14. Believe
Believe
Isnapped the black plastic gloves over my hands and pressed play on my playlist. The delightful sound of Cher’s distinctive voice filled the underground bunker. I fucking loved blaring her in this place because the acoustics were phenomenal.
My head bobbed, and my hips swayed to the beat. The music was flowing through me. This was my happy place. Cher, my sanctuary, and a tied-up, half-conscious stronzo.
I closed my eyes and belted out the first chorus of Believe, ignoring his muffled sounds from beneath the rag and black hood covering his head. With precision, I arranged all my favourite torture toys in a line on the table, giving each one a wipe and inspection as I danced and sang along.
I two-stepped over to the huge bulk of muscle, who was currently heaving with his covered head hanging low to his chest.
“Do you believe in life after love?” I bellowed along with Cher, my voice echoing off the cement walls.
I whipped the hood off and flung it across the room, grinning down at the dickhead. He blinked rapidly, trying to get his bearings before his gaze landed on me.
“Cher’s the motherfucking queen. My mamma has always been obsessed with her, so I grew up listening to her greatest hits, and fuck me, when that voice hits that note.
” I paused, raising my knife in the air as Cher’s husk took the song to a whole new level.
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “There. Makes me all stab-happy.”
His eyes widened, darting around the abandoned space, searching for an exit. He wouldn’t find one. No one was coming to save him. We were all alone. Just him, me, and the Goddess of Pop.
I crouched in front of him, bouncing on the balls of my feet, and instructed my phone to turn down the music a little. I yanked the rag out of his mouth.
“What the fuck is—”
I plunged the knife straight into his shoulder. He threw his head back and roared until I pulled the blade out and gave the other the same treatment. I didn’t want to seem like I had favourites. Panting heavily, he glared up at me from beneath dark eyebrows.
“I’ll ask the questions, Damiano.” I grabbed a chair, spun it around, straddled it, swinging my blade that now dripped with his blood in a pattern on the floor. “Who do you work for?”
He exhaled slowly, lifting his chin to stare me directly in the eyes. “Mayor Piero Caruso hired me as his head of Security for his daughter. But you already know that, Buccini.”
I nodded because I did. I’d had to watch this piece of shit following my girl for over a week, staring at her ass, touching her back, smiling at her like he deserved her fucking politeness.
I clicked my neck to the side and let Cher’s voice take me back to my happy place. It was too soon to unleash my darkness.
“And what’s your main role?” I asked, sounding calmer than I felt. He stared at me, his stupid survival instincts trying to decide whether to be honest or deny. Neither would lead to a different outcome.
“To keep her safe. Mainly away from you.”
I smirked, tossing the knife in the air and catching it.
“To keep her safe?” I pointed the knife at his face, the sharp tip millimetres from his eyeball.
“Does Piero know about your past?” I asked, standing up from my chair and walking around his.
That dark gaze tracked my every move, and I could see his wrists squirming behind his back as he tried to break the cable ties.
Of course, the more he moved, the tighter they cut into his skin.
When he didn’t respond, I grabbed his hair from behind, yanking his head to the side and slowly slicing off his ear, relishing his screams. The fresh blood dripped down the side of his neck like wax running down a candle.
Hypnotising. He roared in agony, thrashing against the restraints until I released his hair, shoving his head forward.
“Hopefully, you can hear better now,” I said, walking away a few steps.
“Cazzo, you fucking shit! I don’t know what you’re talking abo—”
I spun around, flinging my knife through the air so it would land in his thigh because patience with assholes had never been my strength.
He screeched, letting out a piercing cry and ruining Cher’s last note in the song before it started again.
Tapping my foot to the beat, I chose my next weapon, shoving the spiked knuckle duster onto my fingers.
“Okay,” he panted. “No. No, he doesn’t.”
“Didn’t think so,” I sighed, stepping closer to him and rolling my shoulders. “Piero seems to actually care about his daughter, so making an ex-mafia soldier her main bodyguard is an odd choice. Especially a fucking soldato sporco.”
He tilted his head back, briefly closing his eyes, and chuckled. “So that’s what this is about? Just because I once worked for the Leones before your family massacred them? That war was over twenty years ago. You’d have been just a ?kid. Why do you give a shit who I was?”
