Broke and Bound: House of Vitali Box Set

by Renard, Loki

  “I need help.”

  20

  Angelo had given him an address. Mark drove out into the countryside, not entirely sure where he was headed. The address didn’t really seem to correspond with a building. His GPS had it basically being the side of the road.

  Sure enough, after a few hundred miles, he saw one of the tell tale black vehicles sitting on the verge. It was a smart meeting spot. The land was flat for miles around. There was no way to be snuck up on.

  Angelo got out of the car at the same time Mark got out of his. He was dressed in a long dark coat which made him seem taller and more imposing than ever. How long had it been since Mark last saw Angelo? He didn’t know, but it was like seeing him for the first time. An elegant, powerful devil in a perfectly cut suit. Strong shoulders, hard jaw, perfectly sculpted cheeks and those dark eyes which settled on him with the benevolence and dark mercy he craved.

  Angelo left the door to the car open and nodded toward the interior with his head.

  “This is the last choice you’ll ever make,” he said. “Get in and be mine, or take your chances on your own.”

  Mark wanted to hate this man with all he had. Angelo was evil. He’d caused the deaths of twelve people. He had ruined Mark’s whole life. And yet, for some sick, fucked up reason, Mark had to fight the impulse to dive into Angelo’s arms and sob with pure relief.

  He walked up to the car, and got in.

  * * *

  “You want forgiveness, you faithless fuck?”

  Bobby Vitali had apparently lost a collection of favorite ties in the fire, and he wasn’t happy about it. He looked like he was on the verge of attacking Mark with his bare hands.

  “Why would I want forgiveness from you?” Mark shot back. “I’m not the one who did this.”

  “Stop bickering,” Angelo snapped. “I told you to get everything you wanted out of the house, Bobby.”

  “Well, I forgot,” Bobby sulked. “And there was so much we couldn’t take. He owes us thousands.”

  “Oh he owes us a lot more than that,” Angelo purred.

  The three of them were at another country house. It wasn’t as large or well appointed as Angelo’s erstwhile lair, but it was still far nicer than most places Mark had ever been in. The discussion was taking place next to an indoor swimming pool which still had ripples playing across the surface from where Angelo had emerged. The mastermind was taking the meeting in his swim shorts, his muscular upper body bare and dappled with droplets of salt water.

  The drama which had played out at his old home didn’t seem to touch Angelo. Mark watched him carefully, looking for some sign of remorse. Not a one. Angelo was acting as if this was exactly as how he had planned things to be - and the sick thing was, Mark was fairly certain that was the case. This had all been planned out. Those charges had been waiting for his betrayal. He may as well have triggered the detonator himself.

  Mark sat on a deck chair in his cheap suit, his knee jolting up and down with nerves. He couldn’t help but fidget, knowing what he had just done. He’d chosen the wrong side of the law. He was a criminal now, more wanted than either of the Vitali men.

  “I’m not forgiving him even if he pays us back double,” Bobby declared. “They don’t make most of those ties anymore. They were vintage!”

  “I don’t want forgiveness. I don’t want anything,” Mark said. He was broken. He knew he didn’t deserve anything. He kept thinking he should just turn himself in after all and go to jail, but it was too late for that. He didn’t make the decisions anymore. Angelo did.

  “Of course you want something,” Angelo said. “You want to live.”

  “I shouldn’t have come here,” Mark said, looking around furtively “You’re the bad guy.”

  “Oh, am I?” Angelo smirked gently. “How is that, Mark?”

  “You made me kill my friends! You could have killed me!”

  “I did no such thing. My home was scheduled for demolition. Borer in the walls. Easier just to drop the whole thing. The fact that two teams of agents breached the walls and tragically triggered the charges the day before demolition was scheduled isn’t my fault.”

  “You sent the video of me and Bobby. You made them look at me. Accuse me. They want to put me in jail for a very, very long time.”

  “I told you what would happen if you crossed me, Mark,” Angelo said smoothly. “I kept my word. Unlike you.”

