by Shayla Black
There’s no one else in Marco’s suite. Even the casino floor is nearly deserted just before dawn. From here, I can almost smell the puke and regret.
Ducking through the nondescript door tucked into the adjacent hallway, I zero in on the surveillance monitors lining the long wall. As I lean over the desk, I press buttons to change the view. Casino floor, high rollers’ area, hallways, and elevators—no. Café, buffet, kitchens, and south lounges—no. Boutiques, gift shop, concert hall, and meeting spaces—no. Finally, I see the view I need.
My hands shake as I scan the victims in their eighth-floor rooms, most sleeping, sitting nervously, or pacing. And yes, Donzelli has been recording every captive—including Kristi—since they were moved from the basement. Damn that shit stain.
I watch a snippet of me seducing my Little Red. Sal is wrong about a lot of things, but not Kristi. She really does have a great rack. And watching myself make love to her is totally better than porn because I remember this moment. It felt fucking awesome, but being with her wasn’t a mere pleasure. Even though Rudy and Sal watched us—which is still not okay—they’ll never understand because what we shared goes way beyond lust.
I delete the file, promising myself that once we’re safe, if Kristi is game, we’ll make home movies together. Maybe a dirty video series as her pregnancy progresses… That would be hot as fuck.
But I’ve got to focus on now. Marco is probably in his bedroom at the end of the hall, sleeping off booze and pussy. I tiptoe that way and peek in. Sure enough, he’s crashed out and alone.
Best to make sure he stays that way.
A length of rope on his nightstand catches my attention. He probably used it to tie up some unwilling victim, poor girl. She’ll never have the opportunity to mete out her own retribution, so it seems fitting to use this rope to make sure Donzelli pays for his sins.
I snag the rough length from the bedside table, then creep back to shut his bedroom door behind me with the quietest of clicks. Thank fuck the rope is long enough to reach from here to the security room door and wrap around both levers a few times before I knot it off. It won’t hold for long, but since the asshole isn’t likely to wake up, this should detain him until the feds come.
Time to hit that locked room of Paulie’s.
Leaving Donzelli’s suite via his private elevator, I plunge down to the third-level basement. The humid space still smells of unwashed bodies. The stench grows stronger as I trek deeper, wall-hugging to bypass the surveillance camera and plucking the security door combination from memory.
My heart thuds. I sweat. Finally, I might uncover the proof I’ve been seeking since Luca Antonelli approached the feds and I became his “nephew,” Rafael.
With ground-eating steps, I round the last corner. The guards are gone now, thank God. The cages, too. But I’m standing at the door to Paulie’s domain…without a key. The good news is, I’ve acquired some less-than-noble skills during my three years on this op.
I pick the lock and let myself in, plopping into Paulie’s chair and starting his laptop. It’s password protected.
Fuck. I have to think like the big lug? That’s terrifying. What safeguard would he use to keep people out of his machine that’s still simple enough for him to remember?
It takes me a couple of tries to figure out the bonehead’s big security measure was his dog’s name and the year of his birth. Really fucking original…
But I’m in.
I’m not exactly sure if the information I need is in pictures, financial records, messages—or some combination. Quickly, I prowl through Paulie’s hard drive, and I discover something mighty interesting…
Paulie wired a camera in Donzelli’s room to spy on him.
Holy shit.
Marco is still asleep. I see him on Paulie’s monitor. And the camera is recording.
Is this the break I’ve been looking for? After all, Carboni must be spying on the boss for a reason…
Maybe the lug isn’t as stupid as I thought. Come to think of it, he’s been almost defiant lately. Because he’s got dirt on Donzelli? Is Paulie just waiting for the right moment to play his blackmail card?
“Let’s see what kind of shit you’re hiding, Marco.”
With a click on last night’s file, I start watching. Donzelli in his room—on the phone, drinking scotch, picking his nose. Nothing interesting. He presumably shits, shaves, and showers because he walks into the bathroom looking like any businessman at the end of a day and emerges Mr. Saturday-night Suave, pressing down the edges of his mustache like it he’s convinced it makes him more fuckable. Room service delivers dinner. Donzelli pounces on it, takes more phone calls, then disappears.
