18. Eighteen
Eighteen
Rosie
I count the turns as the van careens around corners. Right, left, right, then straight for around seventeen minutes before right, and then left? It all becomes a blur.
The silence is abruptly interrupted as a phone rings loudly, piercing through the metal partition that divides the front and back. A sickeningly deep voice fills the air, making my stomach turn. “You have her?” my father asks.
“Yes, and her friend.”
“Excellent. Kill the friend. I only want my daughter.”
I place my hand over my mouth and shake my head as I hear my father’s orders. This can’t be happening.
One of the men in the front lets out a shrill scream seconds before the van veers sharply to the right. In the midst of the chaos, the piercing sound of two loud pops reverberates through the air, reminiscent of a gunshot, right before the screeching of the van’s tires. My body is catapulted into the air, then it all goes black .
As I come to, a persistent ringing in my ears overwhelms my senses while my eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness of the starless night. I place my arm at my side to hoist myself up and instantly regret it when I feel like I’m on a motion ride. I fall back onto the dirt and wild grass under me with a thud.
What in the hell happened?
I angle my aching neck to the right and see Jess lying a couple of feet from me. Shit.
Rolling to my side with a sense of unease, I crawl toward Jess’s limp body. I place my index and middle finger under her jaw and feel the thump, thump of her heartbeat. Thank God she’s still alive.
I move to a kneeling position and cast my gaze in every direction. We’re on an isolated road, surrounded by darkness, with no streetlights, cars, or buildings in sight. The perfect place to do unspeakable things to someone.
The van is tipped over on its side, with one of the back doors swung wide open. Did I crawl out? And what about Jess? How the hell did we end up over here?
As a faint noise reaches my ears, I immediately hit the ground with my stomach pressed into the earth. I focus on regulating my breathing and tightly close my eyes. When I don’t hear any steps advancing my way, I slowly open my slitted eyelids .
Standing by the van, a slender black figure who is neither of the two men from before gazes across the vast landscape before walking to the front of the van. The sound of glass shattering reaches my ears, followed by the distinct noise of something being dragged.
I hear a huff as the figure drops something hard to the ground. I squint as I try to make out the pile, only to realize it’s one of the men who took us. The figure retreats to the front of the van again before dropping what I can only assume is the other man next to the first. The figure rips something with a grunt, and then a light comes on as they hold a phone over their bodies.
The light from the phone creates enough visibility that I can finally see the face attached to the figure. My breath catches in my throat, causing them to turn their gaze toward me. Their face is hidden behind a white mask except for eye holes resembling a river of black tears and lips painted crimson red.
The masked person looks back down at the men before flipping them both over with an ease I find terrifying and taking a few photos of their faces.
Are the photos a trophy for the kills? Alexa and I went through a phase when we watched only murder documentaries for months. This would be considered a trophy or something, right? Or maybe they were on a hit list, and tonight was their unfortunate night?
They walk down the road without a backward glance, and I start to believe they won’t be coming back until I see headlights coming at an alarming speed back toward us.
I scramble to my hands and knees, and shake Jess.
“Jess, please. Wake up. We have to leave,” I beg, but she remains unconscious.
The car skids to a stop a few feet from us, and the masked person jumps out. In the offset light from the headlights, I watch them grab one of the men and pull him toward the car. When they get to the second one, they drag him by his arms and let his head rub against the dirt and rocks. As the light hits the back of his neck, I glimpse a tattoo. A circle with a slash through it. Odd. I’ve never seen something like that before .
The masked person reappears and gazes over at me before advancing in my direction, which makes me squeal and try to cover Jess’s still sleeping form.
They get two feet from me and put up both of their hands in a calming gesture, and that’s when I realize the person has long nails poking through the end of black gloves.
It’s—it’s a woman?
She looks over both of us with a hand on her hip.
“Thank you,” I murmur. I don’t know why she did what she did. I’m grateful, but still slightly terrified she might kill us next.
She just flops her hand at me as if it was no big deal before placing her finger over her mouth in a shushing gesture and walking to the driver’s side of her car.
All I can see from her back is blond-looking hair in a tight bun. And as I squint, I see the same tattoo on the back of her neck as the guy.
My eyes widen in shock. Did she just kill someone she knows?
The car’s headlights gradually fade away as she accelerates and swings the car around. The silence is shattered by another vehicle’s engine growing louder and closer with each passing second. I look back toward the other car and let out a sigh of relief when I see Vic’s truck speeding toward us, its engine roaring. I turn my gaze back to the other car, but it has vanished without a trace. Like it never happened.
