Chapter Eleven
Jane came to with a gasp as cold water was thrown on her. It took her completely by surprise, as she looked straight into the eyes of a man she didn’t know.
She didn’t exactly look at the man she had killed all those months ago, but she had a feeling this was his father. Vincent Morello. He was old, late fifties, early sixties, maybe. Thick grey hair, and he looked so pissed as he stared back at her.
She attempted to assess her surroundings. It looked like they were in a warehouse. There were large windows at the top of some tall walls, and the space had what appeared to be a concrete floor. It had to be an abandoned warehouse. It certainly wasn’t a basement.
“Go ahead, scream. No one will hear you for miles,” he said.
There were a couple of men in the warehouse with them.
“I’m not much of a screamer,” she said.
Even when she was younger and getting beaten or punished, she rarely screamed. There was no point in doing something that never helped. Usually, screams just angered people. If people got angry, that tended to mean shit was about to get a whole lot worse.
“Don’t worry, by the end of tonight, you’re going to learn how to scream,” he said.
Her hands were tied above her head, but her feet were on the ground. Jane looked up, and she saw that if he wanted to, he could pull her up without her having any balance at all. This was bullshit.
Fuck. This was not good. Her head hurt from being punched, and it had knocked her out cold.
“Alexey is going to kill you,” she said.
“Alexey should have taken my deal. No one kills my boy and gets away with it.”
Jane looked at Vincent Morello, and he didn’t scare her. She knew Alexey was going to come. She needed to keep Morello talking.
“Did you order the hit on Alexey?” she asked. “Is that why you’re so angry? Because he failed?”
She had no idea what she was talking about.
Over the months, she heard random snippets of conversation.
The general gist of those were that Frank Morello hadn’t acted on the instructions of his father.
The Morello mafia was held by some kind of rule book or code, which meant even though Vincent was the head of the mafia, he still needed to take it to the rest of the mafia, his capos, to make all decisions. They followed their own code.
No one had signed off on Alexey’s death. Frank should not have attacked him that night.
None of this made sense to Jane. If you were enemies, you didn’t follow a code, you attacked until one of you won.
She didn’t understand Bratva and mafia politics.
Right now, she only hoped this could buy Alexey some time to get to her.
Especially as Vincent moved toward a small table and opened a cloth to reveal a shit ton of torture toys, and she was not looking forward to playing with him, or the toys. This was not good.
“You ran my boy down in cold blood,” Vincent said. “Frank was a good boy.”
He picked up a small knife, which looked like one she’d seen in horror movies when evil people wanted to play doctor. She tried not to panic. She had no way of knowing if she was pregnant. Vincent advanced toward her.
There was no way she was going to wear this dress to her wedding. It had to be cursed, and Alexey was not going to see her in her dress until the big day. Jane couldn’t believe she was thinking about this now. This was crazy.
She tightened her hold on the rope and hook, not wanting to do anything.
“You know, I’ve heard you can make a lot of tiny cuts on a person, which can make them bleed out,” Vincent said. “Wouldn’t that be fun? Watching you bleed out and seeing as you’re dressed in white, I’d get to see it leak from you, and watch the life drain from you.”
This man was a sick and twisted individual. She didn’t have a clue what to do.
He advanced toward her, and she tried to jerk away, but there was no way of escaping him.
He sliced across her hip, cutting into the lace, and she felt the sting against her side.
She glanced down, and at first, there was no blood, but then, as seconds passed, blood started to seep toward the cut.
It stung as well, but it wasn’t too deep.
She felt her heart rate start to pick up. She felt incredibly sick as well, like she was going to throw up. She looked around, hoping to see anyone that had any sense, but none of them were coming to her rescue.
“If you do this, Alexey is going to kill you, and then he is going to make sure the Morello mafia never has a single spawn,” she said, spitting the words out.
She had not felt like this in a long time, not since she was a kid, and she could do nothing about what was happening. Anger sliced through her core, and she looked at Vincent like the monster he was.
He slashed her again, and she gasped but gritted her teeth, because she refused to give him the satisfaction of screaming.
“No one is coming to your rescue. You’re mine, and the only way this ends is with you dying.”
Another slash.
Jane was not going to give up hope. Alexey would come. He promised her, and she believed in him.
****
Alexey slammed his fist into Dex’s face, not for the first time.
Dex had been working as a Morello soldier for the past couple of years.
He was the one who told him Vincent hadn’t given the order to have Alexey killed.
Dex was the one willing to feed information through, for the cost of keeping his family safe and away from the Morello mafia.
Alexey had paid that price, and Dex’s family were safe, but now Jane was in danger, and Dex was refusing to help.
“If you don’t stop, you’re going to kill him before he can give you the answer,” Nikolai said.
“He knows where they are,” Alexey said.
“I don’t,” Dex said. “I told you, Vincent Morello tried to have the mafia declare war on you.” Dex took a gasp. “But it didn’t work. The capos saw through him, and Vincent went off the rails. As punishment, they removed him from power, and now the capos are attempting to choose a new boss.”
Alexey hadn’t been made aware of this.
“They believe with Frank dead, Vincent is incapable of making sound decisions, which is why they are not willing to keep him as boss. Whatever he has done, he does not have the backing of the mafia.”
“I get all that, but you know Vincent. You know where he would take Jane so he could hurt her and spend a great deal of time doing it.” He grabbed Dex’s jacket and lifted him up so he looked him in the eyes.
“I have men driving to your wife and three kids. If you do not give me a location right now, you will find their dead bodies piece by fucking piece.” Alexey was willing to do whatever it took to get Jane back.
Dex stared back at him.
He would kill whoever he needed to, he would hurt whoever was in his path. He would do whatever it took to have Jane safely back in his arms.
