The Don: Sebastiano (Stud Mafia #1) (23 page)

“Greg!” I yelled out again, the patrons all staring at me as I jumped chairs and pushed tables to get to him. “Please, you have to tell me who gave you this note. “Please, you need to remember.”
My father is going to lose his shit.
“I NEED to know!” I pulled and tugged on his white shirt, desperate and frantic for an answer. “Please!”

“Signorina Morassi, I didn’t get a good look at him. There were so many people in the café at the time ordering food and coffee, I just can’t remember him—” I cut him off and shook him.

“You have to remember, Greg. Please, I’m begging you!”

“Sorry, Signorina Morassi. It was just some young punk kid, I can’t remember much else.”

Shit, shit, shit!

With wobbly legs and shaky hands, I sank down onto the nearest chair and read the dreadful note again.

Your man is in the alleyway, bleeding to death as you read this note.

The whore is in my care.

Tell your father thanks for the early Christmas gift.

I’m sure I will reap the benefits of what he has taught her.

I think I’ll keep this one; she’s quite a looker.

Holy fucking shit.

How am I going to tell my father Sierra has been kidnapped?

***

SIERRA

Confused, I slowly surfaced. My arms wouldn’t work and my head felt like I’d taken a round in the boxing ring. I tried to open my eyes, but I clenched them back shut as the pain tripled. Then I remembered the man grabbing me. Panic helped me force my eyes open, but as I turned my head, white-hot pain shot right through my eyes and into my brain.

I closed my eyes and bit my lip to keep from crying out. After several long, deep breaths, the pain lessened to a more manageable level, and I carefully opened my eyes to evaluate my predicament. First, I saw the cuffs shackling me to a ring above the bed I lay on. The ring made me pause. Its only function seemed to be to hold the handcuffs. Not very reassuring. Either kidnapping was something they did a lot, or they’d mounted the ring just for me.

I scanned the room slowly. Not much furniture. An open door to my right and a closed, smaller door beyond my feet. A tug on the cuffs verified the ring held without any give. The sound of voices registered, and I looked back uneasily at the open door.

“This is stupid.” I heard a familiar voice from the other room. He must be my captor.

“Just shut up,” another man said. I vaguely remembered his voice. Maybe he was the one driving the van. “He said to call, so we call. Let me do the talking.”

“Put it on speaker. I won’t say anything.”

“All right,” the driver said.

The sound of a phone dialling was followed by a ring. The line picked up.

“Yes,” a male voice answered.

“We got her,” the driver said.

“Any complications?”

I strained to hear who they were talking to more clearly. That voice was familiar. I knew that voice.

“No. Went off like clockwork. We even ditched her phone. It had a GPS in it, so now no one can trace her whereabouts. Now what do we do with her?”

“Just hold on to her. Her disappearance will keep him distracted.”

I just couldn’t place that voice. I racked my brain trying to identify it and where I’d heard it before. But something off about the voice prevented me from making the connection.

“So, we sit and wait. That’s it?” the driver asked.

What he’d actually said sank in. The ‘he’ they were referring to who needed to be distracted was Sebastiano!

“That’s what I’m paying you for,” the voice said. “And don’t entertain yourselves with her. She’s to remain unharmed, for now.”

Oh, shit.
I cringed at the ‘for now’ and looked around the room again. I focused on the ring above my head. I somehow had to try to get it out of the wall.

“You’re the boss,” the driver said.

A click signalled the end of the call.

“This is stupid,” my captor said. “I thought he said we could fuck her.”
“You heard him. You’ll have to wait to have fun with her later.”

I jerked my gaze back to the door and swallowed back the bile at the back rising in my throat. Closing my eyes, I focused on breathing again. I couldn’t panic. I had to keep it together. Figure it out. All I had to do was figure it out.

“I’ll go check on her,” my captor said.

I kept my eyes closed, concentrating on evening out and quieting my breathing to a sleeping rhythm. Heavy footsteps moved to the door and then into the room. It took all my willpower not to flinch away when his hand rested at the base of my throat.

