24. Tristan
TRISTAN
S imone moves fast and viciously, exactly what I would have expected from her.
She drives her elbow back into Enzo's ribs, startling him enough that he falters.
She takes that moment to drop to the sand and scramble away from him, kicking at his ankle as she does so, a risky move that makes me both proud of her and want to yell at her all at once. Enzo stumbles, and I have my shot.
But I don't take it.
Instead, I rush forward as Enzo stumbles, hitting him with the butt of my gun in the temple before he can recover. He goes down hard, the knife spinning away across the ground, and I'm on him before he can get back up.
"Stay down," I snarl, pressing the barrel of my gun against the back of his head. "Move and you're dead."
Enzo groans, blood trickling from where my gun connected with his skull, but he doesn't try to get up. Not entirely stupid, then.
I look up at Simone, who's sitting up in the sand, her hand at her throat. There's fear in her eyes, an emotion I rarely see in her, and it makes something violent and possessive rise in my chest.
"Are you hurt?" I ask her, a bit more sharply than I intend, keeping my gun trained on Enzo.
"I'm fine," she says, but her voice is shaky. "He didn’t hurt me."
My guards come rushing down the beach, weapons drawn, faces grim with the knowledge that they fucked up. They should have been closer. They should have seen this coming. They should have taken Enzo down the moment they saw him.
"Secure the area," I order. "Check for more of them."
"Boss, we're sorry, we?—"
"Later." I cut the man speaking off with a look that promises retribution later. "Get her inside. Now."
Two of my men escort Simone back to the house while the others help me drag Enzo to his feet. He's conscious but barely, swaying on his feet as we march him toward the cars. I hit him hard, which I don’t regret in the slightest. I have more pain for him before we’re finished here.
"Where are we taking him?" one of my men asks.
"The warehouse," I say grimly. "The one by the docks."
The warehouse is one of several properties I inherited when I took over the Russo territory.
It's mostly empty except for what’s needed for extracting information from unwilling subjects, and this time of night, no one will be around to hear the screams. My father taught me young that sometimes violence is the only language people understand.
Tonight, Enzo Torrino is going to learn that lesson the hard way. I’ve never enjoyed torture, but I might make an exception for this.
We drive through the Miami night in silence, Enzo zip-tied and blindfolded in the back of the SUV.
He's still conscious, though he hasn't said a word since we loaded him into the vehicle.
He knows what's coming. He knows there's no talking his way out of this.
I hear the occasional grunt and muffled sound of pain, but no attempts at pleading. No begging.
It would almost make me respect him, if he hadn’t hurt my wife.
The docks are deserted at this hour, nothing but boats and empty buildings. We pull up to a nondescript building near the water, and I can smell the salt air mixed with diesel fuel from the boats in the harbor.
Inside, the warehouse is uncomfortably hot. I roll up my shirtsleeves, setting my gun on a nearby table as my guards drag Enzo toward a chair bolted to the cement floor. Two men are already getting out a tarp, the sound of the plastic ominous in the still night air.
"Sit him down," I order, and my men force Enzo into the chair. They secure him with zip-ties, arms behind his back, ankles tied to the chair legs. He's not going anywhere.
I pull off his blindfold, and he blinks in the harsh fluorescent light. His eyes are wide with fear, but there's still defiance there, too. He thinks he's tough. He thinks he can withstand whatever I throw at him.
He's wrong.
"Let's start simple," I say, looming over him. "Why tonight? Why my wife?"
Enzo spits onto the concrete floor. "Fuck you."
With one quick motion, I backhand Enzo across the face. His head snaps to the side, and when he turns back, there's fresh blood on his lip.
"That's for making me repeat myself," I say conversationally. "Now, why tonight? Why my wife?"
"Because she should have been mine," Enzo snarls. "Because everything you have should have been mine."
"According to who?"
“According to her father.”
I backhand him again, sending his head snapping to the other side. “Her father is dead. Konstantin rules this town. I rule this town. Whatever deals were made before are void.”
He spits again, this time directly at me. I sigh, wiping my hand across my trousers, and head for the pliers lying on a nearby table.
I’m not at all sad to have to use them.
Two teeth later, Enzo has tears streaking down his face. “What made you think you still had any right to my wife?” I demand again, and blood dribbles from the corner of Enzo’s mouth.
