Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters Book 1)

by Lana Sky

  He accepts it as a challenge.

  For whatever reason, he doesn’t follow me when I head toward the back of the bar with Sammy leading the way. Whether he’s welcome to or not, Lucifer falls into step behind me, and I hate this part of me that feeds off his presence.

  Alone, Lynn would shrink inside herself, trapped with all these unfamiliar men. She’d hate where their eyes leered as she crept past them, unsteady in her boots. Her heart would race, and she’d entertain—for a minute—that returning to Vinny wasn’t the worst possible fate a woman could face.

  Arno and his brutes had been drunk on revenge. These men are driven by another thought that makes my skin crawl once I identify it. Greed.

  I keep my gaze trained on Sammy’s brown curls, but I can smell the others. I hear them.

  “Pretty little bitch.”

  “Looks like she can take a hit. I wonder how many.”

  “Hot piece of ass.”

  It’s only when Lucifer takes a step closer to me that they fall silent. His heat burns through my back. His breath rustles the hair at the nape of my neck. It’s like he’s breathing his scent onto my skin—marking me in a way that even these animals are forced to respect. Does he do it out of duty to our private bargain?

  Or merely because he likes exerting his authority over men who would be foolish to challenge him?

  It’s an amusing thought to consider as Sammy finally comes to a stop before a wooden door decorated with strips of police caution tape.

  “Ladies first,” he says while opening the door, revealing the small room beyond it. I’m surprised to find that it’s organized like a makeshift clinic. There’s a black recliner in the center and a row of counters against the wall, cluttered with trays of syringes and vials. So maybe less of a clinic and more like...a druggie’s paradise.

  “I can t-take it from here,” Sammy says when Lucifer starts to follow me inside the room.

  “Yeah, he’s got it,” another man seconds. Tall and imposing, he comes from nowhere to guard the door, conveniently inserting a foot in between me and Lucifer.

  “Come on, Dante,” Mack playfully scolds from across the room. “Leave the women to their business.”

  He’s outnumbered. I can sense his frustration in a single grunt that sends loose strands of my hair flying, but I suspect that I’m the only one who notices. The next second, he’s gone, heading toward Mack and Arno. The lack of his presence is like a Band-Aid being forcefully ripped from a wound. I don’t know if I miss it or if I’m relieved by its loss.

  At least now I can bleed in peace.

  “Step right up,” Sammy says with a nervous laugh as I tear my gaze from Lucifer’s retreating form and cross over the threshold. He gestures toward the recliner, and I settle onto the edge of it while the door shuts with the one thug on the other side of it.

  Sammy eyes me carefully, clicking his tongue. “Let’s get a look at that ear.” He reaches for the hair on my right side and then hesitates as if silently asking for permission. I nod, and he withdraws the strands, groaning when he sees the wound up close. “Jesus! Did they let a fucking butcher take it off with a hacksaw?” He shakes his head at such a poor method of torture. “Sloppy. Just fucking sloppy.”

  Muttering under his breath, he turns to the counter. There’s a long mirror hanging on the wall above it, and I studiously observe his hands as they flit over the scattered materials.

  “It’s a bit too old to do much, I’m afraid,” he says. “Otherwise I’d attempt stitches. I can clean it for you, at least—” He glances over at me and winks. “I wasn’t kidding about the gangrene.”

  From behind him, my reflection stares back. The haunted shell seems a little more animated now. There’s a harder line to her jaw that wasn’t there before. She’s on edge. She’s anxious. The man before her keeps sneaking glances at a vial of liquid when he thinks she isn’t looking.

  “I should clean it with some peroxide, I guess.” He approaches me with only a bottle of alcohol in his hand and a wad of gauze.

  Gritting my teeth, I force myself not to react as he methodically cleans what’s left of my ear, dabbing at the wound. The burning sting goads my eyes into watering, and I can’t suppress a wince when he presses too hard.

  “Oops!” He drops a bloodied bit of gauze to the floor, and I automatically lean down to grab it—but he expects the motion. His fingers are already waiting to seize my wrist, holding tight while he jabs a needle fished from his pocket into my vein.

