Chapter 14: Chapter 14

Fury and rage are the only words to describe the emotions building inside of me. Once Lia’s inside, I wait for the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place. The door doesn’t budge when I push against it with my shoulder. The frame is reinforced to ensure it doesn’t go down under the pressure of someone’s boot. There’s a fire escape in the back of the building for a quick exit if necessary.

There’s something bubbling just under my anger that nags at me. It’s a lot to ask Lia to simply trust me after a few days together, but I want her to. I want her to lean on me, but this thing between us is new. I’ve never wanted someone so badly, and the most fucked up part about it is that I’m grateful to Saul Caputo. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to kill him, but it’s a weird sensation to have.

I take one last look at the door, knowing that I have enough people around to keep Lia safe and get back into the SUV. The driver is a soldier for the Barrone family. He’s eager to make his bones, become a made man. As the don, I can’t remember the last time I initiated someone into La Familia.

‘Take me to the Icebox, Mateo,’ I tell the driver once we pull away from Frankie’s apartment.

‘Uh, I’m not sure where that is, sir,’ he answers hesitantly, peering into the rearview mirror with a hint of fear dancing across his face.

‘Meatpacking District. Take 14th Street to the West Side. You know a place called Oscar’s?’ I ask him.

‘Yeah. Small Italian joint on that street with cobblestones, right?’

‘That’s the one. Circle around to behind that building on 11th and drop me off.’

‘Yes, sir, Mr. Barrone.’ He nods.

It doesn’t take long at this time of night to get where we need to go. By the time we arrive, Armande is standing by a metal door. It’s army green and barely visible from the street. There aren’t any businesses on this block. Just a dark street where most of the shops leave their trash. Armande opens the door for us to walk inside.

The Icebox is anything but cold. It’s a three-story building my father bought decades ago. Dark lighting in the corners of the ceiling doesn’t allow much to be seen as I follow Armande to a staircase that takes us into the basement where three men are bound by their wrists with ropes. They hang from meat hooks secured to the ceiling, a few inches above a plastic tarp covering the ground.

The adrenaline from fighting the first two is long gone. Yet, a new surge of energy courses through my body. My mind flashes to Lia, wondering if she’s safe, but I can’t linger over my thoughts. I put people in place to protect her and have to trust they’ll do their job.

What’s coming next has to come from a place where only darkness resides. Lia’s a ray of light in my world. These assholes tried to take her from me.

The first one out of the three put up the biggest fight. He’s about my height, but I outweigh him. He whimpers behind the duct tape binding his lips shut. He sways as Armande circles around him. My consigliere has a higher desire for violence than I do. He pushes the second intruder into the third just to watch them squirm in agony from their full body weight hanging with their wrists high above their heads.

A Barrone family soldier stands guard at the entrance of the staircase, ensuring our captives behave. Little do they know, they don’t have much longer to live, but still, I need information. Armande enjoys this part of our work as he’s more of a sadist.

I nod for him to begin.

Armande walks over to a button that lowers the first man to the point he has to kneel. His arms are still suspended above him, bound at the wrists and secured to the hook. The intruder’s gaze darts around the room, panic washing over him as Armande snatches the tape off his mouth.

‘Okay Asshole Number One, who do you work for?’ Armande asks him.

‘I can’t. He’ll kill me,’ Asshole One replies.

Armande tips his head to the side. ‘You do understand where you are, right? Look around you, buddy. You think this plastic wrap was rolling out the red carpet for you? The fucking welcome mat? Why did you try to kidnap the woman tonight?’

‘I swear. I don’t know anything.’ Asshole One is trying his best to put up a fight, but my impatience grows.

Armande Is just as impatient as he pulls the gun from behind his waistband. He drags the clip out, slides it into place, makes sure a bullet is in the chamber, and shoots Asshole One through his forearm. The scream rips around the room. I watch the other two hanging beside him. Their reactions tell me a lot.

The second intruder, Asshole Two, forces out a heavy exhale, gluing his eyes to the ceiling. The third, on the other hand, Asshole Three, pisses himself and begins sobbing from behind his duct tape. He’s going to tell me everything. I nod my head toward him after I snap my fingers to catch Armande’s attention.

Armande moves behind Asshole One, blood dripping down his arm as it still hangs above his head. Asshole One’s screams shift into intense growls to control the pain. The bullet blew out a nickel-sized chunk of flesh with a few bone bits. Blood trickles out of the wound like a dripping faucet. Armande does Asshole One a favor and puts him out of his misery.

The sound of Armande’s gun firing silences the noises of the dying intruder as the bullet pierces his skull. Splatters of blood spurt onto the plastic tarp, spraying out like a Pollock painting and making me take a step back.

Asshole Two continues to stare at the ceiling while Asshole Three is visibly panicking. Asshole Three’s eyes go wide as he desperately shouts from behind his duct-taped mouth. I have no doubt that he’ll tell me everything I need to know, and probably some things I don’t.

Armande lowers both Asshole Two and Three to the point of kneeling like their dead ring leader. We don’t waste time with the second. The gunshot to the back of Asshole Two’s head echoes as the third captive melts into tears. He’s inconsolable, which makes me wonder why he’s here. This isn’t the kind of man you send to kidnap someone.

Armande walks closer to Asshole Three, who’s trembling and begins wiggling like a fish on a hook. Even if he manages to break free, where does he think he’s going? The plastic tarp scrunches under his feet as he continues trying to escape. Blood smears and trickles closer to his flailing body. With his arms in the air above him, he can’t find his footing and his feet fail to grip the ground out of his kneeling position.

