Vicious Promise by M. James
Luca
The docks smell like fish and garbage. I stride down the dock towards the warehouse, feeling myself tense as I approach it. I can feel the shift in myself, the person that I become when this part of the job requires doing. I don’t enjoy torture, but the Bratva has taken too much from me for there to be any true hesitation on my part. I saw my father’s body before the funeral. It had to be a closed casket for everyone else. That’s how terrible the things that they did to him were.
Tonight it’s not even a little bit difficult. All it took were those three words: they have Sofia.
I don’t care so much about the girl herself. I haven’t seen her since she was twelve. But my father died avenging hers. He made a vow, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let these fucking Russians make my father’s—and Sofia’s father’s—deaths for nothing.
Marrying Sofia Ferretti is the last thing I want to do. But I’ve never broken a promise yet, and I’m not about to start now.
Inside the warehouse there’s a man sitting on a chair, his arms tied behind him. His mouth is already bloody, his eyes swollen and blackening, and I see Rossi standing there with several of his men surrounding the chair. The man has a resigned look on his face, as if he already knows what the end of this is. He knows he’s not walking out of here alive. What he says or doesn’t say depends on how much pain lies between now and that end.
“Luca.” Rossi’s voice is dry and cool. “Good to see you.”
“I got here as quickly as I could. Who is this?”
One of Rossi’s men spits on the floor. “His name is Leo. He’s one of the Bratva dogs. But we already knew that.”
“We haven’t gotten anything else out of him,” Rossi says darkly. “Despite the work that my men did on his face. Since this is so personal to you, Luca, I thought perhaps it could use your skill.”
I frown, striding towards the chair. The man has distinctly Russian features, his greying blond hair stiffening from dried sweat and blood at his hairline. He lifts his head as I walk towards him, disgust plain on his face.
“So, Leo, is that true?” I squat down in front of him. “Are you Bratva? Do you answer to Viktor Andreyev?”
“Fuck you,” he says in his thickly accented voice, spitting on the ground. “And fuck your children, too.”
The punch comes before he can see it, my fist connecting with his cheek with a sickening thud and the sound of cracking teeth. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth—he bit his tongue.
“I don’t have any children,” I say coolly. “But I can make sure you never do, if you don’t talk.”
“You’re going to kill me. So hurry up and do it. I’m not saying shit.” He spits out another mouthful of blood.
“Maybe not,” I say conversationally. “Maybe I cut off your balls, and take a few of your fingers, and then let you wander back to your master like a castrated dog. Maybe I let you live that life, instead of mercifully killing you. You don’t deserve a kind death, Leo. But you can earn it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rossi’s grim, satisfied smile. He called me here for a reason—I’m the best at this game. Better even than him, and he knows it, because he gets too much enjoyment from torture. He doesn’t know when to stop, but I will. I’ll do just enough to force them to talk, and once they realize that they spill everything they know from the boss’s secrets to their grandmother’s cookie recipe.
This guy is going to do the same thing. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Thirty minutes later, the man is sobbing. His lip is split, two of his teeth are on the concrete, and one of his fingernails is sitting next to it. And I’m still standing in front of him, cool and collected even with his blood and spit on my shirt and jacket, a pair of pliers in my hands.
“Are we going to keep going?” I ask him, smirking. “Or would you like to lose another fingernail? Maybe the tip of a toe. I haven’t forgotten about the threat to your balls, either.”
The man sneers at me. “You Italians think that you are so untouchable. You think you hold this city in an iron fist. But you can’t hold it forever. We’re coming for you, for your wives, for your sons and your daughters, for your entire blood-soaked family.”
“There’s just as much blood on your hands.” I click the pliers together, but to the man’s credit, he doesn’t flinch. There’s tear tracks in the blood on his face, but his expression is still defiant. “You’ve been trying for years to take over, but you can’t. This city is ours. You’re lucky you have the territory we allow you.”
I lean down, fastening the pliers over the man’s thumbnail. When he doesn’t speak again, I yank.
The scream echoes through the warehouse.
When the man can breathe again, he glares up at me. “We’re closer than you know. We’re infiltrating your upper echelon, and you don’t even know it. And you won’t, until it’s too late.”
I click the pliers together again, and he flinches. “What do you mean by that?”
Rossi clears his throat, and I rephrase, going back to the first question I asked.
“Where is Sofia Ferretti?”
“That name means nothing to me.”
I let out a long-suffering sigh, and squat down again, so that I’m eye level with Leo. He stinks of piss—hardly a surprise, after what he’s gone through tonight. “See, Leo, that’s how I know you’re bullshitting me. Because every Bratva man, from Viktor down to your lowest mongrel, knows who Sofia Ferretti is. Now she’s gone missing, and what I need to know from you is where she is. And if I haven’t convinced you already that I’ll stop at nothing to find out, perhaps this will help.”
Grasping his wrist in one hand, I take the finger that’s now short a nail, and yank it backwards.
By the time Leo stops screaming, he’s soiled himself again.
I wrinkle my nose with disgust. “Do I need to break another one?”
“I don’t know who—”
The heel of my hand comes down hard on one of his balls.
“I’m tired of hearing you scream, Leo,” I say loudly, over the noise. “But what I’m more tired of is being lied to. There’s a lot of pieces I can take off of you and still leave you alive enough to show us where Sofia is. Save yourself some pain, and tell me now. Because I promise you, I will not let you die until you do.”
When the pliers fasten onto another nail, he starts to weep.
“I’ll tell you!” he shrieks. “Please, just don’t. Not another one, please—”
I stand up, tossing the pliers onto a nearby table. “Good. I was going to move on to your teeth next.”
Leo shudders. “I’ll give you the address. They’re keeping her at a hotel they own with the other girls, the ones who—”
“We know all about Viktor’s business, Leo. That’s not why we’re here tonight.” I nod at the man standing next to Rossi, my jaw tense. “Get the address, and gag and tie him. He’s coming along with us, just in case he’s still lying and we have to take a few more fingernails to get the truth.”
I turn on my heel, stalking out into the cool night air. I breathe in, and even the stink of the docks is preferable to being close to the sweating, bleeding, pissing man inside the warehouse.
Don Rossi’s footsteps come up behind me, and I turn around. “Well?”
His expression is unreadable. “If she’s in that hotel room, and still alive, you know what this means.”
“I’ll do my duty.”
“Are you sure about that? There’s always a way out, you know. You don’t have to marry this girl.”
I think of the alternative. Rossi won’t leave her alive for the Russians to try to use as leverage again. If I refuse to marry her, Sofia will be nothing more than a loose end that needs tying up. I know Don Rossi very well—he won’t flinch at that. I’m all that stands between her and two equally terrible choices: being sold by the Russians, or killed by the man who once employed her father.
The very last thing I want is a wife. But I won’t be responsible for breaking my father’s promise.
With my lips pressed tightly together, I jerk my head towards the town car, where the bound and gagged Leo is being shoved into the backseat. In the car just ahead of it, a cadre of soldiers armed to the teeth are piling in, ready to take the hotel where Sofia is being held by storm.
“Let’s go,” I say tightly, not looking at Rossi as I stride towards the car.
Her life is in my hands now. And I know exactly what I plan to do with it.
