I Would Beg For You

Chapter 34 Valentino

I’m in the car staring at the picture of Jasir Berisha that came with the file. He’s about my age, I’d say. Big, unkempt in his tracksuit ensemble, no class at all if one were to judge by the heavy, gaudy bling hanging from his meaty neck. This isn’t a man concerned with manners and propriety. In a way, it’s a good thing—it’s the very civil ones that are the most dangerous, oftentimes cold sociopaths if not outright psycho as they go about exacting their well-thought-out ploys and plans. This guy? He’s a butcher.

I can only pray that Naomi’s still holding on inside there. It’s not been twenty-four hours yet since she was taken, but she shouldn’t have had to endure one minute of such an ordeal. To think it’s Joel Smith behind all this! I’ll kill the bastard when I get my hands on him. All this has been happening because of him. As long as he’s alive, Naomi will never be safe. We still haven’t found him, but I have more important matters on my mind right now. He’ll get his turn.

A hand drops onto my shoulder. I look up into Victor’s face next to me. In the driver’s seat, Marco turns my way.

It’s almost go time. I glance at my watch, waiting for the second hand to hit twelve, then I nod at Marco. He gives the signal into the comms unit, and Pesci’s men are moving outside, circling the building where Berisha is holing up and where we believe Naomi is being held. It’s his stronghold but also the only property he owns outright, and specs from this location, which used to belong to a small-time criminal Italian family in the 1950s, show a reinforced steel door was added to the basement level, in provision for storing the loot from a bank heist that never happened.

That basement will make a great holding cell.

My stomach threatens to overturn when I think why the space would be perfect—no external access, no lights, terrible ventilation, inescapable…

What’s the state of Naomi down there?

No, I can’t think of that. Right now, I have some motherfuckers to kill.

“Give me a gun,” I say to Marco when we alight from the car.

He exchanges a glance with Victor. I curse them both out.

“You’re going to listen to Don Giorgio?” I burst out.

“He knows why you shouldn’t get your hands dirty in this, Val,” Marco says.

I huff, my nostrils flaring with rage. “It’s my wife inside!”

“We got you,” Victor grumbles, pulling an automatic rifle from the trunk and handing it to Marco. For himself, he palms a few knives and sheathes them at various locations across his massive body.

“I’m walking in there empty-handed?”

If this is what it means to be a Don, I want none of it. Next, they’ll make me a glorified desk jockey in my own home.

“You’re walking out of there with your wife,” Victor grits out.

The sheer amount of words strung in a complete sentence works to shut me off. Not only that, but he does have a point.

We wait for the first of Pesci’s men to breach the front door. Half of the crew’s at the back door already. When the ram batters the panel, Marco steps in front, Victor slips behind him, and I follow with a soldier closing the line and covering my six.

Gunshots can be heard inside, mostly the muffled ones from the silencers my men have all been told to use. There’s hardly any salvo in return, young men going down in quick succession. Watching it all happen is like being in a video game like Call of Duty in VR minus the military special ops uniforms. From time to time, Victor will place himself in front of me as we halt. He hasn’t had to use his blades, and I can’t help but think my brother isn’t too happy about this state of affairs.

The crew clears the first floor, about two-thirds of them moving upstairs to clear out the other levels of this townhouse.

There’s been no sign of a prisoner on this level, and knowing what’s in the basement, we all know we’re not going to find Naomi in the upstairs bedrooms. Unless these guys are gentlemen and not messed up assholes. But we know their type—they have no respect for women, starting with their own. In Europe, everyone knows what their sex trafficking rings are like. To say the most depraved go to them is not an understatement for what they expect of their ‘girls.’

Victor turns to me. “Ready?”

I nod, and we start down the stairs to the basement.

Strangely, the space has corridors. Marco calls for a slice of the crew to follow the trails. I hear them on his comms stating the doorway leads to the house next door, revealing a similar network.

Merda! How did we not know this?

Pesci comes down—the upper levels here have all been dealt with. There’s a lookout on both doors.

I’m shaking my head at this botched-up prep plan, and when I catch a glimpse of steel out the corner of my eye, I freeze. Is that a steel vault door?

I wave my hand at Pesci, already turning in the other direction. I hear Marco directing him to the house next door via the web of connected basement hallways. Victor falls into step next to me, and we’re in the anteroom the vault door opens onto.