I sigh, wondering how long it’s going to take him to calm down to extract the information I need. When Armande snatches the tape off his mouth, the third captive blubbers through his words.

‘Please. Please. I didn’t know what we were doing. I didn’t know. Please,’ he cries. Sweat plasters dark brown strands of hair to his forehead. He’s skinny, with sunken cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. Desperation spills out of his pores.

‘If you didn’t know what you were doing, why did you attack me?’ I ask him.

‘Please.’ His eyes dart back and forth between me and Armande. The guy can barely keep his composure. ‘I had to do it. Jimmy said he was going to kill me if I didn’t. I owe him money. I didn’t have a choice.’

‘There’s always a choice,’ Armande huffs from behind our sniveling captive. It makes the guy shrink away from Armande.

‘Please don’t kill me. I was told to drive the van and help them. As soon as we got the chick, she’s supposed to read and record the message.’

‘What message?’ I ask him.

‘It’s on the phone. The phone’s in the van,’ he says.

I look at Armande. ‘What did we do with the van?’

‘It’s at a chop shop, but we cleaned it up before dropping it off,’ Armande says as he walks over to the Barrone family soldier who pulls a device from his pocket. Armande brings the phone over to me before walking over to the guy. He grabs the rope suspending Asshole Three’s arms above him, and yanks it off the hook. Relief washes over the captive’s face as he’s finally able to put his arms down.

‘Show me,’ I tell him, but I also issue a warning. ‘Don’t do anything stupid either.’

He doesn’t know that he’s going to die, anyway. There’s no way he should be allowed to get away with attempting to kidnap any woman, let alone one that belongs to me.

With his wrists still bound in rope, the guy swipes across the screen before pointing a few things out to Armande. When Armande comes back toward me, he hands me the phone and shows the instructions in a note app. There aren’t any texts, phone calls, or any identifying information stored on the device. Just instructions on a sticky note-looking screen.

‘If you want me safely returned, unharmed and untouched, you know what you must do. Tell the CEO to check his mailbox for the invoice. Once it’s paid, you’ll get instructions on where to pick me up,’ I murmur the words.

My gut tells me this is Saul’s handiwork, but I need concrete evidence if I’m going to take it to the heads of La Familia before I put Saul in the ground. I glare at the guy with disgust. ‘What happens after she reads this, it gets to her parents, I assume, and everything is paid?’

‘We, um, were supposed to wait for Jimmy to call. Jimmy would come grab her and drop her off.’

‘Jimmy who?’ I ask him.

He shrugs. ‘I don’t fucking know the asshole’s last name. He runs the gambling book out of Canarsie.’

Armande growls and taps the barrel of his gun against Asshole Three’s head. ‘That can be fucking anybody. Who the fuck still uses bookies, anyway? There are apps for that.’

Asshole Three shrugs, his gaze still shifting between me and Armande, but landing on me. I don’t know what about my energy says that I’m the more lenient between us, but he’s not getting any sympathy from me. I raise an eyebrow, asking him, ‘You want us to find a guy named Jimmy in Brooklyn. What is he? White, Black, Armenian, Asian? What?’

Asshole Three puts on his most sympathetic face, wide puppy dog eyes as he blubbers on. ‘I swear the guy looks like he could be all of those things combined. We just call him Jimmy because rumor is he can jimmy any lock. I just want to go home. I never meant to get caught up in this shit.’

I take a step away from the whimpering man, and Armande follows me toward the soldier by the staircase. I have a decision to make.

‘I can see it in your eyes, Valley.’ Armande’s voice is barely above a whisper. ‘This girl’s making you soft. If we let this asshole go, it’s going to be a mistake.’

‘She’s mine, Armande. Mine to protect.’ Flashes of fear in Lia’s eyes as she tried to escape these assholes anger me. I don’t want Armande to be right, but he is. He confirms exactly what’s in Asshole Three’s eyes. He thinks I have compassion. He’s right, but it’s not for him. Lia is distracting me.

‘Who’s to say this guy isn’t acting? What if he decides to link up with whoever this Jimmy character is and go after her again? Don Barrone—’ Armande is addressing me by my title. It sits differently. We’re not speaking as friends, but as consigliere to boss.

I groan, knowing my choices can incite a war. ‘Get every ounce of information you can from him then bury him with the other two. I might have an idea of which Jimmy this guy is talking about. This has Caputo written all over it.’

‘You really think so?’ Armande asks. ‘La Familia would never sanction a kidnapping⁠—’

I stop him. ‘The dons of La Familia don’t know that Lia Bonetti belongs to me now. From everything I discussed with Caputo a few hours ago, he’s probably had this kidnapping in the works for a while to manipulate her family. The only thing that’s changed is me buying her at that stupid auction last week.’

‘Why are you still invested in this girl, Valley?’ Armande asks.

‘Something feels different about her. I can’t put my finger on it⁠—’

Armande chuckles. ‘From the look of your back and that busted lip, I’d say she put a few fingers on you. You can get any girl for your bedroom shit. Does it have to be the one that puts us on a warpath against the Caputo family?’

‘It’s her, because I want her. She’s perfect for me.’

I can see the disbelief in Armande’s eyes as he rolls them before turning away from me. He glances toward Asshole Three, who’s waiting for his fate.

‘Perfect, huh?’ Armande shakes his head. ‘She’s the perfect amount of trouble that has you wrapped around her finger and every other part of her body. Make sure she’s worth this, Valley. Once we start tangling with Caputo, there’s no turning back.’

‘Caputo told me at Kings that Lia belonged to me so long as I didn’t interfere with his arrangement with her parents. This kidnapping attempt voids that conversation. He should have stopped it. Get everyone ready. We’re going to war.’