The F King: A Bad Boy Romance (Still a Bad Boy Book 3) (16 page)

T
he van skidded to a halt
. The men up front jumped out, then the back door opened. The huge guy climbed in and put a hood over my head. He hauled me outside, marching me several steps and into the back seat of another car.

Somebody opened the trunk, and I heard some groans and weak protests as, no doubt, the two people who’d accompanied me in the back of the van were packed in. One of our two masked abductors climbed into the front seat.

“Don’t move, don’t try anything.”

I shook my head, as much to pacify him as to clear it. Under my fingers, amongst the trash on the backseat of a generally untidy car, I felt something that might just have been a paperclip.

Through the hood, I saw the unmistakable light of a fire flaring up in the direction of the van, and a few seconds later the driver got in. I heard the sound of wiring being ripped from under the dashboard, then the car started. Before the fire got bigger, we were off again, though at a comparatively leisurely pace.

“Don’t move, don’t try anything,” said the driver.

“I told him that already,” said the other one.

“Oh.”

One of them made a phone call. “Hey… yeah, we got him… He’s still in one piece… Yeah… We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Hell of a day,” said the driver.

“Yup.”

I unfolded the paperclip and tried to focus on bending it into the right shape. I’d managed to pick the lock on handcuffs a couple of times before. When I could see what I was doing. When I didn’t have a countdown to death clock ticking down from “a few” minutes, overwhelming everything else in my mind.

I worked on my restraints, as the car made a few lefts and rights, staying below the speed limit. I had no idea how far the van might have gone at that breakneck pace, but there was no doubt we were still pretty central.

Finally, it turned off the road, and I felt it go down a steep ramp into an underground parking lot. A second before the driver turned the engine off, I twisted the paperclip and felt the cuff loosen on my left wrist.

Between the time they stepped out and opened the back door, I slipped my hand out and held the cuff behind my back so it wouldn’t be obvious I had freed myself.

“Out.”

I swung my feet out of the car and stood up. One of them put his hands on my shoulders and moved me to the side, then leaned me against the car by the rear wheel well so he could close the door.

I took a deep breath, trying to figure out exactly where the two of them were standing, which way was light and which way was dark. I had one chance to run, and fucked if I wanted to run straight into a motherfucking concrete wall.

“You comin’ up?” a voice came from such a height that it could only be the huge guy.

“Nah, I’ll wait here until Mr. Barlow tells me what to do with these jerk-offs, make sure nothin’ happens to ‘em.”

I fucking ran, swinging my hands up to rip the hood from my head. I got maybe ten feet before the big guy caught me, moving at a speed I would have thought almost impossible for somebody of his size.

I whirled around with a haymaker punch and he blocked it easily, with an expression on his face as calm as he might have had watching the weather report. It was a face I vaguely recognized.

The fight drained out of me at the ridiculous hopelessness of the situation. Not only was he huge, he was Austin Fucking Aquila, the MMA heavyweight champion. What in the fuck was going on?

I waited for a knockout punch that never came. Instead, he spun me around and reattached the handcuff before pushing me back towards, and then past, the car. The other guy had taken off his balaclava too and was sitting on the trunk, lighting a cigarette.

At least he wasn’t the middleweight champion. I didn’t recognize him at all.

“No, no, don’t get up. I got this,” said Austin, sarcastically.

The other guy gave him the thumbs up and the two of us headed for the elevator. Another car parked right next to the elevator, and the guy who got out nodded at Austin, before falling into step behind us. As soon as I stepped inside, I knew this wasn’t the Acardi building; it was a completely different style.

“Who do you work for?” I asked.

“You’ll have to talk to my brother about that,” said Austin.

We stepped out of the elevator into a poorly-lit office space that looked to be undergoing renovations. Some guy sat at a desk with a headset on, staring at a six-screen display setup full of fuck-knew what.

He paid no attention to me, but another guy wearing a suit who was almost as tall as Austin, if slightly less muscle-bound, was scrutinizing me carefully. Austin pushed me down into a seat.

