The Tempted Series: Collectors Edition

by Janine Infante Bosco

  I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard her crying the sound igniting a rage like no other inside of me. I snapped out of it and my legs began to move quickly following the sound of her cries.

  “I’m coming Princess,” I whispered hoarsely as I slid through the slight crack in the door. I was going to be able to save her. Thank Christ I wasn’t too late.

  “Help me. Dear God, please help me,” I cried my voice sounding weak even to my own ears. I swayed a little fighting the urge to surrender to sleep. My arms feel like they are going to fall off they are so heavy from my shoulders down to my wrists but my wrists and hands feel numb since he tightened the zip ties. I stared at the concrete my vision was starting to blur and I saw little black dots everywhere.

  “No one’s here to save you, sweetheart,” the sick fuck says, taunting me a little more because he hasn’t had his fill of torturing me. He moves to stand in front of me cupping my chin, forcing me to lift my head.

  “My father will kill you,” I shout.

  “Do you hear me? He’s going to kill you! Just let me go,” I believe this with my whole heart that, even if he doesn’t let me go even if he kills me I don’t doubt my father will kill him.

  Deke laughs. “Your father can’t save you little girl just like he couldn’t save his best man. And when you’re dead, he won’t do anything either just like he didn’t after I killed Val. Daddy’s not in control anymore, you’re at my mercy.”

  I want to tell him he’s a pussy for not killing Val himself and simply ordering the hit so he wouldn’t get his hands dirty but I remain silent. It’s not worth it. Even though I bit my tongue, he rears his hand back and slaps me across the face again. I tell myself I must be immune to the pain by now because even though my cheek feels as if it’s on fire I don’t flinch. I lift my head slowly, looking the devil in the eyes, but I can’t stand the sight of him anymore and I turn my head slightly to see Mikey standing off to the side with his gun cocked.

  I wasn’t sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me. Could he really be here? My Mikey. I know he’s not a figment of my imagination when he takes one hand off his gun and places his index finger to his lips signaling me to remain quiet. I look into his eyes and in that split second, I know I’m going to be okay, it’s all there in his eyes, he’s not going to let anything else happen to me.

  He’s here.

  I’m safe now.

  I don’t know what causes me to take my eyes off Mikey but suddenly time stops and everything goes horribly wrong.

  “Mikey watch out!” I yelp as he pulls the trigger, but he’s not the only one firing a gun. The doors to the warehouse slam open and in stormed an ambush of familiar men all with their guns blazing in fury. I barely have time to process the war raging in the warehouse as Deke falls to the floor at my feet. I shriek in sheer horror as his blood and brains splatter all over me. I feel like I’m having an outer body experience as I tremble screaming at the top of my lungs. It’s just too much.

  Mikey starts to make his way towards me and I shake my head and shout. He doesn’t even acknowledge the gunfire behind him and I fear that he’s going to get hit. I try to tell him to turn around but my brain doesn’t send the message to my mouth.

  Mikey spins around and we both watch as my father charges into the warehouse shooting with no regard. Jimmy and an army full of men behind him as they shoot at everyone and everything. Deke wasn’t working alone and his men begin to appear from every corner returning the gunfire.

  Everyone fades away and I stare at my father watching him pull the trigger continuously without any remorse. I cry as I watch my father kill for me.

  “No!” Mikey cries pulling me out of my trance. I avert my eyes towards him drawing my eyebrows together as he starts to run toward me. I don’t know what’s happening all I know is there is no stopping him as he charges straight at me knocking me backward.

  He falls on top of me and his gun slips from his hands onto the floor. It takes me a moment to understand what has happened. Mikey starts to roll off me and I immediately see the blood pouring from his abdomen uncontrollably. He falls flat on his back beside me and I twist my head so I can see him. I cry out because I’m completely helpless still tied to the chair and unable to get to him.

