Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
VAL
I didn’t know where my kidnapper had taken me.
When I woke, I couldn’t see through the darkness, and there wasn't much room to move. It took me a minute to realize he’d put me in a confined space on scratchy carpet.
The small space moved, and I bounced along with it.
Oh my god. He’d locked me in the goddamn trunk of a car.
My head throbbed. Tears stung the backs of my eyelids, and a lump grew larger and larger in my throat.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. Vomit. But I didn’t.
No, instead I sucked in the musty air through my nose and exhaled from my mouth, repeating until my nausea and most of the panic subsided. I couldn’t let anxiety take me down while my life was in danger.
I had to conserve my energy. To clear my head and focus.
When an opportunity to strike out against my attacker presented itself, I needed to be ready. I couldn’t be if I were a panicking, blubbering mess.
The asshole who took me hadn’t tied up my wrists or my ankles or bothered to gag me. He had either underestimated me or was in an incredibly big hurry. Either way, it worked to my advantage if I played my cards right.
If he’d had to rush, maybe someone else came along and saw him, or maybe he realized Stefano wouldn’t waste any time coming after me and Enzo.
My baby.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart breaking again. I wiped at the tears slipping down my cheek.
Stefano found Enzo… I had to believe that.
I kept my eyes shut and listened, tuning in to the vehicle’s movements and sounds. Smooth rolling tires over asphalt. A quiet engine. A large, rectangular trunk. No hint of a new car smell. An occasional squeaky brake pad when the car stopped at traffic lights.
An older model sedan then.
I shivered from the cold.
How long had I been unconscious?
I remembered the banging downstairs in the café. The dark bathroom. Doors breaking into pieces. Hiding Enzo inside my bedroom wardrobe. The monster stepping into the light.
Donnie Luka.
Enzo’s social studies teacher.
But he’d looked a little different. He seemed bigger. Meaner. His face red with exertion, and his once passably charming smile flashing a cruel grin.
He had carried a crowbar, a hand on either end, holding it diagonally across his body. What kind of man came at a woman with a crowbar?
A weak man.
A fucking weasel.
I remembered throwing a pillow and trying my best to dodge around him to get to the other side of the room. He’d blocked my way so easily, so I climbed over the mattress and pretended to shove the bedside table at him. But really, I’d pushed it against the wardrobe with a swift kick to keep the wardrobe doors shut.
To lock Enzo inside.
If my son had recognized his teacher's voice, he might have come out. He might not have understood Donnie Luka only ever pretended to care about him.
Enzo had never truly liked the man as a person, but I thought he probably trusted him as his teacher. I couldn’t risk letting that fucking monster manipulate Enzo’s trust.
I had thrown the lamp from the overturned bedside table at Luka, and he ducked, so it missed his head. Then he backhanded me using his left hand and smashed his crowbar onto the side of my head with his right.
Gently, I probed the area behind my ear where he’d hit me and winced.
“Ow. Fuck,” I whispered.
Thick, warm blood coated my fingertips. Not enough to alarm me. The huge lump worried me more. A lot more.
By some miracle, the dizziness I experienced was minimal, and I could control the nausea with focused breathing. I couldn’t say if my vision had been affected, not while inside my pitch-dark prison. And I hoped I didn’t have a concussion.
Time would tell.
I needed a clear mind if I wanted to make it out of this alive, so I practiced more deep, intentional breathing.
A few sudden bumps bounced me around again. I braced myself against the floor and the roof, so I wouldn’t hit my head. I did, however, twist my ankle.
No broken bones. I could still wiggle my toes and flex my foot, though it hurt like a bitch. I couldn’t help but question if it even really mattered.
Then the car rolled to a stop just a few seconds later.
My heart stalled. A cold sweat soaked through my clothes.
Donnie Luka the weasel slammed his car door, came around to the back, and opened the trunk.
I wanted to come out swinging, pouncing on him, tearing him apart with my bare hands, but I couldn't get into a position that gave me any leverage.
As he lifted the lid, light flooded the space and blinded me.
