Chapter 19 Stan #2
“Se.”
“Good. Make it hurt, frate.”
“Gladly.”
“Any joy on finding a link to the Favaros?” I peppered.
“Yes, actually. Hunter’s been trawling the computers we found at the Nolita brothel. He says that the Favaros managed one of the shell companies that owned the building.”
My brows lifted. “So they were high up the organization.”
Her expression locked down. “Seems so. We’re still looking for more ties.”
I glanced out the window and saw we were close to pulling up outside a warehouse that had seen better days a decade ago. “I have to go.”
“You’re dealing with Dante today, aren't you?”
“Yes. I’ll gather whatever information I can from him too. Oh, and Rory, I’m bringing out your least favorite toy.”
She grimaced then conceded, “He deserves it.”
“That he does. Ciao.”
As I hung up, Luigi lowered the privacy panel and pulled into the warehouse lot. “Capo, you’ll make it hurt, se?”
“He didn’t just betray me and mine, Luigi. He betrayed you and the rest of my Stidda too. You graced him with trust, accepted him as one of your own, believed him when he said he’d have your backs, and he threw that trust and acceptance at your feet.
“I will make him wish his mother had never looked at his fucker of a father, and then I’ll deliver him to the Morningstar.”
Reassured, Luigi gusted out a breath. “Thanks, boss. Oh, I have that thing you wanted. Those lab rats of yours don’t like me, huh?”
“I’ll talk to them.” Accepting the ampoule, I dipped my chin at him then climbed out of the car. Before I shut the door behind me, I ordered, “Wait for my call.”
Upon entering the warehouse, I found Chad hovering.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I snarled with a punch to his shoulder. “What happened on Friday?”
“I’m sorry, Stan,” he rushed to answer, but he didn’t cower. “My phone was off.”
A nerve twitched at my temple. “I want answers. Later.” But I sensed he spoke the truth—the only reason his kneecaps weren’t in jeopardy.
“No more than Aurora and Hunter expected,” he confided. “That fucker Matteo’s too handy with a goddamned knife.”
That they’d okayed him for duty didn’t ease my irritation with him. Or Aurora and Hunter. Why the fuck hadn’t they looped me in on whatever Chad had to say?
Slipping my hand into my pocket, I retrieved my cell.
Me: Thanks for not telling me about Chad
Rory: You’re welcome
Me:
Irritated, I snagged the ampoule and handed it to him. “Everything’s prepared?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Where is he?”
Silently, he guided me to where the treacherous cunt had been stored. Not that I needed a guide. He reeked.
I’d have gagged if I weren’t used to worse stenches.
I peered at the fucker slouched on the floor, one hand cuffed to a pole someone had screwed into the concrete. Rory had already informed me that his spine was broken. A fact they’d uncovered when below-the-waist torture hadn’t earned them so much as a grunt of pain.
Stepping over to his crusty ass, taking note of how his wounds were infected, adding to his less-than-pleasant odor, I crouched beside him, making sure my shoes didn’t go anywhere near his various leaks.
His head barely rolled on its side as he turned to look at me. “Let me die. Pleasssse…”
“Why would I do that, Dante? In fact, haven’t they been pumping you full of my own drugs to keep you going?
I’m thinking of leaving you here. Letting you rot and die at the same time.
Maybe dousing you in moth balls to kill the stench,” I crowed.
“Do you know what happens to a body when it’s dumped in a lye bath? ”
“I do,” he babbled.
“I’m contemplating that. The slower the better. See, Kitty told me what you were about to do to her, Dante. I’m tempted to make you choke on your dick and let you bleed out from the stump, but I need answers.
“I want to know what you know because, Dante, you won’t be the only one who suffers.” His eyes flared wide. “Oh, yeah. We found that little house in Philly. The one where your mom and sisters live.
“How fortunate that we have some openings in our stables. I’ve seen pictures of them. I think they’d make nice whores. But then, looks don’t matter so much, do they? If they’re ugly, then they’ll service the fuckers who are too tight to pay for the premium product.”
The words, toxic and filled with vitriol, slipped from my lips. It was this skill, this ability to verbally torture someone, that made me priceless in these situations.
Luc was rash and quick-tempered. He tortured with a knife. Made them bleed.
I liked it slow. I wanted them to steep in their misery so I could fuck with their heads as well as their blood.
People, my siblings included, thought I was more brawn than brains, but they were wrong. I wasn’t afraid to get my hands dirty, but the brain was a far more delightful place to play.
When I clicked my fingers, Chad appeared beside me. A metal tray in his hands with a syringe on it that rattled from one side to the other before knocking into the ampoule I’d given him earlier.
I didn’t take it, just let Chad’s presence resonate with Dante, who wept silent tears.
“How much do you think we should charge for his mom, Chad?” I twisted the verbal knife. “She’s old, no? Fifties?”
“There’s a market for that,” Chad inserted, calm as you like. “Be worth more if you mess with her mouth, knock her teeth out. Men’ll pay big to fuck a hole like that.”
“You bastards,” Dante howled, thrashing about as much as he was able—i.e., he resembled a dying fish.
