Page 48 of The Don's Prisoner

“Logan, I’m gonna have to call you back,” I said in a smooth, even tone.

“Alright. We will do our best on this end to help you out, brother. Don’t do anything dangerous.”

I hung up on him and answered the call. I didn’t say anything or greet the person on the other end. Instead, I put the call on speaker, so I could put the phone down. I had a feeling that I would break it if I were holding it.

“Well, hello to you too, Giovanni De Carlo. So nice of you to take my call. I feel really special because I know you are trying your damnedest to find the fair Victoria at this moment, so it really, truly means a lot.”

“Where is she?” I growled and Rex laughed. I gripped the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles going white, just so I wouldn’t punch something and break my car.

“Oh, she’s in a safe place, no worries about that De Carlo. For now, anyway. I haven't quite decided what I want to do with her yet. You see, I had wanted her all for myself, but seeing as you managed to defile her already, I’m not so sure I want your sloppy seconds. I may just keep her here long enough to take her as many times as I wish and then throw her away like the trash she is.”

I knew getting mad wouldn't help. I knew yelling was only going to make things worse, but the thought of him touching her, the thought of him killing her, was beginning to rip my heart in two. I was grinding my teeth so hard I wondered if they would break under the pressure.

“If you touch her, McMillon, I swear on my grandfather’s grave that I will skin you alive. We are coming after you, and when we find you, you will be wishing you had just left her the fuck alone like she told you to,” I seethed.

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” he laughed again, and I could hear people talking in the background. “The Irish have always been better at war than the Italians. You don’t stand a chance.”

“Come face me man to man, and we’ll see who comes out on top.”

“Ah, not the way this works, boyo! Nice try though, you get an ‘A’ for effort. I’ll be seeing you soon enough, I suspect. That is, if you can figure out where she is,” he taunted and hung up the phone.

I sat there in silence, wishing for him to call me back and tell me where she was. Waiting for her to call me, even if that was impossible because I had her phone. I had no idea where she was, if she was okay, or even if she was still alive. I wouldn’t put it past him to taunt me like that, only to have killed her already.

For his sake, he better not have. If she was dead already, his death would be agonizingly slow and painful. I would make sure of that.

Chapter fifteen

Victoria

I awoke gradually, observing everything one step at a time, but without opening my eyes. My mouth was dry and felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. My head was throbbing, and there was a sharp pain in the side of my neck, but I couldn’t tell if they were related or not. I could feel a solid floor beneath me. It felt like concrete, but I wasn’t sure how I knew that.

I was lying on the floor on my side, and there was a dripping sound coming from somewhere. My elbow hurt, but it wasn’t terrible. It was like I had hit it against something, but not broken it, which was a relief. The air was also cold, which made goosebumps stand out on my arms and legs.

Carefully, I opened my eyes.

The room around me was dark except for a small window that was so bright with light that it was blinding when I tried to look at it. I had been right about the cement floor too. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were all concrete, as were the pillars that connected the ceiling and floor down the middle of the long room. Everything was dark, so I couldn’t see far, but I knew for certain there were at least three big pillars, thanks to the light from the small window.

The room itself was huge, or at least it seemed so, but my little corner of it was small. I was lying on the ground, enclosed in a metal cage nestled in a corner of the space. Behind me and to my left were two concrete walls, the same walls that made up the frame of the big room. Then, to the front and right of me, there were two walls of metal bars that had a swinging gate-like door, completing the cage. The caged space was probably about eight by ten feet, and the dimensions struck me strangely. I had never been to a jail, but I had heard stories. They set their cells up in very much the same way.

There was a pile of old blankets in the corner of the two concrete walls, and there was a bucket near the door of the metal bars. It was an old, rusted metal bucket and, by the smell of it, it had been used as a waste bucket in the truest sense of the word. I wrinkled my nose at it and sat up, holding my head as it began to pound.

There was talking outside, male voices, but they were too far away for me to hear exactly what they were saying. I wanted to yell out, to at least try, but when I opened my mouth to yell, it was muffled and squeaky. It hardly sounded like my voice at all. It sounded a little like Rose from the movie Titanic when she was lying on the floating door in the middle of the ocean, feebly calling Jack’s name when he wouldn’t wake up.

There was a thought I didn’t need to have.

Slowly, I got to my feet and walked to the window. It was very small and near the ceiling, which was still a few feet above my head, but at least it provided light and the possibility of calling out to someone if they happened to walk by. Chances were that those were Rex’s people out there, and no one was going to help me, but what if they weren't? Maybe I was just there for the time being until Rex figured out where he wanted to move me, and he had forgotten to make sure that the painters were not coming, or the gardeners. Maybe he had made a mistake, and I would be able to catch someone’s attention, someone who could get me out of here and back to Gio.

I should have never left Gio’s house. I didn’t think Rex would do something like this. This was just insane. Normal people, even disgruntled people who had been dumped, would not do this kind of thing.

How was he so different from the guy I had met a few months before? How was he such an emotionless, heartless bastard?

How was I locked in a jail cell in what looked like a warehouse basement? Who even had access to places like this? Oh yeah, the Mafia. That was exactly who had places like this. I shook my head at the ridiculousness of it all. This was like something out of a movie. This couldn’t be real. Maybe I was still dreaming? Maybe I had hit my head on the way to work? It hurt enough to be true. Maybe that was the only part that was real.

As much as I would have loved to believe it was just an illusion, it didn’t help to kid myself. I was trapped, and there was nothing I could do about it because Rex held the key.

Annoyed, I began pacing, thinking about how to get out of my cell. The bars were too close together for me to slip out of them, and there wasn’t anything to climb up onto to look out the window—not that I would be able to escape through that. The window was about the size of a brick, so definitely not slipping through there, no matter how skinny I was.

The only plausible option was to steal the key from whoever came in next. I hoped it would be Rex because I would love to see the look on his smarmy face as I knocked him unconscious, stole the key, and headed back to Gio’s place. I didn’t know where I was or how difficult any of that would be, but it was worth a shot. It was really the only plan I had, so I held on to it with both hands so I wouldn’t let go.

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