His thick fingers dug into my hair and jerked me up.
The pain of being hauled upright by my scalp made me cry out, but then I bit it back, stuffing my cries back down my throat as he dragged me out like a dead carcass and tossed me on the ground.
Gravel stung my palms and my knees as I slid over it, those abrasions temporarily dulling my other aches and pains.
“Stand up,” he ordered.
My limbs were too cold and stiff to move quickly, despite the fiery hatred burning inside me. It took me a minute, but after swallowing a surge of bile and forcing my weight upright, I got to my feet. As I faced my attacker, my unstable body swayed.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
Luka sneered.
“Shut the fuck up. Here's what's going to happen. You’ll pretend to be a well-behaved lady and not the rabid bitch you are. You’ll walk quietly wherever I tell you to go. You won’t make a scene or do anything to draw attention.
“If you can’t follow these simple instructions, I will find your son and make him pay for his mother's inability to follow my directions.”
He bared his teeth like a feral beast each time he spat out those words. And this bastard had the nerve to call me rabid.
I had never liked him, and now I knew why.
He was crazy. My son’s teacher was insane.
Even if he wanted to follow through with his threat, he could never again get to Enzo. Not anymore. Stefano had surely found our son. He had to have. I wouldn’t accept believing anything else.
Granted, I couldn’t be one-hundred percent sure, so I did whatever he said. I walked quietly beside Luka through a well-lit underground parking structure.
That kind of location provided me with no quick escape.
The sick fuck clamped down hard on the back of my neck, steering me like a disobedient child.
The deserted area didn’t have so much as another single car on the same level.
Then he forced me into an elevator and jabbed the fourth-floor button, his sweaty right-handed grip on my neck getting stronger by the minute.
It seemed like an eternity before the elevator doors opened, but when they did, I knew exactly where he’d taken me.
My kidnapper knew the layout of Enzo’s school much better than I did, but at least I could find my way around. And I knew only one rent-a-guard manned the security office on the third floor.
I had to bide my time.
Make a break for it when the right time came.
Weasel boy steered us toward his classroom, though I didn’t have any idea what the fuck he thought he could accomplish by taking me there or even taking me at all.
When we passed the main staircase, I decided that might be my chance. The security office would be right below us.
I jabbed my elbow into his gut to break his hold on me.
He grunted and grabbed his abdomen in reflex, but then he caught my hair and threw me down on the floor.
My palms squeaked against the shiny marble as I slid over it on my stomach.
When I caught myself and got up on my knees, the mosaic design installed last summer stretched out beneath me. A feature made possible by the money I had helped raise for the school.
Fuck-face Luka laughed.
“You really think you’re going to get out of this, don’t you?” he asked. “You? No way.”
He shook his head and laughed again. A more sinister laugh than the last one.
“I just don't fucking understand you, Valerie. You’re a beautiful woman. A little thick in the hips, sure, and you need to be taught some fucking manners, but I could have done that for you. Would have raised you up from the gutter.
“You made yourself a whore when you slept with that man. Why would you go back to him now when you could be mine?”
The world around me spun, and I struggled to follow his ramblings. I pushed back another strong urge to vomit.
Luka came closer. His shoe touched the side of my hand.
“But no,” he continued. “You turned yourself into another home-wrecking slut with the fucking audacity to humiliate someone so much better than you.
“Have you looked at yourself? You think you could ever compare to Benedetta? Now there’s a real woman. Actual class. Genuine beauty. You’re just… average. You have a kid, for fuck’s sake. And yeah, I know your little secret.”
I tried to focus on Luka’s words, to understand what he said while staring at the mosaic on the floor beneath me.
My arms trembled. My ankle screamed. Now that the trunk’s darkness and silence were gone, replaced by blinding light and noise, the pain in my head pounded like a jackhammer.
By all means, weasel, go on. Keep talking.
“I’ve seen the real you,” he said. “You know, when you think no one’s watching. I see how you pretend to close the curtains at night, but you always leave those three inches open.
