Arrogant Prick: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance

BOOK: Arrogant Prick: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance
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Arrogant Prick
A Bad Boy Mafia Romance
Tessa Thorne

C
opyright
© 2016 by Tessa Thorne

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Chapter One
Giovanni

I
pull my punch
, so I don’t shatter his jaw. His head snaps back and his chin bounces off his chest. I grip his hair in my fist, yank his head back, and glare into his bloodshot eyes. “Who ordered the hit on my family?”

Crimson blood bubbles out of his smile. He spits out a broken tooth and says, “I told you earlier—I don't know what you're fucking talking about.”

I release his head and sink my other fist into his stomach. He gasps for breath and struggles against the duct tape holding him to the chair. It hurts so much more when you can’t double over after a gut shot like that. I know; I’ve been in his place before.

My shoes make loud clicks against the cement floor as I circle Tommy. The basement is half finished. A washing machine and dryer that both appear brand new are sitting in one corner. Next to them sit a well-used bench press and power rack. A pressure washer is beside the sink in another corner, along with an 8-player poker table.

Boxes litter the floor at my feet. They were once neatly stored in a linked wire cage against the wall, but I tossed them all aside in my search for any clue as to who ordered the hit on my family. I hadn't expected to find anything in them, and I didn't. But it was a good way to release some of my rage. If I hadn't, I might have already killed this goon, and I still need him to talk.

“Do you know who you’re fucking with?” He’s trying to appear tough, but I can see the fear lurking behind his cloudy eyes. We both know who’s in control here.

“You think I give a fuck, Tommy?” I grab the stack of crime scene photos and hold them in front of his face. “You think I still care what happens to me after you did this to my family?!”

I work his stomach like a heavy bag, relishing the feel of his ribs cracking under my knuckles. As I wait for him to recover his breath, I flip through the photos and stop on the first one that shows my sister Elena. She hadn't even turned sixteen.

“This is a nice setup you have here, Tommy.” I plant another punch in his stomach. I don’t hold back. “It’s pretty fancy for a lowly soldier.”

I wait for him to finish vomiting blood and bile. I don’t remember the number of enemy combatants I’ve interrogated before. They teach you to harden yourself in an interrogation. Emotions can cloud your judgment and make you hold back when you shouldn’t.

My stomach feels like a roiling cauldron. My temper is a raging forest fire. He’s going to suffer. Fuck good judgment. The world will burn for what it did to sweet, little El.

“The Pavoni
familia
must be doing really well for you to live in a house like this in Brooklyn.” I pull a baton from my back pocket and extend it with a flick of my wrist. “So much for the downfall of the Mafia.” The baton crunches into his knee. He screams, twisting his head from side to side, trying to escape the pain.

“I can only see one way out of this situation for you, Tommy.” I grip his chin and stare directly into his watery eyes. “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll end this.”

“You’re gonna let me live?” The hope quavering in his voice makes me want to laugh.

“I didn’t say that, Tommy.” I crack the baton against his right cheek, shattering his eye socket. The soundproof foam padding the walls and ceiling absorb his howls of pain. I pace around the brightly-lit basement as I wait for him to recover.

The treated cement floors slope and angle toward the drain set in the center of the basement, making it easy to wash away any blood and viscera with the power washer. I have to admit, this is a nice setup for an interrogation.

“Tell me, Tommy,” I say as I point at the large plastic drums and industrial acids on the other side of the sink. “How many bodies have you poured down your drains?”

He looks at me with his one good eye. His other eye is bleeding in its deformed socket. Fear has its grip on his face. This is what happens when they realize there’s no help coming. If he’s going to talk, it’ll be soon.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says dully. He doesn’t have the energy to lie convincingly anymore.

“What I want to know is why you didn’t bring my family here and dispose of them cleanly? Or why didn’t you burn the house down to clean up the evidence? Why did you make it so obvious it wasn’t just a home invasion?”

I watch, waiting to see if he’s ready to talk. This is taking too long. I know there’s only a small chance he'll break. Torture hardly ever worked in Afghanistan, and it’s unlikely as fuck to work here. Most of the time people just tell you whatever they think will make you stop.

Every second spent in Tommy’s basement in the ass end of Brooklyn is another second closer to being discovered. All it would take is another member of his crew dropping by, wondering why Tommy didn't show up for the day's collection run. A voice in the back of my mind is telling me that my rage is clouding my judgment; that I should finish up and get out of here. I tell it to shut the fuck up.

