Chapter 33 – Geralynn
Chapter Thirty-Three
Geralynn
Nicki whispers, “Okay. So everything didn’t go according to plan.”
This chick is out of her fucking mind with the understatement of the century.
The only bright side about what happened tonight is Nicki having the intelligence to empty the clip in the right arm of one of the motherfuckers who kidnapped us.
They got her gun in the end, but she didn’t leave any bullets behind in the chamber for them to use, so they ditched the weapon after dragging us in the car.
Thank God Roman didn’t wake up. Thank God he didn’t scream.
But that doesn’t change much about my situation – which is tied up in the back of this Chrysler 300 face to face with Nicki Taviani.
I wish I could smack her or choke her out or settle this physically, but all we can do is talk. And I don’t want to talk.
The one night I fight my better judgment and let her in – we get kidnapped.
“This isn’t my fault!” she hisses. “I have no idea who these people are. But did you catch the plates?”
“No, Nicki. I didn’t catch the plates while a man twice my size snatched me off my fucking porch.”
“Okay. You’re still mad.”
“Girl! I’m more mad than before,” I hiss. I don’t want Nicki to think she’s making progress with me. For all I know, this was the A-team and the B-team could have my son in the back of a Toyota Camry on his way to Mexico. Or Canada. Or anywhere aside from my arms.
Panicking won’t help, but it’s hard not to be pissed the fuck off at Nicki yet again getting me into a crazy ass mess.
“I promise, I’ll get us out of this,” she says. “If they had Pennsylvania plates, they’re with the Pittsburgh mob.”
I don’t want to discuss theories. I want to study for the LSAT and feed my son.
What if he wakes up? What if something else horrible happens and my son in his little newly formed mind thinks that I abandoned him intentionally?
I feel sick to my stomach that this was the one night Renzo hasn’t been home in ages.
And that I’m the one who pushed him away with repeated coldness to him after he’d gone out of his way to be there for our son and look after both of us.
The horrible sinking feeling on my chest only feels relieved when I extend that hatred to the person who dragged all of us into this mess and most likely caused this kidnapping somehow too through reckless, selfish ass behavior.
“Nicki. When I get out of here, our friendship is over. I swear, I have had about enough of this.”
“You can’t seriously be blaming me right now!” Nicki hisses.
“Who else should I blame?”
“I’m sorry,” Nicki pleads with me. “ For all we know, they’re just doing this to scare us and it’s my brother.”
Renzo wouldn’t do this. The thought strikes me as instinctively accurate and entirely different from what I would have expected from Renzo before.
It’s not like he’s a completely different person, just a matured version of himself.
He’s been so dedicated to being Roman’s father that he hasn’t been smirking, snarky or rude about anything in months.
He’s just… the version of himself that only seemed to come out when he would draw me nude seated up atop the dining room table. He loved drawing me naked. And now, he’s probably fucking some other girl while his sister leads me to my execution. And Roman? What’s going to happen to my baby?
“Renzo isn’t doing this.”
“Fine,” Nicki says. “But I promise, I won’t let them hurt you.”
“Any second I’m away from Roman is agony already. This won’t be fixed until I have my baby back.”
“Fine,” Nicki says, lowering her voice even more. “But don’t let them get more leverage over you. If they don’t know about him, you’re safer.”
I appreciate what amounts to her verbal offer to protect me, but this also reminds me of how much real danger we’re in right now. We don’t know what these people want. And I still don’t know where Renzo is tonight. My heart hurts – and I pushed Renzo away too far for him to come save me.
I’ll have to somehow save myself from this mess and most likely save myself from Nicki’s crazy ass too…
She loses her appetite for talking when it’s clear the kidnappers aren’t going to stop to attend to their friends’ gunshot wounds.
This could mean they were fatal and they see no point in treating a dead body, or it might mean that Nicki missed so badly that all she did was piss off a bunch of crazy assholes with guns and balls of steel on top of that.
I try my best to keep track of how long we drive and it must be around four hours.
I can’t think of any cities that are about four hours away from Buffalo.
Maybe Syracuse? Albany might be a little further away…
We also could be in Pittsburgh. The smell wafting into the closed trunk and the slowed down Chrysler both indicate a more urban area.
Nicki seems to be asleep, but she might be pretending. I hope she has the good sense not to use this time for a nap when we need this rush of adrenaline to get us the fuck out of here. When this car stops, it’s almost guaranteed that we’re going to be in a crazy situation where we’ll have to fight.
“Nicki. Wake up.”
She doesn’t wake up right away. But when the car stops and the voices outside start approaching the trunk, her eyes snap awake.
I hope this crazy white woman has a plan, but my instincts are telling me that relying on Nicki is a mistake.
Honestly, I might even have to leave her behind to save myself.
The trunk opens and two masked men yank us out of the car.
It’s too dark for us to see anything and they stop roughing us up once we’re on our feet.
Both men are huge. Scary huge. But Nicki doesn’t seem scared even if she has her wrists and ankles bound up.
All we can do is stand until they decide to get us free.
“One wrong move and I’ll shoot the black chick,” the taller of the two men says. My gaze snaps to his and beneath his mask I see terrifyingly cold hazel eyes. My gut spits out one word to describe that stare: monstrous.
I try not to shudder as I drop my gaze away, but the truth of the matter is I’m more scared than I’ve ever been. Renzo should have prepared me for this, but all he did was make me fall in love with a beast. I didn’t exactly learn how to tame him.