He chuckled. “You can stop faking, pretty girl. Your pulse wouldn’t race if you were asleep.”

I stubbornly kept my eyes closed and he chuckled again. His hand moved to my breast and squeezed forcefully. I flinched and opened my eyes.

“There we go. Even though you got small tits, you sure are a hot little thing. You and me are going to get to know each other real well.”

I looked away from his sneer and stared at the ceiling.

He gave my breast one last experimental squeeze and let go. “Let us know if you need to use the facilities. I’d be happy to assist.” He laughed as he left the room.

I kept looking at the ceiling and shifted so I could see the ring. I had to get it out of the wall. I heard a television on in the other room, which filled the air with the sound of music and Top Forty songs.
Well, at least that would cover any sounds I made trying to escape.

It didn’t take long for me to collapse back down on the bed. I’d managed to crawl up onto my knees, even with my head swimming, and change the position. It looked like the ring had been twisted into the wall, which meant I should be able to twist it out. I’d have to twist my own body because of the way the cuffs were threaded through. I crawled back up then, bracing my knees, gripped the ring and began applying pressure.

It didn’t budge. I shifted to hopefully get more leverage and allow myself to put more of my own weight behind spinning it. Nothing. I was sweaty and short of breath from those two small efforts, but I refused to give up until my arms trembled from the strain yet I still hadn’t managed to move it in the least. I glared at the stupid ring, hoping one of Sebastiano’s men would come and rescue me very soon.

If they don’t, I may not live to see tomorrow. Never see my brother or Sebastiano again. I’ll die never having told Sebastiano I love him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

LORENA

Upon receiving that dreadful note, I had no idea what to do or who to call first. I decided to first call an ambulance for Stefano and then I called my father, but there was no answer. I then dialled Riccardo’s number but there was still no answer. So I raced to the limo and ordered the driver to take me back to the mansion to find my dad.

Entering the house, I screamed like a mad woman, frantically calling for my father. As I ran down the corridor, I smashed into a hard, thick body. Riccardo. I just stared up at him like an idiot. I couldn’t speak. I had no words. I was emotionally exhausted.

I leaned into him. I needed someone to comfort me, but he pulled me away from him. “What the hell, Lorena, what’s wrong with you? Why are you crying?”

“It’s Sierra. Riccardo, she’s gone. They took her and I didn’t even notice. I just sat there bitching about her that she was taking so long in the bathroom and…” I knew I was rambling and not making any sense at all, but he just let me keep rambling.

My father suddenly appeared. “Lorena, what is it, what’s happened? Why on Earth are you so upset like this? Tell me, why are you all stressed?” he questioned me, probably thinking I was crying over something trivial.

“Oh, Daddy, it happened so quickly,” I whispered to him. Releasing Riccardo, I ran to my father and hugged him, howling on his shoulder like a baby.

“Calm down,
bella mia
,” he said. Riccardo handed me a glass of water but I refused it. “Start at the beginning; we have all the time in the world.”

“No, Daddy, please listen. We don’t have all the time in the world.” I gulped, not knowing how to begin to tell him. But somehow I did. I managed to tell him the whole story, right up until the ambulance came to take Stefano to hospital. But when I announced, “It’s Sierra. She’s been kidnapped,” he totally lost his shit.

“FUCK!” my father yelled at the top of his lungs. He grabbed me angrily by my upper arms and shook the fuck out of me.

“Hey, Boss.
Basta
, that’s enough; you’ll hurt her.” If it wasn’t for Riccardo pulling him off me, I would have collapsed; not from Daddy shaking me but because I was so weak.

“Shit, Lorena,
bella
, I’m sorry,” he apologised tenderly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,
bella mia
, I just need answers.” He threaded his fingers through his hair in frustration.

“Riccardo, get Vincenzo here now so he can stay with Lorena. I’ll go make a few calls. Copper John is going to have to pull out all the stops on this one. We need someone to guard Stefano in hospital, as well. I don’t want the risk of him being attacked again. Let’s go.”

