Captivated

by Bethany-Kris

Across the room, Rich shook his head. “No, dance.”

  Of course.

  Liliana dragged in a heavy breath as she stood, and began the few steps to a simple dance that wouldn’t put too much pressure on her, and didn’t require her to be en pointe for the majority of the moves. The shoes really did need to be broken in, and she did not want to break her goddamn toes in the process.

  “Stop,” Rich muttered thickly.

  Liliana did instantly.

  Turning, she found him staring at her with narrowed eyes. “What?”

  “Not that dance—I want you to do another.”

  Her heart clenched.

  “Which one?”

  “The one from the time we first met—when I saw your show. That one. Do that one, Liliana.”

  “I—”

  “Do it!”

  Jesus Christ.

  “All right,” she whispered.

  Back straight.

  Legs tight.

  Toes pointed.

  Arms like wings.

  Breathe in, and exhale slowly.

  It was easier for her to hear her own voice in her head when she danced then because it kept her mind off the man across the room. Problem was, the dance he wanted her to do made her fucking feet scream in protest. She needed her shoes for this—not brand new ones that were too stiff, and difficult to move properly in.

  “Shit,” Liliana hissed, dropping out of her en pointe pirouette, and barely catching herself before she hit the floor. “Sorry, sorry.”

  She apologized out of habit.

  Not for him, but because she fucked up a move.

  A move she knew, and could execute perfectly with the right shoes.

  “Get up and start again,” Rich said. “I’ve seen you do this dance perfectly, so I know you can. Stop wasting my time, and stop whining. Wipe the scowl off your face, and smile for me like you give a damn.”

  “I can’t,” Liliana mumbled.

  “Get up!”

  “I can’t dance in these shoes, Rich!”

  “Or you don’t want to, Lilibet.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  Her scream was as good as a slap, if the expression on his face was any indication. She should have known better, frankly, but she had been keeping that in for too long now.

  He crossed the space in a blink, and Liliana didn’t even have time to cover her head before he was attacking her. He didn’t hit her, though. And maybe that’s what was most surprising, and horrifying when he did abuse her.

  No.

  No hitting.

  He stomped on her fucking foot.

  Liliana doubled over in pain with a shout, and grabbed her foot. She swore she heard the crunch, and a sob caught in her chest when she realized trying to move two of her toes did nothing but cause immeasurable pain.

  Vomit climbed high in her throat.

  Fury saturated her.

  “You bastard, you—”

  He did hit her that time, but he didn’t even give her the opportunity to cover her head for the next hit before he was dragging her up from the ground. He said nothing as he pulled her—despite her clearly broken foot, and the obvious pain she was in—toward the door.

  “Let me go,” Liliana cried.

  “Time for you to learn, Lilibet. I have been very patient with you, but I am not waiting one more goddamn minute. We could have done this the easy way, and you could have just given it to me, but now … I see that won’t be the case.”

  “Let me—”

  They were almost to the stairs, now.

  She heard the first shot.

  Gunshot.

  And then the second.

  One came from the front of the house, and the second, from the back.

  Rich’s head snapped back and forth, but his blank expression never changed.

  “What was that?” Liliana asked.

  He didn’t respond, simply started pulling her up the stairs again.

  “Rich, what was—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled.

  Liliana turned just in time as they rounded the top of the stairs to see Rich’s men scattering to different spots on the bottom level. Their guns were already drawn, and the black hats they wore were pulled down over their faces like masks with only eye-holes for them to see out of. She didn’t get to see anything else, though, because Rich threw her into the closest room. The force of it made Liliana land on her broken foot, and she swore she heard another crunch.

  Her gasp of pain was followed by another cry. Tears welled, and fell down her cheeks. She reached for her foot, but maybe that was her biggest mistake of all.

  She should have been watching him.

  The fucking bastard.

  She heard the clink of metal a second before she heard leather hiss as it was pulled. Rich’s belt coming out of the loops.

  The belt hit her hard.

  Once, and then again.

  Again, and again, and again.

  Stop, stop, stop.

  She heard her own cries.

  Heard her screaming.

  And yet, she couldn’t be sure it was her.

  “You. Will. Listen.”

  Another smack.

  Another cry.

  “You. Will. Learn.”

  The next crack of the belt came down across Liliana’s face—splitting skin, and blinding her for a second.

  The panic welled.

  The fear took over.

  She was frozen for those seconds.

  “What is that smell?”

  It was Rich’s distraction that allowed Liliana a few seconds of reprieve. A moment to gather her bearings, and look for something—anything—to use. To get her out of this, to help her fucking survive.

  She realized she had been thrown into a bedroom, and while her one eye was impossible to see out of, the other one was just fine. There on the bedside table, she found a lamp that looked heavy as hell, and … well, it was something.

  And that was all she needed.

  It took all of her strength, and every effort in her body to ignore the protesting pain in her foot and shooting up her leg, to push up from the floor, and grab that goddamn lamp. She didn’t even think about it once she had it in her hands.

