Ensnared: The Mafia's Prisoner (Book One) (A Dark Mafia Romance) Read online

  “No one interferes in my business, Rora. Not even you.”

  Gio grabs my shoulders as if he thinks I’m going to bolt.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this!” I scream at my dad.

  “Lie on the floor and put your hands behind your back, Aurora.” There’s none of the fondness or respect in Gio’s voice for me I’m used to hearing. His bass voice is bitter and flat.

  “What are you going to do to me?” I snap at my father, ignoring Gio’s command.

  Regret flickers across my father’s face. “I can’t understand where I went wrong with you. Why couldn’t you just be a good girl?” He strokes my hair one last time. Then his expression becomes a mask. He looks at Gio, waiting for him to follow his orders.

  In an instant, Gio shoves me to the floor and straddles my waist. With the efficiency of a trained cop, he pulls my hands behind my back and wraps my wrists in flex-cuffs, yanking them so tight that they pinch into the skin. I try to twist around, but his big hand pushes my chest to the floor, holding it still with profound ease. Fuck, he’s strong.

  Tears well in my eyes, a tangle of dark emotions ripping up my insides as I thrash and kick. Betrayal, anger, sadness, and a dizzying dread. Every conceivable manner of execution filters through my brain.

  A slow watery death, my body weighted down with cement bricks.

  Cement poured over me, left to harden while my body shuts down and finally gives up the ghost.

  These are horrors I’ve heard about, and yet, up to now, I realize I only half believed them. It’s as if, in never having seen them for myself, I’ve somehow been able to mentally distance myself from the fact that my father has ordered such things. To accept them as a made-up fear tactic that never really happens. Now that I’m about to be the one on the chopping block, those same horrors sink in with all too real clarity. It’s the idea of drowning that makes me panic the most.

  “Gio, for fuck’s sake, get off me!” I shriek. “Come on! What would Missy say about this? Think about your daughter, you don’t have to do this!”

  My words are useless, the pleas of a desperate woman on death row and nothing he wouldn’t have heard before, but I can’t make them stop.

  “Nice try. Missy knows what I do.” Gio rifles through my pocket and quickly takes my phone. I hear him slip it into the pocket of his coat. “Can’t have you calling your friends in blue again, can we?”

  Shit. This is really happening. My father is really going to watch a man I once considered my friend kill me. It hits me then that the man I call my father is a stranger. He used to tuck me in and night and serenade me to asleep, rock me when I cried, and yet I never really knew him at all.

  Vincent Romano squats down and grabs a fist full of my hair, yanking my head up. His deep voice is lost and hurt.

  “I had so many plans for you, Rora. I gave you everything. Everything I did was for you and Isabella, and this is how you repay me.”

  “Get off me!” I scream.

  Vincent lets go of me. Gio shoves something into my mouth, a cloth that smells of chloroform, I thrash harder as the pungent odor fills my nose, cloying. He ties the cloth in place, holding it in my mouth. I scream and kick, but he doesn’t budge.

  Vincent strokes my hair. “I’m sorry, Rora.” He bends down and kisses my cheek, a single, loving touch. I sob and buck.

  “The chloroform is taking too long, sir,” Gio says.

  “Do what you have to.” Vincent.

  Gio’s frame lifts off me. Before I can turn around and try to kick him, something hard and metallic—the butt of a gun, it feels like—strikes the back of my head once.

  The world is no more.

  Chapter 2

  The Gift of Justice

  When I was six, I almost drowned.

  My dad has a mansion in Florida, which has a huge indoor pool. He’s always had a strict rule that I wasn’t to go near the pool without supervision. I followed the rule until the day my teddy bear fell in. In my primitive child’s brain, I’d been terrified Mr. Bear was going to drown, so I tried to reach out and grab him. I leaned over too far, and over the side I went.

  Even now, nineteen years later, I still can’t forget the mind-numbing panic I felt in that moment as I clawed for the surface, trying to get my head above water. Every cell in my body screamed for air. You can’t think, you can’t breathe. At six, I understood that my life was about to end, even if I didn’t understand it in those terms. The notion of the end had loomed over me like the monster out of some horror film I’ve walked in on late at night. I feel that same panic now.

