Seized Mafia Bride by Mae Doyle
Lorenzo
As soon as the pizza arrives I grab three beers from the fridge and sit down at the table with Dane and Johnny. Mia is still sitting on the sofa where I left her, her gaze focused on the wall even though I have a pretty good feeling that she’s not actually seeing anything.
It bothers me that she won’t respond to me, won’t come in here and eat something, but she obviously can’t do that just yet. She will. I’ll break her down and make her see that the best way for her to survive this and come out on the other side is to trust me, but she can’t do it quite yet.
“Tell me what we have,” Johnny says, putting his beer down. “I was in here babysitting and you two assholes were out there actually doing shit.”
“Thanks for that.” From where I’m sitting, I can look out the door into the living room and keep an eye on Mia. As soon as she gets up to join or us lays down to sleep I’m going to take care of her. “Looks like this enterprise with kidnapping women and selling them goes a lot deeper than we thought that it did.”
“Hence the empty building that Taylor Hunt is helping renovate.”
I nod. “Exactly. If they have a nice big front built up for the town to be distracted by then it’s no big deal for them to actually do whatever the fuck they want in the back. Keep up a good appearance for everyone to focus on, then sell women out of the back of the building. Looks like that’s their model elsewhere across the country.”
“Fucking ridiculous.” Johnny shakes his head. “Why the hell did they choose to do it here? Did they not realize that we would shut them down as soon as we figured it out?”
Dane speaks up before I can respond. “Looks like it was just a case of the right place at the right time. Damon was looking to expand his little enterprise and Taylor was looking to get more than the scraps that fell from the table when he was crouched on the floor like a fucking dog. The two of them figured that they could work together.”
“And Mia?” Johnny looks right at me.
“They don’t realize that they both want her,” I say. “Taylor wasn’t at the meeting tonight, thank fuck, or I’m sure that it would have all blown up between the two of them. I can only imagine how nuclear they’re both going to go when they figure out the fact that they’re gunning for the same girl.”
“And yet you have her locked up here like a little bird in a cage.” Johnny finishes his beer and gets up to grab more from the fridge. “How’s that going, by the way? She was pretty damn quiet while the two of you were gone.”
Dane glances at me, one eyebrow raised. I know that he wants to know my plan with Mia, too, but I don’t have anything to tell the two of them. Dane got lucky buying his bride when she was younger. Sure, she may not have wanted to go through with marrying him, but she did, and they’re happy now.
Mia will come around. I know that she will. From what I’ve found out about her, she’s never had stability in her life before. The foster system failed her, like it fails so many people, and I’m the only person in her life to ever offer her safety and security. And love. I’m going to take care of her, keep her safe, and give her the family that she never thought she could have.
“Mia will eventually figure out that I’m all she has to keep her safe and happy,” I finally say. “She belongs here with me and she’ll figure that out eventually.” Looking out the door into the living room, I’m not surprised to see that she’s finally curled back up on the sofa. Poor girl couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. “Excuse me,” I say, standing up from the table and walking out to get her.
Her mouth is open slightly as she breathes and she doesn’t stir when I stand over her. Gently, so that I don’t accidentally wake her up, I scoop my arms under her and lift her, pulling her close to my chest.
She’s not heavy, but her weight is comforting. Carefully, so that I don’t rock her or knock her feet into the wall, I carry her down the hall to my room. It would be easy to lock her back up in the little room I had her in before so that I didn’t have to worry about her getting out, but I want her to feel safe.
If she’s going to learn to love it here, she has to feel safe. As much as I’d like to just overpower her time and time again to show her that she really does belong to me, she needs more. I can give her that.
Mia looks tiny when she curls up on her side in my bed and I carefully flip the covers up over her, tucking them around her body to make sure that she’s going to stay nice and warm. She doesn’t move even when I adjust the pillow a little bit and pull the covers up to her chin.
Before leaving, I turn the lights down to a dim glow so that she’ll be able to see a little of her surroundings if she wakes up in the middle of the night, then crack the door before heading back to the kitchen.
