19. ~Julian~
19
~Julian~
It had worked.
Nico had sent a couple of his soldiers to the house where I’d been kept, and they’d planted the tracking chip and also set up some specialist tech that Lev had been able to get his hands on really quickly from his father’s company, Knightsridge Engineering, which prevented a signal jammer or any sort of signal interference from being activated. One of the conditions of me doing this was that the boys had contact with me throughout, and they weren’t going to take the chance of Angelo screwing with that.
Not ten minutes after the chip had been left here, Angelo had been on the move.
He hadn’t texted me. Maybe it was because he thought he’d give away the fact that he’d tagged me with that fucking tracking chip, and he didn’t want to give up what he believed was his ace in the hole when it came to me—his way to always find me whenever he wanted. Or maybe it was the pull of this fucking place and what it meant to him in his warped mind.
Either way, at least I hadn’t needed to deal with putting on a pretense by responding favorably or even entertaining any more of his sickening messages at all.
As I took in the house that was in renovation mode, some walls torn down, debris over the decrepit floors, there was no recollection for me whatsoever. I didn’t remember coming in here because I’d been unconscious, both on the way in and on the way out.
The only part of the place I remembered was that room.
The room he’d kept me bound in the entire time.
His prison.
I didn’t like referring to it as a BDSM dungeon, because it was an insult to the entire fucking concept, everything that the lifestyle stood for. He had absolutely no understanding of it. To say it was warped for him didn’t begin to cover it.
It was a sexual torture chamber created by an unhinged psychopath’s demented fantasies.
“How are you doing, Sunshine?”
His voice in my ear had me jolting from my thoughts.
“Fine. All good.”
“You don’t need to go anywhere near that room. Just being in this house is enough.”
“Yeah, okay. No worries.”
I peered down the corridor past the living room, seeing a staircase in the distance. I remembered them telling me that the room had been upstairs at the far end of a corridor.
“We’re almost in position now. We’ll be just minutes out.”
“Understood. Good. And Angelo?”
“Levi’s tracking him. Fifteen minutes away.”
“All right.”
The communication ended as I figured he was getting into position with Nico and their soldiers nearby.
I started tapping my foot as I stood in what I assumed was passing for a living room, despite it being in no state currently to support any sort of living going on.
The more I just waited in the same place for that madman to show up, the more anxious I became.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t just stand still.
Before I knew it, I found myself venturing down that corridor.
Even that wasn’t enough, and then I was climbing the stairs as well.
As I reached the landing and stared at the door in the distance, the one with the keypad door lock that I’d heard the others describe when they’d talked about my rescue mission when they’d thought I hadn’t been within hearing range, I realized me starting to walk through the house was about more than trying to allay my building anxiety.
I was being drawn there, specifically to that room.
I needed to step inside again, to be there.
I needed to face it.
I had to confront what haunted me.
And now I was right here, I realized that wasn’t just Angelo.
It was the torture chamber itself, too.
A part of me was urging me to turn back around, warning that it was a bad idea. And not just psychologically either.
I mean, I was technically supposed to stay near the exits, so that shortly after Angelo saw me and was drawn inside, I would be able to keep a distance between us until Nico, Milo, and their soldiers moved in and swarmed him.
Before he was able to get too close.
Before he was able to lay a hand on me.
Before he was able to do a fucking thing.
Jesus.
I made my way down the corridor.
I still had time to get back to one of the exits downstairs.
Reaching the door, I found it ajar, so the lock wasn’t an issue.
I sucked in a breath and pushed it the rest of the way open, then stepped across the threshold.
The place had definitely been sanitized. There was no trace of anyone ever being here. No blood or… other things staining the floor or the furniture. No bullet holes in the dark red walls even. Anything that might have been damaged during my rescue had been restored as though it had never been.
I guess I hadn’t expected all the furniture and devices to still be here, for it to look exactly as I’d remembered it in my nightmares and waking memories alike.
