Chapter 14 Alik
ALIK
Islam my fist into Rocco’s side, rolling my eyes in disgust when he starts to blubber. Spit and tears make a mess of his swollen face.
I wish I could claim credit for the split lip, missing teeth, and violently bruised eye, but that was Rem’s handiwork. The Cerreti underboss is getting antsy to kill this fucker, at least according to the note I found stapled to Rocco’s skull.
I’m running out of time to extract the information I still need. Lucky for me, I’ve got a riot of unspent energy coursing through me and Rocco Pagano hanging by the wrists like the piece of shit punching bag he is.
If ever there was a day to beat the information out of someone, today is it.
I land a fist in his gut. The bandages from my first visit are already soaked through with blood, each hit exacerbating previous damage.
I want intel out of him. Need it. But I also want him to suffer. Because of Rina. Because of Sera, too. The second I walked in here in the middle of the night, I knew the scope of my vengeance had expanded. My rage toward him amplified to dizzying levels.
He’s one of the men responsible for taking Rina from me. He’s also the monster who tormented his own flesh and blood, doing his damnedest to break one of the strongest women I’ve ever known.
The vision of Sera naked in my living room, touching herself, lives rent free in my head.
Has pushed out a million other thoughts that need to be there, consumed so much valuable real estate I can barely take a breath without seeing her fondle her nipple or slip her delicate fingers between her gorgeous fucking thighs.
Even now, in this vile place, the memory sends my blood rushing south dangerously fast, my mouth bone dry and my cock too fucking hard.
But the thing that makes me want to tear Rocco’s throat clean out of his body is what came after.
The memory of her muffled screams, the ones she hid behind her closed door.
They were loud enough to be picked up by the mics on the cameras outside her room. If they were the screams of someone enjoying a good old-fashioned orgasm, then I’m the fucking reincarnation of Rasputin.
I’d bet my life those were screams of anger, frustration. Deprivation. I can’t pretend I’m not partially to blame, but most of the credit belongs to this asshole.
“Please,” Rocco gasps, blood trickling down his ribcage. “Just put me out of my misery.”
That earns him a broken nose, cowardly fuck. He screams as red rushes over his mouth and down his neck. Specs of it flying in my direction as he uses what little breath he has to curse me.
My phone vibrates inside my jacket. I ignore Pagano’s pleas, wipe one hand clean, and grab it. I’m hours into this session and my knuckles are starting to swell, but the pain is barely noticeable as I read Dimitri’s message.
They’ve made it to the house. Sera is settled in her new room.
From this point on, there will be thousands of square feet between me and my frustratingly sexy captive.
She’ll have space to roam in safety, and I’ll be able to finish my work in Chicago without her wearing my self-control down to the bone.
I should never have kissed her. Never have touched her. Never have taken her home in the first place.
Never have gotten distracted from the reason I came to this city to begin with.
Rina.
Rocco’s breathing is gurgled. His eyes glazed over in pain. I pick up a nearby bucket and throw the icy water on him, jerking him back from the brink of unconsciousness.
“Vaffanculo! Fuck!”
“We’ve been dancing around this subject all night, Pagano. Tell me how to find Shkodra.”
“Like I said last time,” he whines, “you can’t find him. He finds you.”
“Not good enough.” I slam my fist into his side, just above his kidney. His body tightens in agony before he sags against his cuffs. “Think harder.”
“Th-there is one place,” Pagano pants. “A club he goes to sometimes.”
“A club? That’s too easy.”
I pull back for another hit; Rocco sways on his tip toes—the ones he has left—trying like hell to avoid impact. “Stop, stop. Fuck. I-it’s not that kind of club. Just give me a fucking minute to catch my breath and I’ll tell you.”
“Ten seconds and counting.”
Rocco lobs a wad of bloody spit at my feet, his body shaking as he stammers, “The club is off the books, underground, moving from city to city to meet the demands of certain clientele. It doesn’t have a name, doesn’t have a regular location.
But if you’re going to find the Albanian before the auction, that’s where he’ll be.
” Rocco closes his eyes, his face turning ashy. “Y-you need an invite to get in.”
“An invite, that’s it?” It still sounds too easy. “Tell me who to talk to and I’ll get one.”
Pagano laughs, like he’s enjoying his own private joke. “The invite isn’t a thing, Russian. It’s a who.”
“Explain.”
Rocco’s laugh turns to coughs, wet and sickly sounding.
This fucker is going to need more medical attention if he’s going to survive until Rem’s next visit.
“The rule of the club. If you’re connected enough, powerful enough that the organizers know you’re in town and interested in their products, they’ll deliver the invitation to you.
An escort who’ll get you in the front door.
Without them, you’ll never find it, never get in. ”
“And Shkodra will be there?”
“Who the fuck knows,” Rocco spits. “But it’s your only chance to find him before the next auction. The only place you’ll be able to talk to the sick fuck about your Rina.”
I study the man dangling in front of me. He’s a collection of burnt skin, mangled muscles, broken bones, but he’s still alive. Far longer than I would’ve guessed, even with the medical treatment we’ve given him. Like he’s fighting tooth and nail for his survival.
Like he thinks he might get out of this alive.
“A club with no fixed location, no name, no way to get in without a personal escort sent by faceless pricks who hear rumors I’m interested in spending millions on a virgin. That’s the answer you’re giving me?”
