Taken by the Italian Mafia: A Dark City Romance (3 page)

Whitney screamed. But no one except a man pointing a gun at her head was there to hear it.

T
he rules
about witnesses were very clear:
never leave one
. The bartender had seen him blow Tyrone's brains out. There was only one way he could take care of his problem, and Rocco knew that it was to end it before it started.

Shoes digging into the freshly fallen powder dusted over the alley, Rocco ran for her. With a shot already fired, he knew he couldn't afford to shoot again without dead accuracy. He wouldn't put a bullet through her skull until he knew for damn sure he wouldn't miss the shot. At the elevation she stood at, and his distance from the platform, Rocco didn't want to risk it.

He gripped the bottom rung of the railing, and in a display of tremendous upper body strength, hoisted himself up. From there it was a simple matter of hopping over the railing, and once he found his footing, he'd do her in and be done with it.

If only life were that simple.

The bartender wrenched a garbage bag from between the door frame and the door to cower behind, then screamed at the top of her lungs. The sound echoed just as loudly through the alley as the gunshot had, but its origins made it that much worse. A silenced gun shot could be explained away by passersby not looking for any trouble, but there was no mistaking the shrill panic of a woman's scream. Rocco knew he was in trouble. People would come running now that a woman was involved. He needed to get out, and he needed to get out now.

No witnesses.

With a disgusted scowl, Rocco grabbed her wrist and started to fly down the stairs, dragging her along.

"If you don't shut the fuck up and keep quiet, I'll blow your face off," he warned her as he dragged her towards the sidewalk. "Same goes for if you don't fuckin' follow me and make this good 'n easy. Got it?"

The pathetic whimper that followed was a good enough yes. Her dead weight lightened, and the pretty girl who found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time followed. If she hadn't screamed, she'd already have been dead. What a disaster.

Cursing his luck, Rocco ran the rest of the distance between the alley and the sidewalk, where his driver waited. Although she was in dressy flats and shaking like a leaf, the bartender kept stride. Long legs like hers matched his pace easily. Rocco got his first good view of them as they arrived at the car and he shoved her into the backseat.

The bartender went in face first, legs dangling across the seat, feet hanging out through the door. With a scowl Rocco pushed her legs up and jumped into the back. As he slammed the door closed, his driver pulled off from the curb and merged with New York's non-stop traffic.

"What in the ever loving fuck is she doing here? This ain't supposed to be no hostage situation," the driver, Piero, said. The man was older than Rocco by a decade, but he was much lower down in the ranks. Decades of service as a getaway driver for his family translated to a reasonably safe career with little opportunity for advancement. Still, the man had a mouth on him. Piero knew as well as anyone else how witnesses were to be dealt with.

"Do you think I don't know that?" Rocco bit back. The bartender had curled up into a little ball on the seat beside him and was whimpering, too shocked to deal with what was happening to be a nuisance. Rocco was glad for it. If she started mouthing him off in front of Piero, he'd have to make an example out of her. As the Don's oldest son, he wasn't going to let any member, no matter how low ranking, think he was going soft.

"You were suppose 'ta deliver a message, Rocco. A message. And now there's a chick in the back seat quaking like a leaf threat'ning everything we set out to do."

Piero's criticisms weren't making matters any better. Rocco sat back heavily, gun still in his right hand and tucked on his lap, left arm draped over the back of the seat. There was blood splatter and brain matter speckled into the front of his suit. Against the black suit it was barely noticeable, but on his white shirt the bloody chunks were obvious like flashing lights.

"And I'm gonna take care of it, okay? This isn't my first time out on the job, and it's not gonna be my last. Cool your jets and do your fucking job."

From the way Piero's jaw set, Rocco knew he'd pressed his buttons. The getaway driver wasn't impressed, but it wasn't his job to pass judgment on Rocco's performance. The only opinion that mattered was that of the Don, and if Rocco had his way, the Don would never find out. A matter like this would be dealt with quickly and then forgotten about, just as it should be.