Marco and Leo’s soldiers had been sent in to do the cleanup, their goal to make it look like Nico hadn’t interfered with Angelo at all, because it had been a Leone matter as far as both families had been concerned. They’d been afraid of stepping on Santino’s toes, so they’d made everything look exactly as it had beforehand, leaving no trace of the rescue and the damage done during it at all.
It was fucking eerie.
Why hadn’t Santino gotten rid of this place when the truth had come out, when Angelo had disappeared into the ozone?
It was insulting and fucked-up that they’d not only kept the room, but the building itself, instead of tearing it down. It was like a creepy fucking shrine to Angelo and his sickening activities, like support for it all.
The chains hanging down from the ceiling near the center of the room, the ones that had held me, were still there, along with another set of chains on one wall, the St. Andrew’s Cross opposite, the spanking bench and stocks.
And then my attention was drawn to the bed in the corner.
I shuddered at the sight of it.
“It’s okay. It’s over now. I’m gonna get you out of here.”
“Cat…. Go. Run.”
“No, I’m not leaving you.”
I ran my hand over the black cabinet by the door. The tools that had been on it before were gone, likely inside the drawers themselves. Not something I relished finding out.
Then I walked over to the chains and touched the metal.
“It will prove impossible for you to resist soon enough. Mmm, yes, you’ll break for me so beautifully.”
I stepped back from them and took in the rest of the space and the memories associated with it all. I tried to deal with one aspect at a time, but it all came slamming into me at once.
“Argh! Argh! Argh!”
“Jesus,” I choked, taking a staggering step back.
No. I wouldn’t let it rule me.
And I wouldn’t let Angelo’s take on it control the narrative.
He’d twisted it, reframed things, and he’d tried to etch that into my mind, skewing my memories.
Now I was here again and remembering, with it being all the more vivid, I was actually able to see it for what it really had been, and not his version of things that he’d managed to make me believe. I wasn’t in a weakened physical state anymore. I wasn’t on the verge of delirium like I had been then.
My mind and body were strong.
I was steady.
“You’ll never survive this. I promise you that.”
“I’ll kill you.”
He hadn’t succeeded.
He’d pushed and pushed in a truly demented and unyielding way when I’d been severely compromised.
“You were playing me? After all we’ve done together?”
And still he hadn’t gotten from me what he’d wanted, what he’d been downright obsessive about.
He’d failed.
And I hadn’t fucking broken.
I really hadn’t.
“Julian? Julian, do you copy?”
“The op is compromised. Do you hear me? Julian? Get out now!”
I jolted at Nico’s voice coming down the line this time, the sheer urgency in it sending a flood of adrenaline through me.
I must have been spacing out and too deeply immersed.
I tapped my earpiece. “I’m here, Nico. Sorry. What’s happening? You said the op is compromised?”
As he went to respond, I heard yelling, thuds, crashing, and hell knew what else in the background.
“The fucking ghosts came out of nowhere. We’re under attack. Get out of there. We won’t make it in time to back you up. They’re blocking our way. It could be a diversion to back up Angelo too or to take him out. Their motives are unconfirmed at this time. You have two minutes before Angelo arrives. Get out now.”
Before I could get a word out in response, he added, “Connect with Levi. He’ll guide you out of the area unnoticed by Angelo. But that motherfucker is close. You need to leave right fucking now. Do you hear me, J?”
I swallowed hard. “I hear you, yeah.”
I heard more yelling in the background, screams and automatic fire, and then he was gone, cut off, or— no, don’t go there.
It was Nico Marchetti we were talking about. In battle, the guy was a fucking machine, a dark and twisted warrior. And he was also with Milo. An unstoppable combination. They were fine. They had this.
They would be absolutely fine.
They had to be.
It couldn’t be any other way.
Focus up, Carver!
I didn’t even get the chance to make the connection to Levi, before he found his own way in, his voice sounding in my ear in the next second. “I’m gonna talk you through escaping in a covert way that will make you undetectable to them.”
