Chapter Twenty-Seven
My final class of the day is over. Everything’s ramping up, ready for graduation, and I’m excited, scared, and downright exhausted. I stop by the coffee cart in the foyer, and as I step outside, I see Darius. I make my way over to him.
“How’s things?”
It’s a loaded question. How am I? Have things got better or worse at home? Am I still married to a mobster? He’s everywhere I go. He follows me around the house. He watches me while I swim, but barely speaks. He just assesses.
He has been a man of his word. He hasn’t touched me since the wedding night. Over dinner, he asks questions that I answer as simply as I can. But it feels comfortable. But I can’t help but feel at least a little safer with him than with Enzo.
Enzo has been reaching out to me more and more and is trying to get information about the Riccis, about the Bianchis, but I don’t know anything.
He waited at uni and roughed me up a little last week, told me I’m supposed to be getting him information to destroy them, to take them out of the Syndicate, but I don’t know anything.
Is there even a Syndicate left? Bellino is secretive.
When he meets with Vittorio and Arianna, they go to his office and close the door.
I try to listen in, but I can’t make any of it out.
I’m scared Enzo is going to hurt me again if I don’t come up with anything.
I’m scared that if Bellino finds out, he will hurt me more, but I’m also scared of telling him I’m in this predicament in case he turns on me.
Bellino is a powerful man. I know that much. I want to tell him what Enzo is doing, but I don’t know if I will be the one who suffers. Either way, I’m gonna get caught in the crossfire. I blow out a breath and say bye to Darius as I walk back across the grounds. I head towards my car.
I sip at my coffee. I mentally prepare myself for dinner and then the swim after.
It’s become an almost ritual. I’m not totally mad about the brooding mobster following me around while keeping a respectful distance.
It makes me feel a little powerful to know that he’s heard my boundaries and is respecting them.
Even though I know he could snap my neck if he chose.
I walk past the alley where they store the bins. I hear a faint noise. I spin, staring into the dull, dank darkness, with a frown. I take a step closer. Then another. There’s another noise further in the alley; it sounds like a trapped animal. I take another step, waiting, listening, but nothing.
“Hello?” I call out. I shake my head and turn to leave, but I hear a scuffle behind me. Before I can turn to look. I’m grabbed from behind. Something is pushed and held over my face. It’s an acrid, chemical odour. The smell burns my nostrils, and I gasp for breath. My eyes flutter.
“Grab his fucking legs” is the last thing I hear before I’m floating and the darkness takes over.
My throat hurts, scratches. I try to breathe, but everything hurts.
My ribs sting, and I gasp as I try to take a deep breath.
My eyes start to roll, and I try to flutter them open.
It’s harder than normal; everything feels fuzzy and weightless.
I feel sick. I puke only to scream out in pain.
My ribs twang and snap at the exhale. There’s a pain in my jaw as my head whips to the side.
I gasp and cough, spitting the puke from my mouth.
I take short, shallow breaths; fuck knows why I’m in so much pain.
I try to open my eyes, but only one opens.
The other stings and pulls, pinching as I try to separate the lashes, but it won’t open.
“Well, well, look who’s awake,” a voice snarls as I try to focus on him.
“If it isn’t the little bastard.” A second voice mutters.
I try to look at the other one. Who are these men?
“Who are you? What do you want with me?” I gasp out, spluttering as my ribs stab at each breath.
“Well, I’m fucking offended. What about you, Luciano?”
“I’m fucking offended too, Ricardo.” They both chuckle. Who the fuck are Luciano and Ricardo?
I glance between them. “I think you have the wrong person. I don’t know you,” I gasp.
“Well, now I’m just wounded.” Luciano laughs, stepping forward and grabbing my chin, lifting it to meet his gaze, turning it back and forth as he stares at every feature.
“Our own little bastard brother doesn’t even know us.
” He makes a tutting noise. “You want to come in and steal our legacy, take over from father, and you think because you let fucking Bellino Ricci cum in your ass that we have to bow down to you?”
“You will never take over. We will end you and that sorry sack of shit you call a husband.” He spits on me. Right in my face, and I sob. A single stuttered sob breathes out, and they both look at each other and laugh. Pushing me back into the chair.