“Watch him,” said the guy who must have been Austin’s brother, then turned to the strong silent type who had ridden up the elevator with us. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be killing somebody in an hour?”

“Romano said he was gonna watch a movie, and he didn’t want anybody to disturb him for the next few hours. He was pretty much begging to die early.”

“OK. As long as nobody finds him ahead of schedule.”

“They won’t.”

My brow furrowed. “Romano… Acardi?”

Austin’s brother told the killer to sit tight in case he needed him for anything else and then turned to me. “That’s right. Romano Acardi had an unfortunate run in with a bullet, it seems.”

“Who the fuck do you people work for?” I asked.

“Me. I’m Jace Barlow.” He pulled up a chair and sat opposite me, looking at my face carefully. “I know you’re having the worst day of your life, Ryan. Do you know why this is all happening yet? Did the Acardis tell you?”

“No.”

Jace looked up at his brother, then back to me and sighed. “Today… the Acardis found out that your girlfriend is… a cop.”

My ears rang as if in the aftermath of some kind of silent explosion and it felt like somebody was shoving an icicle through my chest. I shook my head and curled up a little as my stomach cramped again.

“No. No. No, no, no. That’s… that’s not possible.”

“It’s possible, and it’s true. The Acardis tried to find out some background about her, starting from just after Christmas as far as we can tell. They got real suspicious when all their leads ran into dead ends, and they just heard today from one of their sources inside the police department that she’s an undercover cop. They decided to go scorched-earth on you. The cops that picked you up worked for the Acardi Family. They weren’t taking you to the police station, they were taking you to your lab, where I understand they’re installing some shackles.”

I buried my face in my hands, then slid my palms to the side of my head as if trying to hold my skull together. The idea of Sarina as a cop after all this time threatened to blow it apart. The fucking love of my life? I groaned.

“They sent some soldiers to kill your mom. I’m so sorry we didn’t get there in time to stop them. They’ve sent others to kill Sarina, and anybody who knew who she was.”

I sat bolt upright as if struck by lightning. “You gotta stop them!”

Jace raised an eyebrow. “Why? Let them do your dirty work for you.”

“No! I... I’ve got to hear it from her with my own ears. Please…”

Jace stared at me for a frustratingly long time while I tried not to scream my request again as if he hadn’t heard. Finally, he turned to the strong-silent-type.

“Alright, Eric. Since you’ve got some free time, go get her, bring her back if it’s not too late. Cumberland Dorm, room… four-fifteen, right?” He looked to me.

“Yes.”

Jace turned back to Eric. “Go.
Right now
.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eric didn’t walk, he
ran
to the elevator and disappeared a moment later. I hung my head for a moment, then lifted it again, only to let it flop backwards. I stared at the ceiling. Fuck this day.

“It never rains but it pours, huh Ryan?” Jace said.

I managed to bring my focus back to him. “What does that mean?”

“It means everything always fuckin’ happens at once. We’ve been infiltrating this city for months now and all this shit happens
today
, when we were going to take the Acardis down anyway. That’s why we were stretched so thin. I didn’t have anybody close enough to the hospital to stop it.”

“What are you, like, a shitty fairy godmother failing to look out for me or something?”

“I think you’re already dealing with enough that I’m not going to get all puffed up with my own self-importance at the way you’re talking to me.,” Jace said. “No, I’m not your fairy godmother. I was thinking about being your employer, though.”

“Not interested,” I said.

“Hear me out. You’re the whole reason I’m here. I was looking for you. I found out
you
were the F King a few weeks ago. Even the cops don’t know that. Your girlfriend hasn’t reported it if she knew it.”

“She didn’t.”

I felt like my body suddenly weighed a thousand times more at the mention of her name. I struggled to readjust myself in my seat.

“Austin, you got the keys for these cuffs?” Jace asked.

“Yeah.”

“Get them off him.”

Austin reached behind my back and I heard a click. He took the cuffs away and took a seat near the elevators and the exit to the stairwell.

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” Jace continued. “I was wondering if you’re loyal to them, or if you might be convinced to work for me. After what happened today, I
know
you ain’t loyal to them, but you say you don’t want to work for me either.”