I went to start for the door, but then I pulled up short. “Is that what you think I should do?”
“What?”
“Would you leave right now if you were me?”
“He’s inbound, Julian. Erebus struck without warning. It’s not a stretch to assume that they’ll follow Angelo to the house, too. The timing can’t be coincidental. The attack Nico and Milo are facing has to be connected to Angelo returning to the city. Whether that’s to protect him or to kill him for his reckless decision to do this and us disposing of his Leone Family support and soldiers here remains to be seen. Either way, though, it puts you in the line of fire, unless you leave now.”
“If I do, all of this will be for nothing. Nico, Milo, and their soldiers will be fighting out there for nothing. The mission to take out Angelo will be a failure. We might not get another shot.”
“There’s always another chance.”
“I can’t,” I said, staring at the door. “I can’t walk away from this.”
“I understand.”
“Yeah?”
“You know that I do. But you need to know that if you stay, you need to put him down. You have to take his life.”
“It won’t be my first time going to those extremes.”
“That won’t make it any easier. Not for somebody like you who feels deeply, who still very much exists in the light, despite everything you’ve faced.”
I sucked in a breath. “I can handle this one.”
“All right, then first thing’s first, get out of that room. There’s only one way in and out. That door is reinforced steel and it can be locked from the inside and the outside. He could trap you within. I can’t open it from my end. It’s not connected to the main system.”
“That won’t matter if I kill him.”
“There are no guarantees in combat. If you take some hefty hits, you’ll need distance to take a beat, to recover. Head back to the living room and—wait. It’s too late. He’s there.”
“What?”
“He’s there, approaching through the backdoor now. Change of plans. Move across the corridor and enter the second room to your left. Go through the window on the far side. Below, there’s a garage roof that will break your fall. Exit through there, then make a sharp right, and I’ll guide you the rest of the way from there into a better space for the takedown.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll take the fight outside.”
I pushed out into the corridor, heading for the door that Levi had identified.
But as I went to turn the doorknob, then throw open the thing, something pulled me up short.
That eerily familiar voice.
“Julian, I’m here! I know you are as well. I tracked you. My method isn’t pinpoint accurate, so I don’t know where precisely you are inside my house. Call out to me, babe.”
I hated it.
I hated that it sent a chill down my spine.
I hated that it impacted me at all, especially in such a striking way.
I couldn’t allow it.
I couldn’t fucking live with it.
“Move. Move now,” Levi urged me through my earpiece. “He’s seconds out. Coming up the stairs.”
I opened the door and pushed on through.
“Playing hide and seek, my pretty little bitch? Hmm… are you in our special place?”
A shudder went through me, and I clenched my fists.
I stilled on making my way toward the window that was over on the other side of the room, just like Levi had said.
“Move. You’re letting him get inside your head and impact your actions,” Levi warned me.
“Jesus,” I grunted, before snapping back to it and rushing over to the window.
It was one of those single hung windows, so I opened the little locks, then went to slide it up, only to find resistance.
I rapidly took it in. “It’s sealed shut,” I reported to Levi.
“With what?”
“What?”
“What’s it sealed shut with? Glue? Epoxy?”
“Don’t know. Either way, I’m gonna use my blade to try to pry it open,” I said, as I pulled my tactical knife.
“Depending on what it is, it could be easier to break the glass,” Levi warned.
“That would alert Angelo to my precise location before we’re ready.”
“If you move fast enough, it will also have him following you, and chasing you to right where you want him.”
He was good. Always finding solutions to insane situations and problems.
“Angelo is already alerted,” a voice came from behind me, sending a full body shudder through me.
Before I could even spin around, hands were on me, digging into my shoulders, my tactical gear thankfully absorbing any damage. But then I was hissing as he ripped my earpiece out.
He hauled me across the room and then shoved me across the corridor.
A kick to my back had me stumbling through the door of the torture chamber.
I staggered around.
