Chapter 5 Allegra
ALLEGRA
Idon’t know how long I’ve been down here.
After that car drove off, another one followed, but I only heard soldiers.
It’s been quiet for a while, and I’ve been nodding off.
I’m leaning against the far wall clutching the neck of the bottle in my hand, ready.
Ready for what, though? Rami? Because it won’t be Malek who comes to get me. He’ll send soldiers.
He wants me to admit it was my father who sanctioned our kidnapping. Who had my mother killed. Who ordered them to chop off my finger.
He wants me to say the words.
It was. I know. I know what I heard. My father losing his shit when she died.
My father not upset that she’d been killed, that he was too late.
No. He was angry that she’d died. That they’d killed her before he wanted her dead.
He ordered them to burn down the house with all those dead soldiers inside it.
The Maestro inside it. With my mother’s body inside it.
I never got to see him, but I did see her. And the dead soldiers. I wish I hadn’t.
Why does he want me to admit it? To say it out loud? Why does it matter so much?
Something he said is still niggling at me.
And it was so easy. Just a whisper here, a whisper there.
I must doze again because my eyes snap open when the light beyond my door goes on.
It’s followed by the key sliding into the lock, then metal scraping against the floor.
I blink, rub my eyes, looking up to find a soldier I don’t recognize outside my door, another standing behind him.
I scramble to shove the broken bottle into the corner.
Nothing to see here. Just debris. Not a weapon.
I won’t be able to take them both. One soldier if I catch him by surprise maybe.
If I nick the right artery. But not two.
And besides, I realize I don’t want to run.
I want to find out what he knows. I want to find out how he was involved.
I want to know what he did.
And it was so easy. Just a whisper here, a whisper there.
“Don’t touch me,” I say when the soldier reaches for me.
“Then move.” The second one makes a sweeping gesture at the door and the instant I pass him, he shoves me so hard, I fall, just managing to catch myself before my face crashes against the stone stairs.
My whole body feels bruised and for the first time, I look down at myself and see that it’s not in my head.
I am bruised and cut all over, my arms black and blue, my dress torn and filthy.
Once I’m upstairs, the smell is the first thing I register, and I can’t decide the feeling that accompanies it. I stop, closing my eyes.
“Move,” a soldier says, shoving me again.
“Fuck you.” I tell him, but I keep moving.
It’s my father’s cigars. He loved them. I have always hated the smell of them. So did my mother. But in some strange way, they offered a sense of security. A line that couldn’t be crossed.
An illusion.
My own father crossed that line. I touch the back of my neck, feel those spots Cassian found. A prelude to what would come, punishing me to punish my mother. Michael picked up the habit.
Malek knew. He witnessed it multiple times and even tried to stop Michael once, but I now think it was an act. I think he enjoyed watching me suffer. Watching our family come apart.
I lick my chapped lips as I climb the stairs.
At least he’s not playing the piano anymore.
At least there’s that. When I reach what was once the Maestro’s living room, I find Malek looking out of the window at the back.
Well, there’s not glass, that’s long gone, so he’s looking out of a hole in the back of the house.
“Houses like this don’t burn down so easily.
” He turns to face me, puffs on the cigar before crossing the room to tap off ashes in the ashtray on top of the piano.
I wonder why he bothers. The whole house is ash.
A little more won’t make a difference. “Are you going to behave yourself or do you need to be handcuffed?” he asks, gesturing to the chair he’d sat on last time except that now a set of handcuffs is hanging off the back.
Instead of answering him because I don’t trust myself to speak, I move toward that chair. When the soldier breathing down my neck grabs my arm, I tug it free and sit, folding my arms across my lap.
My gaze moves to the cigar. He notices.
I clear my throat. “Where are Amal and Daniel?” I ask, because when Cassian finds out what’s happened to me, he’ll go to the house. He’ll take them. More collateral. But that’s assuming he’d know it was Malek.
And also assuming he’d care that I’d been kidnapped at all.
“My children?” He sounds surprised.
“I know you’d use them as pawns if it served you.”
“Well, now you insult me,” he says, picking up the cigar, puffing before placing it in the ashtray once more. “But they’re fine. Visiting family.”
“What do you want with me? What am I doing here? Why am I alive?” It takes all I have to keep my expression neutral. To keep from letting him see just how afraid I am.
“All good questions.” He looks at the cigar. “Your father had an excellent assortment of these. He wasn’t very good at sharing, though.”
