Page 251 of Syndicate of Sin Bundle

Instead of pulling the trigger, Tommy punched me straight in the face. I went for his gun, but there was more than him in the room now with us. There were at least five other guys from the family, all there to make sure things went smoothly, their guns trained on me.

I was trapped. And if I didn’t think of a way to get out of this, I’d be dead soon.

31

alessandro

Bag over my head. Hands tied behind my back. Tape over my mouth. I sat in the back of the car between Tommy and another man from the family. The blood trickled down from my nose and onto my shirt.

I’d buy another one—if they didn’t kill me.

All I wanted was to ask why I was really here, but I already knew. I had overstepped before they trusted me. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with Chiara and her troubles … but I couldn’t help myself. All my life, I had been used, either by the mafia or by the whores in it.

But Chiara … Chiara was different.

Chiara wanted nothing to do with me, and that was what I liked about her. She didn’t need a knight in shining armor. She had all her shit together already, knew what had to be done before it needed to be done, stuck her nose in places she wanted it to be to figure stuff out.

She was strong. Independent. Didn’t need me.

But, damn, did I want her.

The car stopped, and they pushed me out of it, dragging me by my shirt collar because I couldn’t walk with my feet tied together. The gravel turned to grass, and the grass turned to concrete under my feet.

This time around, I didn’t know if I’d be able to get out of this.

I hated how close I had been to figuring it all out. I needed a bit more evidence.

Someone locked the cuffs around my wrists to a chain overhead, my entire body hanging from it. When they finally pulled the bag off my head and I could see again, I stared at Chiara’s father and the don of the Sicilian Mafia. Together, with at least twenty other family members, standing guard with guns, in a concrete basement somewhere—I assumed Chiara’s family house.

And at that moment, all my suspicions were confirmed.

Chiara’s family was trafficking children, doing hell knew what to them—selling them off, raping them, doing god-awful things that I didn’t want anyone to ever think about, things that I had witnessed long ago in Italy.

So many disgusting and bad memories were rushing through my head because … I had been one of those kids. I’d found my way out of that shithole, found my real family, entered this life so no other child would ever have to deal with that shit.

I wanted to stop it.

Now, I was about to die for it.

“It’s nice to see you again, Alessandro,” Ricinni, don of the Sicilian Mafia, said. He walked around me, looking me up and down.

All I wanted to do was lunge at him, kill him, torture the shit out of him, like I’d wanted to do before I was sent to prison. But I’d never had the chance to get close enough to him toward the end.

They started talking to me, but I didn’t listen. It was all nonsense. Total and utter bullshit. I’d figured everything out about this family. It didn’t matter if they killed me now. I knew the truth, and I hoped Chiara would find it out soon too.

After an hour of hanging there, refusing to speak, not listening to what they were saying, not admitting shit to them, they started the torture. Hitting me as hard as they could until my back was bruised beyond belief. Sliding a knife through my flesh and making me numb to the pain.

None of it hurt as bad as what I had endured in this life. None of it mattered.

Another hour passed. Blood gushed from multiple wounds in my abdomen, from my nose. I could barely see out of my right eye from the swelling. Everything hurt, yet all I could think about was Chiara.

Her smile when she’d looked at me last night and I told her I cared about her. Then the frown she had given me this morning when I told her we weren’t together and how she brushed it off as if it were nothing.

All I wanted was to see her again. One last time.

Chiara’s father’s fist collided with my jaw. My vision blurred. They asked me what I knew even though they already knew. I shook my head back and forth. They asked me who I was working for. I spat the blood back into their faces. They picked up a phone and dialed a number, put it on speaker, and let me listen.

“Hello?” Chiara’s voice came from the other end.

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