I shook my head. “I won’t ask for anything yet. I won’t make it that easy for them. They attacked Las Vegas. They tried killing my brothers, tried killing you and me. They brought war into my city, and I will bring war into their midst. I will destroy them from the inside. I will break them.”
Fabiano frowned. “How?”
I regarded him. The hint of wariness in his voice was barely noticeable, but I knew him well. “By breaking someone they are supposed to protect. If there’s one thing I know, then it’s that even men like us rarely forgive themselves for letting people they are supposed to protect get hurt. Her family will go crazy with worry over her. Every day they’re going to wonder what’s happening to her. They’re going to imagine how she’s suffering. Her mother will blame her husband and brother. And they will blame themselves. Their guilt will spread like cancer among them. And I will fuel their worry. I will tear them apart.”
Fabiano lowered his gaze to Serafina, who started stirring slightly. The rip in her wedding dress shifted, exposing her long bare leg. She was wearing a white lace garter. Fabiano reached for the skirt of her dress and covered her leg. I tilted my head at him.
“She’s an innocent,” he said neutrally.
“She won’t return to them innocent,” I said darkly.
Fabiano met my gaze. “Hurting her won’t break the Outfit. They will come closer together to bring you down.”
“We will see,” I murmured. “Let’s call Nino and see which route to choose next.” Fabiano and I moved toward the desk and put the phone on loudspeaker.
We had just finished our call when Serafina moaned. We turned to her. She woke with a start, disoriented. She blinked slowly at the wall then up at the ceiling. Her movements were slow, sluggish. Her breathing picked up, and she looked down at her body, her hands feeling her ribs then lower, coming to rest on her abdomen—as if she thought we’d fucked her while she was passed out. I supposed it made sense. She would have been sore.
“If you keep touching yourself like that, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
Her gaze darted to us, her body stiffening.
“We didn’t touch you while you were unconscious,” Fabiano told her.
Her eyes darted between him and me. It was obvious she wasn’t sure if she could believe him.
“You would know if Fabiano or I had fucked you, trust me, Serafina.”
She pressed her lips together, fear and disgust swirling in her blue eyes. She began squirming and wiggling as if she was trying to get off the bed but couldn’t control her body. Eventually she closed her eyes, her chest heaving, her fingers trembling against the blanket.
“She’s still drugged,” Fabiano said.
“I’ll get her a coke. Maybe the caffeine will sober her up. I don’t like her this weak and unresponsive. It’s no challenge.”
SERAFINA
I watched Remo leave the room and forced myself into a sitting position. “Fabiano,” I whispered.
He came closer and knelt before me. “Fina,” he said simply. Only my brother called me by that name, but Fabiano had always played with us when we were little and knew me by the nickname.
My mother hadn’t raised me to beg, but I was desperate. I touched his hand. “Please help me. You were part of the Outfit. You can’t allow this.”
He pulled his hand away, his eyes hard. “I am part of the Camorra.”
He stood and looked down at me without a hint of emotion.
“What will happen to me? What does your Capo want with me?” I asked hoarsely.
For a second his eyes softened, and that was the most terrifying answer he could have given me. “The Outfit attacked us on our own territory. Remo is out for retribution.”
Icy terror clawed at my insides. “But I have nothing to do with your business.”
“You don’t, but Dante is your uncle and your father and fiancé are high-ranking Outfit members.”
I looked down at my hands. My knuckles were chalk white from clutching the fabric of my dress. Then I noticed the red stains and quickly released the tulle. “So he’s going to make them pay by hurting me?” My voice broke. I cleared my throat, trying hard and failing to hold on to my composure.
“Remo didn’t divulge his plan to me,” he said, but I didn’t believe him for one second. “He might use you to bribe your uncle into handing over parts of his territory ... or his Consigliere.”
Uncle Dante would never give up part of his territory, not even for family, no matter how much my mother begged him to, nor would he hand over one of his men, his Consigliere. He couldn’t, not for one girl. I was lost.
My vision swam again and I slumped back down onto the mattress.
