I was grateful to Mr. Bertoli for at least letting me pull my pants up before he had Julius and Pietro lead me from Adriana's bedroom. He looked to see if I was going to fight, but when I stood without argument, he turned his attention to Pietro. “Take him to the garage. I'll speak with Margaret and my niece first.”

“Yes, Godfather,” Pietro said. A long time Bertoli man, Pietro Marconi was a second-generation member of the Bertoli crime family and was as tough as nails. Another man I'd looked up to when I was growing up, he'd also moved from an enforcer role to something else, but I knew his skills were still sharp. There was no way I could get the drop on him, even if I wanted to.

Carlo looked at me for a moment. The anger he'd kept under control while Adriana was in the room broke free as he crossed the room, and his fist caught me straight in the nose. My head rocked back and blood flowed, but I could tell it wasn't broken. Carlo is great at what he does, but he's not a fighter. “You betraying piece of shit,” he literally spat into my face. “I loved you like one of my own sons.”

Carlo whirled and left the room, leaving me with Julius and Pietro, both of them still holding their guns trained on me. The room was suddenly quiet, and Pietro took the time to finally say something. “Are you going to come easily, Daniel?”

“I won't fight you,” I said simply, my heart breaking. I knew I'd betrayed Carlo's trust even as I opened my heart to Adriana. In the Mafia, there is room for only one true love, and I had let someone else take the place of my Godfather. “Can I ask a favor though, even though I don't deserve it?”

“You can ask,” Pietro said. “Doesn't mean I am going do anything about it.”

“Can you have someone just pack my backpack and have the keys by the door? If Don Bertoli is going to let me live, I'd like to leave without the shame of rooting for my fucking keys.”

“If you still have that BMW afterward,” Pietro said. “Come on.”

Julius led the way out, with me in the middle while Pietro pulled up the rear. In the hallway, I saw Kathy leaning against the wall with a triumphant smirk on her face. “Guess you won't be fucking Firecrotch anymore.”

“Fuck you, Kathy,” I replied evenly. “She's a better class of woman than you will ever be, you miserable bitch.”

“Come on,” Pietro said, poking me in the back with his pistol before Kathy could say anything back. We went to the garage, where Pietro tied my hands together. He tossed the other end of the rope over an overhanging beam and started to pull it tight.

I thought back to the image of Adam. “Not overhead.”

Pietro nodded and pulled the rope down. Instead, he tied the rope to the support column, then stepped back. “Just to let you know,” he said as he assumed his position by the door, “Kathy is gone, as of the morning. Nobody talks about the Bertoli family like that.”

I nodded in gratitude and stood quietly, waiting for Carlo. Even though the weather was still warm, a hint of chill was in the night air, and I shivered. Julius, who wasn't as disciplined as Pietro, looked me over, even stepping closer to talk. “Why, Daniel?”

I stood straight and tall and looked Julius in the eye. “We've always been attracted to each other. Being with her so much, we were destined to fail. She said we were in love, and maybe we were, but it was too soon to know for sure.”

Julius looked at me with newfound respect, and even Pietro's stance softened. Julius stepped back, and we waited in silence until Carlo came in with two more of his men, thick-muscled moose whom I knew more for their brawn than their brains.

He didn't even greet me, and gone was the cultured, slightly affable middle-aged man who charmed as much as he analyzed. Instead, I was facing Cutthroat Carlo Bertoli, the man who'd started as one of the most cold-blooded men in the entire Bertoli family. “You motherfucker,” he nearly screamed, storming across the floor of the garage and backhanding me. One of the moose, a thickly muscled guy named Lorenzo, noticed that I wasn't trussed up overhead and opened his mouth, but he closed it when Pietro gave him a look. He knew that Pietro was nearly as merciless as Carlo was. “You seducing son of a bitch!”

Carlo's next strike was a kick to my nuts, which I didn't have to fake being doubled over by. Pain radiated sickly up my body from my offended testicles, and I had to force myself to keep my eyes open as he started kicking me over and over. I curled into a ball, silent. My silence seemed to infuriate him more. “Why? Why won't you scream and cry?”

