I lift the tinfoil from the plate just enough to make out two pieces of fried chicken, a hunk of mashed potatoes, and some macaroni and cheese. It’s not enough to share with the woman in the bedroom—a fact that I can’t ignore. Darcy was never rude so the only other explanation is that she, for whatever reason, didn’t think there would be another mouth left to feed.
I drag my gaze along her face, searching the smooth planes of it for any hint of what Mack could possibly be planning. I know she’s aware of the suspicion, but she just smiles and pushes the plate toward me. “Eat up. I don’t think Mack brought along any snacks on your little ‘boys’ outing—”
“Not hungry.” I cut my eyes over to the door and wonder if the little bitch would stick her nose up at it over fucking Thai, though—that is, if Darcy was being honest about Mack getting nowhere near it.
“I thought Arno would have taken her back by now,” Darcy admits, swirling the edge of her thumb along the rim of the plate.
“Why?” The question comes out harsher than I mean it to and Darcy flinches. After all, the bitch was Arno’s problem. His responsibility. His prize. His...
And he can fucking try to take her if he wants to. My fingers flex at the thought of it, burning hot. He can try.
“He said that was why she was here.” Darcy nods to the bedroom, but my eyes are already scanning the scarred wood as if I can see her leaning against the other side of it. Hell, I can smell her, the nosy little cunt. “He said that she was part of his plan for getting revenge for Parish—”
“You can tell Arno that he can have her...when I’m done fucking her.” I make my voice loud enough for her to hear and hate that I can only picture her reaction. How would the little princess react to being referred to as my whore? If she lets out a haughty little gasp in disgust, I don’t hear it above the sound of Darcy choking.
Clutching her throat with one hand, she lunges for the sink while I swipe a plastic cup from the cupboard above her head.
“Here.”
She downs two glasses and then sets the cup aside. Her cheeks are red, and I do a double take, my eyebrow raised. If I wasn’t mistaken, she was blushing, and a woman who—at one point at least—fucked strangers for a living had some damn nerve blushing at the mention of the word.
If she notices the look I give her, she doesn’t let it show. Instead, she wipes her mouth off with the back of her hand and then tucks a blonde curl behind her ear. Mack must like her to dress like a bar bunny, even in the middle of October. The jean shorts and low-cut pink top leave little to the imagination, but the tattoo above her right breast proves without a doubt just who owns her. Mack. I try to remember how she dressed before, as one of the girls Dino kept on his payroll to please the men riled by the violence of a cage fight. Apart from a hazy image of her lurking around the outskirts of the ring, I don’t recall much.
“It’s been a while,” she says softly as if sensing the thoughts circling my head. “Oh! I brought you something—” She reaches into her pocket and withdraws something clasped in her fist. “Do you remember when I first gave this to you?”
She opens her hand and lying on her palm is a silver necklace—the cheap kind women like her seemed to love trading the money they earned on their backs and knees for. Hanging from a silver chain is a line of script that forms a single name: Dante.
“I remember,” I admit. Birthday present, she had claimed, though seeing as how she didn’t know the exact date of mine, I assumed the gift had been more or less a “so you didn’t die during your first round in the cage” present. She had given it to me right after I’d gotten my tattoo. Maybe it was her way of reminding me that at some point I used to be this person named Dante—though she hadn’t known just how eager I’d been to shed that weak, pathetic bastard.
“You left it behind,” Darcy says, dangling the chain from her finger. “When... I want you to have it.” She curls it gently within her fingers and presses it against my palm.
I snatch for it and tuck it, chain and all, into my pocket. “Thanks.”
She shrugs, but an odd expression tugs at her mouth. A smile? She can look back at the old days and smile. I look back...and I find nothing worth grinning about.
“See you around, Dante.” Darcy slips past me and leaves, wiggling her fingers in a parting wave. I wait until the door shuts behind her and I hear her descend the stairs.
Then I turn to the bedroom and swipe the plate closer to me with an outstretched hand. “You hungry?” My voice could be heard from the pit, but the bitch doesn’t answer. So, the little princess wants to play pretend.
