18. Luca
18
LUCA
M y feet drag against the rough floor of the storage room I’m thrown into, and I crash down onto a hard wooden chair before the men handling me tie me down to it and vacate the room, leaving only myself and Antonio alone in there.
The air is cold, the chair beneath me is almost painful to sit on, and the wrappings around my wrists are tightly fastened. Everything about this is designed to keep me as uncomfortable as possible.
Antonio parades around the small room, already celebrating his victory over us. “If only you could have learned a thing or two from me,” he mocks.
Fighting back against the intense agony radiating throughout my entire body, I struggle just to sit up in the chair. Every muscle in my body aches and just wants to give in forever, but I force myself to persist and lift up my head to face him.
“What could I have learned from you?” I ask him, my words coming out with a lisp due to my busted lip.
Antonio can’t help but scoff. “I gave you the option to be in on this deal from the very start,” he begins. “I wanted to give you the chance to do the right thing, but you spat in my face and left me with no choice.”
“Your plan wouldn’t have changed, even if I had some part in it.”
“Well, I guess you’ll never know now,” he taunts. “You’re just far too defensive, close-minded, and indecisive. Do you really think that you could ever become a leader with those qualities?”
Hanging my head again, I conceal my face from Antonio’s view, not able to even look him in the eye. My voice spills out my defeat. “What would be the point?”
Antonio shakes his head at me. “That’s your problem. You have no motivation! No initiative!”
I still avoid his gaze, staring down at the harsh concrete floor beneath me. “Does your son have motivation? Does he have initiative?” I ask him.
“Of course he does! He is a far better fit for a leader than you could ever be!” He is so proud of his son for everything he has done that Antonio gloats about all of Angelo’s accomplishments as if they are his own.
“So if I was like him,” I begin, “then my father would respect me enough to trust me with the family business?” My tone is even more pathetic than it was before. I know that I look so weak to him.
“Exactly,” he lectures. “But instead, you choose to sit back, let everything happen around you, and choose a Rossi of all people over your entire family.”
“So if your son’s the perfect example, then how come he hasn’t gotten the recognition for it?” I ask.
“What?” Antonio exclaims. “He gets plenty of recognition for what he’s done.”
Even after being severely beaten and tied down to this chair as I struggle to fight off my drowsiness, I can tell that even he doesn’t believe what he’s saying. He stammers through the sentence. His voice shakes with uncertainty, and his pitch falters, putting his insecurity on full display.
If this is a man who is worthy of being the leader of one of Montcove’s most powerful crime families, then I am glad that I am far from it.
“You know what, I can’t blame you,” I tell him.
“Blame me for what?” he challenges.
He’s getting defensive. Good.
“You’ve managed to get all the credit and reap all of the rewards all while your son’s doing all of the work,” I say to him, my tone almost making it sound like a compliment. “If ability actually mattered, wouldn’t he be running the Grecos and not you?”
Antonio’s face scrunches up tight, his blood starting to boil beneath his skin and turning his face red. “You have no idea what I do for this family, all the work I put in, everything I’ve sacrificed!” He grabs me by the collar and gets up in my face.
“Yeah, you must have had to sacrifice your pride to sit back and watch your son do everything you couldn’t do.” I laugh. “What a great leader you must be.”
He grunts loudly, no longer able to put words to his frustration. Throttling me with one hand, he backhands me across the face with the other. “You shut your mouth, you little runt,” he screams.
Interrupting Antonio’s screams with his own, Angelo bursts through the door to the room.
“What are you doing here?” Antonio yells, taking his attention away from me and preparing to take it all out on his son.
Angelo’s face is red with anger, his body language all out of order from his usual composure, and spittle is already flying from his mouth. “When are you going to stop telling me what to do?”
“When you stop being my son, so listen to me when I am talking to you!”
I can’t believe it. It’s all worked so well. Everything fell perfectly into place, and the Greco men are at each other’s throats already.
Back when I was lying defeated on the floor of the restaurant’s dining room, the Grecos forced me to watch as Dominic was assaulted until he collapsed beside me. I thought he had given up on everything, that he had given up on me, when he cut me off as I tried to explain my plan.
He didn’t want to hear it, but I’m glad he didn’t. His plan worked so much better.
“I have done everything for you!” Angelo howls. “If it wasn’t for me, you would still be making deals in back alleys with lowlifes.”
“I made you everything you are!” Antonio berates his son.
“Bullshit!”
“Don’t talk to me like that. I am your father!”
Hearing the two of them fall into disarray, their entire plan crumbling as they fight with each other like children, I burst out into near hysterical laughter.
The two Grecos fall silent in an instant, their intense argument having made them forget all about me sitting beside them grinning along to their bickering.
“Are you enjoying this you—” Antonio blurts out, but goes quiet when Angelo grabs hold of his arm.
