by Mae Doyle
“Let go of me!” I jerk back, trying to free my arm from his grasp while trying to kick out at him. I have to use my bad foot to keep my balance, and the pain that shoots through my body is enough for my vision to black out for a moment.
“For fuck’s sake, you are a pain in the ass,” he says, grabbing me around the waist and throwing me over his shoulder.
Instinctively, I start to scream. The shock of him coming to the house and taking me has worn off and I open my mouth, letting all of my fear and panic pour out of me. My scream echoes around the yard until he twists his body to clamp a large, sweaty hand over my mouth.
“You do that again and I cut your throat right here like the pig you are, do you understand? I will let you bleed out on the lawn and then take your empty body to my boss.”
He’s serious. I nod, and he drops his hand from my face.
“For fuck’s sake, I don’t know why Damaso wants you alive so damn badly.”
Holy fuck. This piece of shit works for Damaso Strano? I put his son away in prison last year for a long damn time, and while I’d been worried then that he was going to retaliate, nothing ever came of it.
Was he just biding his time?
“You work for Strano?” I ask, keeping my voice quiet so that he doesn’t think that I’m trying to yell and make good on his promise to kill me. “Damaso Strano?”
In response, he grunts, still carrying me across the yard.
I’m fucked. Honestly, at this point, I can’t imagine how Enzo or Uncle Marco are going to get me out of this.
Damaso Strano is the biggest asshole I’ve ever met. His son is a rapist and a murderer, and I was thrilled to put him away for the rest of his lift. Before, during, and after the case, I’d had security detail on me 24/7, but that had all ended a few months ago.
A few months too early, it seems like. Strano isn’t a patient man, but it looks like he was able to sit on his hands and bide his time long enough to wait for me.
And now I’m really fucked.
The Torentis? Fucked.
And I can’t do a damn thing about it to let them know what they’re up against.
Chapter 18
Enzo
My team with eyes on Lucia hasn’t be in touch in a while, no matter how many times I page them. That’s worrisome, especially when I want to make sure that she’s safe and they’re her first line of defense.
Once we all get back to the house, I tell the guys that I’m worried and Arlo shrugs. The two of us hop into my truck and I speed across town as quickly as I dare when I know that all of the cops have our name on their radar.
We’re halfway there when Arlo turns to me.
“So, you think that you can make it work with my cousin?” He sounds serious, and when I glance at him, I realize that he’s taking this more personally than I realized. Arlo and I aren’t related, but we act like we are, and we were brought up to be close.
Of course it’s hard for him to see me possibly marrying his cousin, even though they hardly know each other.
I nod and squeeze the steering wheel tighter. “She’s the one for me, Arlo. I can feel it. We haven’t had a lot of time to get to know each other, but she’s under my skin. I can’t stop thinking about her. Everything about her is perfect and I can’t imagine ever being with another girl.”
He’s silent for a moment. “That’s how I felt about Hannah,” he says, finally. “She’s everything to me. I just want to make sure that Lucia’s safe, you know? I know that you’ll do everything that you can to protect her, but this…this is bad.”
I know that he’s talking about her kidnapping and the bombing of the Claw and Crown. “I thought that we’d taken care of it when we took care of Giorgio,” I tell him.
“Yeah, but these assholes always have more connections that we know of. I think that Giorgio was working for someone for the first time in his life. Someone more powerful than him. Someone who would have him running scared.”
I drum my fingers on the steering wheel as I turn up my driveway. Someone who would have Giorgio Romano running scared? That would have to be someone as powerful as Pops.
Or more powerful than Pops.
That’s not something that we like to think about – that there could be another family more powerful than the Torentis, but although we have extensive reach throughout the area, that doesn’t mean that we know all of the families in the states.
“It’s possible that they hired Giorgio to do their dirty work because they’re not familiar with the area, and because they knew that he hated us. If they could turn him against us with the promise of money or power, then it’s totally possible that he would work for someone else,” I muse, slowly guiding my truck up my driveway. Everything looks fine. Even from here, I can see the truck where I put my two guards, but since they didn’t answer my pages earlier, I pull up next to them instead of going straight to the house.
“Son of a bitch,” Arlo says, throwing open the truck door. He’s the first one to see that there’s a problem, but as soon as I park the truck, I see it too.
“Fucking hell,” I yell, slamming my door and running around the front of my vehicle. That’s a fuckton of blood. There’s no way that someone survived that, but Arlo grabs the door handle and pulls it open anyway.
James rolls out of his seat and lands with a sickening thud on the driveway. Immediately, I drop to my knees to check him, while at the same time pulling my piece from its holster. Whoever took them out could still be here, although I have a very good feeling that they’re gone.
“Dead,” I tell Arlo, standing up and scanning the wood line for anyone. “What about Arturo?”
Arlo shakes his head in response. He has his pistol pulled, too, and slowly circles around me to get back to the truck. “We need to get to the house. Now,” he tells me, and I nod.
We get into the truck and I throw it into gear, flying up the driveway. Some branches hit the windshield as we go, but I don’t give a shit.
The woman I love is in my house, and there’s a killer on the loose out here. I have to make sure that she’s okay.
