by Loki Renard
“I have my reasons for that.”
“Yes, vague reasons of vengeance, “Angelo sneered. “You want to punish me, but you didn’t do your homework and you don’t really know how. You shoot me and you expect that to do something. You think I haven’t been shot before, boy? You expect me to sit here and whimper for you? You are so far out of your league.”
Maybe he was.
Maybe he wasn’t.
Damien had known going into this that getting Angelo Vitali to break wouldn’t be easy. The gun shot had not been part of the plan though. Damien had lost his temper, which meant that even though Angelo was the one who wore the bullet, it was Damien who had lost control of both the situation and himself.
“You should let me go,” Angelo said. “You’re wasting my time and yours. Let me go now, and I’ll show you mercy.”
“No you won’t.”
“True, “Angelo flashed a shark like smile. “But the longer you draw this out, the worse it will be for you in the end.”
Why did Damien feel guilty? There was a sick stirring in the pit of his stomach, as if some part of him knew he’d just made a serious mistake. But that didn’t make sense. He was used to death and pain. They’d been his constant companions for years. So why did that look Angelo was giving him now make all the hair on the back of his neck stand erect?
It was the man’s composure. Nobody was that calm after catching a bullet. Nobody. Angelo wasn’t fucking human. He was like some kind of sexy Siciliaan zombie. In a moment of pure paranoia, Damien felt a spike of fear. What if Angelo couldn’t be killed?
He pushed the idea away as soon as it occurred to him. Ridiculous. Of course Angelo could be killed. He’d bled the same as every other man did when shot. He just wasn’t showing emotion. There was nothing supernatural about that.
Angelo sat still and silent, his eyes never leaving Damien’s face as Damien tried to quell his inner torment. Angelo’s earlier words kept coming back to him. Was he really worse than Angelo? No. That was ridiculous. He knew at his core that he was not a worse person than Angelo Vitali. This man was a monster, but in that moment he was so caught in the web of the conversation that he couldn’t defend himself.
“Tell me about Mark and Bobby,” he said, deflecting the conversation from himself.
Angelo cocked his head to the side. He was starting to look a little pale. He might even faint. He was still composed though. “What do you want to know?”
“How do you get them to stay with you? It’s common knowledge you kidnapped them both. Is it some fucked up Stockholm syndrome shit?”
“They want to be with me.”
“Bobby wants to kill you. There’s evidence of several attempts on your life. One of them was public.”
“Bobby wants to kill everyone. It’s not personal.”
“And Mark?”
“Mark is going to tear you apart,” Angelo smiled. “You would do well to watch your back.”
“You ruined his life. You destroyed his career. You made him a pariah.”
“And yet it is you he will come for,” Angelo said. “It’s not fair, is it? You know, it is wise of you to worry about Mark and Bobby. Unless I’m very much mistaken, you don’t have them. And if you don’t have them, you don’t really have me either.”
Another flash of temper raced through Damien’s blood. Fuck this guy and his ability to find every weakness. He shoved the barrel of his gun hard against Angelo’s head.
“What’s that? I don’t have you? Sure feels like I have you inches away from being a stain on the concrete.”
“It feels that way, perhaps, but, bullet holes aside, you’re an assassin who has very carefully avoided seriously harming me,” Angelo smirked. “I don’t think you’re used to getting to know your marks as people. I’m betting most of what you do is done from a distance, or from behind. You’re uncomfortable with pain. You don’t want to see it, and you don’t really want to inflict it. And that is going to be what brings you down in the end.”
“Shut. Up,” Damien ground out between his teeth. He was starting to lose his temper. Shooting Angelo was supposed to get him under control, but that bullet had only intensified Angleo’s charisma because now, in spite of everything, Damien was actually incredibly fucking impressed by Angelo. The guy could walk his talk. He was the kind of tough that Marines dreamed of being.
Angelo silenced himself, but the mocking gleam in his eyes stayed there.
“I am going to kick your fucking ass,” Damien snarled.