  No, she simply turned with it and swung for all she was worth. She didn’t even think she had aimed it properly, but the lamp still crashed over the back of Rich’s head.

  He swayed for a second.

  His head swung back to her.

  His gaze glazed.

  Move, her mind screamed, do something!

  In his confusion, Rich had dropped the belt, and his knees hit the floor. She didn’t know if he was going to move again, or how long it might take for him to snap back to reality. She didn’t know anything at all, and she couldn’t think beyond her mind still screaming for her to do something.

  Liliana grabbed it before he could reach for it again, slipped the end tail in through the metal loop to create a noose of sorts, and then threw it over his head. When it hung around his neck like a piece of jewelry, she pulled. She tightened it as much as she could, and pulled again until she heard him gag. Yanked and fucking yanked until she watched his legs kick, and his hands try to pull the belt away.

  Liliana didn’t care.

  She got on the edge of the bed, and used the arm of the four-poster bed as leverage to help her keep that goddamn belt as tight as it could be.

  Her pain intensified—she was probably damaging her broken bones even more. She could barely hold back the vomit. She didn’t even smell the smoke, or hear the shouts and the gunshots; she just saw Rich dying.

  She just wanted him to die.

  Fucking die.

  NINETEEN

  “SHOT SUCCESSFUL.”

  The comm in Joe’s ear crackled, threatening a breakup of communication with the others, but he was laser focused on clearing the next hallway inside the house. Snipers at the back and front took out whatever guards they could pick off while the rest of them stormed the
grounds.

  He could have dressed in gear like the rest, but other than a Kevlar vest and leather gloves, Joe hadn’t given it much thought. And even the fucking vest had been thrown on him by his father with a harsh, “I am not going to explain that to your fucking mother, thank you.”

  Joe caught sight of a flash at the end of a hall as he rounded it, and instantly threw his body back around the corner.

  Brraaaap.

  Bullets peppered the floor.

  Joe heard one or two ricochet.

  Shit, these guys weren’t playing around. Frankly, he was fucking surprised that Rich Earl had access to as many trained guards as he did.

  But then again, like the Marcellos had pointed out when Joe mentioned it, anyone’s loyalty, time, and protection could be bought with the right amount of cash in their hand. So was the way of a criminal without morals or honor.

  Joe waited for the raining bullets to stop.

  Then, he waited some more—just long enough to know the guy was probably peeking around the corner to see if he had hit his intended target. Joe stuck his gun around the corner first, and then his face second.

  His finger was already wrapping tight around the AR-15’s trigger when he saw the guy peer around his side of the hallway, and there was no hesitation when Joe cocked his finger back twice in quick succession.

  One bullet plugged into the guy’s throat.

  The other, between his eyes.

  The man with the ski mask-covered face dropped to the ground like a sack of rotten potatoes.

  “Clear,” Joe uttered.

  As he stepped down the hallway, he could hear the crackling picking up on the bottom level of the large estate. One of Rich’s fucking idiots had managed to shoot some kind of decorative oil burner that was a little too close to drapery.

  It went up like a dried Christmas tree.

  Nothing to stop it.

  Nothing to help it.

  The smoke was rising, now, and he was kind of pissed off that it had happened at all. Unnecessary complications, really.

  Something else to worry about.

  Joe moved into the hallway, and several men followed behind. Lucian and his son, John, quickened their steps just enough to head past Joe as they came to a staircase. One that lead to the downstairs, to the upstairs, and down another hallway.

  “Fuck,” Joe muttered.

  “We’ll go upstairs,” he heard Lucian say.

  “We’ll begin clearing out and checking rooms downstairs,” Dante said from behind Joe, although he heard him just fine in his damn ear.

  “We’ll take this hall, and check the rooms,” his uncle, Theo, said.

  “Everyone out in ten.”

  Lucian glanced back at his brother just as he had started climbing the stairs. “Dante—”

  Dante was already moving downstairs with Giovanni on his heels. “Ten minutes is all we can afford, Lucian. There’s security on this house. It’s burning down. Someone is coming—they have to be. We can’t be here when they get here, okay? Ten minutes.”

  “You can be gone in ten minutes if I don’t have her,” Joe said, done with any pretense that he gave a fuck about someone giving him orders, “but I will be here until I find her.”

  Because she was here.

  Liliana had to be.

  Joe saw the dinner for two in the dining room, and the lipstick stains on the glass of water next to the nearly-finished plate of salmon. They’d found the dance studio set up specifically for a ballet dancer shortly after they stormed the house.

  She was fucking here.

  Somewhere.

  He just had to find her.

  The group split into three smaller ones, and separated to their respective areas. No one said goodbye, but occasionally, the comm in Joe’s ear would buzz with someone muttering something to their partner.

  “I’ll start on this side,” Damian said.

  Theo headed past the two men in the hallway. “I’ll hit the end first.”

  Joe was already rearing back, and letting his foot slam into a door just below the knob. He didn’t think they needed a fucking update on what he was doing.

  Kind of seemed obvious, didn’t it?

  An empty bathroom stared back.

  Fuck.