“Fuck! Rosie, baby, are you okay?” Vic says as he and Axl make it to us.
Axl drops to Jess’s level. “Jess. Wake up. Please wake up,” he says while moving the hair out of her face with a gentleness I never thought he had .
“I’m okay,” I say with exhaustion clear in my voice. The terror-induced adrenaline seeps out of my body, and a bone-deep chill replaces it. “It all happened so fast. The guy knocked Jess out in that maze. She needs to go to the hospital.”
Vic helps me up and wraps me into a tight hug as Axl picks Jess up and holds her tightly to his body.
Vic grabs my hand as we walk, and I yelp. “You’re hurt?”
“I got thrown into the back of the van on my wrist,” I say, sniffling at the immense pain I now feel that wasn’t there in the face of danger.
Vic holds my arm and wrist delicately as we walk. “It’s okay, I swear.”
“It’s not okay. I thought you were dead. You both vanished, and Jess’s car was still there. I want to know everything after we get your wrist looked at, and where the fuck is your phone?”
“I left it in Jess’s car,” I mutter as I look at the ground.
I’m just full of stupid decisions.
The on-call doctor meets us at the clubhouse because the guys have one on retainer. He looks at Jess first. She woke up during the ride here confused and was complaining about her head hurting. The doctor confirmed she has a concussion and gave her some stitches but instructed her to go to the hospital for more testing.
I walk away with a sprained wrist but nothing more, thankfully. It’s not lost on me how much worse things could have gotten.
Vic and I enter a room I’ve never been in before. A large oak table dominates the center, with multiple chairs where the guys currently sit. This must be the church he was talking about.
Julian’s fingers move across the keyboard with lightning speed as Trey and Marcus lean in to see the screen .
Trey looks up as we enter. “How’re our girls?”
“My girl,” Vic mutters.
“I’m okay,” I say with a tight smile.
As time ticks by, the weight of my impending freak-out becomes heavier. A moment I’ve been dreading since Vic found us. I just don’t want to do it in front of everyone, so I put on a brave face, camouflaging the torrent of emotions swirling within me. They want answers, and I have them.
Julian continues to type while Marcus looks over at Vic. “The car you saw speeding away had no tags or identifying marks from what we could see. Someone scrubbed the video footage from the servers as we were looking at it. Whoever did this is good... too good.”
“And the number that texted me the location?” Vic asks.
“Burner, apparently. I can’t find shit,” Julian says, sounding disappointed.
“What about the van?”
“Samuel is towing it here as we speak.”
Marcus looks over at me. “We’re going to need answers,” he states as he crosses his arms over his chest.
Out of the three of them, he’s the scariest because he’s the most stoic. His eyes bore into yours with an intensity, not creepy, but like he’s analyzing you.
I once asked Vic, and he said it has to do with his past. He has trouble trusting people. His intimidating presence still leaves me slightly unsettled despite feeling sympathetic toward him. Then, I found out he’s the club’s enforcer, which means he’s very good at keeping order and killing people. Scary.
“Is Axl planning on coming down?” Trey asks Vic.
Vic shakes his head. “Nah, he’s with Jess. I’ll update him later. ”
All four of the guys look at me, but Vic is the one to break the silence. “Start from the beginning.”
Taking a deep breath, I examine my quivering hands, a telltale sign of my anxiety that prompts me to tuck them away behind my back.
“Well, we were going through that maze thing, and I felt someone’s eyes on us. It wasn’t until we went through the second tunnel that someone in a ski mask caged us in.”
My stomach turns as I recall the feeling of staring up at the man who took me.
“Go on,” Marcus says.
“At first, there was only one person. Then, another appeared and broke the glass to grab Jess. Then, the man in front of me grabbed me.”
Tears escape my eyes and trace a path down my cheeks. Vic wraps his arms around me, but I pull away. When I see the hurt in his eyes, I place my hand on his chest. “I have to finish this, and then I never want to talk about it again.”
I look back at the guys. “They brought us both out to a black van, threw us in, drove away, and then someone saved us.”
“Who?”
I pause. Our savior preferred to keep her help to us a secret. That much was clear, and I can’t help but feel a sense of loyalty to her.
I shrug. “I have no clue.”
“What did this person look like?”
“I-I, uh... couldn’t tell. She had a mask on.”
As soon as I say she, I grimace.
Shit.
Trey raises a brow. “She? ”
“Ahh... yeah, she.”