  “Shhh.” His free hand traps my mouth as a searing heat shoots through my wrist. A drug. Whatever it is works fast. Already, my body feels heavy. It takes twice as much effort than it should to stick the fingers of my left hand into the pocket and find my knife.

  After several tries, I clench it in my fist and jab it straight back, striking whatever is in reach.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Sammy’s hand slips from my mouth, and I lunge from the chair, aiming for the door...but my legs move too slowly. I land on my side, my feet still tangled in the armrest of the chair. The fall knocks the air from my lungs. God, I feel so heavy.

  “Fuck! Fuck!”

  I can hear Sammy scrambling behind me before a crushing weight slams into my lower back. Grasping fingers graze the side of my jaw, seeking out my mouth again while I gather the strength to suck in one last gulp of air and release it on a single scream. “Dante!”

  Of all people, the bastard came to fucking Mack for help.

  Mack, whose sole definition of the term “friend” only extended to how far up someone else’s ass he could shove his foot out of pure amusement. Mack, who would have easily chopped Arno into pieces and sold him for scrap back in the day if the parts would have brought him some easy cash. Mack, who liked to shoot Parish up with dope and fuck her for kicks.

  Mack, who looked at Stacatto’s woman like...

  I inhale, my eyes narrowing at the way his gaze had traced her body. He looked at her like he was already imagining her riding his cock. Willing or not, the bastard didn’t give a damn.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Arno mutters while the fucker is still out of earshot. “While you were in prison—ignoring phone calls and visitors, I might add. Fuck, I even sent you a letter once.” He scoffs, shaking his head. “Anyway. Things aren’t the same. CJ. Kade. Trolito. Benji. Alex—” He holds up his hand and ticks off the fingers one by one. “Dead. Dead. Prison. Dead. Accountant.” He shakes his head. “Don’t ask me how the fuck that happened—”

  “Why him?” I growl, dragging him back to the question at hand.

  “He’s the only one fucking left,” Arno argues. “At least the only one with enough infrastructure to take on someone like Stacatto. Take a look around, Dante—” He gestures with a wave of his hand. “This is what’s left of the Saints. But trust and believe that I don’t like this any more than you do.” His eyes narrow, and I know that he hasn’t forgotten how the bastard treated his sister in the past.

  “I don’t like it,” I say—not that it fucking matters. This is Arno’s battle, after all. The woman isn’t my responsibility, and I don’t owe her a damn thing—least of all the need to plead her case.

  I want to take something from him.

  “If you want to hit Stacatto, you need a plan,” I heard myself admit through gritted teeth. “She’s the only one who knows how his fucked-up mind works.”

  Arno scowls, and I don’t have to remind him that she already outsmarted Stacatto once. Who knew what she’d learned being tucked away in his gilded cage?

  “She is all we need. We could regroup somewhere else. We could—”

  “Now don’t be stingy, Dante.” Mack grins as he approaches the bar. The asshole’s done well for himself, it seems. I count at least thirty men in this room alone, and there are even more stationed outside, monitoring the property’s perimeter. What Mack lacked in charming personality he certainly made up for with brutality and paranoia to help win him some new friends. “I want to help. It’s
the least I could do for Parish.” The bastard has the nerve to actually pretend to care. He bows his head for Arno’s benefit, but I’m not impressed.

  “Then let Arno handle this his way.”

  Mack flashes another cocky grin, erasing all traces of mock concern. “Now where’s the fun in that, Dante?” he asks. “Vinny Stacatto’s no average fuck. I want a piece of him too.”

  Not out of revenge, I suspect. Mack merely wants a piece of the pie. He wants the girl. He wants to use Arno’s fuck-up for his own gain.

  Some shit never changes.

  “The pub is gone,” Arno says, explaining the reason why he’s already lurking around the nearest stash of liquor. “Everyone got out, but the fuckers set it on fire—”

  “Espi.” I’m already on my feet, but Arno places a hand on my shoulder and shoves me back down.

  “You think I wouldn’t make sure he’s okay?” He scoffs. “He was already out running errands for me, but I made sure that he knew what’s up. When he’s ready, he’ll join us here.”

