Chapter 32 – Serena
Dinner was nice. The walk on the beach afterward was nicer.
I hated that I enjoyed the evening with the mobster so much.
As we walked back to the condo, and the energy simmering between us seemed to promise a night of little sleep, Markos received a phone call that left him scowling.
With little to no explanation, he walked me to the door and bid me goodnight.
Once he heard the lock click, he moved away, leaving me watching through the peephole.
I spent the night tossing and turning, waking every so often only to find he hadn’t returned.
He wasn’t back for breakfast, and as I slathered avocado mayo on a piece of sourdough, I was still alone.
“It’s not like I want him back,” I muttered.
Not that long ago, I was planning vengeance for our forced union. Now this pent-up fixation with his whereabouts and our interrupted evening was doing battle against my resolve.
I took the food to the balcony, where I discovered I wasn’t quite alone. An elderly couple was sipping a smoothie, enjoying the heat under the shade of their own balcony next door.
We shared a smile as I took my seat at the bistro table.
The moment I took a bite, the lady called out, “Did you hear that piano music yesterday? I wonder who was playing so beautifully.”
Heat flared on my cheeks. Please, holy mother, don’t let it be the second time. I would never live that down if they’d heard the duet.
“That was me,” I said after swallowing my food.
She hummed, taking a long sip of her smoothie. “We enjoyed it. You played the concerto perfectly.”
Oh, good. The first time.
“We had a dinner reservation, so we never heard you finish the aria,” she continued, easing my anxiety almost completely.
“I’m glad you like it,” I said, the food seeming to stick in my throat.
“Yeah, very good, very good,” the man muttered, speech slurred.
The soft look the woman gave him and the absence of alcohol had me guessing his speaking was due to age and infirmity rather than a cocktail.
“We look forward to hearing you again,” the woman added.
I inhaled my last bite to save myself from replying.
A knock on the door sent the bread choking down my throat. I gave the couple a quick wave, coughing around the lump of sandwich, and hurried back inside.
Some sixth sense had me stopping. It couldn’t be Markos. He had a key. I wasn’t expecting any packages, since everything I’d ordered had arrived this morning. I peered through the keyhole to see a dark haired, petite woman. Relief mixed with confusion, but I opened the door and smiled at Iris.
“Hi there,” I prompted.
She looked me up and down, disgust clearly scrawled on her face. It disappeared in a blink. “Ready to spring this joint?”
It was my turn to frown. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to leave.”
The fact that my car was back in the parking lot and Markos had told me where I could and shouldn’t go, I kept to myself. Something about this tiny woman made me uneasy.
Iris waved her hand dismissively. “You’re with me, you’ll be fine.”
“Um, okay, if you cleared it with Markos?” I retreated inside to set my plate in the sink and grab my purse.
Iris hovered on the threshold, glaring at the piano.
“You did clear it with Markos?” I insisted, house key in hand. I wished the pirate would give me a phone so I had contact him.
“Yeah, yeah.” Iris brightened.
The emotion felt forced, and my stomach did a queasy flip. But I couldn’t conceive of a scenario where this little woman would actually hurt me. The dynamic of the mob meant I was untouchable as a wife.
That’s the code of the Italian mob.... The little voice of warning whispered through my mind.
I brushed it off and hurried after Iris. Why was I so quick to go with her? Hell! Why was I so quick to make sure she cleared it with Markos? I was torn with my feelings toward him. Fresh air and a change of scenery would go to great lengths to clear my head.
Iris was silent as we took the elevator down to the ground floor.
Hopping into her sporty little coup, I hoped she would say something, but she merely turned up the radio.
I resisted the urge to rub my chest. Things hadn’t started out the greatest with my sister-in-law.
Now, Penelope was the part of Chicago I missed the most. It had me starved in a way, being the only girl with two older, protective brothers could be.
But I didn’t know how to start building something with Iris.
We were both stormy, silent individuals by nature. It would take a sunshiny, bubbly personality to make us open up. Evangelia fit the bill. I found myself wishing she lived in the city—or that I could return to the cottage in the village.
Unable to stand the silence any longer, I shouted over the wind as we cruised onto the highway. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” Iris shot back.
I clutched my hair, pulling it over my shoulder and holding it tight. I didn’t have a binder to braid it. There was nothing to do to prevent the snarls from forming except clutch it desperately.
The exit had signs for a shopping mall. Since it was a logical choice for bonding, I was concerned when Iris sped past the monolith.
Each street grew lower and lower in paygrade, until she finally pulled into a cracked driveway.
Weeds grew along the four-foot chain link fence.
The metal roof and cinder block walls were far from inviting.
The chipped paint, once some shade of yellow, was now too dirty to be cheerful.
“What the hell?” I demanded, pointing at the house. “What’s going on, Iris?”
But the other woman wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze was trained down the road at an approaching pickup.
“Iris!” I leaned over and shoved her with my fingertips.
“Shit,” she cursed.
Launching from the car, she snagged a pistol from under the seat.
