The F King:A Bad Boy Romance(60)

     



 

Well, through unsaid methods that were more convincing than what the  city employed on him, Jace managed to get him to admit that he had, in  fact, sold me to a guy here in New Ashby. When Jace tracked down that  guy, he got the name Aquila.

"So, there weren't too many Aquilas in the phone book, it didn't take  long to work our way through them. As soon as your name came up, I  fucking knew it. How many times had I seen you on TV already? Right in  front of my fucking nose the whole time. We got a hold of one of the  towels they used to clean up one of your cuts, got the DNA tested. Just  got the results back and it's as close to certain as these things get.  You are my brother," said Jace.

I looked at the clock on the wall and saw it was only four in the  afternoon. Eight more hours left in the day, and if it kept on getting  crazier at this same rate, then we were all going to be in  straightjackets by ten. Me first.

"So what do you do? Looks like you jumped in with the Picollis. That right?"

"You really haven't heard of me?"

"No. That a problem?"

"No. Well, officially, I won the lottery and grew a corporate empire worth just over a billion at the last estimate."

"And unofficially?"

"I dedicated my life to taking down the Picollis. I worked up through  their ranks and then, when the opportunity came, I all but wiped them  out in Port Magnus. I'll never stop until they're dust in the wind. The  Picollis have always been close with the Bertolinis; that's one reason  their fucking human supply chain landed you here. Now they've come to  some kind of agreement, so as far as I'm concerned the Bertolinis have  to go too."

Jace leaned forward, putting his elbow on Ross' desk and scrutinizing  me. Kendall jumped a little in her seat and then put her hand on her  stomach, distracted by some kind of action in there before her husband  continued.

"So, I knew ever since I saw you lose to Cannon-Fodder Coles that you  were on the take. What I need to know is if you're with me or them. Help  me end them, Austin. There's nobody I'd want more as my right hand man  than my own brother. If you're worried about money-"

I held up my hand and cut him off. "Forget the sales pitch. I'm in.  They … " I gulped. "They've taken my wife. They've g-got Skylar because I  fucked some of them up, and they're blaming me for one of them dying. If  I don't win this fight tomorrow, first minute of the first round,  they're going to kill her."

Kendall gasped and held her hand up to her mouth, while Jace's expression only reflected an even greater focus.

"Fuck. Tomorrow night." He drummed his fingers on the desk. "What time, exactly, is your fight?"

I shrugged. "It's not set in stone. It's the main event, the last fight  of the night, but how long it takes to get there depends on how long the  preliminary fights and the undercard goes. I guess at about eight  thirty."

"Fuck."

Jace's brow furrowed, and I could see his eyes staring right through the  desk, twitching every now and then as he worked through the logistics  of this problem, in a similar way to how I visualized every scenario of  my fights. Kendall watched him silently, as if she knew how he worked.

"The Bertolini place still out on the east side? On Mortimer Boulevard?"

"Yeah."

"OK. Do you know anybody working security there? Anybody that would be  on your side? Or could be bought off without raising the alarm?"

I made a disgusted sound. "The closest I got is this guy named Ken Horn.  He's the one that brought me in to talk to Gavino this morning. I don't  think he knew what the Bertolinis had planned, but I don't know. Other  than that …  I never got along with any of those assholes."

Jace leaned back and laced his fingers together on top of his head as he rolled his eyes upward in thought.

"This is going to be a close one."

"What, exactly, is going to be close?"

"Here's what I'm going to do, in a nutshell. Tomorrow night, a small  army is going to descend on the Bertolinis. Ken Horn is going to help us  get in, or will mysteriously disappear before his shift starts. We'll  kill them all and we'll get Skylar out of there."

"Wait …  what? You can't just go in there with guns blazing. Skylar is  there, they'll just shoot her! Look, I'll fucking win this fight,  they'll let her go, then-"

"No. I know how these motherfuckers operate, Austin. They aren't going  to let her go. They'll keep on making you jump through their hoops, one  after the other, until you stumble, and then they'll kill her. They'll  never let her go after what you did. This guy that died, he a made-man?"         