“Fuck off, asshole. It’s the only answer I got. Now let me down before my arms rip out of my sockets.”
“So what if they do? It’s not like you’re going to need them much longer.”
Rocco bucks against his bindings. I ignore the mixture of curses and promises he throws at me, things he’ll do if only I let him go. Or kill him. Whatever I want, as long as I make the torture stop.
“Save your breath, Pagano. You’re going to stay strung up for as long as I need to corroborate your information. You better hope I have an invite within forty-eight hours, otherwise I’m going to take one of your legs. Then we’ll see just how hard hanging here can get.”
“Evil fucking bastard.” Rocco’s voice breaks, real fear shining through.
“Takes one to know one,” I say, grinning at him. “But who knows? Maybe I’ll find the Albanian just like you said. Then once I’m done with him, I’ll come back here and slit your throat. You’ll be dead in seconds. Nice and easy.”
I won’t. Whether I’m the one to kill Rocco, or Rem, the man is going to die slowly, and very, very painfully.
A reality he’s working like hell to avoid as he starts blabbering.
“Everything I said is true. About the club. About Shkodra. He’s gotta be the one who bought Rina.
You get to the club, you’ll find him. He’s a nasty fucker.
Cut him into tiny bits for all I care. But he can tell you where your girl went after the auction. He knows. Vaffanculo, he has to know.”
I give Rocco a patronizing pat on the cheek. “Better hope he does, mudak.”
Eyes bloodshot and wild, Rocco keeps going, “He’s in Chicago.
He here. Now. He has to be. He wants more like her, like Rina.
” Rocco coughs, choking on the blood still running down his face and into his mouth.
“I-I’ve…cazzo!—I had a girl lined up for him.
Before those fucking Cerretis rampaged my house, I had a girl ready and waiting.
Virgin. Feisty. So insignificant no one will ever miss her.
Just like he likes them. Serafina is an ugly bitch, but the Albanian doesn’t care about that.
He just wants to fuck them and break them, and Sera was gonna be so perfect. ”
Murderous rage blurs my vision. Some primal part of me screams to kill him now. To slice him open from neck to nuts. Whatever he’s saying is lost to the roar in my head until I’m able to pull myself back and focus.
I grab his ear, yank until he’s forced to meet my stare. “Repeat what you just said.”
His breath is rotten when he answers, “Shkodra has a specific type. He collects them. Can’t get enough of them. H-h-he wants more. And I had one for him, plucked and primed, just waiting to be sold. Fuck, the things he’s going to do if di Salvo doesn’t get her to that auction.”
Di Salvo. I heard the name during my time in Pagano’s clan. It was always accompanied by a look of hatred, or fear, or both.
Rocco is rambling, sounding crazier by the second.
“—it would serve di Salvo right, disappearing when he did. He stopped answering all my fucking phone calls. Just vanished—poof. And he thinks he can just walk back into this city and take credit for the girl and make everything right with the world? Segaiolo. I almost hope she died in that cell, so the Albanian can give that fucker di Salvo what he deserves.”
I pull harder on his ear, threatening to rip it off his skull as I bring him back to the plot. I don’t want to hear him say her name again, but I need confirmation. “Who was the girl?”
Rocco is in so much pain it takes all his effort to say, “My ugly ass niece, Serafina. No blonde hair, no blue eyes, no tits at all, but she’s a virgin.
If you’d seen her, you’d know why. A body more boy than girl.
But she’ll be fucking tight and she’s got more fight in her than half of our family combined.
And she’s mafia by blood. Pure fucking mafioso blood.
Shkodra will pay through the nose for her.
Will get off just by breaking her, sadistic fuck.
Looks can be bought, changed, enhanced. But bloodlines—those fucking things are untouchable.
Rare. And Shkodra loves rare. Nothing gets him harder than breaking a mafia princess. ”
I don’t realize I have my knife against his head until I see blood trailing down the side of his neck. “You were going to sell your own flesh and blood to that monster?”
“Anyone would for the amount he’s willing to pay. Don’t get sanctimonious on me, Russian. Even you’d be tempted to sell your Rina—”
I slice up in one quick motion, cutting Rocco’s ear clean off. His words morph into screams, his body convulsing as it loses even more blood.
I fling his severed ear in his face, leaving him to the tender care of one of Cosenza’s brutes as I try to make sense of everything he’s said.
There’s no avoiding it now: My mission is about Rina and Sera. Avenging one and protecting the other. Which is a real mind fuck because I don’t want to think about Sera. I want her safely locked away, out of sight, out of mind, out of my fantasies and filthy dreams.
Christ, a virgin! With a praise kink.
That knowledge might as well be a time bomb welded to my ribs. Just waiting to go off, to blow my restraint sky high. To obliterate all pretense of civility and send me—the base, primal, primitive me—after the girl I definitely can’t have but am becoming increasingly desperate to claim.
Mnye pizdets!
Outside, the cold Chicago air hits my face, and I take a deep breath, clawing back my sanity. I grip, tooth and nail, to the sliver of mental clarity I have left. I’m going to find Shkodra, destroy him and everyone working for him, and leave Chicago.
I’m not getting involved with Sera. I can’t want her, not even a little.
Thank God I’ve moved us to an estate so big we’ll never have to see each other.