Scoffing, I snatch up the plate with one hand and head for the bedroom door. When I wrench it open, she isn’t there lurking on the other side of it. Instead, she watches me from the bed, sitting cross-legged on the bedspread. Her head is cocked, but she meets my gaze almost as if daring me to challenge her coy little act. She could have fooled me...almost, but her chest heaves beneath her sweatshirt. Not only that, but the comforter is slightly off center as if someone leaped onto it.
I consider calling her out. Instead, I step forward and drop the plate onto the bed, spraying a glob of macaroni and cheese onto the mattress. “Eat.”
She reaches for a leg of chicken without hesitation, and I catch myself staring. So many women were odd when it came to food, but she doesn’t seem to care that I watch her rip into the meat with her teeth and swallow down chunks whole. She moans. Her free hand comes to pick away a bit of macaroni between two fingers, and she samples that too. There’s something wild about the little lamb when she thinks the wolf isn’t watching.
I wonder what she’s like when she’s with him, the bastard who stabbed his name into her chest. Does she lick her fingers when she’s finished and carefully strip every bone of flesh like she does now? I try to compare this woman to the one Arno kidnapped; the bitch who could watch another being abused and laugh.
I’m not sure which woman stares back, pushing the now licked-clean plate toward me. I take it and leave to toss it into the sink. When I return, she’s still sitting, watching me, waiting.
Ignoring her, I scan the wall, prepared to pick a corner to sleep in—maybe within those hours of silence I’d finally figure out a way to deal with Vinny Stacatto’s whore. I head for one near the window, but the girl surprises me by leaping from the mattress before I can even take a step.
“You sleep.” She jerks her head toward the bed. However, when I don’t move, she staggers backward until she occupies my corner herself. “You sleep.” She sinks down to her knees, stretching her legs out in front of her.
I should snatch her from the floor and strap her to the fucking bed. I close the door and sink down onto the mattress instead, my back facing her. “Suit yourself.”
She makes a soft sound in response. Part acknowledgment and part satisfaction. Okay, I will.
I can’t understand why the sound irritates me so fucking much as I close my eyes and pretend to sleep.
Prison can teach the deepest of fucking sleepers how to jolt awake at the slightest noise. Sleep becomes as steady as blinking—you take it in little fucking snatches at a time, always on alert. For hours, I’ve listened to her shift against the floor. I knew the exact moment when she rose to her feet, trying and failing not to make a sound.
I felt the bed shift with her weight. I smelled her. Felt the heat of her skin with every careful move toward me she made. I kept still even as she straddled me, balancing her weight across my stomach, inches away from my already hardening cock. It’s only when she presses her knife against my throat that I finally let my eyes open.
She doesn’t so much as blink. Her eyes gleam in the grayish light of dawn filtering in through the window that paints her skin, making her glow. She’s a ghost on my chest, threatening me with a dull ass blade.
“Do you think I won’t do it?” she asks, jerking her chin at the weapon.
“You won’t.” There isn’t a shred of doubt in my voice. No fear. Vinny’s whore may have entertained the idea of hacking off a man’s dick, but she can’t drive her knife through my throat—even though it would probably be in her best interest to. “You would have done it already.”
She doesn’t challenge that. Instead, she tilts her wrist, digging the blade in just a fraction deeper. “If you were Vinny I would.” As if she’s not quite sure of that, the knife digs in even deeper. “I would.”
She’s not ready when I shift my weight and throw her off. Within seconds, I have her pinned beneath me with the hand holding the knife trapped against the headboard. When my gaze meets hers, she lets the knife go, and it bounces across the pillow.
“Are you going to give me back to him?” she demands in that haughty little tone of hers, proving once and for all that she really was listening in last night. “To Arno?”
I choke out something that might be a laugh, but it’s too damn cold. “Do you want me to?”
I expect her to cringe and shake her head no. I expect for her eyes to widen at the thought of spreading her legs for Arno or his men. Instead, her frown deepens. She’s thinking.
“I guess...Vinny wouldn’t care how many men I’ve fucked when he gets me back.”
Red flashes across my vision, painting her. I don’t know if it’s anger at the blatant way she assumes that I won’t fulfill my promise to kill her or the fact that she’s so fucking cavalier about the possibility of being...fucked.