     



 

"No, but I just about took Renato Picolli's lower jaw off with a baseball bat and turned him into an unmade-man."

Jace shook his head. "I fucking love baseball. But they're not letting her go after that."

I could feel a cold sweat on my brow. This sounded a lot riskier than  what I'd been planning, but what if he was right? What if they never let  her go?

"So when do we go in?" I asked.

"You don't go in," said Jace.

"Fuck that, I'm-"

"Listen. You need to be at the event center, showing your face on live  TV. That's one of the things that's going to keep your wife safe, you  understand? There's two things working in our favor here, and neither of  them will last forever. First, they have no idea you're my brother.  They don't think you have access to the kind of manpower and arsenal  that I'm going to unleash on them. Second, is their penchant for  theatrics. They gave you an ultimatum, and they're going to stick with  it even if they have no plans to release her. Things can go wrong, but  the way you can buy me the most time to get everybody here from Port  Magnus, as well as take care of Ken Horn in whatever way he needs to be  taken care of, is to win that fight in the first minute."

Something felt unspeakably wrong about a plan that put me so far away  from Skylar when shit like that was happening. The world of hand-to-hand  combat was my world, my specialty, but Jace gave every impression that  whatever this was, it was his domain. Slowly, reluctantly, I nodded.

"You got a number for Ken? A way to get in touch with him?"

I nodded again and pulled out my phone, reading the number out loud to  him, then giving my own number when he asked for that. Jace and Kendall  stood to leave, and Jace pulled me close when we shook hands, speaking  quietly to me.

"Win that fight, then come to the mansion. If it can be done, I'll leave Gavino for you to deal with personally."

Jace left Ross' office and Kendall paused for a second, as Ken had done all those months ago when I first met Renato Picolli.

"This morning you were all by yourself, but you're not anymore. You don't know Jace yet, but you will. He can do anything."

She reached out and touched my shoulder and then followed her husband.  Kendall had a lot of faith in him. I wished I had as much.





Skylar





The door opened and the one they called Gavino Bertolini waddled in.  Enrico, who I thought I heard someone say was a relative of Gavino's,  had been busy running cables from somewhere outside the room to the back  of the large screen TV. He'd also set up a video camera behind me, to  record me watching NHBFC-89, and Austin's fight in particular.

"Turn on the TV, the main event is next up. She still keepin' her mouth shut?"

"Yeah," said Renato.

It was almost impossible to understand him when he tried to say full  sentences, due to the fact that his face was a mess and his jaw had been  wired shut, but that affirmation came through loud and clear. Enrico  pressed a button on the TV and it sprang to life, showing some  commercials.

"What's the matter, sweetness? Still sulking because of the little knife thing?" Gavino asked.

He oozed over to me and stroked my cheek with his hand. My skin wanted  to crawl completely off my body at his touch. I flinched away but,  cuffed to the chair that was bolted to the ground in the middle of a  large plastic sheet, there was only so far I could go before his hand  found me again.

"He didn't cut you deep, it won't even scar. Oh fuck no, you've got the kind of face we can make some money off."

His hand went down my neck and slipped inside my shirt to cup my breast.  I shrieked in disgust and tried to squirm away, tears beginning to  spill from my eyes.

"See boys? Listen to that. She's an underground porn star waiting to  happen. If we had more time, you'd be starring in a whole bunch of  videos for sale to a very particular crowd of people, and one for me  personally too. How many guys you think we could get in the train,  Enrico?"

"For her? With a couple weeks' notice? Couple hundred in a night, I  guess." Enrico shrugged, not looking up from the video camera  instruction manual.

Gavino pulled his hand back. "Yeah, a couple of those full-length  features, sign up anybody who wanted seconds. I bet we could get fifty  movies out of her before her snuff film."