And there he was, leaning against the door frame with a creepy nonchalance.
His Ivy League haircut was barely intact, his blond hair in disarray. He was in his usual gray leather jacket and black jeans combo. There was a three-inch red-raw scar across his left cheek and I remembered Cat inflicting it with a whip during my rescue. His right hand was bandaged with gauze due to another injury she’d inflicted, this one being impaling his hand with a knife. He had a Beretta holstered at either hip as usual, but he made no move to reach for them. His goatee was joined by a whole lot of stubble. He looked tired and beyond just that of the dark circles under his eyes, the result of living on the run for the last while.
He opened his hand, and I saw my earpiece there. “Before you’re ready? What did that mean? Is this a setup?” he asked, his creepy casualness maintaining as he asked the questions. “Because if it is, I have to warn you that your backup is being kept busy. And also, it would definitely sour our reunion to know you tried to set me up.” He tapped the earpiece and brought it to his mouth, communicating, “Stay the fuck out of this.” In the next second, he tossed it on the floor, then ground it to shit with the heel of his boot.
“Just us now, Julian.” His eyes shone with disturbing lust. “The way I’ve been craving it for too long now.”
He pushed off the doorframe and looked me over curiously. “Was that just your backup because you were afraid I’d hurt you? Is that why you’re in all that heavy duty gear?” He waved his hand dismissively. “That’s not why I came. It’s not why I asked you to come to me either during our text conversation earlier.”
“Then why?”
“Things are dicey for me right now. Your friends’ recent actions have put me in a difficult position. There are no more Leone Family soldiers because of them, no force to command for me, and even the empire itself has been dismantled. There’s nothing for me to take power over. I arranged our meeting for tomorrow night because I was planning to come back into the city tonight anyway to meet with Leo and strike a deal for me to temporarily share Marchetti Syndicate assets—the ones that Nico hasn’t already taken possession of. Leo owes me for hooking him up with Erebus backup that’s keeping him safe from the wrath of Nico because the smart fucker can’t risk a massacre.”
“Even if you could achieve that, if Leo agreed to that, you don’t have an army. The Leone Family is gone. It’s over.”
“Nah, not yet. And you heading down to this house caught my attention, as you can obviously see. So now I can accomplish both my goals at once. Meeting with Leo and sorting this shit before Erebus gets to me.”
“Before Erebus gets to you? They’re not blocking the way to you to protect you?”
“Thanks to Nico and all of you, they’ve turned on me. I’m no longer useful to them and they already weren’t happy about the hit I put out on Caterina after she took Santino from me. They were willing to assist then because I was useful to them, a major in here in the city. But all that’s shifted now. As they were hunting me tonight, they must’ve registered Nico and the rest of your backup in the area and looked at it as an opportunity to take that shithead out before he can take power and then they lose Leo and their last chance to get a proper foothold here with at least one family.”
“You said Leo is one of your goals. What’s the other?”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “You, of course. I’ve come to take you with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He pulled his guns from his holsters and laid them down on the floor, then kicked them away over to the other side of the room. “I told you that I’m not here to hurt you. There will be no more punishment, either. I’m done with that. I made my point. I made my mark on you. Now I just want to be with you. I want you to be mine.”
“That’s never going to happen.”
“You’re wrong.”
I pulled my gun, cocked it, and took aim at his fucking skull. “Am I making myself clearer now?”
He didn’t even flinch as he stood staring down the barrel of my gun. “You’re not the type of person to shoot an unarmed man, to kill in cold blood.”
“You don’t know enough about me to make that assumption.”
“Yeah? So, this is how you want this to end? Impersonally? A simple bullet to the brain, and it’s all done with?”
Son of a fucking bitch.
“Say I buy your denial bullshit even for a moment, Julian. Say you drew me here out of some apparent revenge. Would that be satisfied by just pulling the trigger right now? There’s nothing you want to get out of your system first?”
All the intensity and the frustration and sheer rage at being in his presence again, the shit he was spouting… it finally got the best of me.