But I couldn’t stop staring at the needle and syringe that she dropped.
That little—
Gunfire ripped the air.
I ducked, heart shooting to my throat. Whatever the hell mess this woman got me into unfolded with nightmarish proportions.
A loud thwump-thwump belched through the air. Iris yelped but managed to fire another round. It was only then I realized she was the one shooting. Whoever was in the truck....
I peeped up.
The weapon pointed at me from the window was large, like a cannon. Fear was the only thing I felt as it fired. I ducked, but not before a fist-sized beanbag collided with my shoulder. They weren’t using lethal force.
They were attempting to subdue us, not kill.
Registering that fact, I leaned over to grab the syringe. If Iris managed to shoot them, I wasn’t going to be left at her mercy.
Doors opened. A double whomp-whomp filled the air. Iris screamed in fury as she toppled over.
I slipped the needle into my pocket just as rough hands grabbed me. Pain laced my scalp as they tore me from the convertible, tugging my hair caught in their unforgiving grip.
Strings of an unknown language waved through the air.
As they pulled me inside, I glanced back to see Iris fighting hard. One of the men dodged her punch, then threw one of his own. It knocked the lights out of the poor thing.
Good riddance.
Not that I ever wanted to see a fellow woman hurt—especially by a man—but she broke the code of sisterhood with whatever she planned to do with the needle.
My captor kicked open the door. An overwhelming stench of cleaner made me choke, tears jumping easily to my eyes. They shoved me to the floor and dropped Iris next to me. An argument broke out between two of the three.
I rubbed my scalp, trying to think through the panic.
The guns—these ones real and dangerous—waving about in our direction didn’t help matters.
Squinting through my tears, I tried to make out their faces. One stood with his back to me, arguing with a stockier man whose thick beard hid most of his features. The third man, tall and lanky, kept his weapon trained on us while glancing nervously between his companions and the window.
None wore masks. A bad sign.
I inched away from Iris’s unconscious form, my hand sliding to my pocket where the syringe rested. The needle felt like my only insurance policy, though what good it would do against three armed men was questionable at best.
The argument intensified, and though I couldn’t understand the language, the tone was unmistakable. Something was wrong.
“Please,” I said, my voice steadier than I’d expected. “I don’t know what you want, but my husband will pay—”
The bearded man pointed a gun in my face. “Silence, bitch.”
I gulped, swallowing my words.
But it was the darker feeling, the one coiling in my gut. The plea had been natural, without conscious thought. Now I had to ask myself: Would Markos pay a ransom?
He was wealthy, sure. The condo we lived in was easily seven-figures. He bought the most expensive piano on the market just to hear me play. But spend his money to save me? To solve whatever criminal politics were unfolding?
I couldn’t help but think I wasn’t that valuable.
Finally, some conclusion seemed to be reached between the men. The bearded one stomped forward, gripped my arm, and drug me to a back room. There was no furniture in this place, which was lucky, because he shoved me hard. I sprawled on the ground.
The zipper of his pants was deafening in the room.
Fear the likes of which were unimaginable seeped into every fiber of my being.
Please, merciful heavens, no.
I scrambled across the room until my back was against the wall. He didn’t advance, merely played with himself. I didn’t look, not wanting to see the horror.
After a minute of sloppy hand strokes, he waved his gun. “Suck.”
I shook my head.
He pointed it at me. “Suck,” he repeated in broken English.
My fingers curled into fists at my side. I would die before—
There was something hard in my pocket.
The syringe.
This fucker wanted a blowjob? I could get close enough. One shot—it was all I would have.
Body numb and unresponsive, it seemed forever as I crept across the ground. I didn’t reach for my pocket until I was right in front of him. That floppy, disgusting looking piece of meat drooped in front of me. It wasn’t circumcised, and it wasn’t clean.
Now was the hard part. Did I put my mouth on it, only for a moment, to distract from what my hands were doing? I gagged, brain scrambling for an alternative.
The squeal of wheels, the loud crash of a collision sounded from the next room over.
The bearded man spun around. “What that?” he garbled, accent so thick that the words were barely understandable.
A terrible roar thundered through the air. It was the call of a monster. The voice of death. The final reckoning from a sea god.
“My husband, you bastard,” I snarled and jabbed the needle into his ass cheek. A flick of my thumb and the syringe depressed completely.
The man yelped.
Spinning, he clocked my face. But because I moved fast, he barely caught me. I didn’t feel the blow, too busy scrambling away. He took two steps, intent on chasing me, but his large body swayed. First to the left, and then to the right.
He stumbled. Pitched forward.
And then collapsed.
I jumped for the gun. Victory burst through me as I clutched it. Two shots in quick succession, and the man stopped breathing.
Markos came in while I was trying to push the man over. He didn’t move, didn’t rush to help me.
I flicked a glance at him, and with a final burst of strength, shoved the heap of stinking flesh over. And then I emptied the clip into his crotch until there was nothing left but a hole and torn flesh.