my eyes. I’ve had a few good years, and now it’s all gone to shit. I fled once, I’ll be fucking damned if I do it again.
I tap the window that separates me from the driver. “Hey, we’re going somewhere else.” Giving him the address of the center for autistic children, my heart begins to pound harder. This is really fucking stupid, but I need to tell that creep Salvatore exactly what I think of him. He’s robbed me of everything.
The staff look horrified when they see me. I say bike accident and that I forgot something when I quit, that I just want to try to find again. Two minutes alone with our archives give me an address to little David’s father. Young, shy David, who loved Kerry. He must be about nine now. Salvatore took that away too when he had David removed from our care. It crushed my friend. He walks over everyone, destroys everything.
Even more determined, I hop into the taxi again and give the guy the new address. It’s a fancy neighborhood, a world away from my home address, and the shabby street where we stand right now. He gives me a once-over before he shrugs and starts rolling.
It’s not hard to see that it’s the right place because Salvatore surrounds himself with security. Three men in black suits pace the gravel outside a wide barred iron gate. The taxi driver meets my gaze in the rear-view mirror. He looks as nervous as I feel. I’m sweating and my mouth is desert dry.
I lean forward, feeling the eyes of the guards on me. “Can you come with me? Please?”
His eyes widen. “No, ma’am. That’s definitely not in my work description.”
My heart sinks. “Can you at least wait here, please?”
His gaze flickers between me and the guards, then he licks his lips and nods. “I’ll wait a little to the side. Meter will be running.”
I take a deep, shaky breath. I have to do this before I change my mind. “Okay, fair enough. I won’t be long.”
He looks skeptical, and I don’t like it at all. What the fuck am I doing? I jump out of the car, give him one last glance, then I close the door and put my palm on the roof as the car immediately starts rolling. With a heavily pounding heart, I turn toward the gate and the serious men who stand there. They have lined up, and somehow they look taller and wider than they did a few seconds ago. A gun, catching a ray of sun, glints in the belt under a suit jacket, and almost changes my mind. My legs want to take a sharp turn to the left, to where the taxi waits. No! I need to settle this. I lick my swollen lips. My face is still strained and tender. My arm doesn’t really hurt anymore, safe in its cast, but my head aches and every breath I take is a bitch on my broken ribs. I ran once. I made myself a new life. My friend fled for her life. This is for Kerry as much as for myself.
/> Fuck Luciano Salvatore!
My legs feel as if they’re filled with lead as I walk up to the one who looks like he’s in charge. “I need to speak to Salvatore.” Every cell in my body tells me to run but my mind forces me to stay put. I think of Kerry as I left her at my cousin’s house, her posture stiff and unnaturally straight. I wonder if that’s how I come off too.
They look at each other and two of them bark out a laugh. One of them doesn’t move a muscle, he just keeps staring in a very discouraging way.
“Now why would we let you do that?”
I’m at a loss for words. “Please.”
The man in the middle, the one who spoke, pulls out a gun and gestures with it toward the road. “Trot along, little girl.”
I freeze up. The blue-black metal of the handgun glints. It’s not aimed at me, but a slew of memories assault me from the sight. My parents shot to death in their car. One of my brothers assembling weapons as I walked in on him a few years later. I knew then it was all going to shit. Next time I saw him, my worst fears had come true as he had been thrown in county jail. My aunt and uncle weren’t having it anymore. My other brother had already moved out. I was nineteen and I fled from everything. I’m not fucking doing it again.
“I know where Kerry Jackson is!”
Well, I don’t, but I’ll sort that later.
“Is that supposed to mean anything? Get lost, lady.”
I gape as my cheeks heat up. I don’t know why I thought that was important. Maybe because I was beaten black and blue because of it?
“Well, check with your boss,” I spit.
I lose the staring contest as my eyes flicker between them. Of course, I do. I’m fucking scared out of my mind. But I’m pissed and I won’t budge. I raise an eyebrow, as does he, then he puts his hand to his collar and turns away. I hear him speak, but I can’t make out the words. The other two stand with their arms crossed over their broad chests as they look me over, their lips curled in distaste. I’m suddenly uncomfortably self-conscious about the absolute mess I am. My insides squirm, but I force myself to stay still.
I jerk when the gate starts moving and the man who spoke comes up to me, grabbing my good arm. I wince. ‘Good’ is relative. It’s also been beaten and he’s squeezing my bruises.
“Ow.”
“Move,” he growls.
I stumble next to him as he strides up the driveway, toward a beautiful white mansion. To the far right stand several exclusive cars, BMW, Mercedes, Tesla. The lawn is perfectly trimmed and emerald green, the bushes cut in shapes of balls, and cylinders. Birds sing and it all seems both very unthreatening and completely lethal at the same time.
He can’t be all bad, can he? He’s a father. There’s got to be a streak of humanity in him.
A rough man in the dark in my apartment. Merciless beating. My friend scared witless. No. He has no redeeming qualities. As we walk up a long set of granite stairs the loathing in me grows. I’m gonna fucking tell him what he needs to hear.
When the door opens I jerk back, instinct telling me to run, but the fingers around my arm hold it in a vice grip, and all I do is hurt myself. The man who has escorted me pushes me toward a blond giant with a crooked nose. He looks me over, stone-faced, but I still see a hint of curiosity when he takes in my swollen face and the cast.
“I’ll take it from here,” he murmurs, a slight, undefinable accent to his voice. “Come.”
My legs shake as I walk toward him, across the threshold. My stomach is in knots and I fight to keep my breathing under control. I keep the vision of Kerry before me, broken beyond recognition, heart, body, and soul. My own pain is still vividly present with every breath I take.
I have to do this.