He’s gone for hours, so I skip through the empty time—feeling the ticking of my own racing clock—and pick up again when he returns, rips off his suit coat, downs half a bottle of booze, then grabs his phone again. He makes a terse call and breathes in his palm as if he’s testing his breath before he strides purposefully out the door.
The sick fuck, like Paulie, is sampling the merchandise. So what’s with the breath check? Is he hoping to impress the captive he’s forcing to his bed? Absently, I wonder who he chose to torment for the evening. My money is on the girl who looked maybe fifteen but had the curves of a woman.
Quickly, I scan through the next twenty minutes, fast-forwarding to the moment Donzelli enters his unit again. He rolls through his door, pushing a laundry cart. What the fuck? He doesn’t do his own wash.
Hastily, he stops the rolling receptacle, locks the wheels, then lifts out a smallish limp body with a sack over her head. She looks smaller than I remember. A lot less curvy, too. Is she someone who got plucked off the floor tonight? Someone even younger than the girl who isn’t quite old enough to drive?
I wince. I expected Donzelli to be on the sick side, but seeing that he’s the kind of freak who gets off on girls barely old enough for puberty makes me want to puke.
He sets the prone form in the middle of his bed, ties the kid up with the rope I found on his nightstand, and peels off her hood. From this angle, in this dim lighting, I can’t make out the face, just a mop of curls. But when Marco starts removing her clothes, there’s something familiar about this figure. It tugs at me, ugly and dark.
Then the pants come off—and my jaw drops. “You sick fucking asshole.”
He hasn’t brought a girl to his bed but the little boy I saw in the cage. He’s going to violate a goddamn kindergartener?
Donzelli jolts the child awake. A struggle ensues. But his captive was already subdued. I can’t watch what comes next.
Fury permeates every cell in my body. I see red. My blood burns. I want to charge in and save that poor kid, but this is a recording, and I’m too fucking late.
But I can put Donzelli away and save others, including my pretty Little Red. I just have to move fast.
My phone dings suddenly, jarring me from the computer screen. It’s Ransom with a one-word message.
Done.
So that’s it. Paul Carboni is dead. Good. He deserved it. One less criminal to pollute the world.
But this whole piece-of-shit business is done, too. Today. I’ll make sure. I have enough evidence to put Donzelli away. If I keep digging, I hope I find enough to destroy everything else.
I copy the disturbing footage of Donzelli with the boy. A scan through the recordings on the computer tells me this kid isn’t the mobster’s only dirty secret. I duplicate those incriminating videos, too, then leak fifteen damning seconds of footage from last night to one of Donzelli’s counterparts in a rival family. Anonymously, of course. And I make sure the boy’s face is totally obscured. I don’t want him victimized more than he has been, but what I can’t undo now will save some other child this terrible fate later. His rival is macho enough to think that mobsters who touch any male sexually for any reason should be run out, but still humane enough to believe children are off-limits. Donzelli will be prosecuted and likely offed in prison, ordered to death b
y his own kind, so no one will care enough to come after me. Hell, I might even be a hero for exposing the truth.
Okay, hero is a strong word, but we all have fantasies, right? Sure, I’d love to avenge his victims, but putting a quick, painless bullet in his brain while he sleeps wouldn’t be satisfying. My plan will see justice served, and he’ll have lots of time to dread his horrible and well-deserved painful ending behind bars.
That thought consoles me as I dash off videos to my contacts in DC, who will undoubtedly find them mighty interesting. Then, bonus! I stumble across a document on Paulie’s hard drive with Donzelli’s passwords. Paulie collected them, apparently, along with the combination of a wall safe in the big boss’s office.
I glance at the clock. The feds will storm in and shut me down in less than thirty, but I have to see this through. I owe it to that poor little boy, Sammie, and every other victim. I need every shred of evidence I can get my hands on.
And it’s more than a job, because if I fail, I’m not sure Kristi and I will ever be safe.