It’s so nondescript a space, I want to laugh. Except half the window opens onto the street, light from the lamps falling inside just enough to highlight a trail of dried blood on the concrete floor.

My stomach heaves. No! This can’t be Naomi’s… If that porca puttana did anything to hurt her, if he kil— I can’t even think of this as my breath stops then starts to wheeze out of me.

Suddenly, I’m on the vault door, throwing myself onto the three-lever handle to turn it so I can open the damn thing, so I can go in and see Naomi, so I can…

Victor is there giving me a hand, and the door opens with a clunk and groan. Inside, it’s dark, and a rank smell, of musty damp and acrid vomited bile, whiffs out to our nostrils. There’s a heavy reek of salty, still-not-dry blood on the coattails.

I almost retch, but then I’m thinking Naomi could be inside this shit hole, this hell hole, and I’m rushing in, my sole slipping on a patch of blood inside the doorway. My eyes aren’t acclimating to the darkness, until Victor shines the beam of a torch inside. It’s empty, a cot with tattered blankets in a corner, but then the light catches on something. A hint of pale, shimmery fabric. I can’t make out the shape from here, but…

The beam illuminates a prone form on the cold concrete of the floor. It’s a woman, her body barely covered by the scrap of satin on her. It’s a nightdress, like the one Naomi was wearing when she was taken.

It’s Naomi! She’s here!

I rush to her, my feet slipping again on a trail of blood that leads right to her. My heart is squeezing in my chest. All this blood, this vile smell, it can’t come from her, can it? It can’t be hers. She can’t be… No, she has to be…

I fall onto my knees next to her. She’s tucked in on herself, almost in a fetal position, her arms wrapped around her stomach as if protecting it. The light catches her exposed back, and I gasp at the sight of the many reddish bruises it reveals. Someone was hitting her between the shoulder blades and in the small of her back. She curled in on herself to protect her vital organs, it seems like.

I’m almost afraid to touch her, because I’m scared to find she isn’t alive. She’s not moving, and her legs feel cold—I can feel the cold radiating to me, like someone who’s been left out at the mercy of spiteful elements.

When a soft moan breaks the thrall I’m in, I dare hitch in a breath.

“Naomi?” I call out. “Gattina? Please, say something.”

Gently, gingerly, I push the hair from her face, try to get her to ease her hold on her midsection. It seems like she tries to fight me, but she hardly has any strength left.

Still, she’s alive. Only just, but I’ll take it. That she makes it, it’s all I’m asking for.

It’s not easy, but I manage to pull her to me—she still won’t let go of her arms over her belly. One arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders, I cradle her to me and stand up. She cries out, though the sound is barely audible, when her battered back presses into my arm.

“It’s alright, baby,” I croon to her as I step out of the vault. “I’ve got you.”

Victor’s eyes grow wide when I emerge. Then he’s nodding at her.

“Blood’s dry,” he says. “Not hers.”

I glance down. Indeed, the satin is stiff with the dried blood. That amount came from a big wound, one that wouldn’t have stopped itself like a small, surface cut. She would’ve been dead by now from that kind of blood loss.

I throw another glance at the trail on the floor. So, it’s someone else? A prisoner, or did she get the drop on one of her captors?

Cradling her to me, I start toward the stairs taking us to the first floor. Marco’s here, on the phone. His concerned gaze stops me in my tracks. He cuts the call and nods at Naomi.

“That was Antonio. Don Vitale’s come to him with more intel. Turns out there was a funeral today, late in the afternoon. Jasir Berisha buried his eighteen-year-old son. Word has it the kid died during an operation overseen by his father, a bullet fired by a woman he was holding hostage.”

By the emphasis on ‘woman,’ I know that’s not the word that was used in these hush-hush reports. And I have a fair idea who she is—my wife. She didn’t cower, and she fought, probably trying to escape. That’s my girl. Her fighting spirit is still there.

The Albanians must know Berisha will be wanting revenge. That we have their blessing to take him down means it’s the result of his own fuck-up that his son died—he surely wasn’t allowed legitimate retribution. And as such, he was building his own crew, to get the drop on us. Good thing we came in when we did, and no wonder the Albanians are using this to make an example of Jasir Berisha.

