by Stacy Gail
YEAR OF THE SCORPIO
Part One
Stacy Gail
***TRIGGER WARNING: This is a DARK mafia romance. In addition to several scenes with strong sexual content, there are also scenes involving violence, death, gun play, mention of sexual abuse, and adult language. Due to the nature of this book, it is intended for 18+ audiences only***
They call me Dash.
Sixteen years ago my brother and I were kidnapped. The Scorpeones believed our father, boss of the Vitaliev Bratva, could be pressured into relinquishing his hold on Chicago’s underworld.
They were dead wrong.
Ultimately the Scorpeones made the youngest of their family pay for their sins. I tried not to care. Marco Polo Scorpeone, the hostage whose life was forfeit if his family moved on the Vitalievs, was the enemy. Why should I care if he was tortured worse than a prisoner of war?
Except I did care.
For sixteen years I’ve cared, more than I can say.
They call me Scorpio.
There was no light in my world. Then I saw Dash smile.
No voice could pierce my darkness. Then I heard Dash speak.
I’ve killed to survive. Killed to please my handler. Hell, I’ve killed to please myself. Killing is what I do.
I know I’m not good enough for Dash, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s mine, from now until the end of time. But that time might be nearer than I think, because someone deadlier than me is closing in...
109,000 words
Author’s Note: This is the first half of a two-part story arc. YEAR OF THE SCORPIO: PART ONE ends on a cliffhanger, which will be concluded in YEAR OF THE SCORPIO: PART TWO. You have been warned.
Discover Other Titles by Stacy Gail
Bitterthorn, Texas Series:
Ugly Ducklings Finish First
Starting From Scratch (novella)
One Hot Second
Where There’s A Will
Earth Angels Series:
Nobody’s Angel (novella)
Savage Angel
Wounded Angel
Dangerous Angel
House Of Payne Series:
House of Payne: Payne
House of Payne: Scout
House of Payne: Twist
House of Payne: Rude
House of Payne: Steele
Scorpio Series:
Year of the Scorpio: Part One
Novellas:
Crime Wave In A Corset (Part of the steampunk holiday anthology, A Clockwork Christmas)
How The Glitch Saved Christmas (Part of the sci-fi holiday anthology, A Galactic Holiday)
Zero Factor (Part of the cyberpunk anthology, Cybershock)
Best Man, Worst Man
Connect with Stacy Gail:
Amazon page: http://amzn.to/2czcCuX
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/RmNxH
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1rU3qmY
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Stacy_Gail_
Instagram: https://instagram.com/stacygailsworld/
Copyright
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. Characters and names of real persons who appear in the book are used fictitiously.
Copyright ©2016 by Stacy Gail
Cover image ©2016 ostill, Shutterstock Image ID:107713517, Forewer, Shutterstock Image ID: 257821672
Acknowledgments
Thanks so much to everyone who dropped in on my Facebook page to help me come up with a “sex move” for my hero, Polo. Bookerina Lovington, your suggestion was perfect!
Also, thanks to Jillian Mootz and Kristi Alford-Metcalf for helping me name Konstantin Medvedev. You picked a great name for a great character, ladies!
To everyone who fell for Polo Scorpeone in HOUSE OF PAYNE: RUDE, thank you for taking the time to let me know how you felt about Polo. His story became so real in my mind that I began plotting out scenes while still working on RUDE, but I still wasn’t sure that a self-described “monster” of man who existed in a violent world was something people would want to read about. Thank you, each and every one of you, for giving me the confidence to share his story. This story is for you.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Prologue for Year of the Scorpio: Part Two
Note from the Author
About the Author
Connect with Stacy Gail
Prologue
Scared. Scared. Scared.
The word hammered in my brain, keeping time with my frantic heartbeat. I hugged my knees tighter to my chest out of the fear that it would be heard by the men outside the locked door. But the old cabin’s walls and door across from where I sat huddled on the bed were thick and sturdy. No one could hear the terrified beat of my heart but me.
Or so I hoped.
I shivered, though the air inside the small room I’d been locked in of for days was stifling. I squeezed my knees tighter, and the bed squeaked at the slight movement. It wasn’t even a bed, really. In my twelve years of life I’d never gone camping, but I figured the squeaky thing I sat on now had to be like one of those cot things people used in tents, or maybe in the military. It was just a flimsy metal frame holding up a grid of springs, topped off with a cushion like the ones on the chaise lounges by the pool at home.
Home.
In the dark, my throat tightened until I could barely breathe. My poor Papa. He had to be so worried. My mother had died when an aneurysm burst in her brain only a month after I was born, so my brother and I were all my papa had. We were his world, his reason for living.
But we’d been taken from him.
Just the thought of him wandering alone in our big house killed my heart.
Papa, please come and find us. We want to be with you. Please, please, please...