  Mark put his head in his hands and began to sob. This was the end. Angelo had picked him up, but that didn’t mean he was going to do anything else for him. If the Vitali men didn’t take him in, he was lost.

  Vitali had constructed a trap from which it had always been impossible to escape. Freedom had been an illusion from the moment Angelo first put hands on him weeks ago. Mark finally understood what Bobby and Angelo had been trying to tell him all along, far too fucking late.

  “I could have died like they did. Why didn’t I die like they did?”

  “Shhh,” Angelo soothed, crouching down in front of him.

  Comfort was the last thing Mark expected from Angelo. Certainly he hadn’t gotten it from anyone else.

  “You should have stayed loyal, Mark,” Angelo purred, lifting his face by the chin and brushing some of the hair out of his eyes in a gesture which felt so perfectly kind he leaned into it instinctively. He needed comfort. Craved it. And the only place he could find it now was here, with Angelo Vitali. To everyone else in the world, he was a traitor. He was scum. A criminal conspirator. He didn’t know what he was to Angelo, but he knew when this man touched him that he felt something. Hope. There was a future here, and only here.

  “I don’t mean to give you an out from your own actions, my boy,” Angelo said, his dark eyes so delicious beneath the wet curls of his hair. “But you should not blame yourself for everything. This is not entirely your fault.”

  “What do you mean? Of course it’s my fault! I led them to you, and you…”

  “It’s not your fault you were sent in unprepared for your first mission. It’s not your fault you had no back up. It’s not your fault they left you in my clutches for a full week. I’ve broken men in hours. You had no chance at all. It’s not your fault they didn’t even bother to check that the house was safe to enter. It’s not your fault they bashed their way in and ran around until they exploded. They’ve been deeply negligent, Mark, and they’ve hung you out to dry every step of the way.”

  Angelo had a point. The same thoughts had occurred to Mark briefly, but under the weight of the judgement of his peers, he’d pushed them away.

  “They’re not just coming for me,” Mark murmured. “They’re going to try to come after you for this too.”

  “My lawyers are already drafting a suit against the FBI. I have very good lawyers, Mark. By the time they’re done, the FBI will be building me a new house. You don’t. You’d have a legal aid attorney who would sit there with his or her thumb up their ass while you spent the rest of your life behind bars. You were smart to come back to me. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you. You’re my boy now, and I look after what’s mine.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Angelo smiled. “Now you boys stay here. I have some business to attend to.”

  * * *

  “You hate him, don’t you.” Bobby spoke in Angelo’s absence. “It’s okay, you can admit it.”

  “Yeah I hate him.” Mark could barely look at Bobby. “I hate him for fucking me over, for taking everything from me. I hate him for ruining my fucking life.”

  Bobby nodded, for once looking somewhat sympathetic. He laid back in a deck chair, puffing away on a berry themed vape. “Angelo only loves men who want him dead.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true,” Bobby said, drawing a deep breath of flavored smoke. “I don’t know why, but it is. I used to think he secretly wants to die, but that’s not it. I think he just enjoys the perversion of it, seeing hate and lust in a man’s eyes, knowing he has both of the most powerful feelings a
man can have focused on him. Love isn’t enough. He wants it all.”

  “That’s fucked up,” Mark said simply.

  “I did try to tell you,” Bobby added. “You had no idea what you were getting into. You still don’t.”

  “Yeah, well. Maybe he’s got no idea what he’s gotten into,” Mark replied. He was already wracking his brains trying to come up with a way to get back at Angelo. The relief he felt at being saved from prison was tempered strongly by resentment for the way he had been played. He needed to get his own back. He needed revenge. Not just for himself, but for everyone else. For the fallen. They would have their day.

  “I’ve tried to kill him twice,” Bobby said casually. “A third time, and he says I’ll lose my balls.”

  “You’ve never had help before,” Mark pointed out. “Maybe we can work together to give Angelo what he deserves.”

  “Maybe,” Bobby said with a reckless grin that made him look all the more handsome.