Tired of waiting, I bring my arm back, preparing to swing the baton, ready to smash the other side of his face. “I’ll give you all my money!” He screams through his sniffles, trying to hold back his tears. “I’ve got over a hundred grand in that wall safe. Please, just let me live.”

Bargaining, right on schedule.

“That safe?” I gesture to the sleek black box built into the wall. “You can’t offer me what’s already mine, Tommy.”

I lay the baton on the poker table. Tommy’s blood seeps into the green felt surface. I change out my bloody latex gloves for a fresh pair, grab my bag and walk past his home gym to the safe. It's got both an electronic keypad and a fingerprint reader. It's exactly the type of safe an amateur would buy.

“You can’t open that without my fingerprint and my code.” His voice is weak. He’s going to pass out soon. “I’ll let you have it if you just promise to let me live.”

I open up the key panel, wire my code breaker into the electronics, and let it go to work. In the meantime, I walk over to the bench. The forty-pound weight scrapes loudly against the concrete floor as I drag it off the rack. I walk over to Tommy and wait for him to realize what I’m about to do before I smash it down on his toes. He writhes and screams in his chair, begging for mercy until he falls over on his side.

There’s no mercy left in me. All I have left to give is death and suffering, and I’m in a generous mood.

I pull his thumb back, feeling the joint snap and saw it off his hand with the serrated back of my knife. If anyone’s close to his house, they’d hear his screams despite the soundproofing, but I couldn’t care less. He passes out before I finish.

The code breaker blinks green, signaling that it’s unlocked the code. 9999. Fucking idiot. I shouldn’t have expected better from anyone stupid enough to buy a biometric safe. I wipe the blood off his dismembered thumb and press it against the reader, then type in the code. A loud click signals my success. The safe swings open, revealing stacks of hundred dollar bills.

I arrange the bundles neatly into my bag, and walk back to my gruesome workspace. Blood is dripping from Tommy's ruined hand onto the floor and running down into the drain. I lift him up, plant the chair back on the floor and wake him up with smelling salts under his nose.

“Now that I’ve got your money, time to get back to the matter at hand.”

My knife digs into his wrist. The blade severs his palmaris longus tendon, and it snaps back against his forearm with a soft pop, followed by his shrill scream.

I don’t wait for his scream to die down before I cut off his little finger. I don’t care about keeping him alive anymore. I just want him to pay for killing my sister before she got to go to her junior prom.

“Who ordered the hit? Who else was with you?” I ask, but I don't give him time to answer.

All I want is to hear his screams. I cut off his ring finger and watch him writhe in the metal chair.

Fuck.

I need to get a hold of myself. I wrap Tommy’s mangled hand in a ball of duct tape as his eye starts to roll back in his head. He’s whimpering like a baby. His bottom lip is quivering, and his one good tear duct is gushing.

I put the knife down and take his chin in my blood-slicked hand. “Hey, you can still get out of this. Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll stop taking you apart piece by piece.”

“Okay, please, stop.” I can barely hear him over his sniveling. “I’ll tell you.”

I wipe off the blade, and the knife folds shut with a click. His eye follows the knife as I tuck it in my pocket. He sighs with relief.

“Who else was there?” I ask.

He looks up at me with his broken face, somehow still hoping for mercy. “I was with Rizzo Napoli and Michael Delluci,” he confesses.

“Describe them!” I shout, and he flinches.

“There’s a photo of us upstairs. It's of the three of us at a club. Rizzo sells coke there.” He blubbers. “Please don’t kill me,” he begs.

“Who ordered the hit?” I ask sternly.

“Don Pavoni.” He breaks down crying. He knows this is the end for him. Even if I don’t kill him, it’s over. He’s a rat now, and that makes him good as dead.

The only problem is that's exactly the answer I wanted to hear. Even as dumb as Tommy is, he must have known that I thought it was the Don that ordered the hit. Is he telling me the truth, or just what I wanted to hear? That's what I'll have to find out, but I'm not going to find out from Tommy. I'll have to work my way up their ranks until I know for sure. Killing a Don isn't going to be easy.

I collect the rest of my gear in my bag and throw it over my shoulder. Tommy’s eye tracks my movements like a mouse eyeing a cat, and he takes one last shuddering breath and speaks.

“Please don’t--”

My fist smashes into his throat, crushing his windpipe.

There’ll be no mercy. Only death and suffering.

BOOK: Arrogant Prick: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance
2.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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