Marked For Love (Mob Romance) (18 page)

Grace glanced at the clock.

How long until he returned, again?

She was aching for him and it felt like he’d hardly been gone for a few hours. Grace rolled onto her side on the bed, on the verge of coaxing herself back to sleep, when a curt knock came on the door.

For a moment, the young woman stiffened.

Vicente had warned her not to answer the door for anyone – not to step in front of the window while he was gone. Why would someone come to their hostel anyway? She didn’t know anyone in Prague and Vicente had mentioned how the Czech crime syndicate felt about Italians.

She didn’t answer, merely lying in bed, every muscle in her body tense.

When the knock came again, the young woman reached for the gun on the bedside table. The moment she clutched it, she almost dropped it, the weight startling her. She would never be as comfortable with guns as Vicente – not if she were around them for the rest of her life.

Grace sat up to level the gun at the door, trying to keep her hands steady. It could just be a porter, trying to figure out if the room was still occupied or not. If it was, she’d feel idiotic for freaking out…but if not…she might very well have to shoot someone.

To take a life.

The young woman waited with bated breath for another knock, and when it didn’t come, her mind began to race. Had they gone? Slowly, she rose from the bed, tiptoeing over to the door with her gun clenched tightly in her fist. It took her a moment for her to work herself up to looking through the peephole.

But once she did, she leaned forward to press her face flush against the flat surface.

Precisely a millisecond later, the entire door burst inward on its frame, the weight of it collapsing on her so she hit the ground hard, crying out in shock. The gun spun away towards the bathroom as pain suffused Grace’s body, stealing her breath.

She lay pinned beneath the wooden implement, trying to catch her breath, as no less than five men strode into the room. They were all immaculately dressed in pinstripe suits and crisply starched button ups, their shoes gleaming in the fluorescent lighting. Slightly dazed, Grace gazed up at the assembly, trying to clear her vision.

The first pair of eyes she met gleamed cruelly with triumph from a face lined with age. Graying hair was artfully slicked back from a face that had once, perhaps, been handsome, but now only radiated frigid superiority.

Grace hadn’t a single doubt in her mind that she was now toe to toe with the infamous Giorgio Acconci.

**

When he returned to their room, the door was broken from its hinges and the space was in ruins. Vicente frowned as he stepped over fragments of broken furniture, tearing aside the yellow police tape that had been strung across the room. He stared at the mess around him, trying to quell his rage.

There was no doubt about it.

The space reeked of Giorgio’s expensive cologne – and of his particular style of conducting business. Vicente strode into the bathroom - relatively untouched - and reached behind the sink, running his hand along the smooth tile there. When he found nothing, he checked between the provided washcloths and under the bottles of lotion and shampoo.

Giorgio would have left his message in a place the authorities would never have thought to look, but that Vicente could discover with ease. Suddenly a low, insistent buzzing reached the man’s ears and he whipped around, stooping down to ease plastic cover from the side of the bathtub. Within, he found a small mobile device scrolling an unknown number across its surface as it rang.

He didn’t hesitate before answering, shifting effortlessly into Italian. “Hello?”

There was silence for a beat before his stepfather answered him, his voice low with disappointment. “Vicente, Vicente, Vicente. Why have you run from me? You know it never ends well.”

The assassin bristled at the Don’s assured, superior tone. “Where is she?” He was in no mood for the devil’s games. If he had hurt Grace, Vicente would not rest until he crushed Giorgio’s windpipe in his fist.

He had long realized the man was no family of his.

“She is with me. Relatively unharmed…for now.”

Which meant she wouldn’t be staying that way for much longer. But Giorgio wouldn’t even have spared the young woman’s life if he didn’t see some benefit in it.

“What do you want, Giorgio?”

“So cold, Vicente. You called me father once.” The man’s voice might have radiated genuine hurt, but Vicente was beyond caring. How long had he put aside his true self to be what this man had turned him into?

No more. “What do you
want
?”

A sigh issued from the other end of the line. “I want you back, Vicente. You are too valuable a resource to lose for the sake of a single woman. Here is what I require: You return to me and re-enter my service, as you were before…as my son. Once I believe that you will not steal away again, I will release your woman. I will ship her back to where she came from and forgive her father’s debt – contingent on your never seeing her again.”

Vicente’s fingers curled into fists.

Who the hell did Giorgio think he was? Vicente was far from some frightened teenager under his parents’ thumb. To issue him an ultimatum like this spoke volumes of the man’s jealous insecurity.

But he could not disregard his stepfather’s power. If Giorgio was attempting to make a deal with him, he’d be a fool to deny him immediately. It would almost certainly mean Grace’s brutal murder at the man’s hand.

And that was just for starters.

“How long do I have?”

He didn’t have to see the man to know Giorgio was wearing a satisfied smile. “Two days. Meet me in Sicilia.” The don paused a moment before continuing. “I can’t wait to welcome you home, my son.”

The line went dead.

Vicente stared at it for a long moment before dropping it into the toilet. Of course, he knew his stepfather had no intention of keeping his word. The very most he could expect was to see Grace one more time before the Don dismembered her. Then, he himself would face weeks – possibly months of torture while Giorgio decided whether or not he truly wished to forgive him.

If
he did as his stepfather asked – and blindly walked into his trap.

