Page 3 of The Beast Who Broke Me
“Unbag him, Vicente,” says the dangerous voice.
The bag comes off in a rush of cool air and I fill my lungs gratefully, blinking at the woman standing over me. She has short black hair and big brown eyes, a Glock holstered at herside, and she’s right in my face. “You need to puke or anything?” she asks.
I don’t bother answering, since I don’t need to puke—or anything. I’m not even conscious enough yet to worry about my body. Imightbe in pain, but I wouldn’t know. Whatever drug Whiny stuck me with—because I think that’s what I’ve pieced together so far—it’s making everything floaty. Like reality is on a two-second delay.
I’m in a warehouse. Cold concrete floor, and the air smells like rust and wet cardboard. Industrial shelving stretches away into shadow, and there are a few large metal shipping containers lined up against the far wall.
I don’t want to think about what’s in them.
“Hey,” the woman says again. “You okay?”
I’m not going to speak unless I have to. I look past her to the others standing behind her. There are three of them, all male.
“There’s a bucket there to your right,” the woman says. “If you need to puke.”
There’s a guy in his twenties with brown hair, trying to seem tough by putting his hands on his hips, to make himself seem wide and imposing. But he’s about as skinny as I am right now, so it doesn’t work.
The other two men…
The other two, I recognize.
One of them steps forward: short and stocky, bearded, hands covered in old prison tattoos. “He’s fine,” he insists, staring at me. It’s Whiny, aka John Scaglietti. Scags, they used to call him.He was one of my grandfather’s bodyguards. “Look, the kid’s totally fucking fine, and the job went off without a hitch.”
The woman glances at him with dislike and turns to the third man. “I told him, sir. Told him you wouldn’t be happy.”
Scaglietti shoots her a look so full of venom I almost wish she’d seen it, so she’d be on her guard around him.
“Like I said, Scaglietti and I will have a conversation later,” the third man says. “But go on, now. All of you.” He steps forward as the others leave, bickering while they do.
“…didn’t have to snitch me out, Vicente.”
“Yeah I fucking did,” she snaps without breaking stride. “I’m not going down foryourscrew up, Scaglietti.”
“If Della-crotch-sniffer here had done his job right?—”
“Fuck you,” shoots back the skinny guy. “I bagged him clean.”
I haven’t taken my eyes off the man in front of me. He comes a step closer. “You know who I am?” he asks.
I nod. Nick Fontana, the Morelli Underboss, is not someone I expected to see. But it makes a sick kind of sense. I guess Sebastiano Conti was wrong. Itwasthe Morellis all along.
Dami and I were right to be suspicious of them.
Thinking of Damiano Orsini makes me come back into my body in a thump. His mouth on my throat. His hands in my hair. The dull ache in my ass that breaks through the drug fog. The way he touched me, the way hepossessedme…
But becoming aware of my physical state presents another problem. I turn my head to the side and puke up everything inmy stomach. And since the last thing I ate was a huge meal from Rosa, there’s a lot of it.
I don’t even know Rosa’s last name, it occurs to me, as I wait for the choking spasms to end. I never bothered to ask. Nor Vito’s, nor Sammy’s.
I never had thechanceto ask. And now I never will.
I’m pretty good at getting most of the mess into the bucket, and Nick Fontana just stands there waiting while I vomit it all up. “You done?” he asks at last as I spit, trying to clean out my mouth.
I take a few deep breaths. The nausea has passed, so I nod briefly. He pushes the bucket away with his foot, then comes back to stand in front of me. “It’s the drugs,” he says. “I told them to do it clean, but Scaglietti went off-script. For what it’s worth, he’s gonna regret not following orders.”
“He never was worth a goddamn,” I croak out. “But then, rats never are.”
He gives a half-smile. “So youdoremember him.”