I watched him with dead eyes.

“So, let me lay out my benefits package for you to consider. Believe it or not, I know what you’re going through. I saw my own mother get killed by… well, not
these
fucks, but fucks a lot like them. I made it my mission in life to take them down. First, I took Port Magnus from the Picollis, then we took New Ashby from the Bertolinis. After that, it became apparent that all these old mafia families are one and the same, interconnected. The only way to make sure they don’t grow back is to fucking kill them
all
. I had to make sure my next move hit them in the biggest single money-making operation any of them had, and that’s you and your F. They buried you deep. They’re not exactly like the other mafia families where you can sneak into their house and steal their fucking Rolodex. My guy Dan here,” he gestured at the man at the computer, who waved without looking, “can hack anything from anywhere, but in the end it was easier to buy this building right across the road from Trafford Tower, so we could get mainline access to the data cabling under the street.”

I looked at the windows, which were covered by vertical Venetian blinds. “We’re…?”

Jace nodded. “Right across the street. Anyway, the benefits package. The first thing I’ll promise you is that, if you work for me, I’ll make sure you get all the revenge you can handle. You will make them
hurt
on a daily basis, and I’m not just talking about in the wallet. I’m talking about every kind of pain that you’ve felt today, and more. Nothing will bring her back, and I can’t promise any amount of revenge will even the score in your mind.”

I dropped my eyes from Jace and leaned forward so that my elbows were resting on my knees. “I’m listening.”

“Second. Consider it a signing bonus. You might have noticed two guys in the back of the van with you? These are the guys who killed your mother. We didn’t get there in time to stop them… but we got there in time to pick them up. They are my unconditional gift. To you. They are
your
property. I have some places, and some tools, you might like to use if you want to… talk to them.”

Every beat of my heart was like the worst cramp I’d ever felt. I felt hot flushes and my hands bunched up into tight fists, shaking with anger. To know that the two men that killed my mother had been so close, they had been my makeshift mattress, really, was overwhelming.

The dreams I’d been having about that peaceful future on some nameless tropical island with Sarina, my mother living out her golden years in a nearby mansion… that was falling to the ground around me like a shattered window. There could never be peace, but there could be vengeance.

“What do you need from me?”

“You’re gonna have to relocate someplace where nobody knows you if you want to live a life any better than the chains the Acardis thought they were going to put you in tonight. I’ll set you up with a new lab, new staff, new accommodation. I’ll match what the Acardis were paying you and, if you don’t fuck around with me, I’ll give you the respect a man of your expertise deserves. That’s true, isn’t it, Dan?”

“All good, boss,” said Dan, not taking his eyes from the screens.

“So, do we have a deal?” Jace asked.

I swallowed down the lump in my throat, the grief for the life that could never happen, and cleared my throat. My mother was dead. Sarina… maybe dead too. “Yeah. Yeah, I think we do. You said the Acardis were going down tonight. How?”

I walked to the window, peeking between the blinds at the Acardi building across the street. Jace stood next to me.

“We’ve got the locations of about half the Acardis’ upper hierarchy in the city and nearby suburbs surrounded by my men, ready for a coordinated strike that’s going to tear the city out of their grasp in one fell swoop. Dan’s got control of all the money that can be reached electronically, and we have locations of billions more that they’ve got stockpiled.”

“You know… if you wait a couple weeks, the Acardi bosses all have a meeting right there in their building. You could have them
all
in one place instead of half of them all over the city,” I said.

“Alberico is scheduled to be out of town in a couple of weeks and, besides, Romano is already dead. They’re gonna know something is up when they find him, when they find the dirty cops that were going to bring you in. Things are in motion already, and that building is a fortress.”

“Hmmm. If we could get the bosses there tonight, I could give them to you.”

“Right, but we can’t. And when I said that building is a fortress, I didn’t mean it
looked
like a fortress or they just
call
it a fortress. It’s a fucking fortress. They can lock that shit down so tight you couldn’t get in with a tank before help or the authorities arrived. They have
anti-aircraft
guns on the roof.”