Vicente, however, knew Giorgio Acconci better than any man alive, and he’d be damned if he’d play into his hands. He had two days. In two days, Vicente could move mountains if he so pleased – and he could certainly topple the Devil.

On the way back to Italy, Vicente got into contact with all of his remaining friends. While Giorgio had seen to it that they were few and far between, the assassin wasn’t without allies. He was too clever for that.

The hours he spent on the train provided him with the valuable time he needed to plan how to extract Grace from his stepfather’s manor without getting both of them killed. Giorgio’s mistake was thinking that he could have the upper hand over any and every one beneath him. He underestimated those closest to him – and that would be his undoing.

He’d turned Vicente into a killing machine, using him to strike fear into the hearts of all that opposed him. Now, Vicente would make his stepfather afraid.

He thought of Grace – of how terrified she must be. How Giorgio must have taken her – dragged her from the room and locked her up. The man wasn’t against taking his carnal pleasures with the women he captured and he might choose to do so just to prove his power over Vicente.

That, he could not allow.

Giorgio Acconci would never rule over him again. He’d die first.

Chapter Nine: Finality

Grace’s jaw ached.

Through all that she’d endured at Vicente’s hands – the kidnapping, being shoved into small spaces, blindfolding and threatening, the man had never struck her.

Vicente’s henchmen had done so three times in the forty eight hours she’d been under their watch. Once had been when she’d asked to go to the bathroom – another when she’d attempted to shift in the chair she’d been shoved into. The final time had been her actually attempting to break her bonds – an infringement that had earned her a blow that had bloodied both her lip and her nose.

It was clear that Giorgio Acconci was nothing like his stepson.

She was being held in a magnificent manor in the hills of some Italian isle – she had no idea which one as she could understand absolutely nothing of what was being spoken in her midst. Not a single one of her captors appeared to speak English, and if they did, they didn’t deign to speak it to her.

Despite the splendor of the marble hall she was in, all Grace registered was its frigidity. The house was, like its owner, very stark and uninviting.

The man had visited her twice since she’d been bound to her chair, and both times had been to watch his men strike her as punishment. He seemed to enjoy the violence, and the young woman quaked when she imagined what more he might have in store for her.

Vicente had once mentioned something about slicing off fingers and dismemberment.

The notion made her blood run cold.

However, as worried as she was for her own well-being, Grace was even more worried about Vicente’s. It was obvious that the only reason she was alive was to draw him back to Italy – and once he arrived, who knew what his stepfather would do with him. Welcome him back with open arms? Shoot him on sight? If anything she’d heard about Giorgio’s temperament was true, she was sure it would be the latter. He would tempt Vicente back from his freedom to end his life.

Right before he ended hers.

Just then, the doors to her prison opened and her head jerked up, her jaw twinging from the quick movement.

Giorgio entered, flanked on both sides by men near twice his size. Grace eyed them warily. If the Don had come to watch
these
men hit her, she might not survive to provide his future entertainment. Slowly, the man advanced on her, and the young woman faced him as squarely as she could. Even as her heart pounded in fear, she held her head high.

He would not cow her.

At the end of the day, the Don was someone who manipulated others into doing his dirty work for him – who had turned his stepson into a cold, unfeeling murderer without a second thought. He was frightening, yes, but he was also pitiful.

When Giorgio’s hand shot out unexpectedly to take hold of her jaw, Grace winced at the pain that shot through her. “
Chi ti credi di essere , cagna , per rubare il mio figlio da me
?”

She had no idea of what the man spoke, but if the dangerous gleam in his eyes meant anything at all, it couldn’t be good. Giorgio squeezed her injured jaw to the point where she panted harshly in pain, nausea spiraling through her. “He is
mine
.” The English words were uttered with a thick, almost unintelligible accent – but Grace understood them all the same.

Giorgio thought his stepson was nothing more than a possession to use as he would – and he intended to keep on using him for as long as he possibly could.

“Vicente belongs to no one but himself,” she managed, despite the pain the Don inflicted. “And you know it.”

The man reared back and struck her again, this time so hard Grace saw stars. For a moment, she felt something shift in her face and was terrified a bone had been broken. Spitting out blood, she felt silent, eying the Don through a half-lidded gaze.

If there was no way for her to survive this, she could at least pray that Vicente stayed away. She had to know that this man intended to kill her whether he came or not – that much was clear in his cold, decisive gaze.

**

Vicente gazed down at the manor built into the hills below. How many hundreds of times had he entered the building in his lifetime. Hundreds? Thousands? And all as a pawn of the man who would have easily sent him to his death.

Tonight would be the last time he would ever enter the Acconci manor – and the last time he would be subject to the whims of the man his mother had loved. Though he knew that Amya had adored Giorgio unto her last breath, he had never felt any such affection.

Only loyal indifference.

Closing his eyes, Vicente pictured Grace’s vibrant smile. The way she laughed – the way her nose wrinkled when she laid her eyes on food she didn’t like. The way she sighed and moaned beneath him while he made love to her.

She would live. If he had to tear apart the manor to the last man, Grace Trellis was walking out alive.

He moved in swiftly, silently, taking out the four men who guarded the front entrance to the manor with sniper shots. They dropped like stones, never seeing their assassin. There were, Vicente knew, surveillance cameras all around the manor, but for a short two minute window every six hours while shifts were being changed, no one watched them.