  An unidentifiable time after Gio had knocked me out, I jerk awake from nothingness. I lie in a world of blackness. The flex cuffs are still on my wrists, keeping my hands under my back, but now there’s another pair binding my ankles. Whatever Gio gagged me with, it’s gone now. There’s a horrendous roar in my ears, obnoxiously loud and overpowering. The hard, flat surface under me vibrates against my back.

  Confusion pierces my scattered thoughts. The whole world reeks of exhaust. What the fuck?

  Then it sinks in. That God awful-rumble is a car engine. I’m lying in the trunk of a damn car.

  I wish I could say I handled it well. I wish I could say I handled this like some badass movie heroine, lying in the darkness, waiting for an opportunity to gain the upper hand and strike. Yeah, right. Instead, fear takes over, and I scream bloody murder, throwing my feet into the roof of the trunk, bashing the side of it.

  “Let me the fuck out here! Gio! Dad, get me out of here, you fucking pricks!”

  Nothing happens. The car doesn’t stop, the engine rumbles on. The thing is so loud, they probably can’t even hear me. Although, unless Gio wanted to hear me scream, why not just leave the gag in?

  Disbelief settles in. My father can’t actually be doing this. He can’t be sitting up there in the front of what is probably his limo with his enforcer listening to his own daughter kick and scream as if she’s having a temper tantrum. Even my father isn’t that cold.

  Except he is. He had a teenaged girl kidnapped, the purpose of which I try not to think too much about.

  I have an absurd thought that the man who’s behind this whole thing isn’t my father. He looks like Vincent Romano, kingpin of New York. He looks like the man who has shaken hands with the famous and the insurmountably rich, smiling at the camera at charity events. But it’s not him. No, he’s been taken over by some sort of demon. Yup. That’s it. Demonic possession is the only way he would do this.

  I kick and cry and scream, but still, the car doesn’t stop.

  Shit. I’m gonna die. I feel like one of those terminally ill patients who suddenly realizes their life is measured not in years, but days. It takes half an hour without traffic to get to the docks from my apartment. Depending on how long I was out cold, I might have a lot less than that to live.

  Once again, my mind rolls over all the ways in which he might kill me. And that’s when the memory hits. The memory of when I tried to rescue my bear and almost died.

  After I’d fallen into the pool, my father pulled me out. I remember his panic as he clutched me to him. He’s the only one who knows I’m afraid of water, and that I never learned to swim. I’d thought he loved me back then. He’d seemed horrified that he’d almost lost me. But that’s the same man who’ll now send me to death for getting up in his business. And he doesn’t care that I didn’t know he was involved.

  Is that how he plans to kill me? By drowning me? It’s usually his preferred method, as it’s the most expedient and easiest to cover up.

  Minutes stretch on. I can’t form a single cohesive thought. I want to cry like a fucking baby, but the tears won’t come.

  I have no way of knowing how much time passes before the car finally jerks to a stop. The roar of the engine cuts short. There’s a tick-tick-tick as it winds down.

  Male voices fill the silence, Gio’s and my father’s. I freeze in place as though if I stay still enough, they won’t see me whe
n they open the trunk. It’s a surreal sound, hearing them talk like two normal guys as they make their way around to the back of the car. I can’t tell by the tone if they feel anything one way or the other—the sounds are too muffled.

  The voices pause. The trunk opens, the light from a nearby streetlamp momentarily blinding me as it cuts into the black. The smell of old rust and fish fills my nose.

  We’re at the docks.

  My dad holds the trunk open while Gio looks me over. Gio regards me as if I’m any other object in the trunk of the car, like the spare tire that’s normally back here. His expression is chillingly impersonal, without emotion. My dad says nothing, watching him as if his coldness fascinates him.

  My dad. No. Vincent. It’s easier, somehow, to think of him as just a man, just a mobster who means to exact his brand of justice. He doesn’t look at me, his gaze moving from Gio to whatever is in front of the car. His breath plumes in the cold winter air.

  I aim both of my feet at Gio’s balls.

