Flawed (The Mercenary Series Book 3) Read online

  An idea occurred to me, but I’d be playing with fire.

  How would Vee’s father feel about her being taken by another mob guy? How would he feel to know another man had cut off a piece of her finger and was now demanding money for her return? Would he be willing to come up with the cash in order to be the one in possession of her? I’d be handing Vee over to her worst enemy, but at least it would give us some options.

  No, it was insane. I must be losing my god-damned mind to even be contemplating it. There surely must be someone else I could get that sort of money from in twenty four hours?

  Either way, I couldn’t stay around here.

  I hesitated. Should I take the tip of Vee’s finger? For some bizarre reason, it felt wrong to walk away, leaving it on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t as though doctors would be able to reattach it after this long, would they? Though it felt utterly morbid, I used a paper towel to pick the fingertip up again, wrapped it in the towel and then pushed it into the depths of my pants’ pocket. Was it weird that I liked having a piece of her close to me again, as though I was connected to her?

  Yeah, it was weird. I was a total freak.

  I didn’t want the cops to see anything suspicious here, so I quickly scrubbed the rest of the blood off the surface. If the police decided this was a suspicious scene, they’d use one of those florescent lamps to pick up any blood splatters quickly enough, but if they just gave it a passing glance, they wouldn’t know anything bad had gone down here. Except for the mess I’d made.

  Fuck.

  I quickly tidied up again, shoving broken crockery into the trashcan. I needed to leave. If the police came down the lane, I’d be blocked in and then both Vee and I would be screwed.

  The place was far from perfect, but it would have to do.

  I’d left the truck idling, and my stuff still on the passenger seat. I stormed out of the cabin door, half expecting the cops to be blocking the lane, or even for someone to have stolen the truck and taken off, but everything was as I’d left it.

  I jumped behind the wheel and reached out to pull the door shut behind me. Doing a three point turn, I drove away from the cabin and back toward the main road.

  For the second time in twenty-four hours, I was heading back to New York to try to find Vee’s father.

  Chapter Thirteen

  V

  Alone in the dark, I lost track of time.

  I tried to keep myself busy, mapping out the circumference of the cave-like cellar. I counted hand spans from the staircase, so I wouldn’t lose coordination in the pitch black. It was cold, though, the chill seeping under my skin and leeching deep into my bones so I began to shiver and could not stop. I told myself this was due to the cold and not fear, but it could just as easily be down to blood loss and shock. It was natural to go into shock after losing a piece of yourself, quite literally, and being abducted. Because of the pregnancy, my body wasn’t at its strongest anyway, and I’d been through a lot, even for me. Also, I was starving—a hunger I knew would turn into sickness if it wasn’t abated. The tiny human growing in my stomach demanded feeding, and the craving for food was more than a normal hunger. It was a desperation.

  No one had made any attempt to communicate with me since I’d been thrown down here. I didn’t know if Giovanni and his men were even still up in the cabin. They might have dumped me here and gone about their business, for all I knew. But I hoped Giovanni would be paranoid enough that he’d want to have people watching over me, even if he didn’t stay here himself. It must occur to him that there was a chance X would find his way here and try to rescue me, so no, I decided, there must be someone else here.

  Using the hand spans I’d counted, I made my way back to the staircase. My palms pressed against the damp, cold rock. Four, five, six, seven, eight …

  I kept counting until I reached twenty-three. My measurements were accurate. My fingers touched wood instead of stone, and I knew I’d made it back to the staircase.

  Instead of perching on the bottom step, as I had been doing as a way of getting off the cold, stone floor, I crawled up them on my hands and knees. I didn’t dare stand in case a bout of dizziness struck, or I missed a step, and sent myself plummeting to the hard floor below. I was cautious, and that was good. Doing anything crazy or rash would only get me killed. I placed my hand and cheek against the wood of the door. Could I feel the warmth from the room beyond, or was I imagining things, so desperate to take comfort in something that I’d even conjure things up in my head? Perhaps, but I did feel warmer up here. I imagined a warm kitchen beyond—the kettle on the stove for tea, a fire crackling, toast so thick with butter it was more butter than bread.

  I was dreaming, of course I was, but better to be dreaming of good things than imagining the worst.

  Forcing myself from my thoughts, I lifted my palm to bang on the wood.

  “Hey! You out there! I need something.”

  I decided not to say the thing I needed most was something to eat. Considering they’d stood by while I’d lost a part of my finger, I doubted they were overly concerned about the state of my stomach.

  I debated telling him about the pregnancy. Perhaps if I told them I was pregnant, they’d have some sympathy for me. I held the information back, though. I didn’t know why, but instinct made me keep my secret.

  I listened for any reply, but none came. Was anyone even there, or was I talking to ghosts?

  I banged again. “Hey, you out there!”

  This time I heard footsteps. They came to rest on the other side of the door.

  A gruff male voice came through the wood. “What do you want?”

  “A blanket. Something to eat and drink as well.”

  He laughed. “This isn’t room service.”