“What the hell was that?” Johnny’s staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Did you just tuck her in in your bed?”
I nod. “She’s mine. I want her to feel safe when she wakes up.”
“Fuck.” He shakes his head. “I never thought that I’d see you interested in just one cunt, Lorenzo. You have it bad for this girl.”
I don’t argue. “She’s mine,” I repeat, in explanation, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “She’s mine and there isn’t a damn thing that anyone can do to take her from me. Now, we know that at least some of the cops here are in with Damon and Taylor so what’s our plan to take them down?”
This makes Johnny grin and he opens his laptop, turning it so that Dane and I can both see it. My pizza’s getting cold and I take another bite while I wait for him to tell us the plan he’s come up with.
“This is the building they’re renovating and moving into,” Johnny says, pointing at the screen. It’s a new picture, probably taken this spring, and I’m not surprised when I see the realtor stamp in the corner from when the building was put on the market.
“It’s pretty nondescript from the outside,” Johnny continues, pulling up the blueprints for the building. “Also it’s incredibly boring on the inside, but I was watching it today and it looks like they have a construction crew that’s been coming and going. From what I can tell without going in, they’re separating the back of the building from the front with some walls and installing a hell of a lot more insulation.
Another picture, this one showing all of the materials being taken in to complete the renovations on the building. Johnny wasn’t joking, there are huge rolls of insulation being trucked in.
“They’re soundproofing it,” I say, and both Johnny and Dane nod. “So they’re going to look legit from the front. Anyone who needs help with a missing woman can easily come to them and they can meet in the front, probably in some offices, and talk about what happened. But the back of the building is where the shit is really going to go down.”
“Exactly.” Johnny looks pleased and pulls up another pictures. “Here’s your good friend Damon coming to check everything out and make sure that construction is sticking to the schedule.”
“Asshole,” Dane mutters, and I agree with him. “So we know what they’re doing, why the hell don’t we act now? We could go to their houses and take care of them in the middle of the night. Nobody would see it coming.”
I want to do it like that, too, but it’s not the right way to handle this, and I shake my head. “No, we can’t just do it like that. Damon has these centers in other cities, as well. If we’re going to stop him and keep it from moving into our city then we need to help protect everyone else at the same time.”
Dane raises his eyebrow and looks at me. “You want us to take down the entire thing? Not just here.”
“Hell yeah, I do. There’s no way in hell that the assholes who work with him are going to get the hint and put a stop to their business if we just shut it down here. You don’t think that Damon has some contingency plan in place in case something terrible happens to him? I guarantee you that he has other men ready to step up and run these places, just like Taylor is going to be the one to run this one.”
“Fuck.” Johnny slams his hand down on the table in frustration. “You do realize how fucking hard that will be, don’t you? We’re talking this crazy coordinated effort to move a ton of men all at the same time. It would be easier to take them down one at a time.”
Dane shakes his head and I’m glad that my brother is agreeing with me. “No, it wouldn’t. You kill Damon and Taylor and take their enterprise down here, everyone else across the country is going to go on high alert. There’s no way to do it but how Lorenzo is saying. Hard and fast, all at once.”
“It won’t be easy to organize,” I say. “Especially because the public conception of Damon is really fucking good. But it’s not like we can go to the cops. Some of them are in on it. Besides, when has the Accardi family ever backed down from something dangerous?”
“It’ll be fun,” Dane promises Johnny. “You love blowing shit up.”
“I do.” Johnny closes his laptop and smiles at the two of us, showing all of his teeth as he does. “I fucking love blowing shit up, you’re right. Okay. Here’s the plan. I’ll do a bit more research and make sure that we know where all of these centers are located. We’ll take them out all at once.”
“I’ll talk to the Bonannos,” I say. “I have a very good feeling that they’re going to want to help us bring this thing to its knees.”
“And I know a family out west.” Dane nods his head like he’s really thinking things through. “They’ll help, I know they will. All I have to do is explain to them what’s going on and they’ll join us. We’ll get this taken care of.”
I’m not worried. It’ll all happen and then Mia and I can finally live in peace without worrying about someone trying to take her from me.