“Sal Envio,” he mumbles. “We had a deal?—”
Now we're getting somewhere. I step, studying him. "What deal?"
He shakes his head, and I move in again. When another tooth clacks onto the floor, Enzo lets out a yowl of pain.
"He promised me that when he took over, I'd get what was rightfully mine! The territory. The respect. The girl." His words are garbled now in his swelling mouth, as if he’s speaking through cotton.
I laugh, and the sound echoes off the warehouse walls. "And you believed him?"
Enzo lets out a low moan of pain. "Why wouldn't I? He had the connections, the resources. He knew her father's operation inside and out."
"You're even stupider than I thought." I shake my head. "You really think Sal would hand over Simone to you? You think he'd let you have the territory?"
Enzo coughs, and blood splatters onto the tarp, followed by another sound of pain. "He promised?—"
"He lied." I loom over him, looking down at his battered face. "Think about it, Enzo. Really think. If Sal wanted to legitimize his claim to the Russo territory, what would he need to do? What did I do?"
I can see the wheels turning in his head, can see the exact moment when understanding dawns. His face goes pale. I gave him a little credit earlier for not being stupid enough to try to fight back, but all respect he might have garnered is gone.
"He'd need to marry her himself," he whispers.
I snort. "Exactly. The only way to truly secure the territory is through marriage to the heir. You were never going to get Simone, you pathetic fuck. Sal was never going to be content being a kingmaker. He was going to get what he thought he deserved. He knew Simone wouldn’t have any interest in marrying him, so he used you to draw her in and planned to take her for himself.
I’m sure of it." Saying it aloud, it all makes sense.
What Simone has said about Sal, what Konstantin has said about him.
He wouldn’t be satisfied serving a man like Enzo. He always planned to take Simone and use her. The thought makes my blood boil.
I’m going to tear him apart for this, piece by piece. He’ll know what suffering means by the time I’m done with him.
"But he said?—"
"He said what he needed to say to get you to do his dirty work. And you fell for it like the desperate, gullible piece of shit you are." I laugh. I can’t help it. There’s some satisfaction in all of this, to seeing Enzo realize that he’s been used.
That he’s suffering and will die tonight for nothing.
“You could have lived your soft, pleasant little life,” I sneer.
“Married another woman, made babies with her, been rich and fat and happy. Instead, you fucked up. And now you’re going to pay the price for touching what’s mine.
For coveting what’s mine. I’d kill you just for looking at her, and you did so much worse than that. ”
Enzo's face crumples, and I can see the reality of his situation finally sinking in. "Please," he whispers. "I'll disappear. I'll leave the country. You'll never see me again."
"No," I say simply. "You won't."
I pull out my gun, but before I can finish this, I need to know everything. "Where's Sal now? What's his next move?"
"I don't know," Enzo says quickly. "He doesn't tell me everything. He just said to convince Simone to come with me and to bring her to him."
"Where?" I snap. He shakes his head.
"I don't know! He was supposed to call me after I had her."
Three more teeth and two broken fingers later, I decide he’s telling the truth. He stinks of piss and blood and fear, and I can see the desperation in his eyes, the desire to have something to tell me. He has nothing, or I’d have it by now.
"What about his other men? How many does he have?"
Enzo is crying in earnest now, a man who realizes he’s going to die and is only suffering until then. “A dozen,” he sobs. “Maybe more. He has some of her father’s old men, the ones that survived. Maybe some new ones.”
I pause, clicking the pliers together, and he shudders. "And his base of operations?"
“He moves around!” Enzo blurts it out, as if information can save him now. "Different safe houses, different locations. I never know where he's going to be until he calls."
I'm not getting anything useful from him. Enzo was exactly what I thought he was—a small-time wannabe who got in over his head. Simone’s father chose him because he was malleable, someone who could be molded into exactly what he wanted him to be. Sal took advantage of that and did the same.
"Any last words?" I ask, raising my gun.
“Please—” he starts to beg, and I pull the trigger.
Enzo slumps in the chair, dead. Blood pools beneath him, spreading across the tarp on the concrete floor.
One problem down. One to go.
I'm holstering my gun when I hear slow, deliberate clapping from the shadows near the warehouse entrance. My men immediately raise their weapons, but I hold up a hand to stop them.