“You shouldn’t do that. That little pussy boy of yours ruined your body. Oh, your tits are great. But your ass is like a fucking freighter. And the stretch marks? Don’t get me started on how disgusting that shit is…”
I could hardly hear him over the pounding in my head.
Again, bile hit my throat, and I swallowed it.
Mother of Christ, this guy couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He just kept going on and on. But it gave me a chance to search for something useful, anything or anyone to help me.
I found nothing. No one.
“I wanted to do the right thing, you know, Valerie. I wanted to look past your flaws and take you anyway. We would sell the café, so you didn’t have to work anymore.
“You could spend a hell of a lot more time at the gym instead, for starters. And you would show me exactly how much you appreciated everything I would have done for you and your little bastard.”
Now he had gone way too far.
I didn’t give a damn what he thought about Con Amore or the choices I made.
As for my body, well, I’d seen how Stefano looked at me, with and without clothes. I would believe a man like Stefano any day before listening to this psychotic asshole.
And I definitely wouldn’t listen to him speak that way about my son. He would pay for that.
“I would’ve been a good father to that boy,” Luka said. “I would’ve given him the discipline he needs. Beat that quiet, creepy shit right out of him. Make him better. A people person. Not some fucking freak no one can even stand to look at. Hell, I would’ve even let him stay once you had my first child.”
I struggled to my feet. The room spun.
The vertigo had to wait. I had to kill this man.
“You threw it all away, Valerie. And for what? Just to be a criminal’s whore?”
I narrowed my eyes but kept my anger in full check.
“You’re wrong,” I said. “I didn’t throw anything away. I made love to a strong man who knows who he is. The man who will protect me and my son. His son. There’s no comparison between you and a man like Stefano.”
“You shut your mouth!” he shouted. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know I would rather be Stefano’s whore, fucking him in his marital bed night after night, than be with you. You are nothing. Benedetta knows about me. She knows about Stefano’s son. And even she would rather share Stefano than be stuck with a sniveling little worm like you.”
The wedding had been called off, but this lunatic didn’t know that. So I baited him, to make him yell, scream, hit something. Anything to get the security guard’s attention, so he would come and investigate.
Luka sneered, leaning in as he opened and closed his fists, and his breath came out in small bursts.
“You’re going to regret those words, you stupid bitch. Don’t you know who I am?”
“I know who you aren’t. You aren’t the man Benedetta would ever choose. You aren’t the man I want or the man I love. At this point, I question if you’re a man at all. You talk about me having your children, but are you even man enough to get it up? I bet your tiny little dick can’t even get hard.”
My grandmother once said if I ever needed to defend myself against a man, go for what hung between his legs.
But since I literally couldn’t get there, I applied her advice using verbal assaults instead.
Luka’s eyes got wider, his pupils like pin pricks surrounded by muddy irises and red-streaked whites. A deeper flush pumped crimson into his face and neck. Spittle flew from his mouth, not only when he spoke but also with his panting.
He was close to snapping.
I needed to push him a little further.
“How were you planning to get me pregnant? Maybe you expected me to be unsatisfied and run to fuck Stefano? He could get me pregnant again, that’s for damn sure. Who knows? It’s possible I’m carrying his second child right now.”
I touched my stomach, smiling, while the idea took root.
Oh shit. Could I really be pregnant?
“You are such a fucking whore!” he screamed.
Yep. That did the trick.
With another fake smile, I backed a few feet away, waiting for a door to open or to hear footsteps racing this way after an exclamation like that in the middle of an elementary school.
Nothing happened.
Where the fuck was that security guard?
“I’m not yours,” I said. “I’ll never be yours. And Benedetta Capaldo will never be yours either.”
I could blame the head injury, or the duress caused by the situation, but it really came down to one simple fact…
I had underestimated how unhinged this man had become.
How far he would go.
I hadn’t even realized he carried a gun with him, not until he jerked it out of his pants.
“You should’ve behaved like a nice Italian girl,” he snarled.
Then he aimed his pistol at me.
“This would’ve been so easy if you’d just been nice to me.”