“Do you want me to give you to him?” My voice is hard. Hard with rage. Hard with a promise. All she has to do is say the fucking word, and he can have her. “Do you?”
She holds my gaze, her chin pointed toward the ceiling, her eyes unreadable. Then...she breaks. “N-No.” Real, cold fear spills out of her, and I jerk back, rising up on my knees. “I don’t want to go to him.”
“Then don’t fucking ask me about it.” I climb from the bed and snatch a fresh shirt from the pile Darcy brought. Ripping off the old one, I pull on the new one, but it’s not enough to erase the bitter sting clinging to my skin. Trust Vinny’s whore to be a good damn liar on top of everything else. Sometimes I could almost believe the little act she put on: the stuck-up mob bitch too hardened by pain to truly fear what might come her way next.
Seeing her stripped of that illusion isn’t any better than watching her hide behind it. It isn’t until I hear the mattress shift behind me that I realize I’m standing there, glaring at the wall. My head hums. My fingers flex, on fire. My jaw aches. I want to punch something. I want to fucking pummel.
But it’s not that little bitch I want to destroy. Trust the fact that only the threat of her precious, beloved Vinny is enough to make Danny rip off her pretty little mask. “I want him dead,” she’s said. For just a second, I join in on her little fantasy; I’d kill the prick myself if only to see how she would react without being haunted by her quest for revenge.
After Arno, and Dino, and Mack...
I’ve had enough of fucking revenge.
“No! Wait!”
Her voice stops me dead in my tracks before I even register heading for the door. My hand is on the knob, already in the process of wrenching it open, and when I glance over my shoulder, she’s on her knees.
“N-No.” She shakes her head, sending that black hair flying. “No one else... I don’t want to go to anyone else.”
She’s telling the truth this time. It’s too damn bad that what she wants doesn’t really fucking matter.
I enter the hallway and slam the door behind me. In five minutes, I’m out of the garage, marching toward the bar that lies up ahead. Inside, I find Arno, sitting on a stool at the bar, but he’s not drinking for once. He glances over his shoulder as I cross the room but doesn’t greet me. Overnight he’s reverted to the shitty little punk I first met in the streets, cursed with the stigma of being Dino Mulligan’s bastard.
“Where’s your little toy?” he wonders nastily when I take the stool beside his.
I feel my eyes narrow. “Fuck her.”
“I’m sure you have, more than once,” Arno sighs, but before I can react, he lifts his free hand above the counter, revealing the bottle he had hidden on his lap. He shoves it in my direction, and I rip the cap off and take a sip without even looking at the label.
It burns. It’s shitty, cheap vodka, but it washes the taste of her from my mouth.
“Feels like old times,” Arno says, glancing around the bar, his jaw set. “You and Mack fighting each other for scraps. The cage. All we need is Dino dangling the meat over your heads, and it could be the good old days again.” There’s a hard note in his tone that I don’t miss.
The “good old” days weren’t very good to Arno. His father may have been a stone-cold criminal, but he didn’t do the fathering too well to the kid who actually carried his blood. Scrawny and weak, Arno wouldn’t have lasted a day in the cage. It was only after Dino died that he grew claws of his own and honed his own bite.
“Something’s up,” I suspect, noticing the way Arno curls his hands into fists. He wasn’t one to dwell on nostalgia for the hell of it. The puppy only brought up the past when he was itching to beat out a new future in pain and blood. “What is it?”
“Mack.” Arno snatches the bottle from my grip and downs a fourth of it in one go. “The bastard...he’ll take it all. Stacatto’s empire. What remains of the Saints. Everything. And I...I fucking handed it to him.”
I grab the bottle before he can take another swig, but I don’t drink from it myself. I stare down into the dark liquid instead, watching it swirl within the glass. In this lighting, it’s the same color as her eyes. Those fucking eyes. All that’s missing are the hints of green and specks of gold.
“It’s not too late,” I say, but I don’t elaborate. Arno can build his own damn kingdom. “Scared little kitties” didn’t do well in groups once they got released from the pound. After this was all over, I’d find some place to lay low. Some way to carve out a new name for myself, away from the cage or the violence—and I tried not to give a damn as to where Stacatto’s little whore might factor into that.
