Chapter 4
KARINA
“Are you going to tie me up and start pulling out my fingernails? Or did Marco give you permission to just kill me now?” I say, my voice devoid of emotion as I stare at Armani.
After leading me into what he had called the “Deep Cellar” and down a long flight of stairs—to what I was shocked to find out was legitimately an underground wine cellar—I was taken to a bare room with concrete floors and no windows and told to sit on a folding metal chair.
It’s cold down here. Wine barrels line the racks against one wall.
Two lightbulbs hang from metal cages overhead.
I’m pretty sure the dark splotches on the floor are not wine stains.
Armani’s eyes narrow. “This isn’t what you think. I just have a few questions for you.”
“I see.”
So I wasn’t sent here to be murdered. At least, not right away.
The only thing I’ve learned about my brother-in-law in the short amount of time I’ve known him is that he plays the bad guy very, very well.
He’s not afraid to be the muscle that the Bellantis need to get things done.
And while I understand that he’s never been fond of me, never did I expect to end up in this situation.
Alone with Armani Bellanti in some secret torture chamber, too far underground for anyone to hear me scream.
Armani might be just as unhinged as Uncle Sergio, and I have no doubt he’s capable of inflicting just as much pain as my uncle is.
But first he hands me a bottle of water.
I don’t even care if this is some kind of manipulation tactic or if the water might be drugged; I’m so thirsty that I guzzle almost the entire thing down before taking a breath.
Armani watches me impassively, holding out his hand for the bottle when I’m done. I refuse to thank him.
“Do you need something to eat?” he asks.
I do, but I also feel sick to my stomach. And I don’t need any more “favors” from him.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. My first lie.
He raises a brow, possibly thinking the same thing, but apparently deciding to forge ahead regardless. “First things first. Who was responsible for kidnapping you, Karina?”
Ha. He already knows the answer to that question, so obviously this is his way of warming me up or testing me, but I have little energy to participate in this interrogation.
My mind and my body are nearly completely depleted.
I’ve barely slept for the past two days.
I’ve had barely anything to eat or drink.
I’m grimy and unwashed—I can smell myself.
I need a hot shower and solid food and sleep.
The last thing I want is to be here with Armani, desperately trying to conceal the fact that I’m now a Bruno mole.
My entire soul aches with the weight of the deceit I’m carrying.
“I’d appreciate your cooperation, Karina,” Armani says, rolling up his sleeves. There’s something menacing in the gesture, something that tells me he’s getting into interrogator mode.
“My uncle,” I answer hastily.
“And where did they take you after you were kidnapped from the memorial service?”
“I don’t know. Some industrial-looking place. The guys who put me in the van brought me straight to Pietro, my ex-fiancé, and he put me in his trunk and drove me to my uncle’s.”
Armani nods. “Your family home?”
“The house I grew up in, yes,” I answer impatiently.
Calling it “home” is a stretch, he must know that. It was nothing more than a shelter for me, a place where I ate and slept and killed time devouring books and trying to block out the reality of my life.
Armani starts pacing in front of me, arms behind his back like a soldier.
“And at what point did you arrange with your uncle to stage the kidnapping?” He pauses across the room and turns his head toward me, slowly and deliberately. “It was all so seamless. Impressive, really. How often did the two of you speak in order to pull it off?”
I actually laugh out loud. I can’t help myself.
“Nothing was staged, jackass. Do you really think I asked my uncle, or any member of my family, or anyone who works for him to chloroform me, blindfold me, shove me in a van, lock me in the trunk of a car, and then drive me back to the one place on Earth that I never wanted to see again? Fat chance.”
“So how many phone calls did you sneak to your uncle to arrange this whole thing?”
This time I don’t laugh. I’m too annoyed. “Zero.”
“You have to admit, it was very convenient for you to be whisked away in the middle of a crowded event here. No one had eyes on you. You could’ve easily walked off the property of your own free will.”
“Yes, I could have, but I didn’t,” I say.
