Manacled Hearts: an Age Gap Mafia Romance (The Sanctum Syndicate Book 3)

CHAPTER 16

Thousands of needles pierce my body all at once. Each and every one of them is a figment of my imagination, bred of fear and grueling nightmares. They hurt, nonetheless. They paralyze me anyway.

Though, my muscles ache like I’m shaking.

Maybe I am… I don’t know.

The world around me disappears. All but the face of the man who was pleased to see that I wasn’t broken beyond use, and joined my destruction. Because he wanted a piece of me too.

This memory was vague until now, lost in the drug haze they put me through. I remember him, his limp as he walked closer to where I laid flat on my stomach, his fat hand squeezing my jaw as he lifted my head to inspect me, and now… his weight on top of me.

I had a feeling, but I hoped the memories of him wouldn’t come. Vassallo, the one whose face faded from my nightmares. He was lost in the darkness I was taken in. But now, in the brightness of this room… I see nothing else but him.

He’s staring at me.

Frozen eyes bore into me, gouging to the surface more of the pain buried beneath the drug-induced memory loss.

My ears pick up on activity around me, but the stinging in my veins and the incessant buzzing in my head mixed with Vassallo’s voice, pull me further away from reality and throw me in a pit filled with all I’ve been avoiding. No, that’s the wrong way of putting this, because I haven’t been avoiding what happened to me. I came to terms with it. But only because I could barely remember it.

What I have been avoiding is remembering.

A frigid ghostly touch grips my nape, my spine tingles with beads of sweat running down it, and my hands hurt, like caught in a crushing vice.

Burning sears my muscles, the pain contracting them around my bones and crushing me from the inside out. Only, the pain holds direction, like he’s yanking on them, controlling the fibers and forcing them to bind me until I can’t escape. Until I return to that dark room where he will come for me again. The other one, Frankie B, too. The one who vowed to keep me.

No, no, no!

They can’t have me! They can’t!

Warm, comfortable pressure tightens around my upper arm, but soft velvet engulfs my cheek.

“Evelyn! Evelyn, please!”

With a painful jolt in my soul, I’m wrenched back to reality. My hand flies to my chest when the shock of the agony growing there hits me. I’m heaving, hard, and aches burst all over my body. Turning my palm over, I find indentations from my fingernails. They pierced the skin well enough that blood trickles out. I hiss when it hits me that the pain in my other hand comes from the doorknob I’ve been squeezing so tight, it imprinted on my palm.

“That’s it, come back, Evelyn. You’re okay.”

That voice… that touch… the odd softness.

As if only now I realize he’s here, my gaze shoots up, and I’m met with piercing, bright-blue eyes the color of the sunlit sky on the coolest of summer days. His soft touch stroking against my cheek is warm, comforting. For a moment, one cruel moment, I lose myself in that blue, flying through the atmosphere he always pulls me in. And this time, he allows me to.

The ache in my muscles melts away, my lungs find a focus, a calmer rhythm within the chaos, and Vassallo is no longer in my line of sight. Finnigan is.

“Good. That’s it. You’re here, safe, with me.” He clears his throat. “With us.”

My gaze drifts away and, holy mother, mortification hits me like a ton of bricks.

“I am so sorry, I didn’t realize you were all in here. I thought this was—I don’t—I’m sorry. I’m going to—”

“Evelyn,” Finnigan interrupts my erratic speech, as he drops his hand from my cheek.

Without his touch, I’m exposed. Like the contact shielded me from the outside world.

“You didn’t know we were here,” Maddox says, and I realize he’s standing right next to Finnigan.

Was he always there? All the eyes in the room are aimed at me, each in various states of either concern or curiosity.

“Are you okay?” Finnigan asks.

“Yes. Sorry, I was just coming to…” Shout at you, I want to say, but it feels inappropriate now. I thought he was going to be alone, I think. I don’t know. I was so angry, I didn’t think straight.

“Seriously, don’t worry. I think we can all agree the timing was… perfect.”

Maddox turns away. “Did you know that Vassallo is Bartiste? That he’s the one O’Rourke, Holt, and Boseman worked with?”

“No.” Carter.

His tone is sharper than I’ve ever heard him. Not that Carter tends to speak too much. I rarely ever see the man, to be fair, but now he sounds downright annoyed.

“So, this meeting was to tell us that Roberto Bartiste is back, but you had no clue—”

“No,” Carter interrupts Maddox, the bluntness chilling.

“Evelyn, I know this is tough, but we need to talk about what happened when you were taken. Knowing who Vassallo is changes everything.” Maddox turns to me.

I open my mouth to speak, but I’m lost for words.

“No!” Finnigan answers for me. “Look at her, she’s shaking like a leaf after seeing that bastard’s face on the screen. We can’t put her through that!”

“There may not be any other choice.” Carter argues the logic. “It’s been eight years, and we all thought he was dead. Not only he fucking isn’t, but he’s been trying to get back into Queenscove right under our noses.”

“You think I don’t fucking know that?!” The bite in Finnigan’s voice pales against the emotions bleeding through the cracks in what I’m starting to believe is a carefully constructed mask.

Because what I see now on his cruelly beautiful face is the same thing I saw the moment I came out of that container months ago—anguish. He’s broken…

Just like I am.

Only now I realize that the eyes in this room are no longer aimed at me, but at him. And they hold a hesitant, all knowing expression that makes no sense to me. I can also tell it’s making Finnigan uncomfortable. Why? Who is Vassallo? Or, what did they call him, Bartiste? Who is he to them? Who is he to Finnigan?

His brother’s expression is the worst of them all. It may be that he hasn’t been part of this world for a while from what I can tell, but he doesn’t mask his feelings like the others. Or at all. His eyes are strained with sadness and something that looks a lot like shame.

“Who is he?” I blurt out and want to slap my hand over my mouth instantly.

The attention returns to me, but no one says a word.

“An old enemy,” Finnigan finally replies.

“And a new one?” I ask.

His gaze fixes on mine, the intensity of it pins me in place and stuns my breath. For some reason I start counting the unspoken moments. I reach to five when the charge in the air seems to ease, and the clarity in his eyes takes me aback.

“Yes.”

One word was enough to turn my world on its axis.

One word that seems to carry a weight I’m not prepared for. Because his answer had nothing to do with the fact that Carter announced this man’s return into their lives. He is a new enemy for a whole new reason… a whole new crime. And this one is against me.

“Come, let’s go somewhere quiet.” Finnigan’s hand wrapped around my upper arm attempts to guide me away.

“Finn, man, I think it would be better for me—”

“No.” He cuts Maddox off without sparing him a glance.

“I just think we’re closer, and you…” Maddox trails off while everyone else stays deathly silent.

“I will be the one to talk to Evelyn.” Finnigan’s hand tightens around my arm, and I don’t get a chance to argue as he guides me out of the room.

Why is he insisting for him to be the one to speak to me? Or better yet, why isn’t he allowing anyone else to? I have so many freaking questions.

There’s a peculiar possessiveness in his words, his eyes, even his touch, and I can’t fully make sense of it. I’m not even sure if it’s about me, or their past.

What happened to Finnigan Hennessey?