Broke and Bound: House of Vitali Box Set

by Renard, Loki

  16

  Bobby and Angelo stood waving as Mark drove away. He’d left in a haze, walking somewhat gingerly, which Bobby found hilarious. Angelo hadn’t gone easy on the fed, not even a little bit. He’d fucked Mark as if Mark had been taking it in the ass for decades. And the whip would leave marks for quite a while as well. That fed wouldn’t forget them any time soon.

  Bobby had figured he’d be relieved when Mark left, but he wasn’t sure he was anymore. Mark had taken some of Angelo’s attention off him, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. He hadn’t enjoyed being jealous, but having less of that laser focus on him was handy at times. He’d gotten away with more in the last week than he had in the last year.

  “Just us now, boy,” Angelo said, wrapping his arm around Bobby’s shoulders.

  “Yeah,” Bobby said guardedly. He didn’t know if that was true, or even if he wanted it to be true. He hated Mark on principle of course, but the guy could fuck. If they got to spend more time together, maybe Bobby would have started to hate him a little less. Or maybe he would have killed him. It was difficult to tell.

  “Was any of that true?” He looked at Angelo and asked the question he hadn’t dared ask until Mark was gone.

  “Any of what true?”

  “What you told him about the FBI not looking for him, you know, them deliberately leaving him behind…”

  “They’ve been sweeping the city block by block for the past week,” Angelo said “They’re frantic.”

  “So he wasn’t sacrificed on purpose.”

  “He was sent in without proper backup, and nobody came when the shots were fired. The rest is conjecture. Incompetence, or malice. They failed to secure his safety in any way. They were too focused on getting us.”

  “And, uhm… those shots… they came from the Leonti family?”

  Angelo pursed his lips in a way that told Bobby he wasn’t going to share. Hell, Bobby wouldn’t have put it past Angelo to have set the shooting up himself.

  “You let him go back to the feds. You think he’ll stay loyal to us?” Bobby tried another question.

  “Did he stay loyal to them?” Angelo smiled coldly and clapped Bobby on the shoulder. “We’ve got some preparations to make, my boy.”

  Bobby’s brows rose in shock. “You think he’s going to betray us?”

  “I’d be surprised if he doesn’t pull over at the first town and call in a strike on this place,” Angelo snorted.

  “So why did you fuck him then?”

  “Because,” Angelo smiled. “I had to give him something to betray. He is bonded in the flesh with us, my boy. He is ours. Nothing he does from here on out will change that, no matter what he does.”

  “So… what… what are you going to do to him? Kill his family?”

  “We’ve already established that going after family is a bad idea,” Angelo reminded him. “Besides, Mark doesn’t care about his family. His mother wouldn’t be in that run down nursing home if he did. She’d be living with him and he’d be looking after her like a good son does.”

  “So what, then? Angelo?”

  Angelo was already walking away.

  Bobby shook his head and muttered curses under his breath. This was fucked. If Mark really did betray them, they’d be screwed. There was no way out of it. Angelo was impressive, but he wasn’t bigger than the FBI.

  “I shoulda just shot him,” he muttered under his breath as he scurried to catch up.

  17

  “You bastard. You’re alive! Where the fuck have you been?”

  Gary’s welcome wasn’t exactly effusive, but it was good to hear.

  Mark was returning to the office for the first time since his captivity. He hadn’t been allowed in for a week. After he’d called in with the good news that he was alive, the bureau had sent him straight to a doctor who had insisted on admitting him to a clinic for observation and treatment even though he was physically fine. A few people had been in to see him during that time, made small efforts to debrief him, but there was concern he’d been traumatized after a week in captivity.

  It wasn’t entirely misplaced.

  Everything looked different now. Mark had gone into the house in the woods one man and come out another. He’d changed and the world had changed with him. Memories of his time with the Vitali men often intruded on his day, erotic snippets of naked male flesh presented for his use, or sometimes, memories of what it had been like to be beneath Angelo. It had happened just one time, but that one time had redefined everything.

  Counselors had worked with Mark to go over some of the events, but he hadn’t really told them much. Certainly he had not told them everything. For the most part he simply regurgitated Angelo’s story. Told them that the Leonti family had shot and captured him.

  He didn’t feel bad about lying to the counsellors. Their caring expressions and vanilla smiles were so alien to his experiences he didn’t see how they could possibly understand what it had been like to be there, never knowing if he would cum or be killed, or possibly both.

  Worst of all, Mark found himself missing it. He spent his down time watching television, feeling how very plastic and fake this world he had returned to felt. There was nothing vigorous or vicious or primal for him out here. Everything was soft and sanitized and somehow more wrong than right.

  “You were taken against your will,” the counselor had said several times when he attempted to explain how he felt. “You were a victim.”

  Victim didn’t fit right. Yes he had perhaps been a victim, but he had acted too. That was the part he couldn’t share or come to terms with. He had dominated Robert Vitali almost as enthusiastically as Angelo, and now he had a taste for it. When he saw a handsome young man, his thoughts turned to what that man would look like on his knees begging for release.