  “Mikey baby stay with me,” I shout over the boisterous sound of gunfire. “Please just hang in there,” I beg as I watch his fingers twitch and he tries to reach for me but I’m too far out of his reach. “Somebody help!!” I scream even though no one can hear me.

  My heart shatters into a million pieces as Mikey’s eyes close. “No!!” I let out a guttural shrill. He can’t die Mikey can’t die. He saved my life and took that bullet for me. I should be the one lying in a pool of blood not him. I can’t even hold him. I can’t kiss him and assure him, he’s going to be all right. I can’t tell him that he can’t leave this earth because I love him. All I can do is watch as he bleeds out. I don’t know how long I lay on my side watching Mikey die, but it seems like an eternity.

  “Nikki? Nikki!!” I hear my father frantically yell over the gunfire.

  “I’m over here!” I scream. “Mikey’s been shot! You need to help him.” I hear more gunshots and then the sound of soles tapping rapidly against the cement. My father falls to his knees in front of me blocking my view of Mikey and takes my face in his hands.

  “Thank God,” he cries tears rolling down his cheeks. “Are you hurt?” he asks, as he looks me over. “Did that bastard touch you?”

  I shake my head. “I’m fine, but Mikey’s not you have to help him! Please, he can’t die.”

  He looks over his shoulder at Mikey looking torn between the two of us and which one he should tend to first but ultimately crawls to Mikey. I watch on as he stares in shock at Mikey’s nearly lifeless body lying in a pool of blood.

  “You have to apply pressure to the wound or he’s going to bleed out,” I instruct nervously and watch as my father rolls his sleeves up and without hesitation, he presses his hands down on Mikey’s wound.

  “Vic?” Jimmy calls out as the gunfire dies down.

  “Over here! We need help,” my father calls over his shoulder as he leans forward applying his weight down on his hands that are firmly pushing down on Mikey’s wound. “Stay with me son,” he pleads.

  “Jesus…,” Jimmy says, standing over us.

  “Untie me!” I screech at him. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a utility knife kneeling behind me he cuts the plastic ties from my wrists setting me free before scrambling around me to untie my ankles. I shake out my hands and try to get the blood circulating as I crawl falling flat on my face because of my lack of strength and mobility. Jimmy helps me by putting his hands under my arms and holding my upper body up as I attempt to crawl on my knees again finally making my way to Mikey.

  At first, all I see is blood there is just so much and it seems to be everywhere. I lift my eyes to his face, reaching out I touch his cheek and break down when I feel how clammy his skin feels.

  “Call 911,” my father tells Jimmy. I feel his eyes watching me as I shift my body taking Mikey’s head and cradling it in my lap. I lean down and press my lips to his forehead struggling to hold myself together desperate to believe that this isn’t the end for us silently willing him to live.

  “I love you,” I say against his skin. “I love you so much Michael,” I lift my head my eyes meeting my father’s.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers regretfully. I wish sorry was enough, but it’s not. It will never be enough, especially if I lose the only man I have ever loved.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When I was, three years old, my grandpa Tony died it was a pivotal moment in my life and at the tender age of three, one would think that I wouldn’t remember anything but I remember bits and pieces from that day. I can recall bouncing on my blue rocking horse with the springs on it waiting for my Grandpa to come home from the docks. He was a longshoreman and had gone down to the union hall that morning. Two officers rang N
ana’s bell that day one male and the other a female. The female officer wore her hair tied back in a ponytail. When her partner asked my grandma to sit down and began to explain what had happened to my Grandpa the female officer took me into the living room and made me tell her all about my horsey. I remember that officer after all these years the same way I remember the scent of flowers that filled the funeral parlor in the days that followed. I know now this is how we remember certain moments in our lives by the people and things that surrounded us at the time. We may not remember the actual event, but the things that were associated with it allow us never to forget these certain life changing moments.

