Chapter 42
Isabella
“No, I want to go with you.”
Lorenzo’s breath caught in his throat. “Isabella, no.”
He said my actual name, which usually meant he expected me to listen and do as he said. But I shook my head. “Don’t argue with me. I need to look him in his eyes and know why.”
“I’m not going to hold back for your sensibilities,” he warned. “You don’t need to see any of that.”
I shrugged. “I already have nightmares, Lorenzo. Is this going to give me more, or will I finally feel safe to sleep without worrying that someone is going to come in through the window?”
Lorenzo took me at my word. “Get out of the house for a little while,” he said to Amalia, who was standing in the living room, unsure of what to do next. “Go to the store, make up some errands.”
She nodded in understanding. “Sure thing, boss.”
He threaded our fingers together and led me to a door in the hallway that I had never opened before. It was locked all those months ago when I was first learning the house. It was open now, and I could see there were stairs that led down into darkness.
“What you see down there,” Lorenzo said, pausing at the door, “you can’t ever un-see it, do you understand? And you can never tell anyone about it.”
“I can handle it,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure that I could. A part of me wanted to run screaming back to the safety that Amalia offered, but I needed this. Such a large part of my life had been ruined that night in my bathroom, and I wanted it to be over.
Lorenzo brought my hand up and brushed his lips across the back of it, and then we were descending into that darkness.
It was cool, and there was a vague mildew smell that I associated with all basements.
For a moment, it was like any other basement that I had been in: cinderblock walls, open beams overhead, shelving filled with odds and ends that didn’t quite belong upstairs in the main house.
Then we turned a corner, and there was a door. It was cracked open, but I didn’t hear anything. Maybe they hadn’t started whatever they were going to do just yet?
I held on to that until Lorenzo opened the door wider, and I realized that the hallway was soundproofed.
The corridor had several doors on it; each had a lock on the outside.
I would have bet my last paycheck at the clinic that each of the rooms were soundproofed as well. “Are these holding cells?” I asked.
“Yes.”
My chest tightened. The air around us felt hotter somehow. This was where he was going to put me if I had truly planned to run away, in this place without light and fresh air. “Besides Father David,” I said, my stomach rolling just saying his name, “is there anyone else down here?”
“Not right now.” But he didn’t reassure me that there would never be anyone left down here; I knew it wasn’t a thing that he could say or promise.
Nausea gripped me for a moment, and I had to swallow hard so I didn’t throw up as we walked down that corridor.
Now was not the time for morning sickness.
We came to the end of the hallway, to the door at the very end, and Lorenzo reached for the doorknob. He paused for a second, glancing at me, and then he pushed the door open. At first, all I could take in was the screaming. We hadn’t heard it in the hallway, but it was bloodcurdling now.
Father David was strapped to what looked like a doctor’s examination table with straps that were straight out of a BDSM nightmare.
Something had been stuck into his mouth to muffle the sound of his screams, but it wasn’t helping much.
Elio had pulled out two of the man’s fingernails with a pair of pliers that were still in his hands.
“He confirmed that he worked for the Bratva,” Damian said without looking up.
“Which family?”
Damian shook his head. Lorenzo let out a sound that was like a growl. He gently guided me to a place near the wall, far enough back that I wasn’t within touching distance. “Stay there, dolcezza. Don’t come closer.”
“Okay,” I breathed out, unable to look away from the priest’s bloodied hand.
Lorenzo stared at me for a long while, and then he turned and became a different person entirely. The aura around him changed and grew colder. It was the same thing that was emanating from Damian and Elio.
I was standing in a room with three predators but…somehow, I was safe from them. They were here to protect me, to hurt the man who had hurt me. There was a lot of power in that.
“Which family were you working for, Father?” Lorenzo asked, and I shivered at the sound of his voice. It was almost sweet, almost kind, but there was a slice of cruelty to it. A mocking of how he would talk to me in the bedroom.
Father David tried to speak, but the gag muffled the words.
Damian loosened whatever it was in his mouth and pulled it aside.
They must have had it tied tightly because I could see the angry red marks from where it had cut into his cheeks.
“It doesn’t matter,” the priest panted out.
“I didn’t—” His eyes landed on me, and I froze.
Lorenzo grabbed him by the hair and forced his gaze away from me. “I wasn’t sent out of malice.”
Lorenzo spat on him. “Do you think that matters?” Now, he wrenched him so that he was looking at me. “Do you think it matters to her that you didn’t want to hurt her?”
My throat was dry, but I forced myself to speak. “It doesn’t.”
Lorenzo smiled at me, sharp and terrifying and proud, and I knew that I would never be able to come back from this. “See? She doesn’t care about your intentions. What we want to know is who sent you and why.”
When Father David didn’t answer quickly enough, Lorenzo nodded to Elio, who took the pliers and clamped them around the nail on his middle finger.
He yanked quickly, and a scream bubbled from the priest’s throat.
“I was in debt,” he screamed, as if he were begging for our mercy.
“I owed them so much money.” The words reminded me so much of my father, of the situations that he frequently got himself into, that it made me sick.
I gagged and sank my teeth into my fist, trying to hold it all back.
This room did not seem heavily ventilated, and the smell of vomit would not improve things.
“You owed money to who,” Lorenzo said.
Tears were running down Father David’s face. It was the lowest that I had ever seen a human being, and I should pity him, but I felt none of that. Instead, I felt cold in a way that I never had before: cold from the inside. I wrapped my arms around myself. “Artem,” he choked out. “Artem Volkov.”
The name didn’t mean anything to me, but I saw a ripple of acknowledgment in the men. “Why did you owe Artem Volkov money, Father?”
The priest shook his head, eyes pleading. “Don’t make me say it.” Elio moved on to his ring finger, but as soon as he gripped the nail between the pliers, the man started to blubber. “Artem has boys.”
I gagged, and Lorenzo glanced over his shoulder at me before he put his focus on Father David. “You like them young, Father?” he asked, and I could hear the anger simmering beneath his words.
The priest shook his head, sobbing. “Not children,” he insisted. “They were older, I swear.”
It didn’t matter. No one in the room, me included, believed him. Lorenzo glanced at me. “Look away, dolcezza,” he said. “It’s time.”
Father David started to fight now, seeing that the end was near. “No,” he begged. “No, please, I have more information.” His eyes flicked to me. “I know why I was sent after her.”