He left but not before he put his fist through the wall. I hated it when he did that. It hurt him more than it hurt the wall, but my father was hurting. He didn’t know it, but he loved Sierra. If she died, it would be entirely my fault. He would blame me for the rest of my crappy life.

I crumpled to the ground, shaking. The tears were streaming down my face.

“Oh, God, it’s my fault, all my fault. I knew I sh…should never have let her go on her own. It’s all my fault,” I groaned.

“Lorena, listen to me. You need to calm down, baby. Your father will find out who took Sierra,” Riccardo assured me, smoothing my hair back from my tear-drenched face and stroking my back up and down.

Great, he touches me now. All these years I’ve wanted Riccardo to show me some affection, he does it now. When I am in no mood to flirt or be provocative. Damn him!

The only consolation I had was my father would pull out all the stops and every connection under the sun to find Sierra.
He will. I know he will.

At that moment, my father came back in and yelled out, “Riccardo, get a fucking move on. We need to get going. Lorena,
do not
move from this house. You are under house arrest,
mi capisci
?”

***

I was in a deep sleep in the living room when I heard the kitchen door open and slam.

“Where is your father?” my no-good, bitch of a mother demanded as she stormed into the room and threw herself onto the leather sofa, tapping her feet impatiently and glaring at me.

She did this all the time. Stormed in and expected my full attention. It was always about her and no one else. No ‘Hello Lorena’ or ‘How are you’? She just didn’t give a shit about anyone but herself. God, she was a royal pain in the arse. I was in a deep sleep after Vincenzo gave me some sleeping pills to try to relax. They worked a dream, until the psycho came in, totally unannounced.
It better be fucking important.

My mother had always been a greedy, money-hungry bitch. It was no wonder my father moved on and found someone like Sierra.

Mother didn’t have a loving bone in her body. What the hell my father ever saw in her, I would never understand.

Maybe she
was
different back then, as my father once told me, but something changed her over the years and definitely not for the better. Or maybe I was giving her too much credit. She had always been a heartless bitch.

I turned and looked at her, knowing if I didn’t give her an answer, she’d only get louder and become hysterical until I did.

“He’s out looking for Sierra, like he has been since she went missing.”

“What? You have
got
to be kidding me. She is nothing but a whore. What does he care?” she raged, her hands flapping wildly around her head in obvious annoyance.

Yep, here she goes. She sure is pissed.
At the mention of Sierra’s name, she went berserk. Oh, this was going to be fun and maybe exactly what I needed to try to get my mind off Sierra being kidnapped.

“For a start, how the hell did you get in the house? Daddy banned you from visiting because of the spectacle you made here last time. And secondly, I am
busy
. A phone call would have been nice,
Mother
,” I told her, trying to keep my temper at bay and not set her off any more than what she already was.

She continued to glare at me, giving me the
malocchio
. She was very good at doing that. Giving people the ‘evil eye’ was her specialty.

“Daddy loves Sierra. You would have to be blind not to see that. You know what Daddy is like, Mother; he will move Heaven and Earth for someone he loves. Or maybe you don’t.” I couldn’t help the dig. Her attitude was grating on my nerves. My father only put up with her dramatics for my sake.

“Loves her? Ha, don’t be fooled, Lorena. That whore is just another one of his playthings,” she spat venomously.

“You didn’t answer me. Who let you in?”

“I have my ways.” She started mumbling to herself, half in English and half Italian.
“
Non posso credere che ama quella puttana”!

“
Dio
, I thought if that little
puttana
was gone…forget it! I should have known better. It will never happen, never,” Mother muttered to herself.

Her words sent ice through my veins. I did not like the tone of her voice or anything she said. What was she insinuating? 

“Ma, what are you talking about? What did you do, Ma?” I whispered warily.
Madonna Mia, if she is behind this somehow, my father will just lose it big time. He will kill her.
I saw the panic flick across her face a second before she spoke.

“Nothing, nothing, Lorena, I don’t know what you are talking about.” I could tell she was lying; it was written all over her face. This woman could never lie for shit.