Abandoning Paulie’s command center, I return to Donzelli’s suite, close his office door, and unlock his safe to find drugs and guns, along with blackmail fodder he’s collected on the local cops and the FBI SIC here in Vegas, not to mention Paulie’s sloppy handwritten records of each human trafficking transaction—buyer, victim, and price.
Halle-fucking-lujah! It’s the bonanza of proof I need to end Donzelli’s empire and provide closure to loved ones left behind. Plus, I’ll never have to be Rafael again. Kristi will never worry about my past coming back to haunt her. It’s a way better outcome than I’d hoped for.
Now we just have to make it out of here alive.
I take pictures of everything and send them to both my contacts and my oldest brother. Then I tuck the documents back in place. They’ll get scooped up in the impending raid.
I glance at my phone. Eighteen minutes before the feds descend.
After sneaking out of Donzelli’s suite, I dash back to the eighth floor. Two new guards have replaced Ingram and the big guy. When I approach, they both stand and do their best to act tough.
“You can’t come down this hall,” Vincenzo, an annoying AF protégé of Paulie, tells me.
I do my big-and-bad impression, too. And I’ve been doing mine a lot longer. “Says who?”
Vincenzo and his too-young pal each look at the other for answers. “Well, Paulie…”
Is dead. But no one knows that yet. “Donzelli put me in charge of this operation last night. In fact, I’m the one who moved everything up here from the third-level basement. You want to argue? Take it up with the big boss. Now, you better fucking move. I got business.”
The two exchange another glance before Vincenzo shrugs. “Whatever.”
They step aside. I want to open every door and check on each victim. But there’s no time. Thankfully, they’ll soon be free to carry on with their lives, and their tormenters will either be dead or behind bars.
“Any problems with the merchandise?” God, I hate talking about people like they’re disposable.
“Nah. I guess the kid in 804 was being a pain in the ass during the night. Donzelli set him straight, I heard. The little puke hasn’t made a peep since we got here.”
Setting him straight wasn’t what Donzelli had done, but I can’t spare the time to explain now. Vincenzo and his cohort aren’t important enough.
Instead, I head straight for Kristi. Since Marco is asleep, Paulie is dead, and the turdtastic duo should be out cold in the bar, I don’t have any more obstacles to getting her and Sammie out of the hotel before all hell breaks loose. They’ll probably have to testify at some point, but I want them both safe first.
At the end of the hall, I unlock her door and duck into the room. But it’s too quiet. Something is wrong.
My heart thuds. I draw my weapon and creep slowly into the darkened room.
Someone presses a gun to the back of my head. “Put it down, asshole. You’re going to pay for drugging my scotch.”
Sal. What the fuck? Why is he awake and here? I don’t know, but if I drop my weapon, Kristi, Sammie, and I are dead. Thankfully, he and his thuggy sidekick have proven they’re stupid. I just have to think past my panic and outwit them.
Rudy pops into my line of vision with a meaty fist in Kristi’s fiery hair—and a gun to her temple. My blood freezes. And it gets really fucking hard to think. My life, especially my regrets, flashes through my head. My future flushes down the hypothetical john.
“Now!” Sal growls. “Or Rudy pumps a bullet into her brain.”
Red looks terrified. She’s shaking. Her shirt is torn.
I lose my fucking mind. “What did you do to her?”
“Just a little of what you did last night.” Rudy taunts me by sliding his grubby hand over Kristi’s breast.
He’s testing me. He wants to see if him touching her bothers me. All he’s done is reaffirm that he needs to die first.
Cowering in the corner, Sammie whimpers. Kristi glances the girl’s way like a worried mommy hen. Fuck, she needs to focus on getting out of this alive…especially in case I don’t.
“Drop your fucking gun!” Sal demands again.
Nope. This is a go-big-or-go-six-feet-under moment.
“You motherfuckers messed with the wrong wise guy. Donzelli is on his way out, and Paulie is dead. Guess what that means, boys? Right now, I’m the boss. So you better fucking obey or I’ll leave you bleeding on this carpet. Let her go.”
“What are you talking about?” Rudy growls.