Through the fogginess I heard Remo’s voice. “Change of plans. Let her sleep the drugs out of her system while we drive. We’ve spent too much time at this place. Nino called again. He suggests we head out now. He sent our helicopter to pick us up in Kansas. He heard from Grigory that Cavallaro has called upon every soldier to search for his niece and we are still on the fringes of his territory.”
Dante was trying to save me. Dad and Danilo would be searching for me as well. And Samuel, my Samuel, would look for me. If we were still on Outfit territory not all hope was lost.
CHAPTER 3
SERAFINA
I woke in a car, curled into myself, half tangled in my dress. Fabiano was in the backseat beside me but didn’t look at me. Instead, he was checking the rear window. Another man sat in the front behind the wheel and beside him was Remo.
I wasn’t sure if they’d given me another tranquilizer or if my body had trouble fighting the effects of the first injection. I hadn’t eaten all day and hardly had anything to drink. A low moan slipped past my lips.
Fabiano and Remo both looked down at me. Remo’s dark eyes sent a shiver of fear down my spine, but Fabiano’s gaze didn’t offer any consolation either. I closed my eyes again, hating how vulnerable I felt.
I wasn’t sure how long we’d been driving, but the next time I woke we were in a helicopter. I struggled into a sitting position. The strip with hotels and casinos spread out below, and my stomach constricted as the helicopter started its descent over Las Vegas. I didn’t say a word to either Fabiano or Remo, and they didn’t talk to me either. The tension was still palpable in the helicopter, but they had escaped from the Outfit and now I was in Las Vegas. In Camorra territory. At their mercy.
The moment we landed, Fabiano helped me out of the helicopter while Remo talked to someone on the phone. I needed to wash my face and clear my head so I could think straight again. I had been in my wedding dress for almost twenty-four hours. I felt sticky and sluggish and exhausted. And underneath it all a terror I had trouble containing throbbed inside of me.
I was pushed into another car, and eventually we pulled up in front of a shabby strip club called the Sugar Trap.
Fabiano gripped my arm again as Remo went ahead without a single glance at me.
“Fabi,” I tried, but he tightened his hold. “I need to go to the bathroom and wash my face. I don’t feel good.”
He led me inside the deserted strip club toward the ladies’ room and followed me inside to wait at the washbasins. Remo had ignored me mostly, but I had a feeling that would change soon.
I went to the toilet, hating that I knew Fabiano could hear me. There was nothing I could have used as a weapon, and even if there were, how would that help me surrounded by Camorrista? I dropped my skirt when I was done, breathing deeply, trying to hide my emotions.
“Serafina,” came Fabiano’s warning voice. “Don’t make me get you out of there. You won’t like it.”
Straightening my shoulders, I came back out, feeling shaky from dehydration.
I bent over the washbasin and washed my face then drank a few gulps of water.
“You can have a coke from the bar,” Fabiano said. Before I could say anything, he gripped me by the arm and dragged me out. My bare feet ached. I must have cut them on the forest ground. My eyes flitted around the room. It wasn’t deserted anymore. As if drawn out by the commotion, several scantily clad women had gathered at the bar.
They avoided looking at me, and I realized I couldn’t hope for their help. Not a single person in Las Vegas would probably risk helping me.
“Coke,” Fabiano barked at a dark-skinned man behind the bar, who grabbed a bottle, opened it, and handed it to Fabiano. The man purposely wasn’t looking at me.
Good Lord. Where had they taken me? What kind of hellhole was Las Vegas?
“Drink,” Fabiano said, holding the bottle out for me. I took it and had a few long sips. The cold, sweet liquid seemed to revive my brain and body.
“Come.” Fabiano led me through a door and along a bare-walled corridor toward another door. When he opened it and stepped inside with me, my stomach revolted.
Inside were two unknown men, both of them Falcones, I assumed. All of them were tall, with hard expressions and this air of unbridled cruelty that they were famous for. One of them had gray eyes and looked older than the other guy. I tried to remember their names, but then my eyes met Remo’s and my mind turned blank.
The Camorra Capo had shed his shirt. There was a fresh wound on his left side that had been stitched up, but there was still blood around it. My pulse stuttered in my veins at the sight of his muscles and scars.