FORTY-ONE
He wasn’t coming. Now I was sure something had happened to Vinnie.
My knee bounced restlessly as I sat trapped in silence that seemed too loud, watching Matt pace in front of a bookshelf. Sweat coated my palms as I observed him drag his fingers over the worn spines as if searching for calm in the texture.
‘It’s been too long,’ I growled, launching myself from the chair. An hour. An entire fucking hour.
He trailed me to the car, his jaw set, glowering at his phone the second he dropped into the seat beside me. I didn’t start the engine right away. A wrenching sense of foreboding had sunk its claws into my gut and refused to let go.
‘What?’ I snapped.
He looked at me quickly before turning back to the screen.
‘I turned Paula’s GPS on when we were in the kitchen.’
My grip on the steering wheel tightened. The thought that he’d done something that might upset her made my chest clench, but reason clawed its way through. Given everything, I should’ve done it myself.
‘And?’ I prompted when he said nothing for a while.
‘Could be a glitch in the app, but—’ he muttered, breath thin, thumbs hammering the screen. ‘She hasn’t moved from one spot in a while.’
Cold dread seeped into my chest. ‘She’s sleeping.’
He was already shaking his head before the words even left my mouth.
‘She went out. Look.’ He angled the phone towards me, showing a blinking red pin pulsing like a warning flare. I squinted at it while keeping half my focus on the road.
My heart climbed into my throat.
‘Where is that?’
‘Down the street from Zio’s place.’ He turned the screen off, then on again, thumb moving fast over the display as if he could force the pin to move.
With a litany of curses at this insufferable woman who couldn’t fucking stay put, I pulled out my own phone, fingers already scrolling – and froze.
One voicemail. Unread. Several missed calls.
From her.
I hadn’t heard a single ring.
‘Press that for me,’ I said, shoving it into Matt’s hand. He tapped it, and the car filled with the sound of her voice as I fumbled with the ignition.
As soon as she said the box, our heads whipped towards each other.
And I fucking floored it.
Tyres screamed as we peeled out, headlights carving through the dark, and the smell of burnt rubber followed us down the street.
We hit the first corner. Matt braced against the dash. The city blurred around us, streetlights cutting across the windscreen like a thousand warnings. My pulse threatened to give as the brakes shrieked outside Alessio’s gate.
And I already knew—
She was gone.
Our shoes struck the concrete stairs in sync.
We both halted sharply mid-step when we zeroed in on the small black box resting flush against the front door. Rectangular. A note with my name on it.
Untouched – or made to look that way.
Matt was already on the phone, his voice clipped as he barked into it, talking to his youngest brother. ‘Pull the feed. Street cams. Start with Zio’s area.’
I took a cautious step closer, crouching low. The air seemed heavier this close, as if the box was exhaling something dangerous.
I reached—
Matt’s hand clamped on my shoulder.
‘Let me look first,’ he said quietly, scanning the porch, the doorway, then the roofline above us as if he’d done it a thousand times before.
Right. The Marines.
Some of the tension bled from my spine, but not all.
He dropped into a squat beside me, posture low and steady, eyes darting over the box like he were reading a blueprint. ‘No awkward seams. No visible pressure points.’ His voice had gone flat – all business. ‘No antenna or lens. Doesn’t mean it’s clean.’
His fingers hovered just above it, stopping just shy of the lid.
‘If it’s rigged, it’ll trigger on tilt or lift.’
He stopped. Raised his head.
‘It’s already open,’ I murmured, spotting the magnetic flap that stood slightly to the side.
Urgency clawed at my bones. The longer we waited, the worse off Paula was. I needed to fucking find her. I needed to crush his windpipe – liberate her from the hell she lived in.
Matt’s gaze followed mine and he swore under his breath. ‘Birdie, goddamn it!’
A fresh wave of dread hit me, slithering down my neck like ice. She’d opened it without thinking about the consequences.
A flash of something caught in the corner of my eye, then. Something black and metallic in the rose bushes. I stretched, picked it up—
‘That’s her phone,’ Matt said, cursing as he snatched it and started flicking through it.
Frustrated, I grabbed the box off the floor and flipped the lid.
The thing inside had long since lost any semblance of warmth or healthy colour – a severed piece of flesh that no longer looked human. It was just a dull, waxy relic now.
I couldn’t remember a single thing about my father except for his knuckles. Those, I would recognise anywhere. If he’d cut off his whole damn hand, I would’ve identified it in an instant.