“I wonder if he’ll still want to fuck him if we cut his face up?” Ricardo asks, and Luciano splutters out.
“We should just carve him up real good and send him back in bits. Bellino thinks he’s so fucking tough it wouldn’t surprise me if the rumours of his reputation are made up.
Have you ever seen him do any of the shit he’s been rumoured to?
” Luciano grins as he picks up a knife and passes it from hand to hand.
“Fuck no, he’s a pussy. All smoke and mirrors. Bet he’s never even got his hands dirty, not like us.” They nod, guffawing at each other as they laugh about which bits to cut off first.
“Please don’t do this. I never wanted any of this. I never wanted to marry him. I don’t even want to be a part of this or your family. I just want to be left alone. I just want to go to school. Please just let me go. I’ll transfer. I’ll leave, please?”
The sting that spreads across my face as my head whips to the side from the punch one of them gives me. I gasp and spit out the mouthful of blood as it pools on my tongue.
I cough and splutter as I retch before screaming out at the sensation through my ribs.
Something is seriously wrong. My hands are bound behind my back, and I’m sitting tied to a chair in the middle of what looks like a basement.
I gasp and try to look around to see where I am, but it could be a stone shed.
There’s a small, grated window in the top corner, big enough for me to crawl through if my ribs weren’t fucked up.
“Where are we?” I gasp for breath.
“Shut the fuck up,” Ricardo screams and steps forward, slamming his fist into my ribs.
I gasp and lurch forward, puking bile onto the floor from the sharp pain.
I cough, trying to breathe through my nose, shallow breaths at first, but then Luciano punches me in the face, and my nose cracks, and blood pours over my lips.
Down my throat. I try to breathe, but it feels like I’m drowning.
I gasp and splutter, and Luciano kneels down in front of me. Smirking as he pinches my chin and turns my face from side to side again. “Well, Bellino won’t recognise him now.” They both burst out laughing.
“He won’t want him looking like that, bet he won’t even want to do him from behind. Fuck, he’s ugly now.”
They both bark out laughs. My head hangs as I try to just breathe.
I try to swallow, but the blood and mucus stick in my throat, and I try to spit it out to clear it.
I try to blow out of my nose, and it stings, but I manage to clear it as snot and blood trail over my lips, clotting and coating my face as it drips onto my chest. I pant and hang my head.
They’re gonna kill me, and Bellino won’t care.
I’ve never been a proper husband to him; I’ve never asked him anything of substance.
I’ve just closed myself off from him and just cohabited.
He will just move on and get another husband.
No one knows I’m here. No one cares about me.
I’ve never been wanted or even liked by anyone.
Darius is only my friend because we dormed together.
But now he’ll just think I’m home with Bellino. I shake my head.
“Just end it,” I whisper. “Just get rid of me.”
Ricardo turns to look at me. “Ahhh, poor little bastard. Do you want to die? Does no one care?”
“No one loves him. How tragic,” Luciano laughs.
“Even Father doesn’t want you, and your slut of a sister hates you as you stole her fucking husband, and that thing you call a mother, that walking bag of fucking chlamydia, is nothing more than a disease.
She thought she could trap our father with you runts, but he wants nothing to do with either of you. ”
Another slap rings across my cheek. “You’re a fucking disgrace. You’ll never be a De Luca! You won’t even be a Ricci after we’ve finished with you. You fucking cunt. Trying to steal our legacy.”
The blows start raining down on me. One hits me in the face, the other in the ribs.
I’m kicked and punched while I’m tied to the chair.
I close my eyes, gasp as I try to breathe.
I pass out only to be hit again and scream as I wake.
It feels like it goes on forever, like I might die.
I never wanted this. I never wanted to be a De Luca.
I never wanted to be a Ricci. I never wanted any of this.
We have our mum’s name, so I’m not even linked with my father.
I just wanted to be me. I just want to be away from here. I just want…
There’s a distant roar. Screeching and a high-pitched noise like metal tearing at something, my captors, Ricardo and Luciano, freeze. I try to focus. I try to see what’s happening, but I can’t.
“Where the fuck is my husband?”
I do know that voice, though, even though he doesn’t speak much. When he does, it’s distinctive, and in this moment of everything I’m so unsure of, I know he came for me.