“I’m sure that will be incredibly tedious, “Angelo drawled. “Put some effort into it, boy. Try to be at least a little creative.”
Scrunccch…
Damien lifted his head. “What was that?”
Angelo must have heard it too. His head turned at exactly the same time as Damien’s.
The ominous crunching of something too large to be good news was clearly audible outside the warehouse door.
“Well,” he said. “One of us is in trouble.”
BOOM!
Damien was standing over Angelo, gun to his head when the doors exploded and the warehouse was suddenly filled with blazing light from a dozen halogens mounted on the top of SUVs.
Armored men rushed in, dozens of them dressed in high end mercenary clothing and carrying the kinds of weapons which made Damien’s pistol utterly worthless.
The sound of the explosion was still ringing in his ears as four men piled atop him. He was taken to the ground, a black bag was shoved over his head, and he felt the familiar feeling of thick plastic cable ties being fixed around his wrists.
There was a lot of shouting and cursing as he was carried away. In seconds, Damien went from captor to captive. His body couldn’t keep up. A numb sensation of shock made thinking impossible as he was carried away, his legs kicking reflexively, but without real purpose.
7
“Let me at him,” Bobby growled. “I want to carve his fucking heart out with a spoon.”
Angelo was back home, and it was all thanks to this vicious boy snarling threats. Bobby wasn’t the biggest of the Vitali men, or the most physically intimidating - but just like Angelo said, he was a vicious little bastard with a talent for manipulation. He’d known exactly who to call when Angelo went missing. The same man who had fucked him over two years ago - and the last man who would want him back on the streets without Angelo’s supervision.
Mason Malone.
Bobby had once been a serious threat to the CEO of one of America’s most deadly private mercenary forces - until Mason had asked Angelo to handle him. Angelo had taken Bobby and made him his in every way, at first as a favor to Mr Malone, and then for his own benefit. That had left Mason in Angelo’s debt - a debt which had just been repaid in full.
Mason’s forces had hit the warehouse like a hurricane and Angelo’s captor hadn’t stood a chance. Now he was tied up in the basement, and Vitali’s boys were about to have their fun.
Mark frowned and took the teaspoon out of Bobby’s hand. “We’re not going to hurt him right now. We’re going to find out who he is and who he works for. If you can’t get your shit under control, you can go to your room.”
“Fuck you,” Bobby nearly exploded. He was vibrating with vengeful energy. This fucker had taken Angelo and hurt him. Bobby didn’t like that. If anyone was going to torture and eventually kill Angelo, it would be him. Or maybe Mark. Bobby had tried to kill Angelo twice since they met and frankly, the idea of someone else doing it was just plain galling. He didn’t have any immediate plans to off Angelo, but he’d always thought of himself as the ultimate bringer of justice to the Vitali patriarch. Point was, he and Mark definitely had first crack at Angelo when the time came, and when the mood took them. Not some random asshole who liked to creep around in bathrooms.
“We don’t know who this guy is,” Mark said calmly. “We need to find out a lot of things before we start killing him with kitchenware, alright?”
“Fine,” Bobby grumbled.
> Together, they went down to the basement, where their captive had been bound to a chair in much the same way Angelo had been sitting in a chair when they found him. Couldn’t beat the classics. Bobby wanted to put a bullet in this guy to even the score, but Mark had refused to allow him that pleasure.
Mark strode into the room ahead of Bobby and yanked the bag off the man’s head. Bobby found himself looking at one of the most attractive guys he’d ever seen in his life. The asshole had wily yet strong features, incredible green blue eyes ringed with dark lashes and narrowed with fear and suspicion.
“What’s your fucking name?” Bobby cursed the question.
“Damien Colt.” He answered almost mechanically.
Shit. Damien was hot. Very hot.
Bobby glanced across at Mark and saw a stunned expression on his face too. Yeah, okay. This was going to be fun. This sexy man was theirs to play with. Angelo was still recovering from his ordeal, so he hadn’t showed any real interest in coming down here and dealing with Damien as yet.They could take their time with him. This was going to be good. Really fucking good.
