Page 27 of Love Without Control

“You ask a lot of questions.”

I widened my eyes incredulously. “Well, excuse me. I’ve been drugged, kidnapped, sold, hit, stuck in the back of a truck for hours, hit again, forced to wear a hooker dress, rescued, seen corpses, taken to a safe house, almost blown up in a helicopter, and now I’m riding in a pimpmobile. Pardon the hell out of me if I have questions.”

My voice had risen almost to a yell by the end, and as my chest heaved with frustration, Damiano turned the car onto a surface street and sighed. “You’re right. It’s a long story, so let’s talk after we switch cars. The house is only a few minutes away.”

I acquiesced and stayed silent until we arrived at the ramshackle house with a charcoal-gray Ford Explorer parked in front. Damiano parked the pimp car, used a key from the keyring to get inside the house, and came back a few minutes later with another set of car keys.

I looked around, but no one was paying us any attention. This seemed to be the kind of neighborhood where no one asked questions.

After transferring everything to the SUV, we got in and headed out. I lasted all of two minutes before asking, “Is Rodrigo your dad or your uncle or something?”

Damiano’s lips pressed together. “I wish he was my father, but no, we’re not related.”

“You’re not an FBI agent, are you?”

“No.”

“CIA?”

“No.”

Pressing my fingertips into my eyeballs, I puffed out a long exhale. “Are you some kind of vigilante?”

His lips twitched slightly. “I guess you could call me that.”

I did one of those closed-mouth quiet screams as Damiano took the onramp onto Interstate-10, heading east. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to say more than a few words at a time. Perhaps you could spill what you know without me having to drag it out of you.”

A muscle clenched and released a few times in his jaw. “You’re right.” He drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel before glancing over at me. “Have you ever heard the name Luca Cappitani?”

My eyes drifted up to stare at the top of the windshield as I tried to place the name. My mind brought up the picture of a man with a receding hairline, jowls, and a protruding belly. “Isn’t that some Mafia dude in New York?”

A vein throbbed in his temple. “Yes, he’s the one who tried to buy you.”

My stomach roiled with nausea, and I croaked out, “Why would he do that?”

Damiano shot his chocolate-brown eyes in my direction again. “Why do you think?” His teeth worked over his bottom lip, back and forth a few times before he spoke again. “He doesn’t treat his woman well, Evie. He keeps them drugged and…”

“And what?”

“He uses them whenever he wants. He has a medicine cabinet full of Viagra if you’re not catching my drift.”Shit.“When he’s done with them, he passes them on to one of the men under him in the organization. Or worse.”

Worse?

I covered my mouth with my hand. “And how do you know all this?” The words were muffled, but I knew he could hear them because his knuckles turned white on the steering wheel.

“Because I was sent to pick you up for him.” There was a long pause before he said, “Because Luca is my father.”

I’d experienced the most horrific fear imaginable over the past few days, and I thought the worst was over. But I was dead wrong. It slammed back into me with a vengeance as I realized what he’d just said.

“Are you taking me to him?” I asked, a tear slipping down my right cheek. Swiping it away angrily, I turned my face fully toward the man who was maneuvering through traffic, a stoic expression on his face.

“I am not,” he replied through gritted teeth.

“Are you in the Mafia too?”

“I was but not anymore.”

“Since when?” I asked, pretty sure I already knew the answer.

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