His hand on Kristi’s tits, along with the ticking clock, make me lose my patience.
I elbow Sal in the face, knocking away his shooting hand and sending his weapon slamming into the wall as I whirl around and wrap his neck in the crook of my arm. Then I yank him in front of me to serve as my human shield while I plug two shots into Rudy’s forehead.
Kristi screams as Rudy’s blood splatters and his brains hit the window behind her before he falls dead.
“You motherfucker!” Sal struggles against my hold.
“Shut up.” I press my gun into the small of his back.
Instantly, he stills.
“You okay?” I ask Kristi.
She gives me a shaky nod as she gets Sammie to her feet. The girl hugs her tight.
Everything is going to be all right now.
Well, until someone opens the hotel room’s door behind me, shoving me forward and sending me stumbling.
“What the fuck is going on?” Vincenzo demands.
Sal uses the commotion to break free from my hold and scramble for his gun. He’s still groping when Vincenzo crowds in and cocks his weapon. I’m sure he’s pointing it at my back.
This asshole knew Sal and Rudy were in the room—and said nothing. He let me traipse in, probably hoping I’d bite it.
Fuck that. I am not letting this dick-for-brains be the end of me, Kristi, or this op.
“The day I call you boss, asswipe, is the day I die,” Sal snarls, gun in hand again. “Drop it.”
Thanks to Paulie’s understudy, if I don’t think fast, my chances of living beyond the next thirty seconds are slim. Kristi and Sammie won’t last much longer after that. We’ve got one shot…
I meet my girl’s terrified gaze. “Remember, don’t be afraid, Red.”
She gives me a shaky nod. Does she recall me uttering those words a few hours ago? Does she understand that she’ll have to use my Glock to help us out of this mess?
“Shut up!” Sal demands. “Drop your gun or your girlfriend dies.”
Suddenly, Kristi heaves one of the bed pillows at Sal’s head. What the hell is she doing?
The unexpected projectile rattles him. He sputters and shoots it, sending feathers spewing everywhere.
And once they clear the air, she’s pointing the Glock I left right at him. Then she does one better and pulls the trigger.
God, I love this woman.
The night I met Kristi, I lov
ed that she was my opposite. Soft, sweet, kind, considerate. She didn’t have a mean or sarcastic bone in her body. Besides having great tits, she had a big, open heart under them. She’s got a gentle sense of humor and a thoughtful way of looking at the world that makes me look differently at everything, even myself. What I didn’t know about her? When life gets rough, she womans up—and she does it right.
There’s a gaping hole in Sal’s middle. It hasn’t killed him outright…but if I leave him here, either the feds will find him or he’ll bleed out. I take his weapon from his hands, deciding I’m good either way.
“Son of a…” As Sal clutches his middle and falls to the carpet, Vincenzo seems totally shocked—and distracted.
I take advantage of the moment to whap the punk in the cheek with the butt of my gun. He grunts. I catch a fistful of his greasy hair with my free hand and pound him face-first into the nearby door with a thud.
Vincenzo crumples to a heap.
Smiling, I turn back to Sal and gesture to his gaping wound. “That must hurt like a bitch. It sucks to be you.” I shrug, then I divest all three mobsters of their cell phones and dump them in the toilet. “Come on, ladies. Let’s go.”
“What the fuck?” Sal chokes out. “You can’t just leave me.”
“I can. See, the feds are about to raid this place. I’m getting the fuck out and taking these two, along with the little boy Donzelli molested last night, with me.”
Kristi pales, and Sammie gasps in horror.
“That’s bullshit!” Sal chokes.
“I wish it was. But video of it is making the rounds. No one is going to lift a finger to work for Marco Donzelli then. Not that it will matter because his ass will be in prison. Yours, too—if you survive. Bye. Happy fuck off.”
I motion to the girls to follow. They do, staying behind me.
When I bust out of the room, Vincenzo’s pal is waiting with a frown. “What’s going on? There were gunshots.”
I point my weapon in his face. “There will be more if you give me shit.”
He swallows. “No, sir.”