The hallway is stunningly beautiful, but I only register it in the periphery of my mind. I have tunnel vision as my gaze closes in on an oak door on the far right, toward which we’re clearly heading.
I jump as the man next to me knocks on the door, and then opens it. I see a bit of hardwood floor and an oriental carpet, then I’m pushed inside and the door closes behind us. He’s standing too close behind me and I stumble forward a step, my back crawling from his presence.
In the middle of the room stands a giant desk, an old-fashioned, dark wooden desk. On it an ashtray, a laptop and a few sheets of documents. Next to it stands a man, tall, dark hair, impeccably dressed in a gray suit. Luciano Salvatore. He doesn’t move as he looks me over from head to toe, and then back up to my face before he slowly removes his suit jacket and hangs it over the back of his chair. He takes his time, and it seems as if the clocks have stopped. I stare, transfixed, as he rolls up the sleeves of his white shirt, showing off well defined muscles beneath the rich dark hair on his forearms.
Then he walks toward me. I glance over my shoulder, at the man behind me. It’s not a comforting sight. His light gray eyes meet mine, his face expressionless. I look back at the man I’m here to see, my heart slamming so hard in my chest that I can barely breathe.
His eyes are slightly hooded and pitch black, his Roman nose and his sharp jawline make his face both rough and awe-inducingly attractive. There are vertical lines on his forehead and frown lines between his thick dark eyebrows. He has some years on him, looks to be in his forties.
“I was told you wanted to speak to me, Miss—?”
Chapter 5
Chloe
I had forgotten how incredibly beautiful this beast of a man is. Flashbacks from when I occasionally glimpsed him outside the center run through my brain. I was pulled to him then and, despite a mounting worry clutching my throat, I’m pulled to him now. It’s just looks. He’s a ruthless gangster. I wet my lips as I try to connect my brain to my tongue.
“Becker.”
He tilts his head, glances at the man behind me, and then back at me. “You seem to have been in an accident, Miss Becker. Traffic?”
I grit my teeth as I glare at him. Accident? Traffic? “You know damn fucking well what happened to me.”
His penetrating gaze darkens a shade and his lips curl. “I have never seen you before in my life. Why would I know what happened to you?”
“Because you ordered it,” I spit. “You fucking—” I scream when he grabs my arm and pulls me toward him, nose to nose, his breath fanning my lips, hot, faintly smelling of cigar.
“Whoever you are, I won’t tolerate you coming into my house giving me attitude, you got it?”
I try to twist free, but he doesn’t budge. “You’re a fucking monster! You sent someone to kill my best friend, you sent someone to kill me. Do you know how fucking scared she was, do you know how I feel? It’s a nightmare, and it’s all you. You’re a fucking cancer in this town!”
In the blink of an eye I have a gun in my face and he yanks me down on my knees, hard. “You’ve got one second, Miss Becker, to explain why I shouldn’t blow your brains out for insulting me.”
I stare up at him, my head spinning from the sudden change of position. Guns. I don’t react rationally to them. If there is such a thing. “No!” I wail and throw myself away from him, scrambling on one hand, an elbow in its cast, and knees to get past the armchair, to get to the door and get out of here. A foot in my back, slamming me flat to the floor, stops my movement. My chin hits the carpet, and my teeth slam together so hard it reverberates through my already pounding head. I scream from the pain, squirming and flailing to get free as I gasp to get air.
“Don’t!” I wheeze.
Salvatore pushes his foot against my side, making me roll over on my back faster than the speed of light to save my cracked ribs from his prodding.
“I called the cops!” I snarl as I look up at him, dark hate filling my chest. I haven’t, but as I cower before Luciano Salvatore, I realize I should have. “They know I’m here. You can’t kill me! They know everything!”
I jerk when he barks out a short laugh. “Check that for me, Ivan.” The door opens and closes, and I’m alone with the beast. He grabs my collar and pulls me to m
y feet, half dragging me toward a set of armchairs to the left, pushing me down in one of them, his hand still gripping my shirt. I gasp as arrows of pain shoot through my chest with every move.
“You’re here for one thing only,” he growls. My eyes dart between the weapon he now rests against his powerful thigh, and his steel gaze. “I was told you know the whereabouts of Kerry Jackson.”
I widen my eyes as the blood drains from my face. I lied. He’ll kill me. He narrows his eyes and it feels as if he sees right through me.
“Yes,” I whimper.
“Then I suggest you tell me.” He raises his gun and points it between my eyes. I follow his arm up to his too-handsome face that right now is twisted in an expression of disgust. He thinks I’m disgusting? Yes, I look horrible, but he did this! The loathing in me grows until I can barely contain it. I want to scream, hit him, claw his eyes out, but I force myself to remain still before the two deadly forces in front of me: the firearm, and the man.
“Why would I? You’ll kill me if I do,” I spit out.
His eyes darken as he narrows them. “I’ll kill you in either case if you called the cops on me.”
The hair on my nape rises. “I didn’t,” I blurt out in sudden panic over what I’ve said. Tell on the mob and die. Maybe I should stick to the lie, maybe that would save me, but I suddenly feel a desperate need to convince him that I’m harmless, a nobody.
Neither of us speaks and silence mounts between us. I flinch when he reaches out and grabs my chin, tilting my head from side to side. “Christian did quite a number on you.”
My lower lip trembles as I relive that night. Rough hands in the dark. Fists. Kicks. Pain, more pain, and then more again. It seemed like it lasted for hours. I’ve barely slept since; the nightmares too vivid.
“You see, Miss Becker. You need to disappear. You threaten me with the cops. You can identify my man. You know way too much about the events a couple of years back.”
“It’s… it’s nothing. I never saw him. It was dark. I don’t know anything. I didn’t call the police, it was just something I said.”
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