And then, I was tossing my gun away too, and lunging at him.
He didn’t fight back as I grabbed hold of him and slammed him into the wall right beside the St. Andrew’s Cross, the force I was using rattling his fucking bones and making him choke.
“Your words are fucking poison!” I roared in his face.
“That’s it. Give me your passion,” he said, moving to grasp my bicep.
I batted his hand away before he could, then grabbed his throat in a brutal grip that had him gagging, his eyes shooting wide as I severely restricted his airflow.
“It’s not passion, you fucking psychopath! There’s nothing on my end but hatred and disgust for what you did to me! What you forced on me! Our baby died because of you! Cat and Nico almost followed! You put a hit out on the woman we love!”
“Baby?” he rasped. “Caterina… was pregnant?”
“Yes, you fuck!”
“You were… the father?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t fucking matter! It was our child regardless! All of ours! Our foursome! We’re a unit, we’re one. And there’s nothing outside of that, no others. No one can touch that. Especially not you. All of this is a delusion! A fucking delusion! Do you hear me?”
His eyes narrowed, that nasty side of him coming out to play. “She… didn’t deserve…a happy ending. She… murdered her… own father. She’s a… fucking cunt. Not worth… your time. Definitely not… your fucking… love.”
I roared and hauled him into the stocks.
He smacked against them, and only just managed to prevent himself from crashing to the floor by digging his nails into them.
Sputtering, he turned around to face me. “You were building a family? After what you and I shared?” He gestured angrily around the room. “Right fucking here, Julian! You were with me, I know it!”
“We didn’t share anything! You tortured me! You forced yourself, and a whole lot of other things, on me!”
“ No!” he screamed. “That’s not all it was!”
“You’re so far gone that you can’t even recognize the reality of it.”
“You saw into me! When I told you about Santino, you got it! You understood! You saw beneath all the rest! You’re the only one!”
“And maybe I could have helped you. If you hadn’t abused me. If you hadn’t subjected me to that sickening shit. That’s the fucking sad part of this whole thing. I warned you. I told you to back off, to let it go, to fucking stop! But you didn’t. You fucking didn’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did. And now you’re trying to reframe it as something beyond that, trying to transcend what you did, trying to twist it into an act of want. Love, even. It wasn’t that. If you really care for someone, you couldn’t do that to them. Not under any circumstances.” I stepped closer. “But you, Angelo, aren’t capable of loving anyone or anything.”
“Don’t do this.”
“Do what? Call it like it is? Put the shame you left me reeling from back on you where it actually belongs?”
I pulled my spare knife from my tactical pants. “I led you here to end this. The only way it can end with somebody like you. You’re too far gone. Too twisted. Incapable of seeing reason or remorse. You’re dangerous to everyone I love. You’ve taken too much from us already. I won’t let you take another fucking thing.”
I sucked in a steadying breath, because my whole body was shaking with putting all of that out there, of finally confronting him with it.
“What Santino did to you… he made you into a monster. I won’t allow the same thing to befall me. I didn’t with what my father did to me, and I won’t with what you did either. I won’t let what was done to me change who I’ve worked so hard to become. That’s power that I have. And nobody is gonna take that away from me. I decide who I am, not what was done to me.”
He choked at my words.
Nothing came from him for several moments.
And then he blinked rapidly, squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then looked out at me, as he uttered in broken words, “You really didn’t want it, did you?”
“No.”
“You didn’t want me?”
“No.”
“And I didn’t actually manage to break you, did I?”
“No.”
“It was just torment to you?”
“Correct.”
“And it haunts you now?”
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s too late,” he said, staring out at me intensely. Emotion welled in his eyes. “For me. There’s nothing left now. The Leone Family is gone. Santino is dead. You really see me as nothing but your abuser and tormentor. Your fucking rapist. I thought… I didn’t see it that way. I thought you just needed convincing, to be pulled from a whole lot of denial. But… it wasn’t… it wasn’t that.” His gaze darted back and forth from my blade to me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Julian.”