“It’s not too late,” I repeat, slamming the bottle down in front of Arno—and this time he doesn’t reach for it. “Mack’s not the only one with ‘friends.’”
Arno chuckles. “You make some connections in prison?”
“Something like that.” Arno doesn’t react when I stand. It’s only when I hold my hand out that he has the nerve to look interested. “Got a phone on you?”
Shooting me a wary look, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cell phone. “Yeah. Why?”
I don’t answer, and he slaps the phone onto my palm anyway. I toy with the keypad as I cross over to an empty section of the bar, just out of Arno’s earshot. It must be busy at the police station this early. I sense the dial tone is about to cut over to voicemail when a tired voice finally answers.
“Fourth Precinct.”
“Can I talk to...” I inhale sharply and spit out the name. “Dick—Richard—Van Hallen?”
There’s a slight pause from the other end, and I can hear papers being shuffled. “May I ask who’s calling?”
“Tell him it’s his long-lost nephew.”
“Just a minute.”
Nearly three pass before a new voice answers the line. “Van Hallen.”
“Hello, Detective,” I say coldly. “This is how we’re going to play this game. I’m going to speak. You listen, and only if you have something worth saying do you talk back. Understood?”
“Vialle?” The detective sounds gruff, pre-coffee. “What the hell are you playing at—”
“Vincent Stacatto,” I say, cutting each word short. “That name ring a bell?”
Van Hallen grunts. After almost a minute of silence, he finally spits out a reply. “Go on.”
“What if I were to tell you that his human-trafficking operation is about to take a nasty hit. Tonight. Would your men be able to stop tailing me to be around to catch the fireworks?”
He’s silent, wondering whether or not I’m yanking his chain. “Stacatto runs a multimillion-dollar operation, Vialle. That wouldn’t be fireworks we’re talking about. It would be an explosion.”
I want to see him burn. Well, the little thrill seeker would get her fucking wish.
“That doesn’t answer my question, detective.”
“Ah...yes—all right. I could spare a few men if your tip was fucking credible.”
“Next question. Stacatto kept a woman around him. Young. Foreign—”
“You’ve just described just about every missing adolescent girl in the international database,” Van Hallen snarls.
“Not this girl. Speaks English. Her name is Danny...Daniela—”
“Manzano?” I assume it’s a last name. Daniela Manzano, Vinny’s pretty whore. “He’s kept her close,” Van Hallen says, but now he’s even more cautious than he was before.
“What do you know about her?”
“Humph...Stacatto barely lets her out of his sight. She was his neighbor, they say, growing up. They lived in the same building. She’s young like you said. About twenty-two...twenty-three. Family came from Brazil, I think.”
I don’t like how quickly Van Hallen settled on the right woman. He wasn’t lying about having a hard-on for Stacatto, at least. “Do you know anything about a murder case connected to her?”
“Terrible, terrible crime,” Van Hallen says softly. “Poor kid lost her whole family. The photos of the crime scene haunted the precinct for weeks.”
“Next question. Detective Andrew Sosa. Know him?”
“No,” Van Hallen says carefully. “But I do know of a Chief Andrew Sosa.”
Chief. Apparently, being a prick in Stacatto’s pocket could make a man rise through the ranks within the course of five years. “What do you know about him?”
Van Hallen hesitates. “I know that he writes my departmental performance reviews.”
“Well, I’m going to go out on a limb and tell you that I know for a fact that he’s working for Stacatto.”
“That’s a very stupid accusation to make, Vialle,” Van Hallen warns, but he doesn’t trash the notion outright. Smart bastard.
“He worked on the Manzano case, right?”
This time, Van Hallen takes almost a full minute to answer. “Yes...”
“Then take some words of advice, detective. He’s Stacatto’s man—but that’s your problem. Last question: if...if I could get you someone like this Daniela Manzano...could you smuggle her out of the city. You. Not your fucking corrupt police chief. Not any one of your little rookie cops. You.” I know it’s a stupid plan before the words leave my mouth. Fuck, I don’t know why they leave my mouth. My neck itches and I have to reach up to scratch at it while Van Hallen takes his sweet time digesting what I’ve said.