“This is what he wants,” he says, pulling his father toward the door. “Let’s talk elsewhere.”
Both men bite their tongues as they practically shove each other out of the cramped storage closet. They leave me alone, tied up in the chair, waiting for the next step of the plan.
I feel awful for never giving Dominic the credit that he actually deserves. He wasn’t the one who ran into this whole situation completely blind, hoping to take out the Grecos single handedly. He was the one that actually came up with a plan to solve this problem without anyone getting unnecessarily hurt.
If it wasn’t for him, I may not have gotten into this situation in the first place, but I certainly wouldn’t have come out the other side as a better person without him either.
I writhe around in my bindings, trying to wriggle free of the tight constraints around my wrists, but every movement just makes them dig further into my skin. Feeling the friction burn against my wrists makes me hiss in pain.
Relenting my attempts to escape, my arms go slack, and I let them fall behind me .
“What am I supposed to do now?” I mumble to myself.
A slouched figure leans itself on the doorframe in front of me. “You wait for me,” the unmistakable voice says. Dominic steps into the light, showing the extent of his injuries, his damaged limbs causing him to need the frame for support.
“How did you get out?” I ask him as he stumbles toward me and begins messing with my restraints.
“If you think getting out of these is impressive, you should see me with handcuffs.” He laughs as he fights against my bindings. With another quick tug, he manages to break apart the wraps around my wrists, allowing me to move my arms in front of myself and massage them.
“How about we do that later? But for now, let’s get out of here.”
Dominic helps me to my feet, the two of us using each other for support as we stumble for the rear door to the storage room.
“That was a good plan,” I admit. “How did you come up with it?”
“Well, I know for a fact that no one pushes buttons like you do,” he responds with a chuckle. “It’s pissed me off in the past, so I thought if we both did that, we could push them over the edge.”
“You weren’t half bad.”
We crash out onto the side street beside the restaurant, the darkness of night as our cover and the roaring argument of Antonio and Angelo already reigniting in the restaurant, and we stagger away.
Throughout the dark, empty streets of the city, side by side with Dominic, the pair of us hardly say a word to each other. The only noises we emit are the pained grunts and panting breaths that call and respond to each other like its own kind of conversation.
For now, though, Dominic guides us both through the labyrinth of street grids to some location unknown to me. He is leading this dance, and I am only his blind partner. We need somewhere to lay low until we know if our plan came to fruition or not. We can’t head back to Valmont. Angelo knows where Dominic lives, and I wouldn’t put it past him that he knows where I live either.
“Where are we going?” I ask him between my exhausted gasps.
“Back to mine,” he replies, his voice showing just how tired he is.
“Won’t Angelo find us?” I ask in a panic.
“Not my dorm, my home.”
The door to the Rossi mansion creaks open, revealing the entranceway behind it. Dominic’s family home is nowhere near the same size as the Valenti mansion, but there’s something so much nicer and more homey about its much more humble design.
“Come on, just up here,” Dominic whispers to me as he takes my hand in his and leads me up the stairs.
Nodding to him slightly, I follow him up to the second floor, limping with each step along the way.
Creeping down the hallway, Dominic has each floorboard committed perfectly to his memory, placing his feet on the exact right spots to avoid the ones that creak. Sneaking behind him, I slip up every few steps, tensing as they creak at me like an incorrect buzzer on a game show.
Luckily, though, even after a few of my missteps, we both manage to make it to the end of the upper hallway and duck into a small, dark room. Flipping on the light switch, Dominic reveals his home bedroom to me and drops quickly down onto his bed.
“Come sit down,” he urges, beckoning me over with his hands outstretched. “You need to rest.”
Moving closer to him, he takes hold of me and pulls me toward him and down beside himself on the bed.
“How are you feeling?” he asks earnestly, looking over each and every one of my assortment of bruises and injuries. “You handled yourself well.”
“Thank you.” I blush, not wanting him to know just how much pain I am in. “But you took some pretty bad hits, especially with finding out about?—”
“Can we not? Just for tonight, at least,” he interrupts. “I just want to be with you and forget about it all for now. ”
“Okay, I like that.” I smile at him. “Tonight, it’s just us.”
He pulls me in close to him, wrapping his arms around me as we both lie down beside each other in the bed. As my body touches and rubs against Dominic’s, we both recoil slightly as our many pains and bruises press into each other’s, but soon we accept the aching and soreness. We still want to move closer again.
Lying with him, I feel safe in his arms, despite the intense agony and suffering I’ve been put through tonight. Even with the aftershock of everything that’s happened,—not just within the last few hours with the Grecos, but this whole rollercoaster of a week—I feel pure bliss wash over me.
Soon enough, I both drift off to sleep, sharing a night of peace with Dominic for a second night in a row. I forget all about our pain and problems for now, letting there just be me and him. For tonight, there will be only us.