“Anyone find the cazzo?” I ask.

Marco shakes his head. “Not yet.”

“Keep looking,” I snap.

I won’t spend another second in this god-forsaken place, much less make Naomi stay here any longer. I’m reassured somewhat the blood isn’t hers, but she’s still been through an ordeal. The sooner she’s on safe territory in a protected house, the sooner I can have a doctor look her over and start treating her for whatever that fucker inflicted on her.

A horrifying thought runs through my mind, stilling my step as I emerge onto the first floor.

Did he rape her? Is this why she’s curled in on herself like this? I’ve seen women who have been mistreated by sexually abusive men—they roll themselves into little balls. Whenever I’ve witnessed this, I’ve made sure those men are taken care of, aka erased off the surface of the earth after their tiny peckers and lifeless balls are ripped off and they’re left to bleed to death into a bucket, strapped to a chair with a hole cut in the middle.

No! Not my precious gattina. After everything she’s been through, not this…

I feel the rush of air disturbing the room before the roar hits my ears. My senses go onto high-alert, my instincts homing in on danger in my vicinity. I tense up, arms closing tighter on Naomi.

It’s a flash of steel I notice first, a slash in the air in the periphery of my vision. I swerve, hitting my shoulder against the bottom rail of the stairs, taking the hit harder to not let Naomi’s head slam into the sharp edge of the wood.

When I register another flash of metal, I realize it’s a knife. Short, but aimed at me, wielded by a big man who looks stark-raving mad, his wide mouth open in a snarl I can’t hear from the blood whooshing in my ears.

I try to duck, but the blade grazes the top of my shoulder, cutting my suit jacket, though I don’t feel it slicing my skin.

I can’t release Naomi, not around this lunatic, Jasir Berisha. Where the hell did the cazzo come from? My men went through this whole building and didn’t find him.

He’s coming for me, but I also know that when you want to hurt someone real bad, you hurt someone they care for. Letting go of Naomi will make her a prime target, and I can’t let this happen. Not after everything she’s been through. Naomi deserves only peace and joy, not all these upheavals and yet another attempt on her life.

So, with mine, I protect her. I pull her in even tighter, curling my upper body over her as a shield. I can see the knife, see it coming at me and disappearing, diving in and pulling up, one, two, three times. My left side, along my waist and ribcage, is starting to feel wet, my clothes sticking to me. But I ignore it, only intent on protecting Naomi.

Suddenly, there’s a huge shadow overtaking me from behind and surging over Berisha’s form. There’s a loud ‘crack’ in the air, then the fucker’s going down, crumpling onto the ground.

Victor turns to me—for a second, I can’t believe my baby brother just snapped a man’s neck with his bare hands—and that’s when the roar in my ears starts to die down. In its wake is a sense of the world falling all around me… No, I’m the one spinning. I only register this fast enough to extend Naomi’s unconscious body to Victor, then I’m the one crumpling as he takes her into his arms.

Sounds are starting to register, though they’re faint, distorted. I can feel my pulse beating erratically inside my whole body, as if my heart is throwing a huge ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ alert, all systems go.

I lift my eyes, noting Victor in a crouch in front of me, Naomi’s pale skin and light nightdress a sharp contrast against his black T-shirt.

She’s safe, that’s all that matters…

My father once told me a strong man never begs. A kid then, I’d asked him if that applied even to his wife, his children. He’d said it again, word for word.

I have no doubt he loved my mother, but on this, he was full of shit. I don’t see any reason not to state this now—I know I’ll be going to meet him soon, might even tell it to him face to face then. The pain is registering now, flames and red-hot iron and smarting and dullness all rolled into one, all radiating from my left side, pulsing against the flow of warm blood leaving my wounds. The knife? It got me. Three times, by my count, in my abdominal region.

But that doesn’t matter. As long as Naomi is safe.

I would’ve liked to stay around and discover what more life had in store for us. Normal days, quiet days, happy days. What I wouldn’t give for them now…

One thing I know, though, my father was indeed full of shit. When you love someone, you’d beg for them. And that’s the show of strength, not the opposite.

For her, I would. Naomi…

I would beg for you…

Beg for another day, another hour, even another minute.

Maybe in another life, we’ll have a chance.