He paused, shaking out his aching leg. I used the opportunity to get back to my knees, but nothing more. Instead, I kept my silence as Carlo crossed the room, rooting around in a closet that I knew contained gardening equipment before finding what he wanted, coming out with a gardening shovel. “Lorenzo, make sure he feels it, but no edges, and nothing to the head,” Carlo said, handing the moose the shovel. “And make sure he can walk.”

You don't really know pain until you get beaten with the flat head of a garden shovel, I learned, as Lorenzo started tooling off on me. The first shot was to my chest, right in the middle between my pectoral muscles. I was barely able to jerk my head to the side in time to avoid catching the handle in the mouth. The second shot was to my back, driving me back down to the floor. As he began systematically beating me, Carlo yelled.

“Daniel, I raised you! I gave you a home, a family, and a life! I didn't ask too much, just that you be an honorable man, and I don't have too many rules, do I? No. But you had to go and break the one that was closest to my heart. Stealing from me, lying to me, those I can understand, and maybe even forgive, can't I, Pietro?”

“Yes, Don Bertoli,” Pietro said immediately, his gun now put away and his hands clasped in front of him like he was having a prayer in church or something. “Very forgiving, sir.”

“Damn right,” Carlo said, turning back to me. “So why did this piece of trash have to go and break the one rule I hold sacrosanct? You're lucky that I love my niece, Daniel. I promised her upstairs that you'd live and that you'd walk out of here tonight. It was a moment of weakness on my part, because I love her so much. But I swear this to you. If you ever, and I mean ever, set foot in Seattle again, I'm going to make sure your cock is fed to Pietro's dogs while it's still attached to your body.”

He knelt and spit in my face, then got up and turned away. “Tune him up some more, Lorenzo. But remember what I said—he walks out tonight.”

Carlo left the garage, and I turned my face to look at Lorenzo, who set the shovel aside with a grin. “Don Bertoli said you have to walk out,” he growled, cracking the ham hocks he called knuckles. “He didn't say anything about you having to look good doing it.”

I don't know how long the beating went on, as Lorenzo's second hit rocked my head pretty hard and things went kind of swimmy for a while. I do know that the entire time, I didn't say a word, except for the times his knee caught me in the stomach and I grunted as the air was forced from my lungs. In the end, I was bleeding from quite a few places, and while I had all my teeth, I was pretty sure my nose was broken.

“Lorenzo,” Pietro, who'd stayed behind the whole time to watch the beating, said after I coughed up some blood onto the floor, “that's enough.”

Lorenzo, who'd worked up a pretty good sweat in the course of kicking my ass, stepped back, panting slightly. “Okay, Mr. Marconi. I think I need a drink of water anyway.”

He left, and it was just me and Pietro in the garage. I struggled back to my knees and tried to get to my feet, but failed, losing my balance. Before I could hit the concrete again, Pietro was there, holding me and helping me up. “That took a lot of balls, kid,” he said in a low voice as he cut the now bloodstained ropes that held my hands together. “Why'd you not say anything?”

“I deserved it,” I mumbled, my lips swollen but still understandable. “I betrayed the man who was like a father to me.”

He nodded, then slung my arm around his shoulder. “All right. I had Julius put your bag on the front steps. There's no way you're walking through the house right now. I'll get you outside, then you get the hell out of here. You're lucky. I hope you realize that.”

“I know,” I whispered, feeling something pull in my ribs. “Can you give me an hour to get some shit from my apartment before the boys come to make sure I followed orders?”

“You've got until the morning shift gets here,” he said, glancing at his watch. “That gives you about ninety minutes. Then you’d better be on the fucking road out of here.”

“I will,” I groaned, wincing as we left the garage by the side door and he helped me to the front steps. I found the backpack that Adriana insisted I buy to blend in with the college crowd, my computer inside along with a few of my clothes, the keys to my BMW sitting beside it. Lifting the bag and picking up the keys was the most painful exercise I'd ever done. “Pietro, you know that—”

“I don't want to know anything, Daniel,” he said gruffly. “Now go, before my soft side gives way to the rest of me.”