“Didn’t your security cameras catch the van that drove off with me in the back?
Why don’t you ask me some real questions instead of trying to get me to agree to the fantasy version of events that your imagination came up with?
I thought you were supposed to be good at this. ”
He circles me, making me regret the attitude I just copped, and then suddenly his hands come down on the back of my chair. The metal vibrates with the force of the hit. I yelp and lean forward.
“Tell me why you arranged this whole thing,” he growls.
Fatigue is weighing heavily on me. My neck and back ache. I just want to sink to the floor, curl up into a ball, and close my eyes.
“I told you. I didn’t arrange anything. They took me against my will.”
He moves around in front of me again. “Why did they take you?”
“I don’t know.”
Armani smiles but there’s no humor or pleasantness in it.
He wags his finger at me. “See, these are the kinds of bullshit answers that get people hurt.” Deadly silence hangs in the air.
Then he leans down and levels me with a dark gaze.
“Would you like to try answering that again? What did Sergio Bruno want from you? What did you give him? What did you tell him?”
“Nothing! I told him nothing!” I’m breathing hard, frightened and frustrated.
As I gaze into Armani’s cold eyes, he nods slowly. He can tell I’m not lying.
But here is where things are about to get tricky. No, I didn’t give my uncle information about the Bellantis—because he didn’t ask. However, he kidnapped me for the sole purpose of turning me into a spy once I returned to the Bellanti estate. I can’t very well admit that, can I?
The problem is, I don’t have a criminal bone in my body. I have no idea how to lie my way out of this.
“Why were you taken?” he pushes. “Tell me why. Because it sure as hell wasn’t for a goddamn social visit.”
I slump in the chair and force myself not to break eye contact. “My uncle wanted to settle some unfinished business. Family business.”
Armani tilts his head, weighing my explanation. “What kind of family business?”
My mom’s battered face flashes before my eyes, but that’s not the answer Armani wants. I look down at the floor, hoping it doesn’t instantly mark my next words as false. “He wanted to give Pietro the opportunity to punish me for the broken engagement.”
“And did he? Punish you? Pietro, I mean,” Armani prods.
Shame heats my face as I think of the kiss. The disgusting, brutal kiss, the stroke of Pietro’s tongue, the threat to make me his whore.
“Yes, he did,” I croak. “Although probably not to the full extent that he’d hoped.”
A hard shiver passes through me as dead air hangs between us. Armani doesn’t ask me to elaborate. I’m sure he’s put the pieces together.
He clears his throat. “I don’t condone sexual assault of any kind, under any circumstance, and it would be easy to feel sorry for you, Karina.
That is, if I thought you were actually telling the truth.
And maybe there is a shred of honesty in what you’ve said.
But there’s also dishonesty in what you’re not telling me.
I need the full story. No prevarications. ”
“I’ve answered every question you’ve asked.” My throat goes tight.
“Have you answered completely? Or are you holding back, protecting your uncle—or yourself? Or are you simply testing my patience to see how far you can push me?”
“Are you really going to hurt me, Armani? Go ahead, then. Get it over with.”
He moves closer, his expression unmoved. “Your husband willingly sent you off with me. What do you think the answer to that is?”
I swallow hard.
“Marco isn’t going to swoop in and save you, just so you’re aware. Now. You spent the last two days at the Bruno compound, and you want me to believe they didn’t squeeze you for information? That you gave them nothing? Agreed to not a thing? Nah. I’m not buying it.”
For a moment, I let my eyes close. I feel like every part of me is made of concrete. My brain is awash with fog, and it takes me a second to realize I still need to answer him.
“Like I told you, this was about my uncle settling what he felt was an outstanding debt to my jilted ex. I guess he thought he owed Pietro some kind of twisted revenge.”
“Fine. Pietro’s revenge, yes, fine. What else did they want, though?”
“I don’t know.”
“What. Else. Answer me.”