“And I’ll make you watch,” Alexey said. “Give me an address.”
Dex shook with fear, then he nodded. “Call off your men.”
“No, you don’t tell me what to do. Location. And once I have Jane secure, only then will I make a deal.” He shoved Dex toward his car.
“Alexey,” Nikolai said.
He slammed the car door shut and turned toward his friend. “What?”
“There’s no one heading there,” Nikolai said.
“I know that, but if he fucks me around, I’ve always got someone ready to do what needs to be done.” He didn’t give a fuck.
There was only one person he needed right now, and that was Vincent Morello.
He climbed into the driver’s seat, and he didn’t have a plan. Nikolai, Igor, and Makar also climbed in. Nikolai was up front with him, while Makar and Igor kept their guns poised at Dex.
“There is only one place Vincent will go if he wants to do business away from the mafia, without them knowing. It’s an old, abandoned warehouse that used to be a meat storage facility.”
“He took her to a slaughterhouse?” Nikolai asked.
“No, it’s not a slaughterhouse. It’s just a place where they would store meat for a few days, after processing. It’s not exactly secret, but no one wants a place that once stored dead meat. Vincent owns it in a different name, and it was purchased off the books, so none of the mafia knew about it.”
Alexey wasn’t surprised. Vincent Morello was a piece of shit who didn’t abide by the very rules he forced everyone to deal with.
He listened to the directions and drove.
He kept seeing Jane in his thoughts. He saw her getting punched in the face before she was taken from him.
It would change into the vision of her opening her car door after she took out Frank Morello and helped him into the passenger side.
Of course, her yelling at him, and then at her apartment, where she told him to shut the fuck up and not tell her anything.
She didn’t want to know names or anything.
Her smile after he told her a joke. How she held up her knitting and burst out laughing.
There was even a moment where he had a really shitty day at work, and he didn’t want to talk or do anything, but Jane had insisted on helping him relax.
She put on some music and forced him to dance it out.
Alexey was not much of a dancer, and they were alone in his apartment.
No one was there to see him be goofy, or just have some fun. With Jane, he let himself be.
He wanted her back. She was his everything, and he wasn’t just marrying her to keep her safe. He was marrying her because he loved her more than anything else in the world. She’d gotten under his skin, and he didn’t want to give her back.
Alexey didn’t like how much time this was taking.
“It’s just up ahead,” Dex suddenly said, and Alexey looked up at the gate. It was a standard warehouse gate that appeared to have a chain wrapped around it.
“What are you thinking?” Nikolai asked.
“There’s no way we’re sneaking in there,” Alexey said.
“What’s the plan?” Makar asked.
“Get your guns ready. This will go fast, and we won’t have time to slow down.”
Alexey didn’t know what they were about to encounter, and he didn’t give a crap. Putting his foot on the gas, he revved the engine, then put it into gear, building up speed. Dex was the only one complaining, but all Alexey wanted was Jane.
Vincent had made a big fucking mistake.
He charged through the gate, and there was only a small chain and padlock that had kept it locked. That sprung open. There were a couple of men, and Nikolai, Makar, and Igor were firing their weapons, and they took out the two guards.
Alexey didn’t stop, even as he saw the metal door of the warehouse. He pressed his foot to the gas and charged, and much to his surprise, Vincent must not have kept the buildings up to standard, as he was able to charge through the door.
Someone must have heard them coming, because there was a body on the front of the car.
He pressed the car into “park,” and gunshots started to fire at him.
Alexey just acted, as he took out the two men in front of him, and he trusted his friends to deal with the rest, as he focused on Jane and Vincent.
Vincent stood behind Jane, and she had several cuts on her body, the blood on the dress giving them away.
When he looked at her, he saw tears in her eyes, and he knew she was hurting.
“I told him you’d come,” Jane said.
Vincent was hiding behind his woman, holding a knife to her throat.
“You kill me, you kill your woman, Alexey. I told you, I was going to kill her.”
“You’re a coward, Vincent,” he said. “You can’t kill Jane, and you know why.”
Jane’s legs were together and Vincent was standing behind her. He pointed his gun left and right and Jane frowned, so he looked at her legs and raised his brows.
They had played this game many times before. Whenever he wanted her to open her legs, especially when he wanted to watch her play with herself, he would move his hand left to right, look at her in the same way he had, and raise his brows.
All he needed was one shot to take him out. He didn’t need to shoot him in the head, he just needed to take out his leg, and that would drop him.
“Why is that, you cocky little shit?” Vincent said.
“You’re a coward, and the moment you kill her, you have no leverage, and you don’t want to end up dead like your son.”
Jane spread her legs, and he saw Vincent’s thigh. He took the shot, and Morello fell, exactly like he knew he would.
Alexey sprang into action, stepping around Jane, and he held his gun at Vincent. The son of a bitch was on the floor, screaming.
“Bastard.”
He stared at Vincent. Dex had told him all he needed to know.
Vincent Morello had been cast out of the very mafia he had once controlled.
Killing him would not create war, it would stop one from starting.
He looked into Vincent eyes, and his only regret was that he couldn’t make this last longer.
He fired his gun, shooting Vincent in the head.
Putting his gun back into its holster, he went to Jane.
“I couldn’t believe you were asking me to spread my legs, but I did. That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Yes.” He cupped her face, and he wanted to kiss her, but first, he pulled her off the hook, then grabbed one of the knives from the floor, cut through the rope and held her in his arms.
“This dress is bad luck. I am not ever going to wear this dress again,” she said.
“That’s okay with me.” He pressed his face against her neck.
“You came for me,” she said.
He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “I’ll always come for you. You’re mine, Jane, always.”