Rocco’s laugh turns to coughs, wet and sickly sounding. This fucker is going to need more medical attention if he’s going to survive until Rem’s next visit. “The rule of the club. If you’re connected enough, powerful enough that the organizers know you’re in town and interested in theirproducts, they’ll deliver the invitation to you. An escort who’ll get you in the front door. Without them, you’ll never find it, never get in.”
“And Shkodra will be there?”
“Who the fuck knows,” Rocco spits. “But it’s your only chance to find him before the next auction. The only place you’ll be able to talk to the sick fuck about your Rina.”
I study the man dangling in front of me. He’s a collection of burnt skin, mangled muscles, broken bones, but he’s still alive. Far longer than I would’ve guessed, even with the medical treatment we’ve given him. Like he’s fighting tooth and nail for his survival.
Like he thinks he might get out of this alive.
“A club with no fixed location, no name, no way to get in without a personal escort sent by faceless pricks who hear rumors I’m interested in spending millions on a virgin. That’s the answer you’re giving me?”
“Fuck off, asshole. It’s the only answer I got. Now let me down before my arms rip out of my sockets.”
“So what if they do? It’s not like you’re going to need them much longer.”
Rocco bucks against his bindings. I ignore the mixture of curses and promises he throws at me, things he’ll do if only I let him go. Or kill him. Whatever I want, as long as I make the torture stop.
“Save your breath, Pagano. You’re going to stay strung up for as long as I need to corroborate your information. You better hope I have an invite within forty-eight hours, otherwise I’m going to take one of your legs. Then we’ll see just how hard hanging here can get.”
“Evil fucking bastard.” Rocco’s voice breaks, real fear shining through.
“Takes one to know one,” I say, grinning at him. “But who knows? Maybe I’ll find the Albanian just like you said. Then once I’m done with him, I’ll come back here and slit your throat. You’ll be dead in seconds. Nice and easy.”
I won’t. Whether I’m the one to kill Rocco, or Rem, the man is going to die slowly, and very, very painfully.
A reality he’s working like hell to avoid as he starts blabbering. “Everything I said is true. About the club. About Shkodra. He’s gotta be the one who bought Rina. You get to the club, you’ll find him. He’s a nasty fucker. Cut him into tiny bits for all I care. But he can tell you where your girl went after the auction. He knows.Vaffanculo, he has to know.”
I give Rocco a patronizing pat on the cheek. “Better hope he does,mudak.”
Eyes bloodshot and wild, Rocco keeps going, “He’s in Chicago. He here. Now. He has to be. He wants more like her, like Rina.” Rocco coughs, choking on the blood still running down his face and into his mouth. “I-I’ve…cazzo!—I had a girl lined up for him. Before those fucking Cerretis rampaged my house, I had a girl ready and waiting. Virgin. Feisty. So insignificant no one will ever miss her. Just like he likes them. Serafina is an ugly bitch, but the Albanian doesn’t care about that. He just wants tofuck them and break them, and Sera was gonna be so perfect.”
Murderous rage blurs my vision. Some primal part of me screams to kill him now. To slice him open from neck to nuts. Whatever he’s saying is lost to the roar in my head until I’m able to pull myself back and focus.
I grab his ear, yank until he’s forced to meet my stare. “Repeat what you just said.”
His breath is rotten when he answers, “Shkodra has a specific type. He collects them. Can’t get enough of them. H-h-he wants more. And I had one for him, plucked and primed, just waiting to be sold. Fuck, the things he’s going to do if di Salvo doesn’t get her to that auction.”
Di Salvo. I heard the name during my time in Pagano’s clan. It was always accompanied by a look of hatred, or fear, or both.
Rocco is rambling, sounding crazier by the second. “—it would serve di Salvo right, disappearing when he did. He stopped answering all my fucking phone calls. Just vanished—poof. And he thinks he can just walk back into this city and take credit for the girl and make everything right with the world?Segaiolo. I almost hope she died in that cell, so the Albanian can give that fucker di Salvo what he deserves.”
I pull harder on his ear, threatening to rip it off his skull as I bring him back to the plot. I don’t want to hear him say her name again, but I need confirmation. “Who was the girl?”
Rocco is in so much pain it takes all his effort to say, “My ugly ass niece, Serafina. No blonde hair, no blue eyes, no tits at all, but she’s a virgin. If you’d seen her, you’d know why. A body more boy than girl. But she’ll be fucking tight and she’s got more fight in her than half of our family combined. And she’s mafia by blood. Pure fuckingmafiosoblood. Shkodra will pay through the nose for her. Will get off just by breaking her, sadistic fuck. Looks can be bought, changed, enhanced. But bloodlines—those fucking things are untouchable. Rare. AndShkodra loves rare. Nothing gets him harder than breaking a mafia princess.”
I don’t realize I have my knife against his head until I see blood trailing down the side of his neck. “You were going to sell your own flesh and blood to that monster?”
“Anyone would for the amount he’s willing to pay. Don’t get sanctimonious on me, Russian. Even you’d be tempted to sell your Rina?—”
I slice up in one quick motion, cutting Rocco’s ear clean off. His words morph into screams, his body convulsing as it loses even more blood.
I fling his severed ear in his face, leaving him to the tender care of one of Cosenza’s brutes as I try to make sense of everything he’s said.
There’s no avoiding it now: My mission is about RinaandSera. Avenging one and protecting the other. Which is a real mind fuck because I don’t want to think about Sera. I want her safely locked away, out of sight, out of mind, out of my fantasies and filthy dreams.
Christ, a virgin! With a praise kink.
That knowledge might as well be a time bomb welded to my ribs. Just waiting to go off, to blow my restraint sky high. To obliterate all pretense of civility and send me—the base, primal, primitive me—after the girl I definitely can’t have but am becoming increasingly desperate to claim.