  Without a word, he grabs my ankles and tosses them aside. Gio’s huge fist swings at my face.

  Vincent’s hand lances out and grabs it before it connects. “Stop.” His tone is clipped, cold, businesslike. “I don’t want her damaged.”

  Wait. If he’s going to kill me, why does he care whether Gio breaks my face?

  “Right. Whatever you say, Boss,” Gio says almost pleasantly. Leaving my wrists and ankles tied, he hauls me effortlessly out of the trunk, and right up over his shoulder.

  “Let’s get this over with. The less I have to deal with him, the better.” My father’s voice is a low rasp of dislike for whomever “he” is.

  Voices drift from a distance, too far to make out what any of the men are saying. Probably more of Vincent’s men.

  “Get your hands off of me!” I shout at Gio. I thrash, but he ignores me and walks across the icy gravel that crunches under his boots.

  This man was my friend once. How the hell can he be the same man who sat and talked with me as a teen, sneaking ice cream out of the fridge when I was supposed to be in bed?

  Gio turns around and says something to his boss. Being spun around sends a wave of dizziness through me. He turns again and keeps walking, causing another wave, as if I’m on some kind of carnival ride.

  As we draw closer, those indistinct voices become clearer. There are at least three, all with thick Russian accents.

  Fuck. Bratva.

  My dad’s primary arms dealers are Russian. Had the deal that started all this been with them? In trying to save that girl’s life, I’d pissed off the Bratva. Lovely.

  Footsteps crunch on gravel, approaching Gio and Vincent.

  “It’s about time, Mr. Romano. We’ve been waiting here for over an hour.”

  I freeze, my breath catching in my throat at the sound of that voice.

  Holy shit. Michael?

  It’s been nine years since I heard that voice. It’s a lot deeper, richer, and a hell of a lot hotter, but it’s him. The accent is unmistakable. It’s the same boy who bullied me as a child every miserable summer until I was sixteen. The same one whose father has had an uneasy alliance with mine for the sake of their mutual businesses. The thorn in my side, the reason I’ve dreaded the best time of year since I was seven, and the future head of the most powerful Family within the Bratva.

  Michael fucking Volkov.

  This day just keeps getting better.

  Despite Michael’s impatience, Gio doesn’t speed up his pace.

  There’s only one reason that asshole and his men are here. I fucked up the deal between him and my dad, so my dad plans to appease Volkov pride and restore his honor by letting Michael see the axe fall. It’s bad enough my father has brought me here to kill me, but now Michael is invited to watch?

  His presence accomplishes two things. It serves as a final act of torment for Michael, and solidifies him in my mind, not just as the evil demon child I’ve hated for most of my life, but as one who has grown into a man far more demented than I ever thought possible.

  “Gio, put me down!” I scream. “Dad, this is crazy, you can’t do this!”

  Neither man speaks.

  Behind me, Michael chuckles. It’s the same sound that caused irritating flutters in my belly even while he tormented me back then, and it does the same thing now. “Bring her here, gentlemen.”

  I twist my torso around enough to catch a glimpse of chiseled features and rippling muscles that look only vaguely like the boy I remember before Gio drops me on the ground like a sack of potatoes in front of Michael. My head slams into the ground. Pain blazes and I whimper.

  “Careful,” my father snaps.

  Gio and Vincent back up a few paces. Michael steps in front of me and squats, his big leather-gloved hands between his knees.

  Several things strike me at once.

  When we were kids, Michael was gorgeous, with stunning blond hair that surrounded his boyishly handsome face, and piercing topaz teal eyes I could stare at for days. He’d had a little muscle, enough to make girls swoon. Now, he has the face of a chiseled angel and bulky muscles that pull the lines of his jacket tight over his arms and chest. I catch a glimpse of a tattoo on his wrist, peeking out from between his leather glove and the sleeve of his coat. He didn’t have that the last time I saw him.

  My god, he’s changed so much, and yet he’s still so hot it shouldn’t be allowed. No one who is as evil as him should be so sexy.