A routine interception and delivery was turning into such a pain in the ass.
What else could go wrong?
As Rocco glanced out the tinted window at the passing New York streets, he wished it went down differently.
Why were Friday nights never easy?

"Here's what we're going to do," Rocco said at length. "You're gonna drive me to The Factory, I'm gonna take care of business, and then we're gonna get home and forget about this bullshit."

Regrettable, but necessary. Rocco's eyes turned to the bartender curled up on the seat beside him. What a pity it was that he'd have to blow her brains out, too. In another circumstance, she might have been a girl worth getting to know. But business was business, and Rocco wasn't about to get caught up in senseless drama over a heart shaped face and a drool-worthy set of legs. Family came first, and no woman would ever convince him otherwise.

F
rom the second
the armed stranger grabbed her, Whitney was paralyzed. The fear was unlike anything she'd experienced before, and with any luck, she'd never feel again. It wasn't as though she had spent her life sheltered from violence, her rebellious teen years made her some dangerous friends. But no one had ever pulled a gun on her before.

The swelling fragility of mortality was impossible to deny when looking down the muzzle of a handgun. Staring down death locked her lips and turned her knees to jelly all at once, and when he pulled her down the stairs, she was unable to resist. Together they ran for the streets. The back door to
The Avenue
disappeared behind her, the last hope of salvation lost.

Whitney's fate was in his hands now.

A black car, unremarkable apart from its tinted windows, idled on the side of the street at the end of the alley. The tall stranger wrenched the back door open and shoved her inside. Both of Whitney's palms hit the leather seat, and she landed rough on her stomach. With the full weight of her body behind the fall, the wind was knocked from her lungs and the top button of her vest popped open. She struggled to breathe, and curled up on the seat as her kidnapper pushed her legs into the car.

Was this it? Was this how she was going to die?

None of it made sense. It had been years since Whitney had been in contact with any criminals. What had she done to attract this kind of attention. She was a nobody. No family, no money, no power. The best thing she'd done in her life was graduate from high school.
Why would someone be waiting for her to take the trash out before rushing her?
This had to be a case of mistaken identity.

But what if these men wouldn't acknowledge their mistake?

The hopelessness of the situation welled inside Whitney as she came down from the shock of being abducted. Whatever their reason, whatever was about to happen, there was nothing she could do to fix things. Her shock grew into full blown panic. The quick, sharp breaths she took did nothing for her starving lungs. Whitney clamped her hands over her mouth to try to stop her rapid, uncontrollable breathing, but the terror welled up inside.

A terrified moan from deep inside deepened into a scream, and at it, the driver twisted around in his seat and glared at the man who sat beside her. The expression was so ugly, so distanced from humanity, that Whitney knew she was in trouble. These were killers. Cold, ruthless, killers.
Why did she always fall for the bad boy?
This time, that attraction might prove fatal.

"Get her to shut the fuck up!"

The scream grew. Whitney had lost control of herself to instinct, and there was no holding back how terrified she was. In desperation she scrambled up into a sitting position and pried at the door handle. The handle had no pressure, jiggling uselessly in her palm. The child lock was on. The window was also locked, only dropping an inch. Even though she could scream through it, in a moving vehicle it would do little good. Tears began to fall, choking sobs mingling with her screams of terror.

"SHUT HER UP!" the driver roared. The tall stranger in the suit had his elbow pressed against the window ledge, forehead planted firmly in his palm. A quiet, moody rage built around him, like dark storm clouds intensifying on the horizon. From where she sat, Whitney saw the splotches of red on his jacket, and meaty chunks of something. That was somebody's blood on his shirt. Pieces of somebody's body.

In the height of chaos and crushing fear, Whitney found her voice again.