“Vialle, if you could get me someone like Daniela Manzano the only place I’d be able to put her is on the witness stand. She could sink Stacatto’s entire operation with her testimony, alone. Or at least turn the public against him.”
“Well, that answers that question.” I rip the phone from my ear, prepared to hang up.
“Wait!” Van Hallen breathes heavily into the receiver. “You...this is all just hypothetical, right? You don’t really have her? Because if you did...well then that makes what I’m about to tell you a little clearer: Stacatto’s put out a hit on a man who sounds an awful lot like you. Half a million dollars for a bastard with blue eyes, dark hair, and a tattoo that says ‘Kitten’ across the left side of his neck.”
Half a million dollars. I have to chuckle at the amount. It’s the biggest pot put on my head, though definitely not the first. I have a feeling it won’t be the last.
“You’re right, detective. Sounds an awful lot like me.”
“I knew you had an interesting rap sheet, Vialle,” Van Hallen admits, “but getting on Stacatto’s shit list within a week is quite the feat to manage.”
“I’ll expect my award in the mail,” I toss back.
This time, Van Hallen doesn’t parry with a jab of his own. “Look...if your information is credible, it’s probably best if you contact me again through my direct number. If what you’re saying is true about the girls...then I think any prosecutor worth the paper his license is printed on would overlook a few murky details if a rogue detective launched his own counter investigation.”
I don’t say anything. It’s his neck on the line, but the bastard seems eager to put it there just to nail Stacatto to the wall. Heroes. Or maybe it’s just plain, old stupidity.
“Memorize this number,” he says, spouting off a round of digits. “Call it only when you have something tangible I can work with.”
He hangs up, and I return to the bar counter and toss the phone to Arno. He catches it with a wary look—though if he overheard anything, he’s smart enough not to admit it out loud.
“Mack won’t be up for a while,” he says, tucking the phone into his pocket. “The fucker went heavy on the drink...” He cracks a tired smile that almost reaches his eyes. “You must have showed him up good.”
I feel a matching grin tug on the corners of my mouth for a second. “Just like old times.”
I leave him there and head for the garage. I don’t know why I take my time mounting each step, my eyes on the door to the apartment. I can almost taste her beyond it. Nervous. Anxious. The little bitch probably thinks that Arno is right at my damn heels, and a part of me takes pleasure in that. If thunder didn’t choose that moment to rumble in the distance, I would have gone back to the bar and gotten the bastard just to prove...
What? That her little pleas didn’t matter? That she didn’t matter? I could turn her over in a second and still fucking sleep at night.
When I finally get the front door open, I don’t find her in the living room or the kitchen. For a second I entertain the notion that the little bitch wised up and ran, but I catch her scent lingering just beyond the doorway to the bedroom, and I find her seated on the edge of the mattress.
Blank. Her expression registers nothing. She’s the same creature she was the night Arno’s man first brought her in. Empty. Distant. She’s ready for whatever I throw at her—and it wouldn’t fucking faze her.
“Arno’s waiting downstairs,” I tell her as I enter the room. With one hand, I reach for her wrist, gripping her so tightly that I feel the bone underneath. “Come—”
She waits until I drag her to her feet before she lashes out. Nails. Teeth. Hands. Feet. The little bitch comes to life kicking and screaming. “No!” Her wounded hand lands a blow across my cheek, and I taste her blood. She ripped the cut open again, but the pain doesn’t even seem to faze her. When I drag her closer, pinning her arms to her sides, I find terror in her eyes, but the fear isn’t directed at me. Oh no. The little bitch is afraid of herself. She doesn’t know why she’s fighting. Why she’s angry at the thought of me turning her over like a piece of meat. She would have never fought him like this, and it’s that realization that makes me shove her back so hard she lands face up on the mattress.
“Stop.”
She lies there, her teeth bared, her hair streaking the dark comforter like a shadow. Her face stands out in stark contrast, displaying a real, true emotion for once. Hatred—only the dumb bitch isn’t smart enough to direct it at me.