  “I’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m struggling to regulate my body temperature. Do you want X to turn up here with whatever Giovanni has asked for, only for them both to find me dead? Can you imagine the sort of shit you’d be in if they found out you’d let me die?”

  I listened for any conversation beyond. If he turned and asked someone else’s advice, I’d get an idea of how many of them were still up there. Were my instincts right, and Giovanni had gone off on some other business, leaving the other two in charge? If so, where was the other man? Gone to take a piss, or was he away for longer? Either way, I didn’t hear any conversation. Instead, the man said, “Just wait there,” and the footsteps went away again.

  I sat, waiting, listening hard for any clues. I needed to learn everything I could. How he opened the door to me, if it looked like it was still daylight beyond.

  He was taking a while. Had he decided against getting me what I’d asked for?

  The footsteps returned. Thump, thump, thump.

  Then I heard the click of a lock turning, and then a clack of a bolt being drawn back across. The door opened a crack, and the first thing I saw was the barrel of a gun. It pointed midway through the opening, what would be stomach height if I was standing, but was aimed directly at my head in my position sitting on the top of the stairs.

  I squinted against the comparatively bright light.

  Something shoved into the gap beneath the gun. A plaid, woolen blanket, and then a flask, which I had to snag to prevent rolling down the stairs.

  “Soup,” the man snapped.

  And the door yanked shut again, plunging me into darkness once more.

  I located my items and pulled the blanket around my shoulders, incredibly grateful for the warmth it immediately instilled in me, and for the softness of the material against my skin. I clamped the flask between my knees in order to have my hands free to unscrew the top. It was insulated, with a plastic cup making up part of the lid. I unscrewed the top and lifted the opening to my nose. The hearty aroma of vegetable soup filled my nostrils, the steam from the soup warming my face then chilling my skin as I moved the warmth of the soup away. I was tempted to lift the lip of the flask to my mouth and drink from it directly, but I didn’t know how hot it was, a
nd I didn’t want to scald myself or spill hot soup all down my front.

  I hooked my finger into the rim of the cup. I didn’t know if I’d seen a blind person do this before, perhaps on a television show, but it worked. I poured the soup until I felt it touch the tip of my finger—making sure it went nowhere near the injured one—then stopped. Feeling around for the screw lid, I put that back onto the flask, making sure I sealed it tight, before putting it back down on the step. I didn’t want to risk knocking it over and losing the remainder down the stairs. I was lucky to have been given what I had, and I doubted I’d get much else.

  With both hands, careful not to knock the hurt finger, I lifted the plastic cup and held it for a moment, relishing in the warmth spreading through my painfully numb hands. My eyes slipped shut, which made no difference to what I could see in the pitch black, but allowed me to focus inwardly.

  He had opened the door.

  He had appeared to be alone.

  There were two locks—one for the door, another bolt at the top.

  He was armed.

  I took a sip of the soup. It was good, with a little hint of pepper which served to warm me further. I found it amazing the difference a little food and warmth could make to a person’s spirit. Yes, I was hurt; yes, I was pregnant. But that didn’t make me helpless, and it didn’t make me a different person from the one I was a month ago. I wasn’t someone who would sit around and wait to get rescued. I never had been, and I wasn’t about to start now.

  I couldn’t waste too much time. I didn’t know how much time I had before the other men returned. I also knew that if I tried to get the man’s attention again too soon, he would know I was playing him and refuse to open the door.

  For the moment, I sat, drinking my soup, and growing warmer by the minute…

  And planning my next move.

  Chapter Fourteen

  X

  Half an hour outside of New York City, I realized I was still wearing the clothes I’d stolen from the UPS guy.

  I didn’t want whoever was inside Mickey Five Fingers’ house to link me with the same man who’d visited the property during the early hours of the morning and tried to gain access to the house via a package that wasn’t even addressed to the Guerra household. I needed to stop and change.

  I hated wasting even a second doing something as mundane as shopping, but I had no choice. I stopped at an outlet mall and went into the nearest place to grab a new pair of jeans and a shirt. The clock was ticking inside me, and in my head I calculated how much time I had left. Just driving to and from New York was going to cost me at least six hours, and that was assuming I didn’t meet any traffic along the way. Then I needed to go back to Vee’s father’s house. If luck was on my side—which I highly doubted—Mickey Five Fingers would have returned from wherever he’d been, ideally with Nicole in one piece, though I couldn’t bring myself to worry about the girl now. Chances were he wouldn’t be around, and I’d have to track him down, eating into even more time.

  What would happen to Vee if I didn’t make it back in the allotted twenty-four hour time limit?

  I remembered the sight of the tip of her finger, the lurch of my stomach when I’d realized what it was. The sight of blood didn’t bother me. It was knowing who the blood belonged to which affected me.

  Back in the truck, I changed into my new clothes then hopped back out of the truck to stuff the UPS uniform into a trashcan. I made sure I removed the piece of Vee’s finger from the pocket first, carefully putting it into the pocket of my jeans. Yeah, it was weird, but I didn’t know what else to do with it. Just tossing it felt more wrong than carrying it around with me, and it wasn’t as though I was the person who’d cut it off.

