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This was my life now. I was supposed to start my new life with Angelo. Instead, I was locked inside my own circle of hell.
Sonny was the last person I saw before I was taken from my father’s house. He was supposed to protect me. I trusted him as much as Angelo.
Was Sonny responsible?
I had no idea what to think or who to trust.
Sonny was my best friend, as he was Angelo’s. My heart bled for Sonny. We shared everything. All of us. I was willing to bet if Angelo had been down with it, the three of us would have shared a lot more of ourselves.
So, what went wrong? How did this happen?
Curled up in a ball, with my back to the room, I closed my eyes. At least the pillows and sheets were soft. I was expecting them to be hard and scratchy.
Everything in the room was too bright, too clean, too sterile, too there on purpose. It made me uncomfortable. For that reason, I counted my blessings the bedding didn’t suck and was surprisingly soft. So was the mattress.
As I drifted off to sleep, I stirred at a sound coming from the opposite end of the room. I rolled onto my side with the pillow between my hands as a door was opening inward. The padded walls disappeared for a second to reveal a dark hallway. My body was useless, tired from not being fed and barely functional. I forced myself up from the bed, the pillow in hand when I made my move.
A man appeared in a suit that fit snug to his muscular body. He had a gun at his waist, one I needed if I was going to escape. I lunged at him as the door shut behind him. I didn’t miss the few clicks that had locked us inside. He caught me before I crashed into him, and gripped me by my hair. Dragging me across the floor by my curls, he made it a point to tug harder, making it hurt more.
He underestimated my pain tolerance. Angelo did worse when he fucked me.
“Get the fuck off me!” I kicked and screamed, sinking my nails into his skin.
Nothing fazed this man. No matter how much I fought, he never spoke a word. In response, he tightened his hold on me and laughed. There was no sense in fighting him. But it made me feel better. Made me feel less weak and pathetic.
He moved the plastic chair from the corner of the room and kicked it with his foot to the center. Then, he set me on the chair, with his hand still on my head. I peeked at up him, my jaw clenched in anger, my hands balled into fists at my sides.
My captor was a moderately attractive middle-aged man. Tall, with broad shoulders, but not as muscular as Angelo. Dark hair swept over his forehead and curled at the ends.
I took in every scar on his face, from the one on his left cheek to the one that ran down the length of his neck. Nothing about him was familiar. Everything new. I didn’t recognize him. But he knew me.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Save your breath,” the man said with a wicked smirk touching his lips.
I didn’t know his face, but his voice was a different story. He was the same man with the heavy New York accent who’d thrown me into the trunk of his car. After all the years I’d spent with Angelo, I knew almost everyone who worked for his father. My suspicions were wrong. Maybe Sonny hadn’t taken me. But I had no idea where his allegiance lied. Sonny was always a mystery to me, even up until the day I was taken.
He tilted my head up, holding it in a vise with both hands, so I was forced to look up and into the camera. A few seconds passed before a red light illuminated from the dark lens. His woodsy cologne burrowed into my nostrils as he bent over me. The smell of cigarettes and stale coffee permeated the air.
“You don’t know how good you’ve got it,” he growled against the shell of my ear, his breath making my skin crawl. “If you want the boss to keep you, then you’d better shut your mouth and do what you’re told. Otherwise, you’ll end up in a much worse place than this one.”
My body went rigid from his threat.
What could be worse than this?
Chapter Three
Angelo
I learned how to swing a baseball bat when I was five years old. The old man took me down to the park with my older brothers under the pretense I had a shot at being something other than a Wiseguy. Back then, I’d wanted to be so many things—a baseball player, a Marine, a cowboy, and even a cop.
I thought I had a choice.
I thought I had a future.
But mine was chosen for me.
Not until I was older did I realize why Pop took us down to the park. It wasn’t to learn how to hit a home run. It was to show us how to inflict pain. How to be a Morelli. Every life lesson had a purpose. Pop didn’t do anything half-assed.