  In the end, Mark just had to get back to work. He had to purge himself of this sickness which seemed to have infiltrated his soul. Standing in the office which smelled like deodorant, sweat, and feet, he knew it was good to be back in this building with its shitty coffee and its flickering fluorescent lights. This was where he would set things right again.

  Gary followed up his greeting with a hug. A straight, platonic, non-sexual hug. Mark had almost forgotten those existed.

  “I know you’re gay, you bastard, so don’t go getting a hard on,” he said, slapping Mark’s back.

  “I’ll try to restrain myself,” Mark laughed.

  The greetings kept rolling in over the next hour or so, his colleagues greeting him like a hero with hugs, back slaps, and all the coffee and candy he could take. They were so pleased to see him. There were some upsides to being in his own world, a world where he didn’t have to take it in the ass to be allowed to go home at the end of the day.

  As the days went on, he started to feel as though Angelo’s spell truly had been broken. With these people around him, officers of the law, people with real power in the world, Angelo Vitali seemed like a paper cut out of a person. Mark was supposed to be working for him now, but at this distance, that just felt like an insane proposition. What could Mark possibly have to fear from a middle of the road mobster who manipulated men with sex? Nothing.

  The longer Mark spent at work, the more determined he became that everything he’d suffered was going to be paid back several fold. Angelo had talked about owning him, but he hadn’t heard so much as a peep from Vitali since getting back. So maybe the big bad mobster wasn’t quite as ballsy as he’d made himself out to be inside the walls of his home.

  The story about the Leonti family had taken the heat off Vitali for sure. It was frustrating to sit at work and write statements about a crime that had never been committed. He was probably going to have to testify in court about it too - and that made him sick with worry. His story would have a hundred holes in it. He’d be forced to perjure himself for Angelo Vitali, and frankly he wouldn’t have held in a fart for the man now.

  Mark looked at the statement he’d just written. Several hundred words de
tailing how he’d been held in an old warehouse and only just barely managed to escape with his life. All he had to do was sign it. Throw away the last shred of ethics he had to his name.

  Mark put the pen down.

  Fuck that. Fuck this. He was done. It was time to be Caesar and crucify some pirates.

  He got up from his desk and knocked on Gary’s door.

  “Come in.”

  Mark walked in and caught Gary halfway through a bear claw.

  Gary huffed when he saw it was Mark. The snort sent a small cloud of powder floating into the air between them caught in a sun beam.

  “What is it? Don’t tell me you’re tired of desk work, we’re not putting you back out for another two weeks and that’s final!”

  “It’s not that,” Mark said. “It’s about Vitali. I haven’t told you everything.”

  Gary’s mustache twitched in irritation. “You haven’t? Why?”

  “He threatened me,” Mark explained. “But I’m not afraid of him anymore. I’m ready to give you everything I’ve got on him.”

  “What’s this everything? We’re about to file kidnapping charges on Mario Leonti.”

  “That’s all part of his plan,” Mark explained. “He wants Leonti out of the way.”

  “So you’re saying you weren’t taken by Leonti?” Gary’s eyes narrowed. Mark knew this didn’t look good. He should have just told them the truth in the beginning.

  “No. Vitali got me when the shooting started. He held me for over a week and wore me down. He made me think my life was over if I didn’t do what he wanted. He tried to flip me. But I won’t be flipped, sir. I want to tell you everything. I want you to get him.”

  “Sit down,” Gary said. “And start talking.”

  18

  The compound was smaller than he remembered it. When he’d been there half a month earlier it had seemed to be endless in scope. From the air, it looked like a postage stamp neatly outlined with fencing.

  Mark had been denied direct access to the op thanks to his previous experiences in the house, but they’d agreed to let him watch from the air. It was the least they could do.

  Down below, masses of units prepared to swarm the place. He wished he could see Angelo’s face when he saw that his brainwashing hadn’t worked and that Mark had remained true to himself in spite of everything. He would have given anything to be the one to put the cuffs on Angelo himself, but he had to watch hovering above. There would be time to gloat later in interrogations. He was going to play a role in those. Oh god yes he was. He couldn’t wait to just sit there and watch Angelo squirm.

  “There the go,” the pilot commented. “Heading out.”

  An order must have been given. Down below, black suited figures emerged from their transports and poured into the house. Mark shifted in his seat, thoroughly excited for the moment when Angelo would be brought out, beaten at his own game. He waited. And waited. Seconds ticked by, every one of them feeling like an hour.

  FWOMP!

  A weird sound and a sudden glare emanating from below made both him and the pilot squint.

  “What the hell is that?” The pilot swore as light burst from the heart of the building. He had the presence of mind to send them rocketing up into the air to escape whatever it was, but they were too slow to fully escape the shock wave. The helicopter juddered and danced in the air above the violent explosion emanating from the heart of Vitali’s home. Mark held on for dear life as they were both shaken violently, riding the turbulence of destruction. By the time the pilot had control of the bird again, there was nothing but a crater where Angelo Vitali’s lair used to be.