  I drove back to Vee’s father’s house. I didn’t park on the corner this time, instead stopping directly in front of the gates. I hoped the guy who’d chased me didn’t recognize the truck. I’d thought about the uniform, but the vehicle had slipped my mind.

  From the outside, the place looked exactly the same. Only hours had passed since I’d last been here, and yet it felt like a lifetime ago. Everything had changed since that morning.

  I wedged my weapon into the back of my jeans and climbed out of the truck. I wasn’t hiding this time. I didn’t care if Mickey Five Fingers knew exactly who I was. I walked up to the gate and hit the buzzer. The cameras mounted on either side of the gate swiveled to watch me. I stared back at them, unflinching.

  The intercom buzzed and a tinny voice came through. “Who are you, and what’s your business?”

  “I need to speak with Mickey.”

  “He’s not here, and even if he were, he don’t receive house calls.”

  “He’s going to want to receive this one. It’s about his daughter.”

  The person on the other end hesitated. “He’s with his daughter.”

  “His oldest daughter. I know where she is, and if Mickey Five Fingers finds out that you turned away someone who has that kind of information, you’re probably going to find yourself missing a set of balls.”

  The buzzer sounded, and the gates slid open.

  I was in.

  Two men in suits approached me from the other side. They both walked with one hand on their belt, as though they thought they were a couple of FBI agents, instead of a couple of gangsters who were most likely on the lowest rung of the ladder. I recognized the tall, broad shouldered one from when he’d chased me down the street early that morning. He didn’t show any sign that he knew me from earlier that day.

  I wasn’t going to allow them to intimidate me.

  Passing through the gates, I moved toward them with a confident gait. Sensing I wasn’t going to come meekly, both men drew their guns.

  “Put those away,” I said, not breaking my stride. “I’m not here to fight with you.”

  They glanced uneasily at each other, and then put their weapon away, though I was sure they’d pull them again given the slightest chance.

  “If you cause me any harm, Mickey won’t learn where his oldest daughter is, and considering the history they have together, I think that would make him pretty fucking angry.”

  “I guess you’d better come through, then,” said the taller of the two men.

  “I guess I’d better.”

  The big guy led the way, the other one bringing up the rear so I was sandwiched between them. I still had my gun and would kill them if I had to, but I was hoping this whole thing could happen in a slightly more civilized manner.

  The guy up front led us into the house then through into a large office, complete with leather couches and a giant fish tank filled with a multitude of brightly colored fishes which took up most of the back wall.

  “Now,” he said, “tell us what you know.”

  I shook my head. “Not going to happen. The only person I’m speaking to is Mickey. I don’t know where he is, but I suggest you get him on the phone and tell him he needs to get back here ASAP.”

  I hoped he wasn’t abroad, hadn’t taken Nicole and vanished to Mexico, just as I had been planning with Vee. I didn’t think he was that kind of guy, though. If he was away, it must be on business. Men like Mickey Five Fingers didn’t run away.

  The two men exchanged that same glance, and I exhaled a breath of exasperation. “Just get on with it. Time is running out.”

  The tall one stepped closer to the phone. “Who do we say is calling?”

  “Tell him it’s X.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Just X?”

  “Just X,” I confirmed. “Now, are you going to stand there staring at me, or are you going to make the call?”

  He scowled, but turned his attention back to the phone. He hit a button which I assumed was Mickey’s number on speed dial.

  “Yeah, boss. It’s Bruno. I know you said not to bother you and all, but I’ve got a guy here saying he’s got information for you about the whereabouts of your other daughter.” A pause. “He says his name is X.” There was another pause as Mickey responded.
r />   He listened then said, “Yeah, he’s in the house. He didn’t give me much choice.” Pause. “Yeah, sure. I understand. Here.”

  And he handed me the phone.

  Mickey Five Fingers. Vee’s father. The man she hated more than anything in the world.

  His gruff voice came down the line. “You have information for me?”

  “That’s right, but I’m not going to give it to you over the phone.”

  “I’m not in New York right now, and I don’t see why I should rush back just because some sub-standard hit man has demanded me to.”

  I gritted my teeth. “This has to do with Vee—” I changed my version of her name—“Verity. She’s important to me, and I won’t discuss what I have to offer over a phone call.”

  “The last time we did a deal, it didn’t work out so well. You have a habit of taking money for jobs and then not going through with them, I believe.”

  “Not intentionally, in this case. Your daughter stabbed me twice before I had the chance to shoot her.”

  “And yet somehow you ended up with her? How is that working out for you both?”

  I thought about the piece of finger in my pocket. Not so well … The two men who’d brought me in here—one I now knew was called Bruno, but who I couldn’t help thinking of as Large, while his counterpart was Little—watched the conversation, glaring at me for interrupting their day. Little kept walking to the window to check outside, as though imagining this whole thing was some kind of distraction for something bigger.