“Don’t be a dickhead,” Nicki says. “What the fuck do you guys want? My father–”
“We know who your fucking father is you stupid whore,” the shorter guy says. Clearly, they’re not going to be doing a good cop bad cop type of thing.
I stay quiet. If this isn’t my fight… I don’t want to fight.
“Why did you take us? My friend has nothing to do with this.”
“You’re right, cupcake. But we still need leverage here,” the taller man says, casting his gaze at me, those creepy eyes penetrating straight through me.
Renzo isn’t coming. Renzo doesn’t know I’m missing because he’s with another girl, so chances are I’ll have to stab the fuck out of this man to get my freedom.
Or something along those lines.
“Tell us what you want then,” Nicki snaps. “I don’t know where the fuck we are, but I need to get her back to Buffalo.”
She avoids mentioning why, but if she’s worried about Roman, it’s too late.
Everything happening right now is up to chance.
I have to convince myself that Roman will survive the night and his father will find him tomorrow.
After I’ve died. At least I don’t have to worry that Renzo will look after his son.
I have all the evidence that I need for what type of father he’s going to be.
But Roman is still alone and I’m still going to die in… wherever the fuck this is.
“You’re not going back to Buffalo, sweetheart. We’re in Pittsburgh, which is where we’re staying tonight.”
Pittsburgh!? Oh hell no. I crossed state lines without Roman and it doesn’t exactly reassure me that these criminals are further away from him.
I don’t even have my phone or wallet on me.
Nicki says something that I don’t catch because I’m too distracted freaking the fuck out about the location of my cellphone to listen closely to the conversation.
The more dominant of the two men commands her sternly. “You’re getting married and then my buddy here is going to give you a baby.”
Nicki folds her arms and looks at them with all the entitlement and insanity of a white girl used to getting her way.
Maybe my best move here is separating myself from Nicki as soon as possible so that these men let me go.
I have my own money and I don’t have to use the mafia connections to get me out of here if I have nothing to do with this.
“What do you mean give me a baby?”
The taller one looks at me again. A shiver runs down my spine. I still don’t like when he looks at me, even if I know Nicki is their main target.
“You look like you’ve been around the block, sweetheart. You know how it works.”
The shorter one laughs and his laugh is scarier than the taller one’s stare. They’re serious and Nicki doesn’t seem like she’s grasping the gravity of this situation at all. Roman. Please be safe. I promise I’ll find a way home.
Nicki keeps arguing like she has the upper hand here. “For all I know, we could be cousins. I’m not getting married or doing anything.”
“Don’t be so sure sweetheart.”
The shorter one leans in and half-whispers to the taller one. “Where are the others? They should have been here by now.”
“Patience.”
The shorter one lights a cigarette while Nicki locks eyes with the taller one like a pit bull about to launch at his neck.
They’re staring at each other with such angry fierceness that if it were just the two of them, I could use this moment to break away from the situation and disappear without them noticing.
Instead, I take in the surrounding streets near this empty warehouse parking lot and realize… we’re not going to be alone for long.
Two vehicles identical to the one we just bounced around in the trunk of for the past few hours drive down opposite streets that converge at the warehouse.
They have reinforcements. My stomach sinks as I watch my chances at escape dwindling away.
An opportunity to run from two assailants might present itself, but I don’t know how many men are in the cars pulling up here.
The SUVs form a circle around us and the two masked men. If this scares Nicki, she doesn’t show it.
“I’m not marrying anybody.”
“Yes, you are. We have major fucking problems down here in Pittsburgh, princess. We don’t live like fucking kings the way you do. We have to work for everything.”
I tune out the rest of their conversation because the first SUV stops and the man who gets out is even more terrifying than the masked strangers who kidnapped us and brought us to Pittsburgh.
The taller man turns to him and nods with respect. “Franco. I brought Nicki Taviani, but we have a bit of a problem.”
He gestures towards me in a way that’s not as subtle as he thinks. The man who just got out of the car has silver hair and mean, pale blue eyes. He says something in a deep, guttural language. Obviously Italian. There’s too much adrenaline coursing through me for me to think quickly.
“You should have left the black girl,” Franco says, sneering at me. “But you brought Nicoletta and I brought a priest… so we don’t have much to worry about.”
Nicki puffs up her chest and I just know she’s going to say some shit to worsen our situation. I wish I could sink into the ground or at least drag Nicki back down to earth.
“HEY!” Nicki says, all but snapping her fingers in the terrifying silver-haired stranger’s face. “You need to bring me back to Buffalo because my father is Leandro Taviani and he is not going to like this.”
Really, Nicki? At least shooting at our assailants was more useful than whatever the hell is going through her head right now.
The man who drove Franco here gets out of the car and I note as many details about him as possible.
He has dark brown hair with streaks of silver, but even if he’s not as gray, he looks older than Franco.
More wrinkles on his face and a deep tan.
If I had to guess, I would say this guy spends a lot of time outside, but I don’t have much evidence except his deep tan.
Franco’s partner drags a woman out of the trunk. She’s tied up with a black eye and dark red hair covering her face. I didn't recognize her at first but then… is that…?
Nicki looks over her shoulder and gasps… “Angela…”
I’ve only met her once, but now that Nicki says her name the memory coalesces in my head and I recognize my best friend’s much older sister, Angela Taviani. She seems drugged, completely out of it and worse – battered and bruised like she’s been beaten. I shudder and try to make myself small.
This isn’t my fight, but if they find out my connection to this family is deeper than just being Nicki’s friend in the wrong place at the wrong time, everything about this situation could change for the worse. And it takes seconds for a bullet to kill.