2. Chapter Two #2
He turns the car off and turns around to face me, flashing a smile. “The name is Finn Murphy, by the way. And I am your worst nightmare.”
I startle when I recognize his name. I know exactly who Finn Murphy is. Him and his brother, Aiden, are hitmen. I know they used to work with Dante. I’ve met Aiden since he started working with Dante again.
But I’ve never met Finn.
Dante kept me away from him when they used to work together.
Now I know why.
Finn is a madman and I’m in his clutches.
Finn grabs me from the car and forces me into the home, which is plain and ugly and boring. It’s nothing like the luxury I’m used to.
I sneer.
“Not to your liking, princess?” he taunts, gripping my arms tighter.
“You couldn’t have taken me to a nicer house?”
“This is a nice house. There’s no mold anywhere. No bugs. It’s clean.”
“Fine. It is clean. But it’s so ugly and bland. This is a place that middle class people buy and I hate the middle class.”
He stares at me for a long moment. It’s disconcerting. “You’re a snob.”
I scoff. “I am not a snob.”
“I just kidnapped you, princess, and yet you’re complaining about how ugly the house is. You’re a snob.”
“Fine. Maybe I am. What of it?”
The smile he gives me sends a shiver down to my toes. “It’s only going to make it more fun for me to tear you apart. To break you down.”
“Why are you doing this?” I demand. My voice is steady and brave. I will not show fear in front of this man.
“Because this is going to hurt Dante.”
“And… Then what? What’s your plan?”
“Then I’m going to drive him so crazy, he’ll destroy himself. His perfect life he’s put together. And it will just be fun for me to watch. No other reason. If you’re trying to apply logic to me, princess, I wouldn’t do that. I do things for my own pleasure.”
“And me? What are you going to do with me?”
He quirks an eyebrow. “You really want to know?”
“You’re going to do it to me eventually. I’d rather know now.”
“I’ll be honest with you. I’m not fully sure yet what I’m going to do with you. Torture you, that much is obvious. But how? I’m still deciding.”
“What are you saying? That you don’t have this all planned out yet?”
“I just made up my mind earlier today to do this so no, I don’t have it all planned out.”
Oh my god. He really is crazy. It would be one thing to have planned this for months but Finn is flying by the seat of his pants. He killed those men earlier without even blinking.
“Who were those men?” I ask as Finn shuffles me across the room. “The ones you killed.”
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? They didn’t upset you to incur your wrath?”
“Nope. They were just there. Wrong place, right time.”
“Right time?”
“For me,” he explains. “Right time for me. I didn’t know anyone would actually be there. I just gambled that someone would. I’ve been to that boxing ring before. I figured there had to be some large men around to prove my point.”
“And your point is?” I ask as lazily as I can. Finn cannot know that he’s scaring me.
“That I am not a man to be messed with. I am incredibly hard to kill. I have escaped the clutches of Dante and my brother and Erik Koslov himself. Even Viktor couldn’t take me down.
” He squints at me. “I heard about the marriage deal he made with you. How does it feel knowing he rejected you for his maid?”
I can’t look at Finn. I knew Viktor had married his maid when he tried arranging his marriage deal with me.
He was going to divorce her and then things changed.
I’m glad that I didn’t have to marry a Russian but knowing that he fell in love with a maid stings.
How does a maid deserve to be married to one of the highest ranking Bratva men in the city?
I deserve more. I deserve to be married to the most powerful Mafia man in New York, and not in some ugly ass house kidnapped by a madman.
“So, you do have feelings,” he murmurs, tracing his finger down my cheek. I jerk away.
“Of course I have feelings. I am a human after all.” I eye him up and down. “Unlike some people.”
“Like what you see, princess?”
“ Hate what I see,” I spit out. “You are not worthy to touch me.” I try jerking out of his hold but he doesn’t let me go. Instead, he keeps marching me down the hall and towards a back bedroom.
It’s a clean room but the sheets look like cheap polyester and the bed looks old. Nothing like my nice Tempur-Pedic mattress back home.
“Not to your liking?” Finn asks.
I can’t stop myself from sneering. “You can’t actually expect me to sleep on that bed.”
“It’s your home now. Better get used to it.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I could have brought you to a shit-stained, mold-ridden, rat-infested house. But instead, I brought you here. Be a little grateful.”
“I should be grateful that you kidnapped me?” This man is truly insane.
“Be grateful it’s not worse. Now get on the bed.”
I tense. “No.”
Something hard enters his eyes. “Get on the bed, princess.”
“No.”
“What do you think’s going to happen?”
“You know what I think.”
“I don’t. You’re going to have to spit it out.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “You’re going to rape me.”
“If I had wanted to do that, I would have done it already. And you wouldn’t have been able to stop me. But I don’t want to rape you, princess.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want to have fun with you. Rape isn’t fun. I love torturing and killing, and yeah, sometimes that includes torturing and killing women, but rape has never been something I was interested in. I like getting a woman of my own accord. Makes fucking more fun if she’s enjoying it too.”