Aside from the ring still clenched around the stiff digit, nothing suggested it had ever belonged to Ezio.
I frowned. Rage bubbled up.
Was he in on this?
Suddenly, the fact that Vinnie was missing detonated at the base of my skull.
Jesus Christ…
‘What’s that?’ Matt drew me back from the spiral and I clocked a piece of paper tucked beneath the soft bed of the box.
The cheap, glossy paper clung to my sweaty palms as pulled it out and turned it over and over.
It was a promotional flier for some new business complex, boasting forty new office leases.
Bold letters announced the grand opening, and for some reason, my mind latched onto the address and the construction completion date – one year from now.
The front door yanked open. Alessio stood framed in the murky light, his sharp glare climbing from the box in my hands up the length of me – and then snapping to Matteo.
‘Paula?’ he asked, voice thick with his Italian lilt.
Matteo didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The hard look in his eyes said enough.
‘How did he get in?’ Alessio asked.
‘He didn’t. She went out,’ Matteo rumbled.
With a curse and a heave, Alessio turned towards the staircase, his voice slicing the quiet.
‘Gianna! Francesca!’
Footsteps thundered upstairs.
His daughter emerged first – still in jeans and black T-shirt she’d been wearing earlier, but her hair was pulled back now, eyes wide and sharp with worry.
Francesca came behind her, tightening the sash of a red silk kimono, bare feet slapping softly against the wooden stairs.
‘Pistole, coltelli, primo soccorso,’ Alessio barked – guns, knives, first aid.
They scattered like trained soldiers.
My mouth opened, then shut again.
‘They’re not coming with us, are they?’ I asked, but my voice came out low, hollow.
The box’s weight dragged at my hand as I glanced down at it briefly.
Alessio didn’t answer immediately. He looked at the flier in my hands, tone far too calm for the chaos tightening my chest.
‘If I were facing the devil,’ he said, ‘I’d want Gianna on my right, and Francesca on my left.’
The way he said it chilled me – not bravado, just preparation. Just fucking routine. This family didn’t panic – they mobilised.
Gianna returned first, carrying a heavy backpack in her hands. From it, she pulled—
A goddamn Desert Eagle – which definitely should not exist on this continent. Even its sheen screamed illegal.
She checked the clip like she’d done it more times than she could count, then met my eyes.
I would’ve been shocked, but I was way beyond that. Worry sat like glass in my throat.
And yet—
As I looked around, at this strange, brutal little army forming in a house filled with framed family photos—
One thing rang loud and clear through the horror: I wasn’t walking into this alone.
And that tiny spark of hope that I’d had a beef with so often in my past perked its head up.
But the beast in me – the one that still had its claws deep in Paula’s flesh – preferred privacy.
That was okay. I was going to maul him with or without the audience.
Cold.
It lived in the floor, in my skin, creeping up through my marrow.
Then the weight – not on me, but from me. My arms were suspended, sockets aching, something sharp pressing into the soft flesh of my wrists. A drip echoed somewhere, steady as a clock, each sound pulling me closer to waking.
My heels weren’t touching anything solid even if my toes were, just barely. Sliding and scraping – failing to find purchase.
And then—
Breath.
Hot. Slick where it dragged across my skin.
My mind struggled to surface. My thoughts were sluggish, as if clawing through syrup. A high-pitched whine whirred in my ears. The inside of my skull pulsed, and my stomach roiled with sickness.
It triggered memories – of when he used to drug me to get his way.
Something was at my neck.
The sensation was soft. Wet.
Revulsion hit a split second later – he was fucking licking me!
My entire body recoiled on instinct, but the chains above clanked tight and held. My wrists screamed.
‘Easy now.’ His voice.
No. No, no—
The haze in my vision warped into shape. Darkness, mostly. A ceiling of concrete ribs stretched overhead. Beams. Cables. An exposed bulb swung somewhere in the distance, casting shadows like broken teeth.
I was hanging. Naked except for my underwear. Arms pulled high above me. Ankles bound. One chain. Two. The floor beneath was bare, slick with damp and something that smelled like rust and rain.
‘You’ve always had such pretty skin,’ Travis murmured, voice thick with something familiar that cloyed in my stomach until I nearly hurled.
I felt his nose skim along my collarbone like a dog scenting blood.
