He withdraws his hands.
“You have it in you, I see. Good to know.”
I’m seething. My body is bruised from head to toe. I remember the accident. The way I was tossed and flipped around in the truck. Everything. Now that I know I’m not dead, I want my husband and my family.
He took me from them. But how? How did he get away with me without anyone coming to save me? There is no way my dad, Cain, or Manny would just let someone take me. My mother, either. They would all fight. Unless... Oh, God. No!
“Where’s my family?” I demand.
He doesn’t answer me. He swings his head slowly to the right, his demeanor becoming uncompromising.
It takes every bit of energy I have to lift my head, using my elbows to hold me up. I cry out as pain shoots down my neck and arms. In the corner of the room is a man who has his back to me. He’s leaning over a man whose head is slumped down, resting on his chest. Those clothes he has on. I recognize them.
A bloodcurdling scream escapes me when I see the man pick up a long, shiny knife and bring it up to the light. He examines it closely, twirling it around in his fingers. My cries and pleas are ignored as my abductor laughs.
“You sons of bitches! Let us go! Do you have any idea who he is?”
I’m hauled up by the hair and dragged off of the table. My body crashes to the floor. I’m too weak to try and fight. Too bruised, too battered, too shocked.
“Let her take a look at him. Let her see what’s about to happen if she doesn’t help me get everything I want,” he says, looking down at me. His eyes bore into mine.
“This is the kind of torture your father inflicts on people when they won’t give up the information he wants. Only I’m not your father. I won’t end his life, not until I’ve drained every ounce of blood out of him. Not until I get what is rightfully mine. I want you to watch, and if you disappoint me and look away, I’ll instruct Raymond here to do the exact same thing to you, except he likes to play with women before he tortures them.”
No words come out of my throat, as it is choked with my sobs. Tears drip steadily down my cheeks, landing beside me on the cold, tile floor.
Raymond doesn’t say a word. He licks the tip of the knife. His eyes are crazed, darting back and forth over his target, who slowly lifts his head. Oh, God. Please don’t look at me. I don’t think I can bear to see him. When his almost unrecognizable face comes into view, I scream.
“Manny!”
No! What have they done to him?
Chapter Nineteen
Cain
I stare out the window, studying the view of the Long Island Sound from Salvatore’s house. It’s been two days since Calla and Manny were taken from the accident and not a word of their whereabouts.
By the time the paramedics got to the scene, they were gone. Both of them. There were no witnesses to the accident to give anyone a description of who took them. Yet Salvatore knows. He knows there would be only one person who would do something like this. One person who was biding his time and waiting to strike. He has my wife. He has my best friend. And he’s a cold-blooded killer. A hitman seeking revenge against his family, who shunned him for his actions and betrayal.
I’ve been left in the dark while Salvatore works with his men to try and find them. No one has heard from him in years, so why now? Why all of a sudden would he come back and take two innocent people? Why wouldn’t he take John or Cecily? It doesn’t add up. I know there has got to be more.
Guilt surges through my veins. I’m the only one who came out of this nightmare unscathed, except for the knot on the side of my head where I must have gotten bumped on impact when the truck flipped and crashed into a building. Cecily has a broken arm, bruises on her face, and burns across her neck and shoulder from the seatbelt. John is banged up all to hell. He’s got stitches in his forehead and some broken ribs. It’s a damn miracle any of us are even alive.
Cecily is going crazy, crying constantly over not knowing where her daughter and her nephew are. John has been bandaged and is gone, looking for a man who is known to do worse things to his victims than even himself. I need to be out there helping instead of here with my hopeless thoughts. I just got her back. I need her. We all need them both.
“Fuck!”
I can’t stay here anymore. They’re out there somewhere, I know they are.
“Cain.”
I turn around to the sound of Salvatore’s voice. He strides in with the same clothes on from yesterday, looking like shit. There isn’t any other way to describe it. He hasn’t slept from his worry, just like the rest of us. His wife, Lola, is going out of her mind. She’s normally so calm and collected just like Cecily, and now she’s just a shell of a woman. She is guilt-stricken, blaming herself for all of this.
“Any news?” I ask Salvatore, veering away from the window.
“Not a damn thing,” he sighs in frustration.
“They’re out there, I know they are. I can feel it in here.” I pound my fist against my chest.
“We’ll find them. Look,” he says, “I know you feel helpless here, but if I let you go out there to help with the search and something happens to you, I will never forgive myself. I need you here. I need you to take care of Lola and Cecily while I’m gone.”
His sudden change of course has me puzzled.
“I thought you said you were staying here in case he calls?”
“I can’t stay here anymore. It’s me he really wants. It’s me who he thinks destroyed him and kicked him out of this family. I need to make myself visible. He wants me and he knows he can’t get to me here. I’m going to make it easy on him.”
“He’ll kill you,” I caution him.
“He won’t kill anybody until he gets what he wants.”
“Salvatore, you need to tell me everything. You need to tell me why in the hell your oldest son would turn on his family.”
“I’ll tell you why.”
Lola stands in the doorway. Her once strikingly beautiful dark hair is unkempt and there are dark rings around her eyes. Her mouth set in a tight line. For a fifty-one year old lady she’s always looked so much younger than her years, but today she looks well past her age. This has got to be hard on her, knowing that one of her children has taken the other and is doing God knows what to him.
“Lola,” Salvatore warns.
“Don’t ‘Lola’ me. Damnit, Sal. Cain has a right to know. That’s his wife out there somewhere with Royal, and he deserves to know why. So either you tell him, or I will. You have no other choice.”
The two of them study each other powerfully. For the first time since I’ve known Salvatore, I see fear mixed with pain in his expression. The way he looks at Lola, telling her with his stare how sorry he is, makes me wonder even more what the hell is happening around here and how it affects Calla.
“Very well. Shower, Cain. Meet me downstairs in the kitchen in half an hour. We will tell you everything.”
With that he puts his arm around Lola, pulls her in tight to him with a kiss on the top of her head, and leaves me standing here with envy. He’s able to hold his wife, while mine is out there somewhere with a man who must have done something beyond my wildest imagination for Salvatore to cast him out of the family. To make Royal want to take his brother and cause him harm, his own flesh and blood. I can only hope that Calla is as strong as we all believe her to be.
I jog quickly down the stairs, through the foyer, and down the long hallway to the back of the house to the kitchen after showering and changing into a pair of jeans, a black Sinners t-shirt, and my boots. Several people I do not recognize at all are standing or sitting in the kitchen, all of them with guns in holsters dangling at their waist or hints of the outline of a gun tucked in the back of their pants. A map is spread out on the table.