  He moved on.

  It was an office, next.

  Then an empty room altogether.

  He was getting fucking nowhere. And by the sounds coming from his ear, everyone else was in just about the same predicament. The rising upset continued between the men as more empty rooms stared back at them.

  Joe was just getting progressively more and more pissed off. So, maybe when he came in front of the next door, and expected that room to be empty, too, he kicked it a little harder than was necessary to get it open.

  And his whole world stopped.

  Because there she was.

  At first, Joe blinked at the sight in front of him. The grip on his gun loosened as he took in Liliana’s sobbing form—bruised, welted, and bleeding face, her dress a mess of blood, and rips, and the pointe shoes on her feet. She hadn’t seemed to notice the door open, or that he was standing right there.

  Ready to save her.

  Joe took in the man on the ground, too. The belt tight around his neck, and the back of his skull beaten in with a broken lamp beside him.

  Apparently, she hadn’t needed him to save her.

  She fucking saved herself.

  “Liliana,” Joe said.

  To him, it was a murmur.

  To everyone else listening in the comms, it must have been a shout because they all quieted at once. Like they weren’t even there to begin with.

  Or maybe that was just his world tilting back on its proper axis.

  Who was he to say?

  “Liliana.”

  Joe set his gun aside, and rushed into the room. She was finally looking at him then—all bruised eyes, and bloodied lips. He reached for her, but she was already reaching back. She held on to him for dear life—it was in those moments when he couldn’t breathe from how fiercely she was hugging him that he finally learned what that really meant.

  But he got it.

  And it was okay.

  Because he was holding her like that, too.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmured against her bruised cheek, dotting soft kisses to the same spot. “Sorry it took so long; sorry it happened at all. I’m so sorry, Tesoro.”

  Liliana just kept shaking her head.

  Shaking all over, really.

  His hands found welt marks on her jaw and throat in the same shape as the width of the belt around Rich’s dead neck, and the man was fucking lucky.

  Lucky that he was dead.

  Lucky Liliana had done it.

  Lucky he never had to meet Joe when he was fucking inspired, and had a damn good reason to kill.

  Oh, the rosary around his throat never felt as light as it did in those moments. He wouldn’t even have apologized or confessed for that one. There wouldn’t have been a need.

  “Get them off,” Liliana mumbled in his neck. “Please get them off.”

  He didn’t know what she was talking about, but her hands were fumbling between them, and her legs kicked against his form. He figured it out then when she sobbed, and shuffled her feet like she was trying to kick off the goddamn pointe shoes.

  “Get them off!”

  “Okay, okay,” Joe whispered.

  He made quick work of removing the satin ribbons tied around her calves and ankles before he pulled the shoes from her feet. As soon as they were gone, Liliana sucked in a deep, ragged breath of air.

  It sounded like freedom.

  “We have to go.”

  It shouted in his ear.

  It also came from the doorway.

  Joe didn’t even mind being rushed, now.

  He got what he came for.

  “Let’s go over this again, Miss Marcello.”

  “There’s nothing to go over,” Joe heard Lucian’s lawyer sn
arl.

  The speaker on the chair in front of Joe and Lucian crackled with the volume of the lawyer’s irritation. A simple wire tap had been placed in Liliana’s hospital room so that Joe and Lucian could listen in from a nearby room while the detectives made their rounds.

  “It’s okay,” Liliana said.

  Joe flinched.

  Beside him, Lucian stiffened.

  Her voice was faint—it had been like that since he pulled her from that room. She didn’t want to talk, and when she did, it was like she wasn’t there at all. It was going to take time for her to absorb what happened, and adjust accordingly.

  Or, that’s what people kept telling him.

  Joe wanted to tell those people to fuck off.

  “You’re saying you have no memory of the home Rich Earl purchased in Vermont—no memory of being there, or how you got away from there?”

  Joe had to give the detective credit, really. He kept hounding on this line of questioning like it was going to get him somewhere. And maybe with a woman who wasn’t Liliana—one who hadn’t grown up in the life—he might have tricked her in to saying something of use.

  She wasn’t so dumb, though.

  She wasn’t falling for it.

  “The last thing I remember is looking up and seeing the emergency room sign above my head,” Liliana said, repeating the one line of her story that wouldn’t—because it couldn’t—change. “I’m sorry I don’t have the answers you want.”

  All it took was a few documents, and a good look around the mansion in Vermont for the police to suspect someone else had been there with Rich, and his men. They found the women’s clothes, and all the other things he had set up for Liliana. They found his papers linking himself to the place, and then the information he had been gathering on Liliana, too.

  It didn’t take geniuses to figure it out.

  She showed up at a hospital the same night Rich’s estate was attacked, and partially burned. She arrived battered, and broken.

  They put two and two together.

  It made four.

  It also made a fucking media circus, and a shitshow for the rest of them.

  “I think if maybe you tried a little harder,” the detective started to say.

  “You’re edging closer to a harassment suit with every word,” the lawyer warned, “and you know it.”

  “We are trying to piece together this investigation, sir.”