Armani’s questions go on and on. He keeps asking me the same things, each time framed a slightly different way, forcing me to relive over and over again how I was taken and where, what Pietro did to me, what my uncle said.
The same responses spill from my lips again and again, never changing, until I’m saying the words monotonously, on automatic.
Even though Armani does nothing to me physically, I’m completely beaten down.
I slump in the chair, tired and aching, the dried sweat on my body giving me a chill. My head hangs low and my stomach is so empty and riddled with anxiety that I feel like I’m going to throw up. And still, Armani demands that I tell him what my uncle wants with the Bellantis.
I keep repeating that I don’t know. And that part is true; I don’t know what Uncle Sergio wants. All I know is that he perfectly outfitted me to get him whatever it is that he’s after. That’s when I realize the obvious: my uncle has been listening to this entire interrogation all along.
I lick my numb, dry lips. “Let me go, Armani. I’m tired.” So, so tired.
He gets in my face, picking up the chair and lifting me and it off the floor. I grip the sides of the chair to keep from falling and barely succeed, nearly sliding off. He slams the chair back down and I don’t manage to stay on this time, landing hard on my shoulder on the concrete floor.
Without the energy to right myself, I lie there glaring up at him as he walks a slow circle around me.
Twisting the bugged wedding ring on my finger, I wish once again that I could wrench it off and toss it into a dark corner, somewhere nobody will ever find it.
Or let it slip down the kitchen sink drain and see if the blades of the garbage disposal can destroy the transmitter.
For a second, I even start to wonder if I should just spill everything.
Tell Armani the truth—the whole truth about the transmitter, the spying I’m supposed to be doing for my uncle—and beg for mercy, let the Bellantis punish me as they see fit, as long as they agree to protect me from the inevitable shitstorm afterward.
But no—I can’t do that. Not if I want my mother to live.
Even if I were able to make my confession on paper, I wouldn’t get away with it for long. My uncle said he has eyes everywhere, and I believe him. I’m not telling anyone shit.
“I never asked to be a Bruno,” I finally say quietly. “But I did decide to be a Bellanti. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“My brother decided. But then, Marco has always been impulsive. That was one decision he should not have helped you make.” He stops in front of me. “Why wasn’t your uncle at the warehouse? You’re his prized possession and he knew we would come after you. Why wasn’t he there to meet us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why wasn’t your uncle there?”
I shake my head weakly. “I don’t know.”
“A man like him would want to set a trap for us, using you as the bait. He should have been lying in wait to pick us off one by one. Instead, he didn’t even show. Why?”
“Jesus, Armani. I don’t know.”
“You know something. There’s more to this than meets the eye. Your rescue was a goddamn setup. Admit it.”
I look up at him miserably and manage to push myself into a sitting position. He can push all he wants. I’m not changing my story. “I don’t know anything about it.”
That was an obvious lie. I do know. I heard them planning my fake rescue, my uncle wanting Pietro to use his weakest men so the Bellantis could off them. But I can’t admit that.
Armani lets out a long breath. I can tell he sees the lie on my face. The way he’s searching me, assessing my gaze, working his jaw in frustration at my stonewalling.
As he stares at me, my mind sinks in on itself, reliving the events of the day. I can still see the dead bodies sprawled on the floor of the warehouse, smell the blood, the nitroglycerin, hear the shouts of pain. And then I see my mother’s bloody face, taste the hatred in Pietro’s kiss.
Resting my elbows on my knees, I put my face in my hands and give in to the overwhelming exhaustion. I can’t stop the tears from falling, but I don’t let myself make a sound. I won’t give Armani the satisfaction of hearing me cry.
“I guess we’re done here,” he says coldly.
I instinctively tense up, going stock-still, expecting a gunshot to pierce my back any second. Marco sent me here to be interrogated, possibly tortured, and killed by his own brother. Is this how I die?
But Armani just grabs my arms and hauls me to my feet, ushering me out the door.
He doesn’t say a word as he walks me back to the house.