  “Priva, kravitsa.” He looks me over with the same gaze he’s offered since we were old enough for it to be appropriate. Amused, appraising, predatory—the look a wolf might give a small animal before chasing it into the shadows.

  Other than a few curse words I’d learned specifically to insult him, I don’t know more than four words in Russian, but I still remember what those words mean. He said them the last summer I’d seen him, on my sixteenth birthday, before he systematically ruined the whole day.

  Priva, Kravitsa. Hello, beautiful.

  The mocking sentiment pisses me off just as it did back then, only more so now, since I know he’s there to watch me die.

  My father had said that the kidnapped girl was supposed to seal his deal. I want to think that, as much of a monster as Michael is, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with that. He wouldn’t have. There’s no fucking way.

  One glance at Gio and my asshat of a father behind him, and it’s clear there’s no way out of this. One way or another, I’m not leaving this place alive. Which is why I do something that, for a variety of reasons, I could never have done before no matter how badly I’ve wanted to.

  I jerk up and spit in Michael’s perfect face.

  He grunts a soft laugh and wipes the spit from his cheek with his sleeve. “Some things never change, huh?”

  He grabs my hair in his gloved fist. I hiss at the all too familiar sting. He ignores it and looks me over again.

  “She is undamaged,” Vincent says. “Mostly,” he adds, flicking a look at Gio.

  Michael releases me, stands, and gives them a nod. “You have kept your word.”

  “So we’re good then?” Vincent says.

  “Da. We are.”

  Michael pulls a switchblade from his pants pocket. My eyes go wide and I try to roll away from him. Smirking, Michael squats again. He grabs my ankles and slices the flex-cuffs from them. Then he rolls me over, grabs my arm, and hauls me up. I have no choice but to sit up on my knees before he jerks me to my feet and then comes around in front of me.

  Through the pain of his grip on my arm, I half-register the black limousine behind him and the two men standing near the vehicle, both watching with amusement. His huge hand pinches until I wince, forgetting all but the demon in front of me. Fuck, someone’s been eating his spinach. He towers over me, and no way was he that strong nine years ago.

  He yanks me against his powerful frame, his arm like steel around my waist, pinning me in place. “She’s still as perfect as a printsessa, Romano.” He pushes my bangs out
of my eyes, almost reverently. I jerk my face away and he smiles as if he likes the challenge.

  “Dad,” I snarl, writhing in Michael’s iron-like grasp. “This is insane. What, you’re going to let him kill your daughter now?”

  “I will not.” He shakes his head, his expression cold. “I have only one daughter now.”

  The words hit like a sucker punch to the gut. The cold betrayal in his eyes is unbearable.

  Michael looks at me and barks a laugh. “Ha, she thinks I’m going to kill her? You didn’t tell her?” His eyes gleam with delight.

  Hope and confusion twist my gut. If he isn’t going to kill me, then what the hell is happening here?

  “Just remember your word, Michael,” Vincent says. He pronounces the name the correct way in Russian—Me-khye-el, with the proper back-throated “K” that makes the name sound so badass and warlike. “I gave her to you to maintain the peace between us and atone for her mistake. She is yours to do with as you please, but she remains alive. Am I clear?”

  Wait…I’m his? I glare at both men. The satisfied look on Michael’s face and the smoky look in his eyes leaves no doubt as to what he plans to do with me. Anger, panic, indignation, and an unmistakable heat all roar through me at once. “Oh, you have to be fucking kidding me.”

  “You are clear.” Michael gives my father a nod. “I will not kill her. But it won’t be long before she’ll wish I would.”

  The warmth dancing in my belly dies like a snuffed flame. The blood leaves my face.

  As a kid, Michael was already skilled at tormenting me, often without even touching me. I am not looking forward to seeing what new, sick methods of torture that life in the Bratva has taught him.

  “No,” I bite out, directing my statement at both Vincent and him. I push at Michael’s chest with my shoulder and try to twist free, but he pins me tighter. “Forget it, Michael, I am not going anywhere with you.”

  He puts his finger to my lips. “Yes, you are.”

  Helplessness eats at my insides. “Vincent, I am not going with this asswipe. Just kill me now.”