  I sit here in the hallway of the emergency room covered in Mikey’s blood and know that I’ll always remember the way his blood stained my hands. I know that I’ll always remember the look in my father’s eyes as he tried to control the bleeding. I’ll remember the sorrowful look the paramedic gave me when he asked who Mikey’s next of kin was. He wasn’t going to let me ride in the ambulance with Mikey the cops wanted to question me. I explained I was the only person Mike had in this world and he let me ride to the hospital with him. He told the cops that they were treating me too explaining that they could follow us to the hospital and question me there. He will never know how grateful I was to him in that moment.

  I fear that every time I close my eyes, I will relive the moment we arrived at the hospital and how the paramedics started shouting for help from the doctors. They rambled off a bunch of medical terms and the doctors in the emergency room started hollering orders, but the one sentence that will always play back in my head is “He’s lost too much blood.” I don’t remember who exactly made the declaration but I know that when I heard those words I felt my heart shatter and hope diminish. After that, the nurse wearing the Hello Kitty scrubs pushed me aside and told me they needed to take him into surgery to remove the bullet. I must’ve opened my mouth to protest because she shut me down with a hard stare telling me Mikey would die if I didn’t let them do their jobs. That’s all she needed to say for me to retreat into the hallway watching as a team of surgeons and nurses ran wheeling Mikey out of my sight.

  I leaned back against the wall and lifted my head to see my father walking towards me looking disheveled; his dress shirt untucked matching my hands covered in Mikey’s blood. His hair that was never out of place was a mess and his face looked worn and tired. There was a pair of police officers walking behind him, but they stopped by the door allowing us privacy. I watched his every step as he made his way beside me falling into the seat next to mine. I didn’t speak, and neither did he we just sat there for a few moments before he reached down and took my hand in his, squeezing it tightly.

  “What if he doesn’t make it?” I asked barely audible.

  “He will,” he said hoarsely. I turned my head to look at him realizing my father needed Mikey to live almost more than I did. I probably would’ve felt sorry for him looking as distraught as he did, but all I felt was anger towards him.

  “Why is that because a Valente already died for a Pastore? If history repeats and it sometimes does, then Mikey will die taking a bullet for me just like his dad died for you,” I couldn’t hide the resentment in my voice not that I cared if I sounded bitter it was time my father knew how poisonous his lifestyle truly was.

  “Mikey’s not going to die,” he said, raising his voice an octave higher.

  “You don’t know that!” I said as I stood up on my wobbly feet and stared down at him. “You can’t guarantee me that he’s not going to die. You just hope that he doesn’t to save your own conscience,” tears started to well in my eyes as anger boiled in my veins. “I used to think you were my hero, the one person in my life I could always count on to make sense of things. I knew that you lived a shady life and your business endeavors were mostly illegal, but I always chose to brush that aside and see the good in you. There was even a point in my life where having a gangster for a daddy was enticing, but that was because you loved your family.”

  “Don’t talk about my love for you in the past tense!” He said cutting me off.

  “If you loved us as much as we thought you did none of us would be in the situations we are currently in. Some thug wouldn’t have kidnapped me and Mikey wouldn’t be fighting for his fucking life. Don’t you dare tell me you love us because if you did, you would’ve let your love for us drive your decisions and not your love for money and power. For years, I’ve watched my sister be so sad and never understood why, but your pal Deke enlightened me. What kind of monster sends the young man his daughter loves to prison? You sent Anthony to prison to avenge Val’s death, ruining his life and forcing him to break Adrianna’s heart. Don’t you get it? Every bad thing that’s happened to us has been at your hand!”

  “Nikki, that’s enough,” Aunt Gina said, walking towards us with Nana beside her.

  “Gina mind your business,” my father lifted his head, looking me in the eye. “Get it all out you’re entitled.”