“Hey asshole,” Bobby cursed. “You fucked with the wrong guys.”
“You must be Bobby,” Damien said flatly.
“Yeah, I’m Bobby,” Bobby said. “If you know my name, you should have known better than to have fucked with my family.”
“Your family? You mean the man who captured you as a favor to Mason Malone, the same Mason Malone who rescued him, if I’m not mistaken. Did you know your daddy was Mason’s bitch or do you just not care?”
Mark grabbed Bobby’s shoulder to stop him rushing forward and kicking the shit out of Damien.
“Easy,” Mark growled softly. “He’s winding you up on purpose.”
“Good. I’ll fuck his face up on purpose too,” Bobby growled.
“We want information, remember?”
Mark was so damn calm. Sometimes he really did remind Bobby of Angelo. He didn’t have the same dark charisma, but there was a forcefulness about him that could be brought to bear even when he wasn’t being threatening, and that was very Angelo-esque.
“What did you want with Angelo?” Mark posed the question with almost conversational calm.
“I wanted to kill him.”
“You could have killed him at any time.”
“He fucking knew better than to do that,” Bobby snarled. “Nobody touches a Vitali. You made a huge mistake.” He dodged past Mark and slapped Damien across the face, his palm making hard contact with the flat plane of Damien’s cheek. God, it was so satisfying. He wanted to do it again, but Mark caught his hand before he could and twisted him away from the bound man.
“Easy!” Mark growled at him. “Hands off!”
“I barely touched him!”
“You weren’t meant to touch him at all,” Mark rounded on Bobby, his handsome face stern. “If you can’t follow directions, you can leave.”
Bobby blushed crimson. He did not like being lectured, especially not in front of captives.
“He’s the one who took Angelo and shot him! Give your big bad act to him, not me!”
“He’s following orders better than you are right now.”
“That’s not fair! He’s tied up.”
“Maybe you need to be tied up,” Mark rejoined. “Maybe I’ll tie you up next to him.”
Bobby’s mouth dropped open. How the fuck was this fair? Mark was disrespecting the shit out of him.
“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even have him,” he pointed out. “So maybe you should shut the fuck up.”
Mark grabbed him by the arm, swing him around, and landed a hard slap to the seat of Bobby’s pants. The hot flash of pain bought Bobby to his toes and elicited a high-pitched yelp at the same time.
“What the fuck!”
Mark repeated the treatment, spanking Bobby on the spot. It hurt, but worse than physically hurting was the fact that it was totally destroying Bobby’s cred in their prisoner’s eyes. The guy was fucking smirking!
“Stop it!” Bobby tried to twist out of Mark’s grip.
“I’ll stop it when you work out how to do as you’re told,” Mark said, releasing him anyway.
“I’m going to tell Angelo,” Bobby threatened.
“You do that,” Mark glowered. “See what he does to you when he hears you’re being insubordinate and making a scene in front of Mr Colt.”
“Why don’t you go tell Angelo and let me deal with this piece of shit,” Bobby suggested. “I promise I’ll leave enough of him to question. He doesn’t need his limbs for that, right?”
“Go and see Angelo,” Mark snapped. “You’re done here.”
“But I didn’t even touch him!”
“GO!” Mark thundered the word.
Bobby went.
He sulked all the way to Angelo’s bedroom. Angelo was on bed rest, doctor’s orders. To Bobby’s surprise, Angelo was actually following those orders. Damien had only held him for a bit over twenty-four hours, but that was plenty of time to fuck a guy up.
“What are you doing here, my boy?”
“Mark sent me up,” Bobby said, his lower lip curling out in a pout. “He said I was being too rough.”
“That does sound like you,” Angelo smiled. “Come here.”
Bobby slid onto the bed and curled up with Angelo. At first he just sat over the blankets, but after a second he kicked his shoes off and got into bed. Angelo was wearing silk pajamas. He looked older and more tired than Bobby was used to seeing him, and Bobby really didn’t like that.
