Vow to Me: A Mafia Arranged Marriage (The Romano Empire Book 1)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

FIVE DAYS AGO.

I wake up with a groan.

Why the fuck is my head pounding? Why are my muscles aching? And why the hell am I sleeping on what feels like the floor? I search my memory for the last thing I remember.

The bookstore.

The bruise around Robyn’s wrist.

Tomasso disappearing into thin air.

The ghost of my past having his arms around me.

Getting into the car.

A sharp pain in my neck.

Feeling like I was going to pass out before everything faded away.

Holy shit. Alessi is alive.

And he fucking drugged me.

I’ll fucking kill him.

My eyes fly open, and I drag my body into a sitting position. I’m on the floor of what looks like a basement, my left wrist is cuffed and chained to the wall, and I do a quick check of my body. I’m still wearing all my clothes, and I’m not injured anywhere other than my pride, but any weapons I had on me have been removed.

Of course, they have. He’s the one who taught you everything you know.

I pull on the cuff around my wrist but it’s too tight for me to wiggle out of. I grab the chain and try prying it from the wall but it’s too secure. There”s no way I’m getting free from it.

Why the fuck would the man I considered my best friend, the man who was like a brother to me, my family, fake his death and then over a year later kidnap and me and lock me in a fucking basement? What does he have to gain?

THREE DAYS AGO.

I have no fucking clue how long I’ve been here. There are no windows for me to be able to see the time of day. I haven’t slept, not wanting to leave myself in a vulnerable position.

I’ve had no food, no water, no fucking bathroom to use since I’ve been here. It could be hours, it could be days, it could be a week. I don’t fucking know. What I do know is that Luca will be searching for me, surely, he’s close to figuring out where I am? He wouldn’t stop until I was back with him.

I keep that thought on repeat, because if I don’t? I’ll lose my fucking mind.

The deadbolt on the door on the opposite side of the room clanks and I shift my gaze towards it as Alessi steps inside the room, I glare at him but stay silent. If he wants me to beg him to release me, he’ll be waiting for a fucking lifetime. The only man I’ll ever beg is my husband.

He looks the same as he did before he ‘died’ except for the fact the has more scruff surrounding his jaw. He’s tall, standing at 6’4, with a wide build and broad shoulders. If I was at my full strength and wasn’t chained to a fucking wall, I might have been able to get the jump on him. But I’m weak, I have no chance in hell of getting free without a weapon.

“I missed you, piccolina.”

The nickname he’s called me since I was a teen makes my fucking gut churn. How dare he call me the pet name I always used to associate with safety? How dare he speak to me so casually, as though were catching up over coffee? How fucking dare he?

“What the fuck am I doing here Alessi?”

“You’re going to tell me everything you know about the Romano family and their empire, their business dealings, their alliances, everything.”

“Like fuck I am,” I growl as I glare defiantly at him.

He chuckles and raises his brow. “You’ve been here for two days little one, and your husband thinks you’ve run off with your lover—that’s the way me and your father made it seem when we sent him a thumb drive with some pretty damning evidence,” he grins.

Your father.

My father helped him fucking kidnap me. Of course, he did. Dear old Daddy strikes again. I want to ask what fucking evidence, but I know that’s what he’s waiting for, he wants me to question him.

Once he realizes I’m not going to voice the questions swimming around inside my head, he sighs before taking a seat on the bench in front of me.

“There’s you dancing with Mu?oz at the club and you sitting on his lap. We even set up a little run in you had with a woman. Remember the woman who asked for your opinion on which hard drive she needed? We paid her and took a picture as you handed her the hard drive best suited for her, then we took a picture of her flirting with Mu?oz and set it up like she was passing him something… see where this is going?” He gives me a manic grin and I shake my head. Theres no fucking way Luca would believe this shit, right? Right?

“But the best part was your reaction when you saw me on the street. The way you greeted me? How you ran and wrapped your arms around me? That’s fucking Hallmark shit, piccolina.”

Fuck. I know exactly how it appears, and now I know that Luca will be looking for me for the wrong fucking reasons. He’ll want me fucking dead.

“So, save yourself some trouble and tell me everything you know. Your husband won’t be coming to save you, the only one fighting for you is you.”

“Go fuck yourself,” I say with a smirk. Luca may think I’m capable of betraying him, but I fucking won’t. He may have believed the worst of me, and that cuts fucking deep. But I’m not going to do shit for the asshole in front at me, he can try however he likes, but I’m no fucking traitor.

TWO DAYS AGO.

Alessi left me some water and a piece of bread yesterday after realizing he couldn’t get me to talk, so at least I’ve had something to keep me going.

The dead bolt moves again, only this time instead of being greeted by the face of my dead best friend, I’m greeted by the view of my father.

Oh, joy.

“Hey, Papa. Good to see you,” I say sarcastically with a nod.