  When he’s ready. I grit my teeth and somehow manage to not wrap my hands around Arno’s neck until he tells me where I can find the kid. Instead, my eyes cut to the back of the room where one of Mack’s punks still guards the door to the “clinic.” Unease is a useless emotion. I don’t like to feel it, and I clench my hands into fists, craving the vicious surge of anger in my blood to replace it. Anger, I understand. Men like Mack react to it better than any other fucking language, written or spoken, anyway.

  “Dante.” Arno’s watching me, uncharacteristically tense. We’re no longer in his domain. This is Mack’s territory. His property. His rules. My quickly thinning patience. It doesn’t take this long to simply bandage a wound. My gaze returns to the door, scanning the stoic expression of the man standing beside it.

  “Dante thinks the woman could be of use. If she’s on our side,” Arno says to Mack, picking up the thread of conversation. That’s right. Apparently, the three of us were supposed to be planning something. Bullshit. Dogs didn’t plan. They stole. They schemed. They reacted on pure instinct.

  “We...Dante?” Arno reaches for me when I stand up, but his fingers graze off my shoulder as I start across the bar.

  My eyes are on the door while I shove past asshole after asshole, not caring who the fuck I have to jar out of my way. The man by the door perks up when I get close. He glances over my shoulder to where I know Mack to be and nods once.

  “I can’t let you—” he starts to say, his posture tensing and stance turning hostile. His lips move, and words keep churning from his mouth, but the buzzing blaring through my skull drowns them out. It’s like my brain separates from my body for a second. I’m merely a machine, cold and empty. My footsteps slow before I enter the man’s personal space, though. Maybe I even mean to turn back.

  Then I hear it. I hear her, even above the buzzing. Faint. Desperate. Pleading. Dante!

  All I know is that I laugh first. The dumb bitch is calling for me. She thinks I actually give a damn. That I’ll come to her rescue. She thinks I’d care. She thinks. She thinks.

  I don’t think, I react. My fists go flying, striking flesh, bone, and wood. I register nothing but pain surging through my knuckles. I see red. I taste it. When I blink, I’m standing inside a narrow room with a black chair in the middle and a row of counters lined with vials of drugs. I spot her instantly, sprawled over the floor, crawling for the door.

  Her eyes widen when she sees me. Then she sticks one hand out, the fingers shaking. “He...he drugged me.” The fuck he did. Her words are already running together.

  When I take her hand, and pull her upright, her entire body jerks like a kite on a loose bit of string. I let her stagger against me, her hands pawing for purchase over my chest. Behind her, the man named Sammy cringes back against the wall, clutching at his left shoulder.

  “She stabbed me! The fucking little cunt stabbed me—”

  “Now, Dante.” The voice gnaws on my thickening rage, injecting clarity back into my brain. “This is no way to make new friends.” Mack stands just beyond the doorway, shaking his head while tsk-tsk-tsking through his teeth. “We’re all family here.”

  Ignoring him, I focus my attention on the man huddling in the corner. “What the hell did you give her?”

  Sammy jumps. One of his hands starts to claw at his wrist, the nails raking the skin. “J-Just a little something to take the edge off—”

  “Heroin,” Mack says without a fucking ounce of shame. “Nothing lethal. Just enough to make her docile.”

  Docile. I force a dark chuckle from the back of my throat as my eyes skim over Stacatto’s battered and now high woman. Her eyelids flicker, the hazel irises swirling. She’ll be docile, all right. I have to press my hand against the small of her back when her knees buckle.

  I swallow hard, shaking my head to hear above the fucking buzzing. “Why?”

  Mack shrugs. “To make it easier to send her back to Stacatto in a body bag.”

  I laugh. It’s only when I see Sammy cringe into his corner that I realize the sound comes out more like a growl. Trust Mack not to have read the fucking Sparknotes. “Arno tried that.”

  Mack’s expression flickers, and suddenly the bastard’s harder to read. “Arno did,” he admits. “But I’m not above using other methods of persuasion.”

  “Other methods?”

  Chuckling, he runs a hand over the stubble along his jaw. He’s sizing up the details of his plan, picking out just how much information he’s willing to share. He was always a sneaky little fucker. “Let’s just say I already have a buyer lined up.”