She hates herself.
“I’m not going to give you to him,” I say, flinging the words at her like punches.
Her chest heaves. She sighs. She’s...relieved. Her eyes shut against the admission, but not before I catch sight of it. Stacatto’s little whore only has enough room in her bed for one monster, apparently. Realizing that pisses her off—as much as a little princess can be pissed off. Her teeth sink into her lower lip, and she bites down until it turns red.
“Unless you want me to change my mind?” I add, but it’s a vicious taunt, and she winces as if I’d slapped her.
Her mouth twitches anyway. Yes. She wants to say it. She wants to don her emotionless armor and take every evil thing dished out at her like a good, caged songbird. But she can’t. Her newfound will is too damn strong, even for her to resist.
“N-No,” she croaks, wrenching her eyes open to stare me down. “No one else.” She drags herself upright, raising her freshly bloody palm as if she’s not quite sure why. “No one else...”
I don’t move. That’s a promise that I won’t make—not to a bitch with another man’s name on her chest. Not to her.
Her fingers flutter, dripping blood onto the bedspread, but she can’t seem to pull the hand back. Maybe she couldn’t bear to be used, even to piss off Stacatto. Deep down, maybe the little bitch didn’t want to die either. It’s a grim realization she can’t force herself to face, and I’m not sure what course of action she’ll take when a knock rattles the front door.
My eyes cut to her. Cut through her. “Stay here.”
She stiffens when I enter the hall again. I move slowly. Cautiously. My fingers flex, and I almost wish that I’d taken her knife. My hands have taken enough of a beating over the past few days.
“Who is it?”
The only response is another quiet knock. I shift my stance as I pull the door open, prepared to shove anyone right down the fucking staircase before they can make a move. I see a shadow. A hulking figure. Blue eyes.
“Shit.” I pull back at the last second and brace my open palm against the nearest wall. “Espi?”
The kid doesn’t acknowledge me with more than a flick of his eyes and a grunt. “She here?”
She? Something tugs at the back of my mind. Her. She’s spoken to him, and who knew what the fuck she’d really told him.
“She isn’t—”
“Is she here or not?” Espi pushes his way past me, muscling through the door, dragging something behind him. It’s a case, oddly shaped. My mind is slow to place it as he pulls it into the living room, scanning the corners for Stacatto’s woman.
“Danny? Danny, are you here?”
When there’s no answer right away, Espi glares at me and seems about ready to hit me with whatever the fuck he has when she finally creeps to the doorway.
“H...Hey.” She smiles, but her bruised lips undermine the expression. She does her best to move without wincing as she enters the hallway, and I know why. She’s suppressing every ounce of pain, humiliation, and abuse...for him.
I can’t tell if Espi can see through the bullshit or if he chooses to believe the illusion instead. “I brought you something,” he grunts, manipulating the case so that she can see it.
When she does, she stops moving. Her eyes widen. They fill—flood. Whatever has been done to her, Espi’s magic case is enough to erase it long enough for her to stagger forward and brush the length of it with a trembling finger. Without a word, he sets the case onto the floor and undoes the latches before flicking it open.
I don’t know what I expect to find inside it. Gold? Money? Dope? Besides pussy, those were the things that seemed to matter wherever you looked. Most men—let alone most people—wouldn’t be brought to tears by the sight of a wooden instrument and her own words haunt me. Cello.
She glances up at Espi, shaking her head. “How...how, why—”
“I got it from a friend,” he says, gently cutting over her.
Speechless, she caresses the body of the instrument like it’s glass. Like it’s the mother-fucking holy grail. For a second, I know she’s forgotten all about Vincent Stacatto, Arno, Mack...Dante Vialle. We’re just dust on her periphery, swept away by her one true passion. Right then, I understand why her precious Vinny was willing to kill her family as punishment for pursuing her dreams. Why he made her play while he killed. Why he held her captive for five years and forced her to bear his ring.
He knew what I know now: nothing in the world would ever matter to her as much as this.
She would never look at another man the way she looked at a fucking piece of wood.
It was the kind of knowledge that might drive some jealous fuck stupid enough to fall in love with her...insane.