Chapter 13 Bruno
brUNO
Golden sunlight trickles through the limp plastic sheeting hanging over the broken windows of the abandoned warehouse we chose to set up in.
Its beams stretch across the stone floor, creating an array of multicolored lights and shapes from the shards of glass and other debris that litter the floor, until it reaches the far wall where the years-old graffiti takes on a new lease of life under the morning sun.
Squinting, it almost looks beautiful. Not as beautiful as watching Saoirse work over the Triad though.
All night long she’s been busy in the middle of the room taking our captive to new heights of pain and confirming that I never want to get on her bad side.
It’s quite the change to go from frantic, hot sex in the back of her car to watching her skin someone’s ribs on the fourth floor of an abandoned structure to the sounds of his pained whimpers and cries.
It’s almost impressive how long he holds out.
I’ve never been one to stomach cruelty of any kind, but each time even a tinge of regret surfaces in my mind, it’s swiftly stamped out by the memory of those poor women.
He did this. Or his men did. Regardless of how deep his fingers were in the pot, the responsibility stains him and Saoirse is dragging every other detail out of him slowly and carefully.
She started without a word when we arrived.
She stripped his clothes, shaved his head with scissors and secured him tightly to a chair without needing my help.
Expected, really. She’s the Irish Underboss for a reason.
Several of her men are stationed on the lower floors and outside just in case the Triad have a way of tracking their men, but it’s been hours and the threat lessens with every passing minute.
She took one break just before sunrise for a cup of coffee and just quietly observed our captive as he sagged in a pool of his own blood and piss, gasping for air around a broken nose, a cracked jaw and God knows how many broken ribs.
She stripped thin flaps of skin from his ribs, embedded splinters under his nails, broken fingers and toes, poured hot water all down his back and spent a good long while carefully shaving skin from his forearm.
He broke, a little under ten minutes ago and never have I heard a Triad so eager to give up information.
“Please,” he sobs through fat, bloodied lips while drooling down onto his bare lap. “N-No more. Please. No more.”
“Then tell me what I want to know,” Saoirse replies casually, as if they were just two friends stopping for a chat in a supermarket.
She stands and pushes her hair away from her face with the back of her wrist, then places that hand on her cocked hip while a blooded knife dangles loosely from her other fingers.
I think I’m turned on. I shift against the crate I’m leaning against so my pants don’t tighten too much.
“Y–You haven’t ask—asked me anything,” he gasps.
Oh, shit. He’s right. Saoirse spoke to him quite a lot but she never actually asked him a question. That has to be part of her method, surely.
She chuckles softly and glances back at me over her shoulder. “Whoops.”
Definitely part of her method.
“Alright. There were some women I collected from an old house,” Saoirse says, reeling off the address. “Tracking ownership of that house was pretty tricky, but I managed it and it led me right to you. So tell me, what were you doing with those women?”
“I wasn’t— I wasn’t doing—hrrk!”
She grabs him by the throat and leans in close. “It’s a collective you, dumbass, not individual. You, your fucking organization, the Triads. What were you doing?” Her change from soft and amused to cold and angry is as fast as a crack of thunder. Goosebumps race down my arms.
“I—” The man coughs roughly when she releases him. “It’s a holding house.”
“For?”
“Product,” he chokes.
“Tell me what you consider product.”
“Men, women. Whatever we get sent.”
“Who sends it to you?”
He shrugs and Saoirse punches him hard across the face. His head snaps to the side and blood sprays across the floor with a wet splat.
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” he chokes, gagging on the blood that surges up his throat and dribbles out his mouth. “Honest.”
“I don’t believe you.” She twirls the knife between her fingers and the blade glints dangerously in the light.
“Wait, wait—please, okay, okay.”
“Tell me.”
“I… the Russians used to work with us but that new bitch, she cut us all off but we still had clients. Still had demand to fill, so we did what we could. Just cause that bitch stopped supplying doesn’t mean people stopped buying.”
Painfully sound logic, I hate to admit.
“So we l–looked elsewhere. And then the Italians made a deal.”
I stand abruptly. “What Italians?”
“D-Del Prete—”
“Bullshit!” I storm forward. “Del Prete wouldn’t have a hand in something so disgusting as this.” Not after what happened to Mary. There’s no way my father would allow something this sick to stain his hands.
“Did you ever meet Del Prete?” Saoirse demands.