Silent tears spilled out from my unblinking eyes. The wetness burned hot tracks down cheeks that were gritty and tight from the tears I’d cried over the past week—or six days, as far as I could tell from the one tiny barred window that had been painted black. I didn’t bother to wipe the tears away. Since I hadn’t seen a bath or even a washcloth since I’d been thrown into this crappy little room, wiping at the wetness would just make my face feel dirtier than it already did.
If I ever got home, I’d never have to be told to take a bath or change my clothes again. I’d do it five times a day just because I could.
Then I jerked my head to the side while my already-tight stomach dropped, as if I’d missed the last step on the stairs.
When I got home. Not if.
When.
I was goin
g to get out of this alive. I had to believe the whole getting-out-alive thing was going to happen in order for me to do what I had to do.
And I was going to do it tonight.
If I was brave enough.
The rumble of men’s voices reached my ears, and my gaze snapped to the bar of light at the bottom of the door. Sweat broke out everywhere, making my skin prickle, but I didn’t move as I concentrated everything I had on what was happening beyond that door.
Shift change.
Okay.
Okay.
I focused my attention to the outside of the cabin, angry now with myself for not having the guts to bust out one of the small, blacked-out windowpanes so I could see what was going on. My plan wouldn’t work if all four of the jerkfaces that kidnapped my brother and me were still there. I wasn’t sure my plan would work with just two of them, but dealing with two huge dudes who didn’t give a crap about hurting kids was still better than dealing with four.
“Leave.” I whispered the prayer so softly that not even I could hear it as I listened for the telltale sound of a motor. “Come on, come on, leave.”
A rough rumble of laughter sounded from beyond the door just before the rev of an engine reached my ears. Yes, I thought, my eyes closing on a wave of relief. Now all they had to do was leave, get far enough away so they wouldn’t hear anything—
The rattle of a lock being released halted my breath again, and my eyes jerked back to the bar of light at the bottom of my door—a bar of light that remained unbroken by any shadow.
It wasn’t my door that was being opened.
Oh, no.
A whimper squeaked out of me as I pushed off the bed. My ridiculous little plan vanished under a choking wave of panic when I heard the snarling, gravel-rough voice through the locked door. Even though I couldn’t see him, I knew what Gravel Voice looked like—big and bald with a heavy, gorilla-like brow and almost no eyebrows. He was the bad one of the night shift, though all of my captors were bad. It was just that Gravel Voice’s level of badness was on a super-villain scale compared to the other sniffling, snuffling guy I’d come to think of as Sneezy.
Sneezy didn’t bother his victims.
Gravel Voice did.
Or at least, he bothered Nizhy.
Only, it wasn’t really bothering that Gravel Voice did. He did...something else.
I didn’t know what he was doing to my brother, but I knew it was bad. It had started the third night of our captivity, and it was something that had made my big, strong, fifteen-year-old hero of a brother cry like a frightened child, for hours on end. Something had happened that had made him beg for his life.
Last night, whatever had been done to my brother had made him beg for death.
“Please... please just kill me.”
The voice I’d heard last night...I shivered again. It hadn’t sounded like my funny, strong, capable Nizhy anymore. My brother had sounded like a child younger than me. A broken, helpless, pitiful child who wanted to die.
That, more than anything that had happened so far, scared me the most.
At that moment, my brain had gone weirdly silent. Until then it had been a jangling, never-ending tangle of fear and confusion and a dread so deep I was half-convinced it was doing acidic damage to my internal organs. But now that everything was suddenly silent and calm, I was finally able to see what had to be done.
We needed to get out of there.
Or die trying.
We were probably going to be killed anyway. At first I’d been sure this whole nightmare would end up with Nizhy and me being shaken but okay, and back in the safety of our home, a home that could easily be turned into a fortress when it wanted to be. But then our captors began to hurt Nizhy. Then they forgot to feed us or give us water for long stretches of time.
I knew what that meant.
The bad guys who took us weren’t interested in giving us back.
If our dad had been an ordinary guy, like a used-car salesman or a factory worker, then yeah—returning damaged goods would still be an option for them. There wouldn’t be any big-time consequences to deal with.
But our dad wasn’t a used car salesman or a factory worker.
No.
Our dad was Borysko Vitaliev, boss of the Vitaliev Bratva, a fact Papa had never hidden from us because he needed us to have our guard up. He needed us to be strong. And in case something went wrong and we found ourselves in a tight spot, he needed us to understand that it wasn’t a game where we had to be polite. It would be a matter of life or death, and that we would have to do whatever it took to make sure we landed on the side of life.
That was where we were now.
After six seriously crappy days of being polite, I was now making the choice to do whatever it took.
