Chapter 10 #4
Dashamir Dervishi steps inside, closing it quietly behind him. He’s in short sleeves with no jacket, and he moves with that same eerie stillness I noticed at the fight. Those pale eyes sweep over me once, cataloging damage like a doctor assessing a patient.
“Vincenzo Vici.” He says my name like he’s confirming an appointment. “I’m glad you’re awake. I was beginning to worry I’d have to wait.”
“No chainsaws?” I ask, faking bravado.
Dashamir doesn’t deign to answer my question.
He pulls up a chair and sits across from me, close enough that our knees almost touch.
“Let me be clear about our situation,” he says, his voice soft, almost melodic. “You’re here because you came into my territory, crashed my celebration, stole from us, and lied to our faces. You want my guns, don’t you?”
“My fucking guns.”
“Your guns,” he agrees politely. “Which are now mine. Redistribution of resources from a dying family to one that’s building something better.”
I laugh, and it hurts. “Better. That’s what you call this?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No shame. “The Vicis, Montonis, Barones, and Lucanias have held this city hostage for generations. Corruption, violence, feuds that kill innocent people while you play your power games. The Dervishis are bringing order to chaos.”
“Is that what you call torturing people in basements?”
“When necessary.” He stands, walks to the table, runs his fingers along the tools laid out there. Not selecting one. Just considering. He picks up a long metal needle, examines it, and sets it down.
“Someone has to be the monster,” he continues quietly. “Someone has to be willing to bloody their hands. I accepted that role for my family.”
“How noble of you.”
“Two months ago,” Dashamir continues, returning to his chair and sitting close to me once more, “four Dervishi soldiers were sent in pursuit of you, the last surviving member of the Vici family. They were never seen alive again. Their bodies were all found dead in a laundromat.” He pauses, watching me intently.
“There was a witness. A woman. Her bloody footprints were at the scene.”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and his dark hair falls over one of his eyes.
“The woman you brought to the fight. Was that the same woman?”
The conversational way he speaks makes my chest tighten. I force my expression to stay neutral, but my jaw clenches before I can stop it.
Dashamir’s eyes sharpen. He saw it.
“Interesting.” He tilts his head, and now he’s focused on me with a predator’s intensity. “Who is she?”
“She’s no one.”
A cold smile touches his lips.
Getting to his feet, he grips my hair and drives his fist into my face. Pain explodes in my nose. His next blow lands on my mouth, and I feel my lips slice against my teeth.
The next four blows are all aimed at my stomach and aching ribs. Nausea swells in my throat, and I fight the urge to throw up as Dashamir’s brutal blows hammer my aching body and blood fills my mouth.
He stands and circles me, and I collapse forward, gasping for air. Fighting for breath through the pain. I can only hear his soft footsteps on concrete.
“What I want to know is why you have not killed the man who murdered your family. There can be no doubt who the perpetrator was, and yet he still lives. If I had such evidence…”
His eyes flash, and his jaw flexes.
There’s a story there. A wound. But he doesn’t elaborate.
“Are you going to ask me any questions,” I grit out, “or is this a fucking tea party?”
Dashamir rolls his shoulders like an athlete warming up.
He hits me, calculated and brutal, right in my damaged ribs. The pain explodes white-hot through my chest. I can’t stop the grunt that tears from my throat.
“I don’t enjoy this,” Dashamir says quietly. “But I need answers. Are you working with the man who slaughtered your family?”
He hits me again. Same spot.
“Did you ask him to kill your father and make you don?”
Silence apart from my short, hard breaths.
“What plans do you have with Agnello Montoni?”
Nothing.
“Pain clarifies,” he says, breathing slightly harder now. “It strips away lies, pretense, false loyalty. By the time we’re done, you’ll tell me the truth. Who are you allying with?”
I smile through the blood. “Your mother.”
He grabs my jaw, forcing me to look at him. “Everyone breaks eventually. Everyone. The only question is how long it takes.”
“Then I guess we’re in for a long night.”
I don’t trust myself to say a single word about wanting to crush Don Agnello like an insect, in case Dashamir figures out the reason why I haven’t. Adora isn’t going to become this monster’s plaything because of something I’ve said.
He studies me for a moment longer, then releases me. Walks to the table. Selects a pair of pliers. Despite my bravado, my stomach clenches.
My hands are zip-tied to the arms of the chair. Dashamir grasps my wrist and drives the pointed pliers beneath my thumbnail.
The pain is blinding, my whole body arching from pure agony, and my eyes squeeze shut.
He rips the nail out.
The scream that tears from my throat could curdle milk. My hand feels like it’s on fire. Sweat and blood drip down my chest and back.
Adora. I’m enduring this for Adora.
I watch as Dashamir flicks my bloody fingernail aside and moves on to my pointer finger.
I’m sickened by the way he’s maiming me, and my hands are shaking, but I’m unable to look away.
Again, he shoves the thin, pointed metal under my nail, working it deep, before wrenching with all his might and ripping the nail out at the root.
“Fuck. Fuck.” I sweat and bleed and curse, but other than expletives, I don’t say a word. If he connects Adora with the woman at the fight and the woman who helped me in the laundromat when I killed the Dervishi soldiers, she’s dead.
Worse than dead.
I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of what this animal will do to her.
Dashamir drops the pliers onto the table and wipes his hands clean on a cloth.
“You’re strong,” he says, folding up the bloody cloth and laying it down. “Stronger than I expected. But strength isn’t enough. It never is.”
He returns to his chair. Sits. That unnerving calm settling over him again.
“Who was the woman in the laundromat?”
I spit blood onto the floor between us. “Go fuck yourself.”
He regards me coldly for several minutes.
“Let me tell you what’s going to happen. I’m going to leave you here to think about things. Your woman is out there somewhere, unprotected, while you’re tied to this chair. I have your phone, and my men are already looking for her. Maybe she knows what Vincenzo Vici wants from Don Agnello.”
I swallow hard, remembering the photograph my father sent me of Adora Montoni. Will Dashamir realize that the sleek and perfect mafia princess and the provocative, smoky-eyed young woman I brought to the fight are one and the same?
“I’m going to come back, and we’re going to continue our conversation. And you’re going to tell me everything I want to know. Because if you don’t?” His pale eyes are like winter. “I’ll bring her here. And I’ll make you watch while I ask her the same questions.”
Every instinct screams at me to lunge, to fight, to tear him apart with my bleeding hands, but I’m bound so tight I can’t move.
“She has nothing to do with this,” I say again. “This is between you and me.”
“No.” Dashamir stands. “This is between you and what I want, and I will win. I always win.”
He walks toward the door.
I should stay quiet. Should conserve energy and not provoke him.
But I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut.
“Hey, Dashamir.”
He pauses, hand on the doorknob. He looks back.
I grin through the blood. “You talk a lot of shit for someone who hasn’t gotten a single answer out of me.”
For a heartbeat, his mask slips, and I see white-hot rage flicker across his face.
Then it’s gone, replaced by that terrible stillness.
“We’ll see what you have to say while you’re watching your woman scream for mercy,” he says quietly.
The door closes behind him, and the lock turns.
I’m alone in the dark, bleeding and bound, knowing I’ve painted a target on Adora’s back.