  Mark’s cock twitched. Being with Angelo meant having access to Bobby, and his sweet ass. That would be a bonus. He could still remember how it felt to have that tight ring stretched around his cock.

  “So you still hate me? I’m not a fed anymore.”

  “Yeah I hate you,” Bobby said with a puff of smoke. “You fucked up my tie collection.”

  Mark didn’t know if Bobby was being serious or not. He probably was.

  “Hello, boys,” Angelo smiled as he strolled back in. He was now fully dressed in one of his customary expensive Italian suits. “What are you plotting?”

  “Nothing,” Bobby lied immediately.

  “Of course you are,” Angelo replied. “You’re always plotting, Bobby. And there’s two of you now. More to plot. But be careful, boys. If you do come up with any little plans, the one of you who betrays the other first will be rewarded. The one who is betrayed will be punished severely.”

  Mark stared at Angelo, then at Bobby. How had Angelo so neatly circumvented their plans before they even began? The ease with which this man manipulated the world was incredible to behold.

  “Mark said he’s going to shoot you in your sleep,” Bobby piped up with a malevolent grin.

  “I did not!” Mark practically exploded with indignation. “I never said that. Bobby said he was going to spike your drink with glycerin. Said he got the idea off television.”

  “No, I didn’t!!” It was Bobby’s turn to be indignant.

  “Oh my dear boys, you are both in so much trouble,” Angelo smirked. “Mark, go get cleaned up and burn that dreadful suit. You don’t have to dress like a poor agent anymore. You have money behind you. It’s time you started looking like it.”

  Money. Power. Lovers. Mark had everything anyone ever thought they wanted, but it had come at far too great a price.

  “It’s too late to regret your decisions,” Angelo said to him as he sat unmoving and miserable on the chair. “They’re made. The consequences are done too. Look to the future, Mark. To what you will be. To who we will be, to each other and the world.”

  “A pack of twisted vicious assholes with electrical burns from shoving probes into each other’s asses?”

  Bobby laughed as Angelo shook his head.

  “A trinity of evil.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mark didn’t have to fake his confusion.

  Angelo was clearly only too pleased to explain. “Bobby and I are cut from the same cloth. We’re too much like one another. We don’t really care about costs to lives. It doesn’t weigh into our calculations. We’re just not made that way. But you have a conscience which pricks you when you’re taking advantage of the weak, and betraying the strong. You’re the worst of all of us, Mark. You’re perfect evil. We don’t really feel the difference between good and bad, but you do. You’re the kind of man who knows what evil is, but does it anyway.”

  “I had to! You forced me!”

  “I set traps for you, but I labeled them clearly. You walked into them of your own accord, because it suited you first to declare loyalty, then to betray it. You did that twice. First with the FBI, and then with us. You are the least trustworthy person of any of us, Mark, and yet you sit and you whimper and you blame me for your misfortunes. If you learn anything from this, learn to own who you are and the decisions you make, because I will not tolerate another betrayal. If you so much as lie about what brand of cornflakes you are eating, I will throw you to the boy and he will have his fun with you.”

  Mark swallowed and nodded. In his own fucked up, twisted way, Angelo was right. If Mark had just picked a path and walked it, none of this would have happened. Perhaps Angelo and Bobby would have killed him in the first place, but that would have saved the others. They died because he ignored Angelo’s warnings.

  “I won’t betray you again,” he said. “I know what happens if I do. Prison or death.”

  “Prison and death are picnics compared to what I do to you,” Bobby snorted. “You’ll fucking beg for prison and death.”

  Mark was safe, and yet he was in so much danger he couldn’t really comprehend it. He was loved, but he was hated. He was free, but he would never ever walk the world again without looking over his shoulder. There would be a warrant out for him. Maybe even a bounty. Being a rogue FBI agent turned criminal was not going to be an easy life, but at least it was a life.

  Mark couldn’t quite bring himself to thank Angelo, or Bobby, but he knew he’d owe them for everything until he drew his last breath. He was bonded to them now by a blood obligation, a debt which would never be paid.