“Did you steal them from his office after you killed him?” I try to say it with a sneer, but my voice falters.
“I thought you said you’d behave.”
“I’m not clawing out your eyes. I’d say that’s behaving.”
He smiles a smile reserved for an unruly child and gestures with a nod to the soldier at my back. Before I can think, the bastard has a fistful of my hair and is tugging me painfully to my feet.
“Kneel,” Malek says.
“Fuck you,” I tell him.
The soldier who still has my hair twists and I feel the heat of tears at the corners of my eyes.
“I said kneel,” Malek repeats, but doesn’t wait for my fuck you. Instead, he gestures to the soldier who forces me down to my knees.
I struggle against him, instinct, scratching at the skin of his hand when I can’t pry him off, my scalp burning when he pulls that much tighter.
Malek crouches down in front of me as the soldier forces my gaze to the floor.
“I wouldn’t,” Malek says and before I can even get a fuck you out, fire sears the back of my neck, and I let out a sharp cry. I hear the burning of skin, get a faint whiff of it over the stench of the cigar. He presses harder, twisting the cigar into tender flesh.
“Fuck. You!” I manage as the soldier begins to drag me to my feet.
“I like you on your knees,” Malek says between puffs as he relights the cigar. “It’s humbling, isn’t it?” he asks me. “You know what is even more humbling?” He shifts his gaze from me to the soldier. “Strip her.”
“No! Stop! Stop!” I fight as Rami comes to stand before me. I guess he was in the room the whole time, but I didn’t see him. He grins, grips the dress with two meaty hands and rips it apart like it’s nothing. Like it’s made of paper.
If my father were here—fuck! He’s not here. And what would he do if he were? What? Not let any of these people hurt me? That’s a joke. Hell, he’d likely do the hurting himself.
The soldier at my back grips my arms and pulls them to my sides.
Rami finishes by shoving my underwear down and it’s somehow more humiliating to be standing with my panties around my ankles than it would be if I weren’t wearing any at all, but I don’t move and I don’t look at Rami as he looks me over, making a lewd gesture with his tongue before getting out of the way so Malek can see me like this.
My eyes fill with tears, but I raise my chin and force myself to look at Malek. To meet his eyes after he’s taken his fill of me.
“A little skinny for my liking,” he says. “What do you two think? She your type? Go on. Have a good look, Rami.” Malek gestures at me like I’m fucking dessert as he brings another match to his cigar.
Rami looks me over. “Not meaty enough, like you said, but I’m not picky.”
“No, I don’t imagine your type are,” Malek says with a curl of his lip that makes Rami’s eyes narrow hatefully.
Malek walks over to me, puffing on that cigar. When he’s standing a few inches from me, he makes a point of looking me over again.
“Did you fuck him?” he asks.
I don’t respond. I won’t.
“Did you fuck Cassian Trevino?”
I don’t know how to answer. I don’t want to answer.
He shakes his head. “What did I expect?” he asks more to himself than to me as he casually presses the cigar into my breast.
I grit my teeth against the pain, but I can’t help a whimper. I struggle, but can’t pull away, not with the soldier holding me in place.
“What the hell do you want from me?” I manage to ask when he walks away. “Just fucking kill me and get it over with!”
“Oh, Allegra, is that what you’ve been thinking?” he asks, all faux offended. “You must have been terrified.”
I don’t know why I feel a little bit of relief. I know it’s cowardice. And besides, if he doesn’t want me dead, surely whatever he has planned will be worse.
“Tell me what the fuck you want then.”
“Well, for starters, I want the same thing I wanted a few hours ago. Tell me. Tell me you knew your father was the butcher who ordered your kidnapping. Your mother’s kidnapping. Your mother’s brutal mutilation. Yours.”
“How are you different, Malek, tell me that?”
“Oh, I’m different. You see, Alaric Moretti stole. I don’t steal. I take what I’m due, but I don’t steal.”
“Is that what this is? Why you killed Michael? Why you took me? Are we your due? Are you going to kill me, too?”
He smiles, all teeth now, and gives a shake of his head, chuckling as if something I said is funny. “Oh, Allegra. I already told you that’s not the case. You’re far too valuable to be killed.”
“Then what do you want with me?”
He takes a deep breath in, then exhales. His gaze moves over me, but not in a leering way. He didn’t have me stripped for his pleasure. He did it to humiliate me.
“I want the family.”
“What?”
“Moretti family territory. I want it.”