AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re lying,” Vincent said. “You wouldn’t go along with something unless you knew why. Where did he take her?”
“You have to believe me, Vincent. I can’t tell you!”
“You can tell me, you just won’t! There’s a difference, and that difference is as vast as life and death.”
“Please!”
He shook his head. “Don’t beg! It’s unbecoming of you.”
“You have to understand—”
“No, you have to understand. They’ve taken something important from me, and I’m not going to stop until I find her. If you want even the slightest chance of making it out of this room alive, you’ll tell me what I need to know.”
“If I tell you anything, they’ll kill me.”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll kill you,” he said. “And I won’t take mercy on you. Every minute she’s out there, you’re going to be right here, and I’m not going to end your suffering until she’s back where she belongs.”
* * *
The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Carmine had heard the phrase so many times, but it wasn’t until that moment, sitting in that immaculately clean car and fighting back nausea at the stench of fresh leather, that he finally understood what it meant. It was stifling, the hostility rolling from the man beside him too much to take.
Carmine had a fractured rib, a broken nose, and a mildly sprained wrist on top of the concussion. Vincent had called in a favor, and one of his colleagues agreed to see him off the record. Despite Carmine’s insistence he didn’t need any doctors, Vincent demanded he go, and when Vincent DeMarco demanded something, even Carmine couldn’t say no. So when Corrado arrived in town, the two of them had set out for a clinic while his father stayed back to deal with the devastation.
“You’re not gonna kill that doctor I saw, are you?” Carmine asked, the heavy dose of morphine in his system clouding his thoughts.
Corrado said nothing, and Carmine wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad.
“I don’t think you should,” he said. “He’s just a doctor.”
“Carmine?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
Carmine decided then he should probably shut up.
Disoriented, he glanced at the clock on the dashboard and saw it was midnight. Haven had been gone for twelve hours, and the clock kept ticking as if the seconds didn’t matter.
He sighed, the strain in the car growing.
Carmine felt like he could breathe again when they reached the house and put some space between them. He headed inside and paused in the foyer as his father stepped out of the room under the stairs. Corrado shuffled in and closed the front door. “Has he talked?”
“No,” Vincent said. “He’s given me nothing.”
Corrado brushed past Carmine, giving Vincent a peculiar look before disappearing into the room. Vincent muttered something under his breath, refusing to look at Carmine as he strode away. Carmine sat down on the steps, putting his head down and rocking back and forth for a while, before pacing the hallway. As the morphine faded from his system, so did his patience.
Eventually, he heard footsteps on the stairs as Vincent approached at the same time Corrado stepped out, both men stopping in the foyer. Carmine looked between them, his last bit of control slipping. “Why are you just standing there? Can’t you do something? Anything? Christ!”
Before the last word was verbalized, Carmine was jerked by the back of his collar and slammed into the wall. He lost his breath as Corrado shoved a gun to his fractured rib. “Have you still not learned your lesson? Is one of us going to have to die before you realize this isn’t a game? These are our lives you’re messing with, and I, for one, will not tolerate you endangering me more than you already have! I don’t care whose child you are.”
Carmine’s heart pounded rapidly. He didn’t doubt for a second that his uncle would shoot him.
“Corrado,” Vincent said. “Let him go.”
Corrado released Carmine and swung around, turning the weapon on Vincent. Carmine inhaled sharply as he watched it play out. Vincent stood as still as a statue, not blinking as he stared down the barrel of Corrado’s gun.
“You keep pulling me in deeper and deeper, Vincent,” Corrado said, lowering his pistol.