Commotion sounded downstairs, jolting me from his startling words.
“They’re here already. I won’t make it to Leo.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “You’re right, it is over now.”
With the distraction of the commotion, heavy footsteps rushing through the house, yells sounding out, I was caught off guard when he suddenly grasped my knife-wielding hand.
Then, stunning me more, he held onto it as he lowered himself to his knees.
“I was right about one thing. It’s not in you to kill a man in cold blood. I can see the look in your eyes. I can feel it from you.” His fingers tightened around me, sending a shudder through me. “You’ll still be haunted, though. You won’t be free of it. It has to be this way.”
Before I could even process what he was saying, he wrenched my hand forward, forcing the knife through his chest, driving the blade deep right into his fucking heart.
His eyes shot wide, and he grunted. “They’re… coming. Run.”
In the next second, he twisted it for good measure.
With a roar, he yanked it out, then released it, and me, by extension.
He collapsed onto his back, struggling for breath.
Dying.
And I stood there watching him fade away.
Watching my tormentor leave this world until the last of the light in his eyes snuffed out.
I took a staggering step back.
Seconds was all I had to process it before I heard heavy footsteps reaching the corridor and coming in hot.
I managed to get a grip, and I leapt toward my gun, snatching it off the floor and cocking it, just as two guys wearing red and black hockey masks made it to the threshold.
I fired off two rapid shots, driving through their masks, shattering those and their skulls beneath in the process, and they dropped hard right there.
But there was no relief to be had, because as I carefully peered down the corridor, I saw another six rushing down.
I fired, managing to drop another with a chest shot, but no others as they opened fire.
Automatic fucking fire.
It had me jerking back into the room for cover, just as bullets bit into the doorframe.
Fuck.
As I rapidly tried to strategize an escape that didn’t involve me locking myself in the torture chamber with Angelo’s dead body, considering causing some sort of commotion to dart across the corridor and make it to the window I’d originally meant to, the sound of glass shattering mixed with the automatic fire.
All of a sudden, the door of the room I’d been in earlier opened just a couple of inches, a second before something was tossed through the small space and down the corridor toward the hostiles.
I jerked back as I caught sight of them.
Flashbangs.
I was just out of range within the room when I heard them go off.
The automatic fire abruptly stopped, replaced by roars and sounds of chaos.
“Fuck!”
“It’s him!”
“Ah! No!”
Ear-piercing screams rang out.
I looked out, able to see a little now, just as the door opposite flew open, and I got one hell of a shock when familiar wavy hair filled my vision.
“Cat,” I breathed.
She must’ve really been in the zone, or she’d somehow felt me, because she swung her head toward me quickly and winked, before firing down the corridor at the hostiles.
Mere seconds passed before everything went eerily still.
I stepped out to see Cat and a man I recognized as Joseph Stover standing over all the dropped bodies.
They were both clad in tactical gear, like me.
I watched Stover rub her shoulder, and she smiled up at him.
“Cat!” I called, unable to help myself, or the intensity that came out with that one word.
She jolted and turned around.
And then she was running toward me.
I bolted forward too, and we met halfway, throwing our arms around each other.
“Jesus, darlin’, I’ve missed you. We’ve fucking missed you so much,” I uttered, emotion bleeding from me as I held her to me tightly.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she responded, as emotionally as me, burying her face in my chest and clutching me to her.
I couldn’t believe it.
She was here.
She was actually here!
Our reunion was interrupted by Stover’s voice, all-business, as he said, “Nico and Milo are fine. Unharmed. I saw to it. A few of their soldiers suffered minor injuries.”
I looked out at him in question.
Cat assured me, “They’re good. He sniped down the remaining hostiles.”
“ They’re well. You’re here. Angelo’s gone,” I murmured, trying to take it all in.
But I couldn’t in that moment.
All I could do was hold her to me and keep holding her.