We pull up to the house and sit in the car for a moment, checking out the scene. From here, everything looks fine, but I can hear Mack barking.
No Frank. Frowning, I get out, and Arlo immediately covers my six as we walk up to the house. The barking gets louder as we step onto the porch, and that’s when I notice the bullet hole through the door.
“Fucking hell,” I say, holstering my gun and pulling my keys from my pocket. Lucia could be hurt, and the thought makes my hands fumble a bit as I open the door.
It swings open and I drop my keys, grabbing my gun again. Blood on the floor makes my heart sink, but then I see Frank.
“Fuck,” Arlo whispers behind me. “I’m so sorry, Enzo.”
Nodding, I swallow hard, and tear my eyes from my dead dog. Every cell in my body is screaming out for me to call to Lucia, but I know that trying to sneak up on the asshole is the best way to keep her safe. We search the house and meet up in the living room again. Mack leans against my leg and I absentmindedly pet him while thinking.
“How did they get her out? The door was completely locked.” Arlo frowns and looks around the living room. “No windows were broken, and the only one open was the kitchen.”
I look up sharply. “The kitchen window was open?” Before he can answer me, I bolt into the kitchen. It would be hard for anyone but my petite Lucia to get through that window, and I have no doubt that’s exactly what happened. The soap and sponge are scattered in the sink, like she accidentally kicked them on her way through.
“Outside,” I tell Arlo, and he follows me out the door. He’s already on the phone with Pops explaining the situation, and I take the lead, running around the side of the house to the kitchen window.
Nothing.
Not a fucking thing.
She could have made a run for it and gotten away, but the fact that two of our guys and my dog are dead makes me think that som
eone took her. I drop into a crouch, looking for any blood on the ground. Some of the dirt and grass is kicked up, like people were walking back here, but there’s no sign of violence.
Arlo walks up behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Pops is making some calls. Do you have any idea who would have taken her?”
I shake my head. Part of my job is to always be as cool and calm as possible, no matter what shit we’re dealing with, but right now I’m finding that a little hard. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, remembering what it’s like to be with Lucia.
I’m going to find her.
“We have to find out who Giorgio was working with,” Arlo tells me. “I’m going to call Ricky and see if he can start doing some digging and can find some intel.”
I nod at him, but I’m not really listening. There’s a very good chance that Ricky’s only going to find dead ends, no matter how hard he looks. “I bet it has something to do with her work.”
Arlo’s on the phone, but he puts his hand over the mouthpiece and raises his eyebrows at me. “Go on. What do you mean?”
I think fast. “She’s a bigtime lawyer, right? You don’t think that she hasn’t put some scum behind bars before? They were brazen enough to have her kidnapped from the fucking courthouse, and we don’t think that it could be someone big behind it?”
Arlo nods and drops his hand from the phone. “Ricky, look into what cases she’s had in the past. Big ones that caused a stir, okay? We need to find out what powerful family she pissed off so that we have the best possible lead for getting her back.” He listens for a moment and then hangs up, slipping his phone into his pocket.
“Listen, Enzo, this suck. I’ve been here before, and I know how terrible you feel, but all we can do right now is try to think smart, okay? Don’t go and do something stupid. Let’s find out who has her and then we’ll take them all out, just like with the Romanos, okay? I promise you, we’ll do everything that we can.”
I nod at him and try to force a smile, but inside I feel twisted up.
That’s great for him to try to tell me that he knows how I feel. I should be appreciative, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.
The only thing that’s going to make me feel better is having Lucia back. And then, no matter what she says, I’m going to marry her. I’m going to make her my wife, I’m going to fill her with my children, and I’m going to do everything in my power to keep her safe.
Chapter 19
Lucia
I want to be flippant about being kidnapped, especially since it’s the second time that it’s happened, but this feels different.
It feels personal.
The dirty hippie who took me didn’t say another word to me as he tied me up, shoved a rag in my mouth, and then threw me in the bag of a dirty van like a piece of luggage.
I struggled to sit up and kick out at him as soon as I hit the floor, but the look on his face told me that he wasn’t interested in my games.
“I will fucking kill you right here, you stupid lawyer,” he promises, and then slams the door on me.
It’s dark as hell in the back of the van, and hot, but I’m able to spit my gag out right away. Not that calling for help is going to do any good. I have no idea what road we’re on, even though I try to keep track of all of the turns we make.
I think that I’m doing a pretty good job at first as I recognize turning onto the main road out of town, but that’s as far as I know. I’m fucked, and even if I were somehow able to get out of the van and did somehow remember the way back, it’s not like I could walk.
My ankle throbs, and if it weren’t so damn dark in here, I’d like to check it and see how it looks, but the windows have been painted over from the inside and there isn’t any light streaming into the back of the van.
Fuck.
After a long ride, the doors open again, and I blink hard in the sudden light. The hippie dude grabs me and throws me over his shoulder, carrying me up to a huge house. Twisting on his body, I try to look around me, but I have no idea where I am.
