Page 15 of Bellini Bound
Enzo spoke again. “You have been called here to witness her initiation into the Family.”
My eyes bulged. Initiation? What the hell did that mean?
Turning to me, my husband said, “The fact that you’re a cop’s daughter tells me two things. One, that you understand you can’t be forced to testify against me in a court of law now that we’re married. And two, you know how to shoot a gun, likely with accuracy.”
“Sh-shoot?” My lips struggled to form the word as something metal was pressed into my right hand. When I dared to glance down, I saw my fingers were curled around the handle of a gun.
Confusion and fear flooded my body. My focus narrowed down to the weapon I held, and I jumped out of my skin when the shrill screech of chair legs being dragged across the floor echoed off the concrete walls.
My head snapped up in time to see a man bound to a metal chair being brought forth from the shadows. He was gagged and blindfolded, several bruises bloomed on his bare chest where he’d undoubtedly been beaten, and blood trickled from a gash on his forehead.
Instinctively, I stepped back, but Enzo snaked out a hand to wrap around my wrist, tsking. “Not so fast.”
“Let me go.” As I struggled to pull away, his grip only grew tighter, and I whimpered, “Please.”
If I hadn’t been staring right at him, I might’ve missed the softening of his gaze. It gave me the tiniest flicker of hope that the version of him I’d met all those months ago was still in there somewhere. But the second he realized his momentary slip, the shutters slammed down, and he was back to being the stone-faced man who ordered me around like I was his pet instead of his wife.
Wrapping an arm around my waist, he pulled me against his chest, grunting with the effort to haul me back to my original position, poised only two feet away from the beaten man tied to a chair.
“As you can imagine,” Enzo said low in my ear. “My men don’t trust you, seeing as who your father is, and frankly, neither do I. While you can’t be forced to testify against me, there’s nothing to say you won’t run to dear old daddy at the first opportunity to volunteer information that could put me, my family, and those loyal to us behind bars for a very long time. So, here, today, right now, we are going to ensure you will never give in to that temptation, thinking it’s your ticket to freedom. When you leave this basement, you will be one of us, bound to this family not only in name, but by blood.”
I swallowed involuntarily. That didn’t mean what I thought it meant, right?
But before I could ask that question out loud, Enzo supplied the answer. “You’re going to show your allegiance to the Bellini Family by taking this man’s life in front of all eight of our capos.” His rough chuckle fanned across my cheek. “In case you need a little vocabulary lesson, sweetheart, those are the highest-ranking members of our mafia outside of my cousins and me, who run this show.”
Shaking my head violently, I protested, “I-I can’t. I swore an oath.”
My husband hummed, the vibration of it tickling the shell of my ear. “Yes, well, that is rather unfortunate, but I’m afraid it’s the only way to earn the trust of these men—and all those they command beneath them. Once you’ve got blood on your hands, you won’t be able to turn on us without implicating yourself.”
He relinquished his hold around my middle, and once he was confident that I wasn’t about to bolt, he sauntered toward the bound and gagged man. I didn’t know where he’d kept it hidden, but suddenly, Enzo had aknife in his hand, and he dragged the tip of it along the side of the man’s face to tug down his blindfold, drawing a thin line of blood in the process.
“You shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Honestly, you’ll be doing the world a service. He’s not a good man, Allison. He steals young girls off the streets to sell into trafficking.” Enzo pulled a disgusted face. “But not before sampling them first. Isn’t that right, Carmine?”
There was a muffled shout from behind the gag as the man stared daggers at my husband, fighting against his restraints.
Working in the ER for years, I’d encountered more rape victims than my heart could bear. It was the memories of those battered women and the demoralizing exams I was forced to perform on them—knowing the odds were slim to none that those DNA results would lead to the capture and punishment of their attackers—that had me gripping the gun tighter.
Sexual abuse was one thing that I would not stand for. And with how Enzo made it sound, this creep had been sticking his dirty dick in underage girls before forcing them into a lifetime of unpaid prostitution.
Still, my arm shook as I lifted it, aiming directly at the center of his chest—I was too much of a chickenshit to go for the headshot. Blood roared in my ears, and my vision grew so blurry that I blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear it. Only when wetness spilled down my cheeks did I realize I was crying.
But in that moment, I didn’t know who I was crying for. Was it for myself, knowing that any time I set foot inside a hospital from this moment forward, I would do so as a complete and utter fraud of a medical professional? Or was it for all those girls this man had stolen from loving families before hurting them and then forcing them into a life of sexual slavery, one they had very little chance of escaping?
In the end, I decided those tears were for all of us. We were all victims of circumstance.
Enzo had been right when he assumed I’d been taught to shoot by my father. Hell, I even had a concealed carry permit and my own registered handgun. Not that I’d ever had cause to use a firearm outside of a shooting range before now.
My finger twitched on the trigger as I tried to hype myself up to do this. Because the minute I fired this weapon, there was no going back.
Just think of those girls. How they begged him to stop and cried out in pain when he violated them.
That was all it took to tip the scales, and a loud gunshot rang out.
For as long as I lived, I would never forget that moment. The smell of gunpowder, the sound of gurgling as his lungs filled with blood, and the taste of bile as it rose up my throat.
And as the life drained out of the man I’d shot, so slowly it felt like time stood still, my innocence died right alongside him.
Tossing the gun aside, I bent over, dropping my head between my knees as I began to hyperventilate when it sank in that I’d consciously killed someone. I couldn’t make my chest expand, and my rapid, shallow breaths weren’t drawing in enough air. It felt like I was suffocating, and panic crept in at me from all sides, along with the darkness clouding my vision.
