“Fuck off,” the Italian sneered.
Owen was punching him in the mouth before he even made the conscious decision to do so.
“Where is she?” Owen shouted while the man spit out blood.
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” he replied, shaking his head. “I tell you anything, and I’m as good as dead.”
“You’ll never leave this basement,” Owen said. “My woman was taken from me, and no Italian gets away from me until I have her back.”
The Italian started to pull at the ropes binding him to the chair, but it did no good. He cursed and struggled, and Owen watched, waiting for him to accept the situation.
“Let me out of here, you bastard,” he shouted.
“The thing you should be worried about is what I’m going to do to you to get the information I want,” Owen said, pulling a set of brass knuckles out of his pocket. They were old school, but he liked to stick to the classics.
“You asshole,” the Italian replied, but there was fear in his eyes.
Owen punched him in the ribs this time. With the brass knuckles, it had a hell of an impact, and he heard a couple of ribs break. The Italian howled in pain.
He didn’t hold out for long after that. There was blood running from his nose and he was breathing heavily when he finally told Owen what he wanted to know.
“She’s being held in a warehouse for now. Old meat packing place on Trotter Road.”
“Why?” Owen asked, using a rag that Declan handed him to wipe the blood from his hands. “What’s the point of holding her?”
“The Don. He’s not back from South America yet, but when he is, he plans to make an example out of her.”
The fucker smiled a little at that. Owen’s blood pressure shot up so fast that he felt light-headed for a moment.
“She’s innocent in all this,” he said, more to himself than the Italian.
“Mancini doesn’t care. She’s your weakness and if he can exploit that, he will.”
That reminded Owen of his father. Mancini was just like him, and Owen had to put an end to him. But he needed to get Ruby back first.
“Take care of him,” he told Ivan as he walked by. He was halfway up the steps when he heard the shot.
Now, all that was left was getting his woman.
16
RUBY
It was impossible to tell how long she’d been held prisoner, but it had to have been at least a day, and she was starting to get worried. She was being held in a windowless room with a cot and not much else. The room wasn’t well ventilated, and she was uncomfortably warm the whole time.
She was taken to the bathroom a couple of times and fed once. Each time she was taken to the bathroom, it was a different broody and mysterious man that refused to answer any of her questions about why she was here. In fact, they refused to speak to her at all.
But they didn’t hurt her. Aside from the blow to the head she took when she was abducted, they’d mostly left her alone. She put her hand to the wound on the right side of her head and winced. It had bled, and the first time she was led to the bathroom, she’d been shocked to look in the mirror. It was like something out of a horror movie. She’d cleaned the blood off as best as she could, but it was still crusted in her hair.
She needed a shower, but that wasn’t happening any time soon unless Owen rescued her. She was sure that he would try to. He was probably frantically looking for her right now. But would he succeed?
The door of the room opened, and she saw another unfamiliar face standing there.
“I don’t need to use the bathroom,” she said. She was getting tired of playing their game.
“Come on,” the man demanded, and she knew it would do no good to argue. Standing up from her cot, she followed the guy into the nondescript hallway. But he didn’t turn in the direction of the bathroom. Instead, he went the other way, and he grabbed her arm above the elbow in a bruising grip to pull her along. Her heart raced. The unexpected could not be a thing in this situation.
It wasn’t long before they walked into an open space with high ceilings. Looking around at the industrial design and the boarded up windows, she realized that this was an old warehouse.