“It’s alright boy,” Angelo said, pressing a kiss to Bobby’s forehead. “I’m going to be fine. There’s no harm done.”
“He hurt you.”
“Yes, he did,” Angelo said, allowing Bobby to snuggle up against him. “But he didn’t do any long-term harm. He could have killed me at any time.”
“I want to kill him,” Bobby growled. “We should take him to pieces and send him all over the country.”
“On a tour of some kind?”
“No, in like matchboxes. To everyone who thinks of fucking with us.”
“The postal service is very insistent that one not send the flesh of one’s enemies,” Angelo smiled.
“You think this is funny?”
“I think you’re very sweet,” Angelo said, pressing a kiss to Bobby’s forehead. “I appreciate your nasty impulses, but they’re not necessary. Once we find out who Mr Colt is working for, we’ll know what to do.”
BAM!
A loud sound downstairs made Bobby startle. The sound of feet pounding on the stairs below drew closer and in an instant, Angelo wasn’t looking old or tired anymore. He reached over, grabbed a pistol from his bedside cabinet and…
“NYPD FREEZE!”
“Angelo!”
Bobby screamed his name, but it was too late. They were taking Angelo away in his fucking pajamas, and him too. Their sanctum was crawling with fucking cops. Bobby tried to go for his gun, but was tackled to the ground and cuffed in seconds. The string of curses which escaped him continued all the way down to the cruiser that he was roughly shoved inside.
8
Angelo was behind bars, and he was pissed. The raid on the house had taken place about three hours after they’d got back with Damien. That was too short a time-frame to be coincidence. He wasn’t worried for himself, or even Bobby. He was very worried for Mark.
“Hello, Mr Vitali.”
Damien didn’t look like an overgrown child anymore. He looked like a detective, wearing a suit which looked good on him even though the cut was relatively shoddy by Angelo’s standards. Such a pity. Damien could have looked so utterly perfect if he’d been outfitted in the Vitali style.
“Hello, Mr Colt,” Angelo said, struggling to contain his temper. It wasn’t often that he became angry. Most of his life was a high stakes game. Being held up in a bathroom at gun point and abducted hadn’t made him nearly as angry as this did. He pushed the rage down, made it a thing tha
t burned with cold fire in his belly.
The transparency of the whole plan was so obvious now. He must be getting old not to have seen the signs. Abducted by a “mercenary” who was uncomfortable with torture. That should have made every alarm bell in his head ring, but he’d been distracted by the physical appeal of Damien Colt. Damien had done a damn fine job advertising weaknesses that didn’t really exist. He’d played him like a fiddle. It wasn’t Damien that Angelo was upset with, it was himself. He’d fucked up, badly, and the consequences would be far ranging.
“So those weren’t Mason’s men who came for you,” he said in an effort to fill in one or two of the final blanks.
“Oh they were Mason Malone’s men,” Damien smiled. “It’s just that Mason Malone saw fit to help us, instead of you. You’re out of friends, Angelo.”
“So it would seem.”
Damien looked like he wanted something. Ah yes, Angelo knew what he wanted. Pain. He wanted to see Angelo’s pain, his anguish. He was a sadist, just not in the way Angelo found useful or appealing.
“You’re so arrogant,” Damien sneered. “You think you can have anyone because you seduced two men. Well I’m a little different than your boy with daddy issues and your traitor. I knew they’d come for you, Angelo. And now we have Mark in custody, and Bobby will be up on charges too. You’re going to go down the longest by far, Angelo. You’re going to spend the rest of your life in jail.”
“You hit me. You shot me,” Angelo reminded him. “And you detained me illegally. That’s not going to play well for the court. I have lawyers who can work a technicality if a police officer so much as breathes the wrong way. These charges will never stick.”
“It doesn’t matter if they stick or not,” Damien said. “Because whether you rot in prison, or get out tomorrow, we’ve got what we came for.”
He was referring to Mark. And he was right. Angelo really didn’t see how Mark would get out of jail or prison perhaps ever. Crooked agents were punished by courts and criminals alike.