  “Go get changed,” Angelo repeated. “Or I’ll cut that shit off you right now.”

  “I’m going,” Mark said, raising his hands. “I’m going.”

  “Good boy,” Angelo smiled. “Hurry back. Bobby’s butt has missed you.”

  “Has it?” Mark shot a look at Bobby, who was scowling at Angelo as if he’d revealed some secret he shouldn’t have.

  “No, of course not, asshole,” Bobby snarled. “Fuck off already.”

  Mark sighed inwardly. He might be on the run from the law, he might be responsible for the deaths of innocent people, and he might be every bit as evil as Angelo said he was. But if that was the case, he was not going to take any of Bobby’s attitude.

  He stood up, put his foot to the side of Bobby’s chair and pushed, sending the little shit sideways and into the pool with a dramatic splash which made Angelo roar with laughter.

  “What the hell!” Bobby scrambled out of the water like a wet cat. “These fucking shoes! You’ve ruined them!”

  “You’re going to address me with respect,” Mark said, feeling the old power returning. “Or I’ll make you. Get it?”

  “There he is,” Angelo smiled. “Welcome back, Mark. We’ve missed you.”

  21

  Angelo could not have been more pleased. The FBI had sustained a serious black eye in their latest ham-fisted attempt to take him down and would not soon come after him again if they knew what was good for them. He had taken care to keep himself out of any of the footage he’d provided to them, so he could not be directly linked to the alleged kidnapping which they no longer even had a witness for. They had come for his life, and in turn he had taken dozens of theirs. And then there was the final victory. The sweetest part of it all.

  He had Mark.

  Mark truly was a rare prize for a man like Angelo. There weren’t many Marks in the underworld. Most men were like Bobby, sharp and dangerous. Snakes and wolves. But Mark was different. He was a sheepdog. He wanted to be loyal. Needed to be honorable. Angelo would warp those drives to suit his need. He had no doubt that within a matter of months, Mark would defend him to the death.

  “You’re not going to get away with this.”

  Angelo was not surprised to see Mark standing at the door of his office. It was late at night and Bobby was sleeping. Only Angelo and Mark were awake. Angelo was awake because sleep was a waste, and Mark was awake because sleep never came to the tormented.

&
nbsp; The man was hurting and his pain made him all the more beautiful. His powerful shoulders, his long legs, that hair which was starting to grow out into a shag that could be styled into something elegant when he was finished grieving for a life that would never have suited him, they were all gorgeous in Angelo’s eyes.

  “Nobody gets away with anything, Mark,” Angelo said softly, patting his thigh.

  “You killed so many people. Just to prove a point to me. Why didn’t you just hurt me? Why did you go after all of them?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Angelo said. “They killed themselves through pride and foolishness.”

  “You set a trap.”

  “Yes,” Angelo admitted. “But I didn’t force them to walk into it. Free will, Mark. We all have it. Now come here.”

  Mark hesitated for a moment then walked slowly around the room and settled himself into Angelo’s lap, cuddling against him with a soft sob. The machismo he displayed around Bobby faded completely when he was alone with Angelo. With Angelo, he wept.

  Angelo held Mark as he sobbed for all he had lost, comforted him as tenderly as any father might tend a fallen son.

  Poor boy. He thought he was broken, but Angelo knew better. Mark wasn’t broken yet. He was just bent. He would continue to twist with time and experience, and one day he would become something so much more impressive than he ever could have been as part of law enforcement. Angelo had high hopes for Bobby, but the boy was impetuous and more of a follower than a leader. Mark had greater potential, and Angelo was looking forward to bringing every bit of it out of his blue eyed boy.

  This was how the Vitali family grew. Not by births, but by deaths. Bobby and Mark thought that he had no heart, but Angelo loved them both more deeply than he would ever express. Alone they were restless creatures, too dark, too broken, too pathetic, too sick for a world which did not understand them. As a family, their broken pieces fit perfectly together. The more they broke, the closer they became. There was no end to it. The world would keep breaking them, because that was what the world did. One day they would shatter completely into one another and that would truly be…