“But you kidnapped me. I didn’t come of my own accord.”
“And I’m not going to fuck you. You’re not the type of woman I’d pick up at a bar.”
I stand up taller. “What does that mean? Look at me. I’m everyone’s type.”
He eyes me over in a way that makes me want to hide under the cheap covers on the old bed. No one has ever made me feel this way before. Fuck him for that. “I like a woman who doesn’t have a stick up her ass. Make sticking my cock up her ass way easier.”
All the air leaves my body. “You are disgusting.”
“And I’m your kidnapper. I never claimed to be a good model citizen. I kill people for a living, princess.”
“And yet you don’t rape women.”
“I don’t get paid to rape women. I get paid to kill people so that’s what I do.”
“But if someone paid you to rape me… would you?”
He tilts his head and gazes down at me. It’s so unnerving. “You’re trying to deflect. Get on the bed.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“No. I wouldn’t take money from someone who wanted me to rape a woman.”
“Why? You can’t actually have a good moral code.”
“I don’t. Raping someone leaves too much evidence behind. If she sees my face, then I’m fucked. But if I kill someone, then they can’t report me to the police and I’m great at cleaning up a crime scene.”
“No you’re not! You just killed those men back at the boxing ring and left them there.”
He shrugs. “I’ll go clean them up. I have contacts who can help.
Death is final. It can’t be linked back to me.
But if I were to rape a woman and let her live, who knows what she could do?
Some people may think I’m stupid for the crazy things I do but I know how to stay alive and out of prison.
Raping women isn’t going to keep me from prison. It’s going to land me right there.”
“But rape cases are hard to find evidence for unlike murder.”
He stands before me, towering over me. “It almost seems like you want me to rape you.”
I scoff. “How could I want someone to rape me? Rape is the literal definition of not giving consent.”
“You’re all about consent then? You’ve been with any man before?”
I flip my hair over my shoulder. “I’m a good Mafia girl. How dare you ask me that.”
“And you didn’t answer my question.”
“No. I haven’t been with any man before. And I’m not giving you my body so I’m not getting on that bed.”
“I just told you I won’t rape you.”
“And you expect me to believe you?”
With a sigh, he grabs my arms and pushes me onto the bed.
“Hey!” I scramble upright but Finn gets on top of me. “Stop this!”
“Just hold still.” He pulls out rope from his jacket pocket and manages to tie my hands to the bedpost within seconds. I keep kicking at him until he ties my ankles up next.
“There.” He stands up and dusts his hands like he’s just done a day of hard work. In a weird way, I guess he has.
“Let me go,” I seethe.
“You look good tied up. Good enough to eat. Now, be a good girl and wait there while I attend to some business.”
“What are you going to do?” As Finn walks out of the room, I call out to him, “Finn! You can’t just leave me here! Dante will find me! He will kill you!”
The last thing I hear is Finn’s laughter and his words, “I’m counting on it.”
Dante
Elio calls me over in the middle of the night, frantically telling me that Aria isn’t there.
“Where could she have gone?” I ask once I arrive at his house.
“I checked the security footage and saw her take my car and drive off.”
“Ok. Then we just look at the CCTV footage on the streets she could have gone. I have a hacker friend that can help us out with that.”
“But that could take hours,” Elio cries, running his hand down his face. “And I need to know that Aria is safe now.”
“Well, we know which direction she went in. I’ll call my friend to get started and then I’ll go out and start looking for her. She couldn’t have gone far. She knows she’ll need to come back soon. She’s probably out for a joy ride and will be home within the hour.”
But as I speak, I know my words sound hollow. Neither of us believe Aria will be home within the hour. Something in my gut is telling me something has gone wrong.
After calling my hacker friend, I drive in the direction Aria went. It only takes me a few minutes to find Elio’s car. On the side of the road. With a large dent in it. Aria isn’t in the car and there’s no one else around.
My gut was right: something has gone wrong.
Then my phone rings. I don’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
“I see you got my gift.”
“Finn,” I growl, recognizing his voice instantly. It’s always so cocky and smug. He was a good friend to have when he was on my side but as my enemy? He’s just fucking annoying. “What the fuck did you do?”
“Oh.” He pauses. “I kidnapped Aria.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Finn is chaos personified. And he has Aria – the girl I helped raise. The girl I’ve known since she was in pigtails and had missing teeth. Hell, I even snuck money under her pillow at night when Elio wasn’t home because he was off on business.
And now Finn has her.
When I kidnapped Nadia, Finn had wanted to hurt her but I was the only thing stopping Finn from doing too much damage. Nothing is stopping Finn now.
Except me. If I can find him.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Nothing. I just wanted you to know.” He hangs up before I can say anything more.
Fuck.