My stomach lurched. A memory crashed through – drugs, pressure on my mouth, a strong smell like sweet plastic. Chloroform.
He’d done it before.
And what usually followed…
My God.
I couldn’t speak. My lips parted, but nothing except a shaky breath left them.
But my mind was waking faster now, rage churning beneath the nausea. I wasn’t as scared as I used to be – not even of the inevitable that came after he did things like this.
Cain had broken that fear in me, had reshaped it. He’d taught me how to wear the chains instead of cowering from them.
I looked up at where they met the wall – rusted bolts biting into the concrete, the metal links trembling each time I breathed.
Not like this. I couldn’t wear them like this.
When my gaze dropped, it collided with the manic blue of my ex-fiancé’s.
His smirk spread slow, like oil on water.
He looked more vicious than I remembered; skin leathered, stretched thin from too much sun.
The symbols scrawled across his face in tiny, uneven scripts, turning his skin into a map of obsession.
‘Hello, wife,’ he purred.
‘I’m not your fucking wife,’ I hissed, the words snapping out before I could stop them. A reflex. The old me, however – the conditioned me – recoiled somewhere deep down, waiting for the price that always accompanied disrespect: slap, punch, kick…
His grin faltered. Something darker came over him.
‘I was wondering if I’d ever see you again,’ he murmured, tilting close enough that I caught the rancid cocktail of tobacco and decay in his breath. ‘But thankfully, you have a knack for making enemies wherever you go.’
I frowned at that, unsure what that meant. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘Oh?’ His tattooed brows wrinkled like cracked paint, and then – he snapped his head forward.
The impact burst white behind my eyes when his forehead slammed into my mouth with a dull, meaty crack. Pain tore through my lip, hot, metallic blood filled my mouth.
‘You were always hard to school,’ he said, smiling through my silence. ‘Luckily, I enjoy disciplining you.’
‘What the fuck do you want, Travis?’ I spat, spraying flecks of crimson across his cheek.
He didn’t even blink. He liked it. Sick bastard.
He glanced sideways and I followed his gaze.
And as each of the items on the table tucked into a dark room came into view…
Syringes, knives, ice-pick-looking things… I don’t know what else was on there—
I shuddered.
‘I didn’t think I’d ever get to talk to you about what you did.’ His voice turned conversational. ‘The ground swallowed you after you put me in prison.’
‘You put yourself there,’ I croaked, my gaze still stuck on the arsenal on that goddamn surface.
His snarl came before the roar as he lunged forward. ‘You—’
He fisted a handful of my hair, jerking my head back so hard my neck screamed. His face hovered inches from mine, eyes bulging, veins rising at his temples. ‘—you put me there, you fucking bitch!’
I whimpered, more out of instinct than fear, biting back the urge to scream – because I knew he fed on it.
‘Sure,’ I managed through the pain, blood catching in my teeth as I smiled through it. ‘I was the one dealing with shady arsehole and beating women.’
His laugh scraped the air with all the ugliness it carried. Then his fingers loosened, hair slipping from his grasp strand by strand until he let go completely.
With horrifying realisation, I watched him reaching for his belt. Undoing it.
The sound of the buckle sliding free fractured the silence.
I forgot how to breathe. My eyes stayed open, fixed on his hands, pleading inwardly that he wasn’t about to do what my mind had conjured.
The belt whined through the air before the thought could even end.
Crack!
Fire lanced across my naked stomach, the sound rattling all the way in my skull.
My lungs spasmed, breath coming out wet. I bit my tongue until I tasted iron, pressing the scream into my teeth. I wouldn’t give him that pleasure.
‘Ohh,’ he hummed, voice thick with amusement. ‘Did you finally learn to like this, whore?’
The next strike landed lower, the belt’s edge kissing my hipbone. I jerked against the restraints, chains rattling as they bit into skin. My bra and panties felt suddenly bruising. My entire body flinched but I shut my eyes tight – I wouldn’t give him what he craved.
Another lash. Another lick of flame.
I shifted my thoughts elsewhere – away from this room, this filth, this body. I’d learnt how. Cain had taught me that. How to turn pain into silence. How to breathe through it until it bent to will instead of fear.
When the next blow came, the buckle cutting into me, I barely moved. Blood ran warmly down my ribs, my thighs.
And I prayed that by the time he was finished, my body would surrender to the dark. That I’d pass out before I screamed or cried.
Because crying was for Cain.
And only Cain.