  “A buyer?” It takes two seconds before the words click and his genius plan unfurls in my mind: he wants to sell her. Whore out Vinny Stacatto’s girl, getting off on the man’s humiliation. It’s sadistic. It’s lucrative.

  It’s fucking stupid.

  “If you want to take down a fucker like Stacatto, then you go for the head,” I say. “You cut it off the fucking snake. She—” I jerk my chin toward the woman, “she knows the inner workings of his organization. His habits. His weaknesses. We use her to take him down, and you stick to whoring out your women on street corners.”

  Mack rubs his chin. “Who’s to say she can’t speak while she’s riding my buyer’s cock?”

  Red. It’s only when Stacatto’s woman whimpers that I realize my fingers tensed, threatening to crush her spine beneath them. “She’ll help us take him down on her own.”

  “Funny.” Mack rocks his head from side to side, stretching out the muscles in his neck. “I’ve heard about the little tape you made with her. If she’s that good of a fuck to get Dandy Dante on her side, then maybe I should double my asking price?”

  “No.” The hoarse command weasels through my eardrums before I even register stepping forward, jarring the woman clutching my shoulders. Her head falls back, those unfocused eyes seeking mine out. “No...only...you.” She utters the words softly enough that only I can hear them, not that they make any fucking sense.

  Only you.

  “Arno’s already agreed to it,” Mack adds with a casual jerk of his thumb toward the ginger bastard in question. “Look at her. She took the high quickly. The little princess won’t feel a fucking thing—”

  “No.” Mack knew business the way a mutt had inner workings of the stock market. He preferred to snarl over scraps to make a quick buck. It was why Dino had overlooked him as a successor; the bastard never thought with his head. “You string her out and trade her for cash. Then what? What next when Stacatto comes knocking with an army at his heels? You didn’t see the men he sent to Arno’s. They were machines. Professional.” I can’t help a flicker of appreciation. A monster could respect the skill of another predator, after all. “Who’s to say that your buyer isn’t already cutting a deal right now to sell you out to Stacatto himself?”

  Mack lets loose another gruff laugh. “Dandy little Dante,” he says, shaking his head. “Always Dino’s favorite. You still
love putting that unfinished high school education of yours to the test, I see.” For a split-second, he drops the act. True hatred lurks in his gaze, unfinished despite the years I spent in prison. Now that’s more fucking like it.

  “And you’re still nothing more than a mutt, I see. Still running with the dogs.”

  He doesn’t react to the insult, but even five years ago the fucker had quick reflexes, known to have a knife drawn and a man gutted before the poor bastard even knew what hit him. Arno may have had the temper, but they didn’t call Mack the “Mad Dog” for nothing.

  He watches me coldly, tallying up the differences he finds in me. I do the same to him. He’s leaner, and despite the lazy swagger, there’s something careful about everything from the set of his shoulders to the open position of his hands. “This isn’t quite the reunion I’d imagined, Dante,” he admits, his tone harder than before. “But what the hell. Let’s do Dino proud. Two methods. Two good ideas. Let’s settle this in the old way and give the boss a show he can enjoy from hell.”

  The old way. My fingers throb, recognizing the implications of the words before my brain even does.

  “No.” Arno finally steps forward, shaking his head. “No. Dante, just let the bitch go. This isn’t your problem.”

  Let her go. I do, and she falls to her knees. One of her hands flutters against my thigh, braced against it for balance, but she doesn’t try to stand. She doesn’t move. She merely tilts her head back to look up at me. There is no fear or hatred in her eyes. Just grim acceptance that’s quickly swallowed up by the haze of the drug flooding her system. She’s too high to speak out loud, but I can almost hear her voice echoing through my head. Just remember to kill me first, before you send me back to him.

  I step away from her and seek out Mack. “If I win...”

  “What the fuck?” Arno tries to muscle his way into the room. “Dante—”

  “The woman’s yours,” Mack says, placing one hand on Arno’s shoulder to hold him back. “We use your plan. But if I win, we do things my way. And.” He stresses the word, and I bark out a laugh, unsurprised. And there it is—with Mack there is always a fucking catch.