“Enough, Isabella. You’ll tell us everything you know about the Romano’s; you’ll help us take them all down.” His voice is gruff, and commanding and I don’t bother to hide my eye roll. Gone are the days where I’ll play pretend and hide behind the mask of perfect princess.

“Ah good, you’re not hiding anymore. Did you know it was my idea for Alessi to train you? Did you know that we worked together in faking his death?” he asks with a smirk. “We’ve had everything planned for years. We’d use you to take down the New York outfit, and you will marry him once the Romano boy is dead, and he will be the one to take over as my heir. I’ve always seen something in him, something promising. Over the past year we’ve been slowly moving into different… business ventures. You exceeded our expectations with your ability to use computers, you’ll make a great addition to our team that finds our buyers.”

Buyers. He’s talking about fucking sex trafficking. I’ve been keeping my eye on suspicious disappearances in and around Chicago, but I never once thought it was my fucking father. I even flagged it and sent it to Alec for him to investigate it.

This motherfucker has started selling girls. Jesus fucking Christ. I need to find a way to contact Alec so he can locate the girls. Fuck everything else, those girls need rescuing.

I keep quiet, still not telling him anything about my husband or his family, and he pulls out his phone to send a text.

A few minutes later, Alessi strolls in and gives me a wicked grin.

“You won’t talk the easy way, piccolina? That’s fine, we’ll see if you can survive the hard way,” he says and nods towards the table in the corner of the room. It looks like something that belongs to a mental institution, used to strap patients down.

Oh fuck, this is gonna hurt like a bitch.

ONE DAY AGO.

My body aches. I’m covered in bandages from where Alessi let loose, he cut up my skin, burned my skin, broke my fingers and dislocated my shoulder.

The only thing that’s keeping me going is knowing I survived without telling him a fucking thing. Most of the injuries are superficial because he “wanted to keep me pretty for when I’m his wife” the sick fuck.

I’m lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what’s going through Luca’s head right now. It fucking hurts that he really thinks I would do that to him. He’s shown me more love in the last two months than I’ve seen for most of my life, and for him to believe I could really do that to him? Well clearly, it can’t have been that fucking real or he would have known better, he would have seen through the lies, he would have had fucking faith in me.

That’s the part that hurts the most. Not Alessi’s betrayal, not my father’s antics, not being tortured while tied to a table. No, the most painful part of this whole thing was knowing Luca didn’t fight for us, that he didn’t trust me, that I would blindly follow him anywhere, in anything. But he couldn’t extend the same courtesy to me.

The door opens and I brace myself to see the two men who were supposed to love me like family but instead used me for their own gain. Only it’s not either of them, it’s a foot soldier who approaches me and undo’s the cuff on my wrist, I pull my arm back to go to hit him, but he slaps me across the face so quickly I didn’t see it coming. I slump back down but he grabs my forearm and drags me from the room. It’s only as we’re ascending the stairs that I realize I’ve been in my childhood home this entire time.

He shoves me into a room that’s filled with computers, and I glance around for a way to escape as he backs out of the door.

Before I can make a move to follow him, my father steps into the room.

“You’re going to repay me for all of the years I had to put up with you living under my roof, the spitting image of your mother and reminding me of everything I’ve lost. It should have been you that died, not her.”

The mention of my mother sends a pang of hurt through my heart. If only you could see the man that you once loved now, Mama.

He explains how he wants me to build a database of all of the girls he has for sale, giving me a folder filled with pictures of girls who’ve clearly been through hell. It makes me fucking sick that this is happening in this day in age, it’s even worse that it’s my own flesh and blood who’s doing it.

He sits in the corner of the room, observing me as I work. I know there’s no point in trying to fight him, I’m too weak and fucking fragile, not to mention he’d just fucking shoot me before I could even make a move.

I play my part and develop a database while swallowing down bile as I do so. My father doesn’t understand computers, which is the only thing I have going for me right now.

The computer I’m working on only allows me to go through a certain systems mainframe. But luckily for me, I set my laptop up on the same one when I bought it two years ago. The laptop that’s currently sitting in New York. And if I know my husband like I think I do, he’ll give it to the one person he knows with the ability to hack into it.

The one person who can put a stop to this shit and help those girls.

After I’ve sent a message to Alec, and my father deems me to have done enough work for the day, he orders a guard to deliver me back to the basement.

The guard isn’t as tall as the others or well built. If anything, he’s a scrawny little thing and I use the opportunity of being alone with him to my advantage. I wait until we”re stood in the basement, where no one will be able to hear the commotion before I jump him, I grab his gun from its holster and shoot him between his eyes before he can even blink. The poor fuck didn’t even see it coming.

Once Alec unravels the codes that I’ve sent to him on my laptop and he sees my message, Luca will be here within hours. Too bad for him I won’t be here when he arrives.