Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
ROISIN
I didn’t expect to sleep, but I guess fear eventually gave way to exhaustion.
Dominic stayed… at least until I was asleep, but there’s no sign of him now. Although I guess it’s possible he’s on the other side of the locked door I find myself behind.
I feel a sliver of disappointment. I have no idea why I expected it to be unlocked. The bedroom I’m now in is small and windowless, so I’ve no idea what the time is. But the suite I was brought to last night was much bigger, with a lounge and a small, but perfectly formed kitchen nook complete with a coffee maker. I could murder for a cup of coffee right now. Instead, the locked door to this small, but nevertheless comfortable bedroom is a stark reminder that I’m a prisoner here. I can only guess Dominic moved me after I fell asleep.
At least there’s an attached shower room, complete with towels, so I decide to use it quickly while nobody is about. A shower and a glass of water make me feel almost human again, but the sight of the overnight bag I packed to go to Emylyah’s brings tears to my eyes for some reason. I don’t know why.
Cleaning my teeth and dressing in fresh, clean clothes has me about as ready for this new day and whatever it might bring as I’m likely to get.
My stomach grumbles, so when there’s a rattle in the lock, the hope rises that someone’s brought me food.
It’s a hope that’s dashed as soon as the door swings open and the Viper comes sauntering into the room. Behind him, I get a quick glimpse of the suite I was in yesterday, so I’m guessing this is a ‘secret’ room off of it, but thoughts of that are obliterated by the leering expression on the Viper’s face as he looks me over and licks his lips. It makes me glad I haven’t eaten, as a wave of nausea crashes through me like a freight train.
“Well, well, well…” Vito Rossi says as he walks around me like I’m some kind of sideshow entertainment. I guess to him, I probably am. “You scrub up pretty well, sweetheart. Just in time for me to dirty you all up again.”
He draws one pudgy finger up my bare arm, and goosebumps erupt on my skin — and not the good kind.
“The other bitch screamed good as I fucked her while one of my men burned patterns into her tits with a cigar,” he tells me with a lewd laugh. “She was a right wildcat. Tell me, Principessa, are you going to be the same?”
Bile rises in my throat as I notice the hardening wedge in his pants.
Oh god! My heart races as I take an involuntary step back, bumping into the wall behind me. There's nowhere to run. Vito's eyes gleam with cruel anticipation as he closes in.
"Please," I whisper, hating how weak and frightened I sound. "Don't do this."
He laughs, a harsh bark that makes me flinch. "Begging already? We haven't even started the fun yet, sweetheart."
His meaty hand reaches for me, and I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for his touch. But thankfully, there's a welcome interruption at the door.
"Boss!" a voice calls urgently. "We've got a situation. You're needed downstairs right away."
Vito hums in the back of his throat, and I feel like I’m nothing more than a bug he’s playing with. A pretty butterfly he can’t wait to pull the wings off of. "I’ll return soon, Principessa," he says, his voice filled with promise. “My nephew may think his word will keep you safe, but believe me, it won’t. I'll be back to finish what we started."
He walks out, slamming the door behind him and I slide down the wall, trembling, as tears of relief and terror stream down my face. I don’t know if that was just to scare me, or if I've been granted a temporary reprieve, but if it’s the latter, for how long? And what fresh hell awaits me when Vito returns?
I wrap my arms around my middle and curl into myself, trying to steady my ragged breathing. My mind races, desperately seeking a way out of this nightmare. But the walls feel like they're closing in, trapping me with no escape.
Suddenly, I hear raised voices and what sounds like a scuffle outside the door. My heart leaps into my throat. Is Vito back already?
The door bursts open and Dominic strides in, his face a mask of cold fury. His eyes lock onto mine and some of the tension leaves his shoulders.
“Are you alright?" he demands, crossing the room in two long strides. "Did he touch you?"
I shake my head mutely, still too shaken to speak, but Dominic's jaw clenches as he takes in my trembling form.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll warn Mika. It won’t happen again.”
I want to remind Dominic that Vito outranks him. Short of incapacitating someone who is not only his superior, but who sits at the right hand of the Don himself, there’s really nothing Dominic can do to protect me. And that kind of thing never happens in the Mafia without the severest of consequences. Whatever Dominic says, it’s painfully clear the Viper isn’t dancing to Mika Rossi’s tune. While I appreciate Dominic’s attempts at protection, I’m not stupid enough to believe that he’ll actually put his life on the line for me.