  19

  Martha Boyars

  Jack Kent

  Gregory Foyer

  Theo Wright…

  Mark listened to the names of the fallen being listed at the funeral. There were twelve coffins displayed in the chapel. So many that there were no room for pews. Standing room only. The cries of mourners filled his ears and weighed upon his soul.

  This was his fault.

  Five days had passed since the mission went wrong. Five days in which Mark had been utterly numb. He didn’t need his pills anymore. His body had shut down all feeling and left him an empty man. He was breathing, and that was about all that could be said for him.

  The whispers had started almost immediately. There were rumors that he had been the reason the teams went in. That he had avoided being hurt - even though he’d been refused the chance to go in, they didn’t care. It was all part of his sick plan, apparently.

  There was little loyalty to rookies who fucked up this badly. All the care and accolades he had received upon returning had dried up. Even now, in a chapel so packed most people were stuffed shoulder to shoulder, he was alone.

  He could feel their stares and knew what they were thinking. He shouldn’t have come. He had no business here. But he couldn’t leave. He had to hear all the names. He had to see all the coffins. Mark didn’t want to hide from this, the biggest mistake of his life. He’d been hiding too long.

  Every day since the incident had been suffused with guilt and misery, the awful knowledge that he may as well have taken their lives himself. They had been good agents and great people. It was his fault that they were dead. There was no other way around it.

  The service ended and the coffins were lifted on shoulders of men and women with hard graven visages of sorrow. Mark watched as they went past, one after the other into the cold dark grave.

  * * *

  “Mark, we need to speak with you.” Gary caught Mark by the arm before he could leave.

  He didn’t pick up on the mood at first. He was so miserable that he couldn’t feel past his own pain. He nodded and followed Gary to a quiet spot behind the church. There were several other higher ranking men standing there. He didn’t know all their names, and they didn’t bother with introductions.

  “Quick question, Mr Locke.”

  They weren’t calling him ‘agent’ anymore. That was the first clue something had gone wrong. The second was when one of them pulled out a cell phone.

  “We know what you said. Angelo Vitali tricked you into drawing us into a trap. But what do you say about this?”

  Mark saw a still image of his muscular body lurching over Bobby Vitali’s spread thighs. It looked even more crude for being shown on hallowed ground.

  “Don’t,” he said, before the agent could press play.

  “So it’s real?”

  “Yeah, it’s real, but… they made me do it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was going to tell you after we got him,” Mark said, feeling the lameness of the words. “When they were holding me, there was all sorts of perverted stuff going on.”

  “So this was against your will?”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I told the counsellors…”

  “We’ve gotten an awful lot of footage of you not having a choice, Mr Locke,” the agent said skeptically. “Your descriptions don’t seem to fully match… and then there’s the fact you pointed the finger at the Leonti family first…”

  “He made me do that too…”

  “Angelo Vitali made you fuck his boyfriend, lie to your boss, and get a score of good agents dead?”

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” Gary intervened. There was donut dust on the end of his tie. It was all Mark could look at as the man who had mentored him ended his career. “You’re not under arrest yet, Mark, but you’re suspended. Don’t leave the city. We’ll be in touch.”

  * * *

  Mark drove away from the cemetery in a daze, his mind ticking off all the probable charges he’d be facing once they got their paperwork in order. Conspiracy for sure. Twelve separate counts of murder, god knows how many associated charges of serious bodily harm. Maybe even terroristic acts. Mark could only imagine what else they’d find to throw at him. The loss of this many agents on a single op meant someone was going down for this - and he was the obvious choice. He couldn’t even call himself a
scapegoat. It was all his fault.

  Visions of cells and solitary and gang members with toothbrush shivs played through his mind on the drive home. He’d be going to prison for the rest of his life for sure. The bureau had to save face and prove that it had been one corrupt rookie that was to blame.

  He pulled up to the intersection near his house. The turn for his apartment was on the left. Mark went right, checking in his side mirrors to make sure he wasn’t being followed. He took several turns around the block, then headed toward the park. He needed to think. There were probably only hours of freedom left. The fact that they’d let him leave the cemetery was a mercy he had to capitalize on.

  As he parked among the happy family vehicles with the little stick figures on the backs of them, he felt so incredibly disconnected from the world. It was just like Angelo had said. He wasn’t part of it anymore. Not really. He didn’t know how long he’d survive in or out of jail.

  He had one lifeline left. A cellphone he kept under the seat. It was supposed to be for Angelo to contact him, but it was also capable of dialing out. He should have turned it over to the investigators in the first place. Why hadn’t he? Had some fucked up part of him been too reluctant to sever the last lines between them?

  Mark pulled it out of its taped position and held it in his hand for a long moment before flipping it open and pressing the button for the single number programmed into the speed dial.

  It rang three times. Three bell like tones, each of which tolled for him and his soul. This was the end of everything. Before it could ring a fourth time, the call was accepted.

  “Mark.” Angelo’s accented tones floated down the line. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Mark swallowed his pride and said the three words most dangerous words you could say to a man like Angelo Vitali.