“I don’t think so,” I countered. “My legitimacy has nothing to do with your mistakes. You fucked with the wrong people, Dante. You could have stayed as you were, tucked up safe and sound on my Stidda. Hell, you’d have been set for life.
“But no. You weren’t just a snake in the grass.
You were a traitor. You stole my woman from my bedroom and thought you could get away with it?
” I scoffed. “Se, I like the symmetry of this. It’s very eye for an eye, but you should have figured it out by now, Dante—we don’t take one eye.
We take both. We take your tongue and your fingers and your dick too. Then, we kill you.
“You reap what you sow, porcu.”
“Nah,” Chad disagreed. “The women in his family will be reaping that, Capo. Years after he’s dead and gone, his bones the fertilizer in some fields on a farm somewhere, they’ll be the ones fucking—”
“You cunts,” Dante cried, but the most he could do was wriggle.
“Oh, look, the worm is trying to turn, Chad.”
The other man cackled. “Maybe he thinks he can save them.”
“Too late for that,” I declared with a laugh. Until any and all amusement in my voice faded. Until it turned to ice. Until the air around us froze. “Unless I get answers.”
“You won’t leave my family alone,” Dante bit off. “No matter what I tell you.”
“Sure I will. You’ve met Aurora, Dante. She treats our hookers like sisters.
You think she’d let me dump your family into our stables if you’ve given us the answers I want?
” I tsked. “By the sounds of what I saw in that hellhole we took you from, your family would be better looked after in our whorehouses anyway—”
“Fuck you!”
I smirked. “Nah, your mom will do that.”
Dante ceased wriggling. “You’d fuck her?”
“Gladly,” I lied. “I’d fuck her every day and every night, and each time, I’d tell her how you sold her cunt to me. How you let her deal with your debts. How you let your sisters work off those debts on their backs too.
“I’d make sure she knew that her only son, her pride and joy, was the reason she had to suck my—”
“SHUT UP!” Dante roared, gaining energy from somewhere. “SHUT THE FUCK UP. LET ME THINK! PLEASE!”
The roar faded into sobbing. And because I knew when to back off, I stopped taunting him, got to my feet, and stepped away from the living corpse.
Chad, that tray still in hand, followed me. “You wouldn’t, would you, Stan?”
“Turn your stomach, Chad?”
His jaw clenched. “What’s with the meds?”
“Meds? Nah.” I reached for the syringe. “Rory ever tell you about C-L-O?”
“What is it?”
I snagged the ampoule, snapped it, and then loaded the syringe up. “A hallucinogen.”
Chad’s brow furrowed. “Why do you want him to hallucinate?”
“Because seeing is believing, Chad. If he won’t give me answers, I’ll let him see for himself what I’m telling him.”
“You can suggest the things you were saying?”
“Power of the mind and all that.” I studied the ampoule with pursed lips. “Only reason I haven’t started manufacturing this is it’s too powerful.”
I was grateful I hadn’t now.
Fuck, Red was enough of a Frankenstein’s monster for my liking.
Getting Kitty to forgive me for the monster’s bride would happen in my next lifetime.
Chad whistled. “Jesus.”
“Perfect for torture. Secret weapon.” I eyed him. “You turning soft on me, Chad?”
“No, Capo.”
“Good to hear. Now, call in my Stidda. It’s time for them to see what punishment betraying me, my family, earns a man.”
I watched him swallow and turned back to Dante, who was weeping like a pussy. Or a cock, I guessed. Kitty had already proven she had bigger cojones than him.
“So, Dante, you know what we were just talking about?” I explained the power of C-L-O. The drug that could take you to heaven… or hell. When his sobs morphed into wails, I chuckled. “You’re acting like it’s a fait accompli, porcu. You can stop this before it gets too far.”
“I can’t. You think my family won’t be hurt if I turn them into you?”
“Is that a philosophical question?” I reasoned. “Who would hurt them worse than we could, Dante?”
Which was the crux of the matter.
“The Favaros would put them in their fighting pit,” Chad inserted coolly.
“A quick death, then,” I added. “Unlike with us.”
The cockroach’s mouth trembled. “If I tell you, once you corroborate it, you’ll leave them alone?”
“Depends on how good your secrets are.” I eyed the needle. “Of course, I could protect your family. Make sure that they were moved to another state, give them false IDs…”
His gaze turned hopeful. “You’d do that?”
“Depends on how good your secrets are,” I repeated. “But time’s running out for you and yours, Dante… I’m not a patient man. So, how deeply involved are the Favaros?”
He blanched. “You know about them?”
“We do. Were the Messinas and Puglisis also a part of this?”
“N-No.”
“Bonu, it’s time for answers.”
“I can’t—”
“Sure you can. We already know a Favaro shell company owned the brothel.” When he began weeping, I tutted. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“No, please!”
“Just remember, you asked for this, Dante. I could have played nice. Put you out of your misery. Instead, I’m going to create some more for you. Just as a parting gift before you rot in hell.”
Eyes wide with terror, he bucked when I went to stab him with the needle, and Chad did me the honor of stomping his foot on the fucker’s torso.
As he screamed in agony, I tutted again and jabbed him in the lower abdomen.
“You thought you knew what pain was, traitor. Let me teach you what it means to betray the house of Valentini.”