I nod weakly, not trusting my voice and not having the energy to argue with him. Dominic's eyes soften slightly as he reaches out, hesitating before gently touching my shoulder.
"Come on," he says, his voice low. "Let's get you out of here for a bit."
I look at him in surprise. "But... I thought I wasn't allowed to leave."
Dominic's mouth twists. "You're not. But at least while I’m present, you can stay in the main suite with windows and fresh air, drinks and snacks on tap, and the television to occupy yourself. It’s not much, but it’s better than staring at these four walls."
He helps me to my feet, steadying me when I sway slightly.
Dominic ushers me into a sunlit room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a lush garden which I hadn’t seen yesterday, when I was brought here in the dead of night.
"Better?" he asks, gesturing for me to sit before he fetches me a hot, sweet coffee which I all but inhale.
“Do you think you could eat? I can organize some brunch for you if you like?”
A glance at my surroundings reveals a wall clock showing the time as 11:23 am. And as much as I didn’t think I’d be able to eat, my stomach takes that moment to grumble loudly.
“I guess something light might be okay,” I murmur, my cheeks heating slightly.
“How about scrambled eggs on toast topped with ham and spring onions?”
“Actually, that sounds perfect,” I agree, my appetite returning just a little. Either way, I know I need to keep my strength up. Who knows when I’ll get another meal.
What I don’t expect is for Dominic to get up, make his way to the kitchen nook, and start assembling ingredients.
“You’re cooking?” I ask, nonplussed.
He throws me a look that says he’s humoring me. “Believe it or not, I am house trained, and I got the fridge stocked last night,” he replies with a chuckle as he expertly cracks eggs into a bowl with one hand, while whisking with the other.
“Can I help?” I ask, even though my own cooking skills leave a lot to be desired. But hey, I can shred ham and snip spring onions with a pair of scissors like the best of them. I can even make toast.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re sitting at a two-person dining table in the bay window, and I’m surprised when Dominic fixes a plate for himself as well and joins me.
“So, about earlier,” he begins once we’ve finished. I tense at the reminder, but I also appreciate that he didn’t bring it up until after we finished eating.
“Nothing happened. Not really,” I reassure him, unable to look him in the eye.
“Nothing happened because I invented a reason for him to be called away,” Dominic states bluntly. “Just like the Viper invented a reason for me to be called away, so I wasn’t with you.”
If he’s trying to make me feel better, it’s not working.
My eyes widen as I process Dominic's words. "You… what? But won't he be angry when he finds out?"
Dominic's jaw tightens. "Let me worry about that. The important thing is keeping you safe."
I shake my head, anxiety churning in my stomach. "But why? Why risk so much for me? I'm nobody to you."
He's quiet for a long moment, his dark eyes studying me intently. "You're not nobody," he finally says, his voice low. "And I made a promise to protect you."
"I don’t understand what’s going on here," I tell him, bewildered.
Dominic looks away, his expression unreadable. "It’s complicated.”
Yeah right!
“Just know that there are those of us who want to avoid a war with the other factions. And that means keeping you out of harm's way until we can get you out of here.”
“Is that even possible?” I ask pointedly.
Dominic sighs, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not a foregone conclusion, you’re right. But there are... disagreements within the organization about how things should be run. Vito represents the old guard — brutal, ruthless. But there are those of us who see a different path forward."
“I have to ask, though…" He trails off, and for a man who's always appeared so formidable and together, seems remarkably uneasy.
But I know what he wants to find out. The question I have to ask myself is whether or not I’m compromising my own position by telling him the answer. I mull that over in my mind while I wait to see what he says.
Finally, he clenches his jaw and steels himself. “Vito’s fiancée, Maricela Escobar. Do you know anything about her?”
I look away, unable to meet his gaze the second he says her name. And from the way his eyes narrow and he growls deep in his throat, I know I’ve given myself away, so Dominic already has his answer… in which case, I may as well come clean, and back it up with the reasoning.
“I know she’s a damn sight better off under the care of my brothers than she ever was in this place,” I all but spit at him, lifting my chin in defiance.
To my surprise, instead of the burst of anger I expect, Dominic, his elbows resting on the table between us, drops his head into his hands, then rubs them over his face. “Sadly, that doesn’t surprise me,” he concedes. And right there, the tension that had me wound tight ebbs away.
