Before I can even grab Harper’s hand, the guard has marched toward her and scooped her up in his arms, throwing her over his shoulder. Her squeals have me upright and ready to fight, but another guard runs inside and pins me to the bed. I fight him off as best as I can, kicking and punching, even biting my way through, chomping down on his finger as hard as I can. But after all the beatings I took, my strength is dwindling fast, and I’m quickly overpowered.
Left to watch the one woman I love be torn away from me.
“Harper!” I growl as the guard grabs my wrists and forces them together on my back so he can put new cuffs on.
“Marcello!” Harper screams. “No! Let me go!”
But the guy marches straight out of the room with her on his shoulder as though she’s an easy victim. And when the door slams shut, my heart shatters into a million little pieces.
Her cries go through marrow and bone.
“LET HER FUCKING GO!” I roar, rage filling me up like a volcano that’s about to burst.
“You wish,” the guard quips, laughing like he’s enjoying my misery as he chains both my hands and feet up to the bed, strapping me in place.
“I’ll do anything. Trade places. Her life for mine,” I say, trying to speak to the good side in his soul if he even has any.
But the click-clacking of heels distracts me from the guard.
“Well, well … if it isn’t Marcello begging on his deathbed. I’m so glad I was able to witness that before your life is over,” Molly muses as she steps into the doorway.
“Take my life. Not hers,” I repeat, ignoring her obvious taunts.
She merely smirks. “You think I want her life?” Her brow rises. “Marcello …” She walks toward me and grabs my chin, digging her fingers into my skin. “All I want … is for you to feel the same despair I felt when you two hurt my husband.”
The last word comes out in a hiss as she throws my head back and turns her back to me again.
“So you’re just going to torture her like you did me? What kind of mother are you?” I say.
The guard leaves first, holding open the door for her.
She throws me a wicked glance over her shoulder. “Haven’t you heard? I’m not her mother.”
Her stone-cold eyes make mine widen as I realize what she is about to do.
“And I think you can guess who is going to pay for that,” she muses.
“No. Don’t touch her. Don’t!” I yell, but she slams the door in my face, leaving me with nothing but my own fury to rot in.
I roar out loud again and again, but no one comes in to pin me down again or keep me quiet even though I want them to. Even though I’m challenging them to do it. Because fighting them is the only way I can ever hope to get out.
What the fuck do I do?
And what is going to happen to listen?
The thought of them hurting her like they did to me ruins me, turns me insane, and I direct all my attention at the camera, and yell, “I GIVE UP! You win, Molly! Do you hear me? You can have me. I’m giving up. Do with me what you want. Just don’t fucking hurt Harper. She’s innocent.”
There’s no response. Maybe there isn’t anyone left to watch those cameras from the other end.
Fuck!
Suddenly, the door opens again, the sound making my ears and eyes perk up. But no one storms in like usual. “Who’s there?”
After a few seconds, someone sneaks in, taking ample time to check the area before closing the door and throwing a blanket over the cameras. Only then does he turn around to face me.
I frown at the guy who just looks at me like he’s seen a ghost, his beard scruffy and badly kempt, the hair on his head not in any better shape. Who the fuck is this dude, and what the fuck is he doing in my cell if not to torture me?
“Marcello,” he says, frowning right back at me. “Don’t you recognize me?”
My face scrunches up. What the fuck is the meaning of this?
That’s when he rips off his mustache and beard, chucking away his apparent wig as well.
“Ricardo?” I ask. “That you?”
“Of course it’s me,” he replies. “Who else would come here and wear a wig to save your motherfucking ass?”
He looks me up and down and makes a face. “You look horrible.”
“Thanks,” I say. “How did you get in here?” At this point, I might as well be hallucinating.
He walks to me and fishes a key from his pocket. Only now that I’ve taken a good look at him do I realize he’s wearing the same outfit all the other guards here wear with the Irish Family emblem stitched at the top.
“You’re one of them now?”
“Pretending is the keyword here,” he replies, stuffing the key into the lock and unlocking the cuffs. “Mario’s amazing idea.”
I get up and rub my wrists while he works on my ankles. “And the Irish just let you walk in looking like that?”
“Well … we’re talking about the Irish here,” he retorts, laughing a little. “They have more muscles than brains. Besides, they were a little too busy with Harper to even notice me. All the easier it was for me to knock one of theirs out and steal this damn key.”
When my ankles are freed too, I take a few seconds to get my muscles working again. I’m exhausted, in pain, malnourished, and thirsty as fuck, but the mere thought of escaping this hellish place gives me renewed energy.
“What are they doing with Harper? Do you know?” I ask as I get up.
“No, but I heard her cries. It can’t be anything good.”
“We have to save her.” I stumble to the door, recapturing my footing only barely.
“Marcello, wait.” Ricardo grabs my shoulder.
“What?” I bark.
When I turn my head, he raises a water bottle. “I know you want to save her, but you’re—”
I snatch the bottle from his hands and glug down the contents in one go, smashing it onto the ground as some of the water slides down my chin. “I’m fucking ready to save my fucking girl.”
Ricardo smirks. “Good. We’re gonna need that hard punch of yours when they realize you’re gone.”
He nods, and I nod back before he opens the door, and we storm out. Guards are everywhere, but Ricardo charges right at them like a fearless lion, kicking and punching his way through.
“Marcello, catch!” he yells, and he throws me a gun that he hid in his pocket. I manage to grab it midair as another guard comes storming at me, but I shoot him right in the head.
The door in the back opens up, and that one guard with that mask on who was torturing me all this time comes bursting through, the look in his eyes maddening, like a bull seeing red. “MAGGOT!”