  I looked at him torn between wanting to scream and yell at him for all the horrible choices he made in his life and the need to wrap my arms around him just because he was my daddy the one man I measured every other man against even Mikey. I turned around putting my back towards him deciding it was better if I didn’t look at him anymore. There was nothing left to say. I took the bottle of Gatorade Aunt Gina offered me and waited for word on Mikey in silence. Aunt Gina took a seat next to my father and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

  “She’s been through a lot Vic she doesn’t mean it,” she said in an attempt to console her brother.

  “Everything she said is true,” I heard my father say. I wiped away the tears that fell from my eyes he was still my dad no matter how angry I was. I still loved him and hated that my words inflicted pain on him regardless if he deserved it or not or how true the words were.

  “Miss Pastore?” I lift my head to see two police officers standing before me.

  “Yes,” I confirm that they’ve found the person they were looking for. I know that they aren’t here to give me an update on Mikey or tell me that he’s dead like the pair of cops that visited my grandma the day the man she loved died.

  “We need your statement,” the female officer explained.

  “For crying out loud you cops are relentless,” Nana says from her chair. “Poor girls been through hell and back and you’re going to make her relive it all.” She shakes her head disgusted and I look back towards the officers.

  “It’s fine, let’s just get this over with,” I say running my fingers through my hair only for them to get stuck in the knots. I needed to shower to wash this nightmare away.

  “Okay, can you start from the beginning?” the male officer asked, taking out his tape recorder while his partner reached into her pocket for a pad and pen. “Both you and Mr. Valente live in New York so what were you doing in Florida?”

  I glanced over at my father who dropped his head to his hands a memory of him and me flashed through my mind of when I was a little girl and he’d take me in his arms and dance with me. Dancing was kind of our thing at every family party you could catch my dad and me on the dance floor.

  “We were visiting my Aunt and my Grandma,” I watched as my father lifted his head his eyes fixed on mine. “Mikey wanted to surprise me for my birthday and take me away,” I lied because no matter what the man I was staring at was still my dad and I wasn’t about to throw him under the bus.

  “Fast forward to the night in question where were you when Deke Rogers took you?” the male officer asked.

  “I was sleeping in the guest room,” I said, thinking back to how I had fallen asleep in Mikey’s arms whispering to him that I loved him.

  “Were you alone?” the partner took over asking the questions.

  “My aunt and grandma weren’t home when we got back that night, but I didn’t go to sleep alone. I went to bed with Mikey but when I woke up, he wasn’t there either.”

  “Where was he?”


  “I don’t know,” I cocked my head to the side, studying the woman who was firing questions at me. “I didn’t get a chance to ask him before he was shot.”

  “Okay, so he wakes you up and then what?”

  “He puts a gun to my head and tells me to get dressed,” I can feel my father’s eyes on me as I speak. “He tied my wrists before we left the house and then he took me to the warehouse that you found me in.”

  “Do you know why he took you?”

  “My father is a union delegate for the Longshoreman’s Association he wanted my father to have the ILA turn their heads and move drugs through the New York harbor,” I glanced over at my dad. My story was partially true my father did have ties to the union delegates. My grandfather was high in the ranks with the ILA before he died, that’s ultimately, how my father obtained control over the docks through his dad. “He told my father he’d kill me if he couldn’t get control over the docks,” I divert my eyes back to the police. “He would’ve killed me too if Mikey hadn’t found me when he had.”

  “What happened when Mr. Valente found you?”

  “Deke was about to shoot me, but Mikey shot him first,” I said, closing my eyes remembering Mikey running towards me.

  “When did your father show up?”

  With my eyes still closed and my mind playing back the scene, I answered. “Within seconds, Deke’s men started shooting at my father and his associates. Mikey couldn’t see anything going on because his back was towards it all as he started for me. When he finally turned around and saw what was happening, he saw the gunmen try to shoot me,” I opened my eyes blinking away the tears. “He charged at me taking the bullet meant for me,” I swallowed hard. “He saved my life,” I look passed the police officers at the closed doors that they wheeled Mikey through so many hours ago wishing that I had the ability to return the favor.