"This is all a mistake," she sobbed. "I'm not who you think I am. Please don't kill me! I didn't do anything! If you let me go, I'll never tell anyone anything about this. Please, please just let me go. I just wanna go back to work and do my job. I just wanna go home. I won't—"

The cold touch of metal chilled by winter air kissed her forehead. She looked up into vicious blue eyes, beautiful like sapphires. Whitney went quiet. The muzzle of the handgun pressed tighter against her forehead, twisting back and forth slowly to drive the message home. One moment he was sitting in irritation with his gun on his lap, and the next they were nose to nose, that same gun pressed against her forehead.

"I will kill you right now," each word, although whispered, was clear, "if you do not shut up. Blink once, slow, to say we have an understanding."

The wild fear she'd felt seconds before, had condensed into a tight, coiled spring right in her core. Whitney summoned the strength she needed to blink slowly for him, keeping her eyes closed for a good few seconds before parting her lids.

"Good," he murmured. "Real good. Now keep those plump lips of yours closed."

"If you fucking get brains all over the back seat of my car there will be hell to pay, Rocco."

Rocco. Was that her kidnapper's name, or was it just a handle?
Heart racing with fear, mind too scattered to think straight, Whitney stored the piece of information away. If she got out, the police would want to know as many details as she could remember. It was her duty to herself to get this guy locked away.

If
she got out of this alive.

Rocco turned his attention to the driver, scowled, then looked back to Whitney. The glint in his eyes lacked humanity, like they were made of hateful glass beads instead of real human parts.

"And I don't care what that price is, or how long I have to spend scrubbin' blood and brains out of the back seat. In fact, I don't care about anything later. All I care about is the right now, and that's what you should be concerning yourself with, too."

Had he read her mind? Did he know she was trying to commit details to memory?
Whitney's eyes widened just a little, lips threatening to part. The more time she spent with this man, the less real she believed he was. No matter how stunned she was, Whitney would never forget those eyes.

"Now you keep bein' a good girl and keepin' quiet, and we won't have a problem."

But it wasn't Whitney voice she had to worry about — an electronic jingle lit up the back of the car as the phone in her back pocket buzzed with a text message. Gun still pressed against her head, Whitney kept still. Rocco remained just as still, eyes boring into her.

"Well, we have a little problem," he corrected himself. "I'm gonna need to take that phone off your hands. In our car we have a little rule: present company is way more important than anyone on the other side of a phone. You wouldn't want to be rude, would you?"

Rocco paused, and Whitney blinked slowly again to show that she understood. If she was going to get out of this alive, it wasn't because anyone was going to save her — she was going to save herself. That was how her life had worked in the past, and that was how it was going to work now.

"Good girl. You're not all that bad when you're not being batshit crazy, now are you? So what you're gonna do now is reach back nice and slow into your pocket and hand me your phone. Take your time. Imagine you're moving through mud. Gotta slog along, can't move too fast."

Or else he'll put a bullet in your brain.
 Just as slow as he'd instructed, she lifted her hand and made its way to her pocket. The gun against her forehead did not ease back, but it did not press harder, either. Clutched in her fingers, she lifted her arm in a sluggish way and brought the phone back in his direction. Rocco let her bring it all the way to him before he took it from her hands. Requested item delivered, Whitney lowered her hand onto her lap and left it in plain view.

This would not be how she died.
With ever ounce of her being, she would fight for her life. No matter how scared she was or how hopeless it seemed, she couldn't give up.

Whitney pressed her lips together, trying to keep herself strong, but the pressure was too much. As Rocco pulled the gun away and tucked it into a holster hidden beneath his jacket, Whitney lost it. Although she didn't scream, or sob, or plead for her life, she couldn't hold back her tears any longer. Big, hot drops streamed down her cheeks and collected beneath her jaw. Whitney didn't dare lift her hands to try to wipe the tears away in case Rocco decided to blow her brains out. Right now it was his game, and she had to play by his rules.

The car sped forward, leaving
The Avenue
in the dust. Whitney rested her forehead against the tinted window and continued to cry in silence. Minutes ago, her biggest worry was the state of her job and what it would mean for her future — now she had to worry if there would be a future at all. It had been a hell of a Friday night already, and it was still far from over.