He stampedes through the guards, shoving them aside even though they belong to the same family, charging straight for me. But I aim the gun at his knee without breaking even a drop of sweat and shoot.
He goes down crying like a bastard, and it sounds like a serenade to my soul. While Ricardo deals with the other guards, shooting them down one by one as they come pouring in, I pay extra special attention to the one who deserves it the most.
The guy is on the floor but still tries to get up even though he can only stand on one leg, so I shoot him in the other knee as well. He falls down, leaning on his elbows, but he still refuses to give up, clawing his way toward me to try to grab me.
“You won’t get away with this!” he growls.
“I fucking sure as hell will,” I reply, and I move my foot out of reach from his fingers, only to stand on top of them slowly, increasing pressure as I bend over and grab a fistful of his hair so I can rip off that mask of his. What’s behind it is an ugly face filled with scars, one I wish I never had to lay eyes on. I force him to look me in the eyes. “Remember when I told you you’d be the first to die?”
I shove the gun into his mouth and point it up toward his brains. “Beg.”
He shakes his head, rage still flooding his blood. “Fuck you,” he hisses, barely audible around the gun in his mouth.
I crack down onto his fingers harder and harder until one of his bones breaks, and he cries out in pain. “Now you know what it feels like,” I growl.
“Marcello! Hurry up, will ya!” Ricardo yells from the other side of the room, still punching and gunning down guards.
I sigh as I realize right now is not the time to enjoy torturing the filth who tortured me. Then again, he probably wouldn’t be able to handle it. But when he tries to fight me off, I gun down his hands, enjoying the sounds of his screams, before I put a bullet through his brain.
The sight of his blood gives me great pleasure after all the pain I’ve endured.
“C’mon!” Ricardo beckons me, and I focus my attention on the action around me. Several Irish and Polish guards lie wounded scattered around the floor, their bodies pierced with bullets and bruised with fists. A door on the other end of the hallway is opened up now, the one place I know leads to salvation.
But we must find Claudio first. I owe it to him to save him from this hell.
“Open up all the cells,” I tell Ricardo as he tries to go ahead.
He frowns and pauses in his tracks. “Why?”
“Claudio is inside one of them,” I reply as I kick down one of the doors myself. The cell in front of me is empty, but I know he is here somewhere. They wouldn’t just kill him without telling me. Molly loves to see me suffer, so she would definitely want me to know every little detail of his torturous death.
No, he must still be living and breathing somewhere, waiting for someone to come and rescue him.
So I bust open the doors one by one, shooting through the locks before knocking them down with my foot. Finally, in the last cell at the end of the row, do I find the man I’m looking for. But the relief I feel is only temporary.
“Claudio, get up, friend. We’re going to break out of here,” I say as I approach him and lift him up from the floor.
“Marcello? How did you get out?” Ricardo appears in the doorway and brings a smile to Claudio’s face. “I guess that explains it.”
“You didn’t think I’d leave you all hanging, did you?” Ricardo replies, and he comes to help me aid Claudio, unlocking his shackles. Claudio grumbles with aches and blinks slowly. He looks just as tired as I was when Ricardo found me, but when Ricardo shoves a gun into his hands, the fire sparks behind his eyes.
“Let’s kill these sons of bitches,” Claudio says.
I chuckle. “Now you’re talking, mi consigliere.”
I help him out of the cell.
“Free the prisoners. There’s a girl named Melanie in here who’s a friend of Harper’s,” I say, and Ricardo and Claudio nod. “Make sure she’s safe.”
“They’re keeping Harper up there,” Claudio says, pointing at a door that leads to a set of stairs. “I heard her cries all the way down here.”
My pupils dilate.
Her cries? Fuck. That can’t be good.
My heart is telling me to move even when I know it might be dangerous. I can’t stop these legs from immediately sprinting toward that door.
“Marcello, wait!” Ricardo calls out, but I can’t bear to stop.
Not while knowing my Kitten might be in danger.
Molly would do anything to hurt me … even hurt the one she used to call “daughter,” just out of spite.
So I race up the stairs, not giving a shit how many guards lie waiting for me there. They must’ve heard the gunshots, so they know I’m on the loose. But I don’t fucking care. And as I get to the top, I whip out my gun and shoot down any motherfucker who dares to try to stop me from getting to Harper.
BANG!
I shoot the guard in front of me, and he falls to the floor with ease, revealing the hallway. We’re in a giant warehouse with only a few rooms scattered throughout, but the one at the far end of the hall is brightly lit, and I can spot Molly standing over something … or someone.
Sitting in a chair, bound and gagged, is none other than Harper.
A guard films the ordeal while another guard has his dick out … and slaps it against her face.
Rage overcomes me as I storm toward the door, not giving a fuck about all the men guarding the other doors. When they spot me, most of them charge at me, and I jump to evade their grasp as they try to topple me.
“Marcello! Behind you!” Claudio’s voice makes me turn my head.
Too late.
One guard tackles me from behind.
OOF!
The sound leaves my throat before I realize I’m on the ground.
The guy is on top of me and knocks the air out of my lungs with his knees. I exert myself and roar as I lift my head and arm, aiming to shoot. But another guard quickly jumps me too and grabs my wrists, pinning me down to the floor to knock the gun from my hand.
“Get the fuck off me, you bastards!” I growl.
I can hear Claudio and Ricardo fighting more guards behind me as they now know we’ve been freed. There’s no way they can help me get rid of these assholes on top of me right now.
But all I can focus on is Harper, who is helpless in that chair right in front of me as the guy is purposely humiliating her and using her for his own pleasure, jerking himself off right in front of her while Molly watches with a gleeful smile on her face.
The smile doesn’t dissipate when she turns her head to look at me.
It only deepens more and more, like a wicked villain finally getting her way.