“Of course, to Vito, that simply justifies your abduction and means we’ll have a more difficult time finding reasonable grounds for your release. For him, this is just tit for tat.”
It might not be my most sensible move, but after the things the Viper said to me about Orla before Dominic charged to my rescue, his words fire my temper. “Really? Tit for tat?” I shout, exploding out of my seat and toppling it in the process.
“Tit for tat would be if my brothers raped, tortured, and murdered Maricela, and then hung her on your gates so that a tiny tattoo was the only way she could be identified because the rest of her body was so bloodied and bruised, she was unrecognizable. But you know what? They’re not doing that. They’ve treated her like a guest. She’s actually looking healthier than when she arrived. Her bruises have faded and she’s eating properly. Sucks to know the abductors you’re so angry with are treating her better than she was being treated here,” I repeat the same words I told my brothers as I power-pace across the floor in an attempt to quell the anger raging through me.
For a hard-boiled Mafia dude, Dominic’s eyes widen in surprise, and he looks flummoxed by my response, but I’m not finished with him. “So no, I am not ‘tit for tat’.” I whirl on him and words drip venomously off my tongue, complete with finger quotes. “I’m the second freaking sortie.”
“Jesus, woman, do you have any sense of self-preservation at all?” he asks, effectively taking the wind out of my sails when he doesn’t retaliate the way I expect, leaving me off balance. “Do you have any idea where going off like that to the wrong person is going to get you?”
My mouth drops open, and I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Seriously? That’s his response?
Asshole! How did I ever get the idea he was one of the good guys? Rather than making me more circumspect, it just enflames me all the more. “I’m pretty certain I could be as quiet as a church mouse and the perfect little prisoner, and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference how I get treated by Vito Rossi,” I spit. “Do you know what he said to me before you came in?”
I don’t give him a chance to respond. “He told me, and I quote, ‘The other bitch screamed good as I fucked her while one of my men burned patterns into her tits with a cigar.’ He told me how she was a real wildcat and asked if I was going to be the same, and in all that time I never said a word to him. So I’m pretty sure he doesn’t need any provocation.”
Dominic opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again and clenches his jaw. “You told me you were okay,” he grates.
Spinning around, I throw my hands up in the air. Are all men naturally this dense? “I am okay. Nothing happened!”
Technically — though I keep that to myself.
“But you’re missing the point here…”
“No. I’m not.” The words are harsh and rigid, like every muscle in the man’s body, and it’s then I realize his hands are clenched so tight on the tabletop that his knuckles have turned white. “Now explain yourself. Tell me who this was done to,” he demands.
Fuck. I don’t like talking about Orla. We may not have been friends, and I may have been disdainful of nearly everything she stood for, but thinking about what happened to her, making any attempt to put it into words, leaves me sick to the stomach. No one, not even the Viper himself, deserves to have their life ended like she did.
Well, I might make an exception for Vito Rossi. The man deserves a taste of his own medicine. But then that would make me just as bad as him, so I banish the thought from my mind. It’s not like I’d ever act on it.
Probably.
Instead, I give Dominic some generalities. “Her name was Orla. She was a thirty-four-year-old Irish woman with kin amongst our soldiers. Prior to her death, she and Ciaran were…”
Shagging? Screwing like monkeys? Fucking? Satisfying an itch?
I’m not sure what to say. It’s not like they were a couple, even though it was her association with my brother that got her targeted.
Fortunately, Dominic picks up on what I can’t find the right words for. Maybe that’s a man thing, too.
What am I thinking? Of course it is.
“So, what happened to her?”
I suck in a breath and walk back to the table on shaking legs, righting my chair so I can sit down again. “Everything I just said and worse,” I tell him, hoping he won’t make me repeat it. “I want to vomit just thinking about it.”
“And how do you know Vito was the cause of all this, and not some other enemy?”
“What, you mean aside from the fact that he just admitted it to me?”
Dominic just looks at me coolly. “Vito simply said ‘the other bitch’, how do you know he’s referring to this Orla woman?”
I look him in the eye as I recite what I know to be true. “Because she was found with her lips taped closed and a baby viper stuffed in her mouth.”
A string of curses litters the air at this piece of news, and Dominic’s chair scrapes across the floor as he pushes it back and gets up, his expression closed off and in no way inviting any questions.
Instead, he grabs me by the arm, pushes me back inside the windowless bedroom, and stalks away without a word, and I’m left wondering if I’ve done the right thing by telling him anything.