Page 14 of Veil of Vengeance

“He’s not just my relative. He’s my big brother,” he replies.

My eyebrows reach my forehead, and I blurt out, “You have a big brother?”

“Yes, why is that surprising?” he asks.

I shrug again. “I don’t know. You give off only-child vibes.”

“Vibes?” he asks like a scoff, but before I can answer, Emiliano speaks up.

“The both of you are causing me a headache the size of the Middle East. Shut up.”

“You’re just jealous she likes to converse with me better than you,” Romiro retorts.

Emiliano answers with, “Since when do you say ‘converse’? You’re a fucking idiot.”

“I’m going to tell your Mom you’re being an asshole again,” Romiro threatens, as if that would work on the Capo of the Camorra, but Emiliano doesn’t respond.

We drive for another thirty minutes with both Emiliano and Romiro exchanging insults. They sound like five-year-old children. Not even Marcello behaves this way. I wonder how he’s doing. My poor baby brother. I wish I hugged him when he’d gotten out.

I thought it would keep him safe if we all stayed away from him, but now, I don’t know when I’ll see him again, or if I’ll ever be able to.

We drive for another ten minutes, this time in silence, and then the car comes to a complete stop. I can hear the sound of two car doors opening and shutting, and two voices speaking, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.

Then the blindfold is taken off and I blink a couple of times so that my eyes can adjust to the light. Emiliano is leaning to my right with the blindfold in his hands.

He stares at me for a beat, and my face heats, which he notices. He’s about to say something, but instead, he moves out the way and says, “Come on.”

“You owe me ten grand now.” Romiro is standing on the side of the car that I’ve come out of, and he smirks at Emiliano across the hood of the car.

“You bet on me?” What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? All I get is a shrug from Romiro and a grunt from Emiliano that closely sounds like “fucking Morettis losing me money.”

My eyes wander around where we’ve stopped. It's a parking garage full of different cars. I look behind us to see an iron gate that appears to be around half a mile away, and to my surprise, there are no guards patrolling. If I thought I had a glimmer of hope to escape from the clutches of the Camorra, it’s squashed now because they’ll catch me before I can even step foot out the front doors. Emiliano’s voice cuts through my depressing thoughts.

“You’ll be leaving on my terms and my terms alone. Don’t trick yourself into believing that you stand a chance of returning home without my permission. Now come on.” He begins to walk toward the doors of an elevator while both I and Romiro stay behind, before I decide there is no use pissing them off.

Romiro walks beside me and whispers, “If your Dad loves you, he’ll give us what we want by the end of this week.” My Dad, love me? My Dad doesn’t love anyone but himself, money, and walking STDs. Right now, the enemy is treating me better than he ever did. I give Romiro a weak smile, but I don’t reply. Emiliano stands near the entrance of the elevator, his arms folded across his chest, making him appear even larger than he already is.

The elevator pings and the doors slide open. It has three mirrors, one on the sliding doors and two on the right and left of us. Black velvet covers the back wall.

The doors open to a large entrance area, which has six different doors. Emiliano grabs my upper arm and drags me toward the far-left door. It leads to stairs down to what I assume to be a basement. He lets me go ahead of him, which means that there is nowhere else to go, nowhere to possibly escape.

My suspicion is confirmed once we've stepped on the bottom landing and all I can see is rows of metal cells. The walls are damp. The smell of blood and other things so thick and prominent in the air that it makes bile rise in my throat, which I force back down.

“Come on,” Emiliano mumbles as he walks to the first cell to the right. Opening it, he motions for me to get in. With my stomach churning, I decide it’s best I do what he wants in case he goes all butcher style on me.

“I’ll send down someone in a minute to give you some food,” he informs me once he finishes locking me in.

The cell is empty except for a piece of fabric with a thin cushion on the floor. Probably there to be like a bed or something. I pace around the small cell, trying to figure out how I can find a way out of this place without being spotted.

I don’t want to go back to Chicago. If I can escape, it’ll mean I can escape the clutches of my Dad too, and he’ll be none the wiser. I shake my head; I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I need to get out of here without getting caught.

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the cell door being opened. I look up, and to my surprise, it’s a woman who’s entered. A woman who doesn’t seem to be that much older than me and is wearing close to nothing, which makes me blush red. She laughs softly once she sees my expression and elaborates on why she’s wearing lingerie while walking around.

“Have you never seen what a working girl looks like?”

“Oh. No, sorry, I don’t know what a working girl even is,” I tell her, feeling my face heat up in embarrassment at my ignorance.

“A prostitute, darling. I’m a prostitute,” she supplies. I grimace at her bluntness before looking around.

---