I wish I would have thought this through prior to their line of questioning. Although I doubt they’ll ever find her.
Trey narrows his eyes. “So you’re saying a girl outsmarted two likely trained men?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t know the who, but maybe we can figure out the why,” Julian contemplates as he looks at Trey from above his laptop.
“Don’t look at me, fucker. I’ve been keeping my nose clean,” Trey says.
Julian narrows his eyes. “Are you sure about that?”
“One hundred percent. Life’s been fucking boring lately. But this... this gives me something to look forward to,” Trey says, rubbing his palms together. An evil smirk adorns his lips, and I look away.
“You’re such a dick,” Vic says from my side.
“I can’t help it, bro. There’s some chick in town who can allegedly take down a couple of guys. I need to find her, stat. And you guys all know that I’ve made changes since I’ve taken over. Pop’s rule was bloody and vile. I won’t put us back through that shit. We lost too much,” he says with a sigh.
“You piss anyone off lately, Vic?” Marcus asks while ignoring Trey.
“Nope, I’ve been pretty preoccupied,” Vic says while looking down at me with a small smile.
“What about the guy on poker night?”
Vic goes rigid. I look up at him. “What guy?”
“After you moved in, someone came to my house,” Vic says, looking guilty.
“Why didn’t you tell me? ”
“Because I didn’t want you to worry.”
He’s right, I would have. That still doesn’t make it right. But I also didn’t tell him about the guy at the bar.
“So, maybe he came back?” I ask the room.
“Unless he can crawl out of the soup drum he’s in, I doubt it,” Trey says with a creepy smile.
My eyes go wide. Did they kill the guy? I look up at Vic, but he’s looking at Trey.
“Well, I got nothing, but I’ll ask the other guys and Ax. Shit has to be connected, though,” Julian says while closing his laptop.
The guys review possible suspects while I stand there, looking at Vic. Not saying anything could get them hurt, and I’ve already gotten one person hurt so far. I can’t let that happen again.
I wait three seconds, mulling over what to do, and then sigh. “Wait... they were coming for me.”
“Why would you think that?” Marcus questions with a quirk of his brow.
“Because I heard my father on the phone with the men.”
My throat gets tight at the memory of his gruff voice with a hint of excitement at the prospect of me being taken and brought back to him.
“Your father?” Marcus raises an eyebrow.
I watch Vic still, and an expression I can’t decipher pulls onto his face, but it disappears just as quickly.
“Pretty sure you couldn’t piss off anyone bad enough to get yourself kidnapped,” Marcus states.
“I did. I pissed my father off.” I bite the inside of my cheek until it’s painful, weighing my options, then say fuck it. Goodbye to my anonymous life. “I’m Rosalinda Gallo Moretti, and my family... ”
“Is the highest-ranking Mafia family in Chicago,” Trey says, narrowing his eyes at me, then Vic. “You knew this?”
“Yeah, she’s my friend’s sister.”
“Gage?” Trey says, putting the pieces together. “I thought he looked familiar when he was crashing at your place.”
“No fuckin’ way. Her?” Marcus points at me with shock clear on his features, which is semi-insulting. I guess I don’t really scream Mafia princess when you look at me. I don’t have the attitude or confidence most have.
Trey looks back over at me. “Your father is a piece of shit, by the way.”
“How do you know her father?” Vic asks.
Trey shakes his head. “We’ll discuss it later. I think we’re done here, boys.”
“See you later, princess.” I flinch at his words.
“Can you possibly act like you never got that piece of information?” I ask with a grimace.
I like the anonymity of being Rosie, the unknown girl. She was fun and carefree. Uncomplicated. I want her back. Not what the guys know now.
Trey regards me thoughtfully before shrugging. “I’ll think about it. Vic, later.”
Vic nods at him before grabbing my arm. I walk out of there more confused than when I entered.
As we ascend the stairs and approach his room, I steal glances at him. He keeps his eyes forward and chews on his lip as he looks at his phone, lost in thought.
As he gazes at me, his eyes soften, but there’s still something in his eyes I don’t like. He looks upset. “You must be exhausted. Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll be right back. ”
He turns around and shuts the door without another word, which feels like he’s shutting me out as well.
Tears free-fall from my eyes as I rummage through Vics’s drawers for something clean to wear.
I feel utterly drained, with a heavy weight pressing down on my chest and an unending stream of tears.
The realization that death was a real possibility hits me hard, and the thought of Jess being harmed because of me is even more devastating.