“Tell him that I brought her. I’ll put her in the back room,” hippie says to someone at the door. As soon as we step into the house, I can smell baking and cinnamon. My stomach rumbles, even though I ate most everything in Enzo’s house, and the asshole laughs.
“You’re never going to get again, you stupid whore. Not after the boss gets finished with you.”
The boss. I never met Damaso Strano when I was trying to put his son in prison, but I saw him from across the courtroom plenty of times. I saw his dark, beady eyes. The way he cracked his knuckles when he was unhappy. How he stared at me like he wanted to kill me.
He was the reason I had a protective detail for as long as I did, and even though I hated having people on my tail all the time, I’m beginning to think that maybe I should have asked them to stay around for a little longer.
Or maybe I should have told Enzo about it. Even though nobody can see me, I shake my head. Telling Enzo about Strano wouldn’t have done a damn thing. Nobody knew how dangerous he is, and now it’s all come down on my head.
Suddenly, hippie drops me down to land on my ass on a hard chair. I tip forward and almost fall out of it, but he grabs me by the shoulders and pushes me back up. “Do I need to tie you up?” He asks, and I instinctively look down at my ankle.
It’s throbbing and hot, and even without getting closer to it, I can tell that it’s really fucked up. No, he doesn’t need to tie me up, and he knows it but he can’t help but play with me a little.
“I wouldn’t mind tying you up, you know,” he says, lightly running his finger up my cheek. I turn away from him, trying to get him to leave, but he grabs my chin and forces me to look at him. “Maybe the boss will let me have a little one-on-one time with you before he takes care of you, what do you think? Or after he takes care of you, even. I wouldn’t mind, as long as you’re still warm.”
He laughs and chills run up my body. “Fuck you,” I tell him, spitting hard into his face. The glob lands on his cheek, but instead of wiping it away, he leans back and smacks me across the cheek.
I spin and fall out of my chair, which topples over on top of me.
Hippie dude squats down next to me. “You want to get spit on me, darling, there’s one place in particular I wouldn’t mind having your mouth.” His breath is hot on my cheek and I close my eyes, willing him to go away.
“Cristian.” A hard voice makes the hippie dude scramble to his feet. “What the fuck are you doing with her?”
I know that voice. I mean, I’ve never heard it in person, but I’ve seen the person it comes from, and I don’t have to have heard him speak to know for sure that it’s him. Damaso Strano matches his voice perfectly, and from the way that Cristian hippie dude is almost pissing his pants, I have a feeling that he lives up to being a huge dick.
Slowly, I open my eyes and look up. Yeah, it’s Strano. He towers over Cristian, who now looks like he’d be happier anywhere else in the world. Including hell.
“Get the fuck out of here. If I ever hear you talking to someone like that again then I will personally gut and fuck you, do you understand?”
Cristian nods and leaves the room without looking back down at me. I should be grateful that he’s gone, but now I’m left alone with the most dangerous man I’ve ever dealt with.
My dad thought that keeping me away from the Torenti family was important? He never met the Strano family. He was long dead before I took on the case as prosecutor, before I saw pictures and heard testimony about what this asshole’s son did for fun.
There’s a very strong theory that he learned his technique and passion from his father, but nobody’s been able to prove that. Yet.
I have a feeling that I’m about to get first-hand knowledge, and that terrifies me.
“Get up.” Strano’s voice has a hard edge to it, and even though my ankle hurts so bad that the pain is making me grit my teeth, I try to push myself up off of the floor. The chair is still next to
me, and I grab it, using it to help my brace myself.
I don’t know what will happen to me if I don’t do what he tells me to do. I have a very good feeling that I’m not going to make it out of here alive, and all I can hope is that it’s as painless as possible.
“So, I finally get to meet the little whore who put my son away for life.” He stares at me, his eyes roaming over my body.
“And I get to meet the asshole who made him into a monster.” I know that I should tread lightly, but I can’t help spitting those words out at him. He narrows his eyes at me and I’m sure that I’ve made a big fucking mistake, but there’s nothing that I can do about that now.
Can’t take it back.
To my terror, he laughs. It’s just a low chuckle at first, but after a moment, he has his head tilted back and is laughing. Chills run up my spine at the sound.
“My son was a monster,” he agrees. “But you have no idea how bad it can get, Lucia Hall Torenti. Your perfect little parents wanted to keep you safe. Keep you out of this life, right? They did a shit job, you know that?”
I frown, and he grins. “I did my research on you, Lucia. As soon as it became obvious that you were going to take my son from me, I wanted to do the same to your parents. Shame that they were already dead or they’d be able to live the terror of knowing that they couldn’t do anything to save their child. But your uncle, he loves you, yes? The great Marco Torenti will mourn his only niece, you mark my words.”
His hand flies out from his body and he grabs my upper arm before I can even try to take a step back. Without another word, he turns and starts to drag me out of the room.
“Wait!” I yell, trying to pry his hand from my arm. “Just, please! Don’t do this! You don’t have to do this!”
He turns to me, his teeth slightly bared. “I do, though, Lucia. You forced my hand when you put my son away. It was just a matter of time before you were on your own and I could take you. Fucking Giorgio can’t do a damn thing right, but that’s okay. I can.”
