Well… that plan was about what I’d expected. What was surprising, though, was thatWilsonhad been the one to snatch me. Implying Wilson was a man, not a family. I’d foolishly assumed otherwise. But now I knew, and I had no doubt I could use that information to my advantage. After all, one man meant he waspayingfor his goons. The Riccis and Altissimos and most other mafia families leveraged the bloodlines and family respect, which held a lot more power than just coin.
Thinking of the Altissimos reminded me of my wife. Fucking Vee had screwed us over and taken the drugs for herself. I would be mad about it, if I couldn’t see the strategy behind her actions. She’dalwayswanted more out of her life, but not in the same way I did. Me? I wanted nothing more to do with my family or the crime they were engaged in. I wanted to get out, totally out, and join Bellerose for real. I wanted a future with my Bella.
Vee wanted to become the next biggest, baddest bitch in Siena. She didn’t want to get out, she wanted to stayin. She wanted to rule and had never hidden that from me. Despite how pissed I was that she’d gone behind our backs… I’d still do everything possible to support her dreams.
That’s what a good friend did.
After the dumb-shit guard was satisfied with my beating, he left and I let myself drift into sleep while still hanging from my chains.
With no clue how much time had passed, I awoke once more to the sound of the cell door opening and a guard stepping through. Thankfully, this guard was thesmartone.
“I’m allowed to let you down today,” he advised me in a quiet voice. “But if you try anything, you’ll be left to hang there indefinitely. We clear?”
My response was just a grunt. My chest hurt enough that I wouldn’t waste words if they weren’t necessary. The guard gave me a wary look, then nodded to himself and fished out a set of keys from his pocket.
Short fucker needed to use a stool to reach the cuffs holding my wrists in the air. The second they unlatched, I crumbled to the floor in a painful heap. A low groan rattled out of my bruised chest, but all in all, I wasn’t in too rough shape.
“You good?” the guard asked cautiously as I slowly pushed myself to hands and knees. He had his gun in hand, but I knew he wouldn’t use it. Not for deadly force, anyway.
I chuckled. “Sure. Good. Where are we?”
The guard shook his head. “I can’t tell you that, Ricci, come on. Ask me something easy, like what’s for dinner.”
“Okay. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.” I really was, despite the rolling nausea in my gut, probably from the motion of swinging from chains while deprived of food and water.
The guard handed me a plastic water bottle, and I took careful sips so I didn’t vomit it all up. “No fucking clue,” he replied with a smirk. “But it’ll be bad, whatever it is. Settle in and get comfy. You’re here for at least another eleven days.”
He started to leave, and curiosity sparked inside my fuzzy mind. “Your buddy coming back for another visit any time soon?” The guard who’d roughed me up seemed to be trying to prove a point. This guy, though, recognizedwhoI was and had been smart enough to show respect.
“Probably,” the guard replied with a shrug. “You can take it, I’m sure.”
He wasn’t wrong. He left me alone again, leaving me the bottle of water when he locked the heavy door once more. Eleven days, he’d said. Why such a specific amount of time? Was there a meeting planned with my father, maybe?
Fuck, I hoped Bella was okay. If she wasn’t… well… this cursed mafia war hadn’t yet seen carnage like I would deliver. And I’d enjoy every bloody second of it. Which meant I needed to get out of this goddamn cell. Now. Regardless of whether they were taking me right to Giovanni, I couldn’t sit idle for another eleven days wondering what had happened to Bella. Or to Jace. Fuck, even to those other slick fuckers… They were all growing on me, much to my own surprise.
I had a few hours to look around the room and ponder over a reasonable plan, but without knowing where we were or how many guards I’d be facing outside this cell, there wasn’t much Icouldplan. So I simply bided my time until the door opened again.
To my satisfaction, it was the asshole guard with heavy fists. I couldn’t have picked a better victim if I’d been given the choice.
I waited in the shadow behind the door, making him look around the room in confusion for a moment. Then I crept up behind him with a jagged piece of plastic from the water bottle and slashed him across the eyes. Was it strong enough to do any major damage? No way in hell. But it was enough to scratch his eyeballs, and that gave me the moment of distraction necessary to take possession of his gun.
The idiot shrieked at me, hollering about howI’d payand all that crap, but his warnings held as much water as a fishing net. I didn’t shoot him, though. Why go alerting the whole building to my escape so soon? Instead, I knocked him out with the butt of his own gun, donned his steel-toed boots, then caved his head in with my foot.
When I was finished painting the ground red, I divested the guard’s remains of all his other weapons and keys, then quietly let myself out of the cell. The corridor was only marginally brighter, lit with ancient halogens that flickered with every step I took. How infuriating. It reinforced the suspicion that I was in an industrial warehouse, though. Maybe in the basement, given the lack of light.
A low rumble of an engine or machines filled the space, but I dismissed the sound as I calmly searched for a way out. A few moments later, I stumbled into a room where a group of guards sat around smoking and playing cards, totally at ease.
Two of them reached for their guns automatically, and those two both ate lead before they could get their fingers on the triggers.
“Anyone else want to be stupid?” I asked in a conversational tone. It was so much more unnerving when the guy holding the gun seemed unaffected by killing, and I really was unaffected.
There was a dramatic pause, then the remaining guys dove for weapons, and I popped off a rapid-fire round of bullets, splattering the walls red as my ears rang.
“I take that as a yes, then,” I murmured to the room full of bodies. Whatever they were getting paid, it wasn’t enough. I exchanged my gun for one of theirs and checked that it was fully loaded before also taking their spare ammo and a tommy gun.
I sighed as I continued hunting for the way out of this never-ending basement level. If I had to kill every single person I met on my way out, then so be it. Nothing would keep me away from Bella even a moment longer than necessary. Surely, Grayson had kept her safe, though. Or Rhett. Or, shit, even Jace… though he was about as good with a gun as my great aunt Claudia… which still wasn’tbad,but I’d pin my hopes on the other two first.
It took me a while and several more dead bodies before I found a narrow staircase and made my way up. At the top, the door was also metal and secured with the kind of latch that seemed almost…nautical.