The men who took us thought we were just kids—kids of a mafiya boss, yeah, but still just kids. They expected us to not fight back. They expected us to go like stupid, brainless cattle into some hamburger-making machine and not fight it. But I was smarter than a cow. Sure, they’d probably kill me for fighting back, but since they were going to kill me and my brother anyway, what did I have to lose?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Besides, I’d rather die than live through one more night of listening to Nizhy beg for death.
My plan was simple. I had waited until the morning shift remembered to serve up “breakfast,” a stale, cold bagel with nothing on it and a bottle of water—the same thing I’d been fed every day since Nizhy’s and my driver had had his brains blown out in front of us as he’d picked us up from the movies. Once my captors closed and locked the door, I had made myself wait a few minutes more, until I smelled the mouth-watering scent of bacon being fried. It was a mean little trick those jerks liked to pull, keeping my brother and me alive on bread and water while driving us insane with the scent of real food cooking just beyond the door.
Jerks.
But for the first time since I’d been there, I didn’t get ragey over how mean this was. I was glad. Glad they were bad guys who enjoyed sticking to their lame daily torments, glad their cruel ways convinced me all the more that they deserved whatever they got. Besides, their routine gave me comfort. Routine meant I knew what they were going to do next. For instance, I’d known they weren’t giving me a second thought as they went about the usual business of trying to make us miserable.
That was fine with me.
I’d ignored the bagel they’d thrown on the floor, and instead focused my attention on prying loose one of the thin metal support bars under the cot’s frame. My kidnappers were so smug, they didn’t even come to check on me to see what I was up to when all my tugging made the bed stutter-drag across the floor. My heart had stopped dead at the giveaway sound, but one of the jerkfaces from the day shift just yelled out for me to pipe the hell down or he’d find a way to make me pipe down.
Idiot.
I had been more careful after that, and eventually I twisted off the bar with a faint metallic squeak. One end was jagged and corkscrew-sharp, thanks to all the twisting I’d had to do to snap the thing off. Then I’d gone to the room’s single bare bulb, squinting as I looked into its center. I’d never changed a light bulb before, but I’d seen it done on TV lots of times, so I reached for it. A second later I flinched away, biting my lips together to stifle a pained yelp. I brought my burned fingers to my mouth to suck on them before I tried again, this time tugging my grungy sleeve over my hand so I could unscrew the bulb. I had thought about just smashing the thing, but the sound of it breaking might alert them that I was up to something.
That would never do. I couldn’t have them all suspicious and on guard. My plan wouldn’t work if I couldn’t get at least one of them inside this room.
I had hoped that I could get things done by the time lunch rolled around, but once again our captors skipped it. The way the jerkfaces kept skipping our meals worried me, even as it convinced me that risking everything to get out now while I still had the energy was the right
thing to do. Clearly they were no longer interested in keeping me and my brother healthy.
We had to get out of there.
I began to fear they’d leave us in our cabin jail cells to starve to death as the day wore on and the air in the closed-off room became smothering. I carefully rationed the water I’d been given along with the bagel, and even managed to doze during the worst of the day’s heat. But the sound of my brother’s voice, clearly asking for water, snapped me to full wakefulness. He’d been yelled at—“Shut the fuck up, you’ll get water when I say you’ll get water!”—and that led to where I was now, alone in the dark, listening to the shift-change while Gravel Voice unlocked what had to be my brother’s cell.
If they didn’t come to feed me, none of this would work.
Shadows flickered through the bar of light at the bottom of the door. In a heartbeat I was under the bed, holding onto my “weapon” for dear life and staring at the place where there should be a knob, but wasn’t. It was the perfect jail cell, really, and if I could get even one of them stuck in here...
The bar of light under the door suddenly darkened. With my cheek pressed to the dusty wood plank floor, I could see shiny black boots through the gap at the bottom of the door. “You still alive in there, kid?” There was a rattle at the door. “Dumbasses forgot to feed you again today, didn’t they? But I figure a day or two without food or water ain’t gonna kill ya.”
Again my heart nearly stopped. Damn it. It wasn’t Sneezy at the door, like I’d expected. It was Gravel Voice.
The bad one.
My skin iced over as the door swung open. There was a beat of silence as the light from the room beyond flooded in.
“What the hell...? Why’s it so dark in here?”
Hardly daring to breathe, I stayed quiet and kept my eyes glued to those fancy boots while my hand grew slick on the flimsy weapon I held almost hidden at my side.
“What the fuck... Gino, quit sucking in that blow and get in here.” I heard Gravel Voice hit the switch to the light, listened to him curse when nothing happened, then saw another pair of feet stumble across the threshold just as Gravel Voice’s shadowed face ducked into view, eyes wild.
“Where is she?” Sneezy—or Gino—sounded off from behind Gravel Voice.
Gravel Voice snarled, and I was glad it was too dark to clearly see his expression. I might have lost my nerve otherwise. “Fucking little Vitaliev bitch playing stupid-ass games with us.”