I smirked with dark malice because I could barely keep the rage inside me a second longer.
I’d been holding back, but even Cher wasn’t keeping me calm anymore.
I grabbed the back of the chair and tossed it across the room, sending it crashing against the cement wall.
His eyes widened as I tightened my fists around the metal spikes in my palms.
“No, you’re right. I don’t give a shit about that. What I do give a shit about is what you were planning to do to my future wife.”
He didn’t even flinch, but he didn’t need to.
I could see all the evil intentions lurking in his eyes.
If I hadn’t found the hidden camera in her flat earlier today, I wouldn’t have known what a fucking sleazy pervert her bodyguard was.
I wouldn’t have run a more thorough background check on him to discover he had once worked for the rival Leone family as their soldato sporco.
The man known in the mafia as their dirty soldier, used to commit the worst and most violent crimes against women—kidnapping, torture, assault, rape.
After my men followed him from Aria’s place earlier and brought him here for me, I went to his home and found everything I needed to know about the sick bastard.
He had been watching Aria in her flat. He had pictures of her in her underwear and naked.
Sleeping in her bed. His laptop was full of violent, abusive porn from the black market.
Brutal, horrific videos of crimes against women.
He’d done a good job of hiding in plain sight in my fucking city.
He changed his last name and his past, but I didn’t believe for one minute he’d changed his fucking ways.
Men like him didn’t change. It was in their blood.
They’re damn monsters. He was clearly biding his time with Aria, but the intention was there.
At some point, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself. He’d have hurt her.
“Future wife?” He actually had the balls to ?mock me.
My nostrils flared as I stepped nearer, leaning into his face while my eyes turned black with the violence I promised to unleash. “Si. My. Future. Wife.”
My fist struck him head-on, breaking his nose with one clean blow.
But it didn’t stop there. The delicious sound of skin tearing beneath the metal spikes and his mumbles of pain were almost better than the music in the background.
At some point, the force of my fists had knocked the chair backward, taking his body with it, but that just spurred me on.
I hammered blow after blow until even his own mother wouldn’t recognise his face.
When I realised he was unconscious, I stopped.
It was no fun when they weren’t awake to feel it.
I sat back on his stomach with his blood splattered across my bare chest and hands.
I hadn’t even broken a sweat, and the asshole had already tapped out. Pussy.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Sani,” Max’s voice echoed around the bunker as he emerged down the steps with two of my men trailing behind him. I stood up, glaring down at Damiano, giving him a little nudge with my boot. I wanted him to wake up so I could go again.
“When I heard Cher playing, I knew I’d be walking into something, but I thought he might still be breathing at least.”
“He’s still breathing,” I groaned, walking over to the table and swapping the knuckle dusters for some rope. “But not for much longer.”
“Who is that?” Max asked, bending over Damiano to identify him beneath the mangled skin and blood.
“Damiano Vreno. He used to be a dirty soldier for the Leones,” I answered, hooking the rope through one clip on the ceiling. I started twisting the end into a loop. “He’s into some messed-up shit.”
“Men are scumbags.”
“Don’t group us with the likes of him. I’m a fucking cupcake in comparison,” I said, hooking the noose over Damiano’s head. “Mayor stronzo hired him as Aria’s main bodyguard.”
Max stood up with his hands on his hips and fury in his eyes. “Did he hurt her?”
“You think I’d let him? I’m about to make sure he never does.”
Just as Damiano came back around to join us, I tightened the rope around his throat.
He groaned, mumbling something incoherent while I walked over to the other end of the rope and started heaving him off the ground.
My biceps burned, every muscle in my body working in unison to haul the heavy bastard into the air by his throat as he panicked and choked.
His body was still tied to the chair, adding extra weight, but the adrenaline to make this man suffer didn’t let me down.
“Why would Piero hire him?” Max asked as I held the rope steady for a few seconds and then released it so Damiano’s body crashed back to the floor. The chair splintered beneath him, and he gasped, his throat raw.
“I’m hoping for Aria’s sake that Piero had no idea. It took Nero nearly a week to dig deep enough to uncover his past. He covered himself up well, but not well enough.”