“No,” the man croaks. “Jus’ some others, but they had pins.” He lifts his swollen, fogged gaze to my eyes. “Barati pins.”
“You lie!”
“Bruno!” Saoirse stops me from surging forward to wrap my fists around that scrawny liar's throat and I swear he smirks at me, which only infuriates me further.
“He’s lying!”
“Listen, if what you claim is right and that your father is being framed then of course they’ll be using recognizable names and pins, right? How else would they appear legit?”
I hate that she makes sense and after she pats my cheek, I pull myself back. “Fine.”
“I’m going to need every name and every face you ever had dealings with, understand?” Saoirse turns back to our captive. “Your little human trafficking ring isn’t going to last long.”
“Little?” A throaty, weak laugh erupts from him. “We’re not little. You’re in way too deep, little girl. But did you want the Italians' names or the Irish as well?”
Her hands, halfway toward him, pause. “What?”
His laugh gets louder, like air rushing through a paper bag.
“You think your clan is clean? No, no, no.” He chokes suddenly and coughs up a mouthful of blood that splatters onto his bare thighs.
“Italian drugs do most of the work. Get the product addicted and they’ll do anything.
They sign away their homes, their lives, their banks.
Irish weapons are a nice gift to send along with them so no one knows what’s really in the crate. ”
Saoirse’s shoulders tense into a rigid line. “You should be very careful about what you say next,” she warns, her voice low. “The accusations you’re throwing around aren’t working in your favor.”
“What reason do I have to lie?” He coughs harshly.
“I won’t die protecting Italian or Irish blood.
” He spits in my direction. “Scum. Fucking scum. At least we own what we do. But you lot hide like roaches. You really think you can do anything to stop us? To stop them?” His smile turns slim and cold.
“Without witnesses, you’ve got nothing.”
“No…” Saoirse suddenly turns and sprints out of the room, leaving me alone with the wheezing, dying triad.
I want to go after her but leaving this guy alone feels like a bad idea. We remain face to face and his smile turns sinister. “You. I don’t know you.”
“No one does.”
“You a Del Prete? That why you ask?”
“Italian blood is all you need to know.”
“So fucking pretentious,” he wheezes. “If Del Prete wasn’t such a big dog, we’d have killed him for how he acts like he’s better than us.”
“You said you’d never met him.” Warmth prickles up the back of my neck.
“I haven’t,” he replies throatily. “But he has a reputation. Big man. Angry all the time. Always about the money, all he cares about.”
My father is tall, but big isn’t how I would describe him. And we’re rich. Money hardly drives him. At least it didn’t fourteen years ago.
“You son of a bitch!” Saoirse comes storming back into the room with her phone in her hand, drawing my attention away from the Triad.
“What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
Her grip on the phone is so tight that her knuckles are pure white and she stops in front of me with an array of emotions flitting through her eyes, everything from anger to upset. “They’re gone.”
“Who?”
“The women! The ones we rescued from that fucking house. All of them have been discharged from the hospital and taken without a trace. The nurse I spoke to has no idea how or when, but they’re all gone. Every single one.”
No witnesses… shit! “Who could do that? Who has that kind of power?”
Saoirse shrugs quickly while massaging her temple with curled fingers. “Fuck knows. Maybe anyone if you’re fast enough. All it would take is a—”
A sickening snap behind me cuts Saoirse off and as she looks past me, her eyes widen. “No!”
I turn in time to see the Triad rip his now dislocated or maybe broken wrist out of his bindings and throw himself backward to smash up the chair he’s bound to.
Throwing myself forward, I sprint the few feet toward him but he’s fast. He grabs a chunk of wood from the back of the chair and whips it hard in my direction so I’m forced to throw my arms up to protect my face.
It smacks against my forearms, stinging while Saoirse rushes past me.
“You fucker!” She yells loudly as I lower my arms. She’s faster than me and he’s within her grasp as he sprints toward one of the broken windows.
Her arm stretches out and just as she comes into contact with his flailing arm, the man yells loudly and leaps up into the air.
He crashes through the broken window and his scream trails after him all the way down to the ground, where it cuts off with the sickening wet thud of his body hitting the concrete four floors down.
I join her at the window staring down at the guards swarming the exploded mess he’s become.
“Motherfucking shit,” Saoirse snaps. “Now what the fuck do we do?”