Chapter 15

Chapter 15BellaIwoke up to an older woman’s blurry face. She was wiping the blood off my injured arm. It took me a few minutes to realize it must be Mr. Russo’s wife. That’s when the whole horrific memory of being abducted came flooding back. Finally, I became alert enough to shove her hands away.“You mobsters really take of your possession, don’t you? Even the ones you’re planning to kill in order to wallow in a big pile of money.”“Now now, dear, it looks like you got a nasty bump to the head, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”I replied irritably, “I know that husband of yours is a fucking maniac.”Her expression closed down and she responded curtly, “There’s no need for that type of language.”I sat up to find I was lying on a couch on a huge wraparound porch of a lake house. “Where the hell am I?”“You’re at our vacation cabin, miles from civilization, so don’t go trying to run off. You wouldn’t get very far,” Mr. Russo said.I gestured at my broken body. “Do I look like I’m in any kind of condition to walk, much less run?”“Well, that’s your own fault. No one told you to jump out of a moving vehicle.”His wife got up and went to stand by his side. “Are you sure she doesn’t need a doctor, dear?”He looked down into his wife’s adoring face. “No, she’s just got a few scratches. Young people today are all halfwits. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true—they think that they’re invincible.”Mrs. Russo responded, “It’s those violent video games. I’m so pleased our sons grew up without that kind of influence.”“I wholeheartedly agree, sweetheart.”“Have you decided what you’re going to do with her? I wasn’t expecting us to be joined by a guest.” Mrs. Russo said as she fussed around me. I couldn’t decide if the woman was as batshit crazy as her husband, or just blissfully ignorant as to why he’d brought a bleeding woman home.I decided on the latter. The Russo brothers seemed decent enough—at least for mobsters—as did their sister Sophia, so they must have had some calming influence growing up. But I had that horrible thought again, were the brothers somehow involved?“Where are your sons?” I asked.“Oh, are the boys joining us?” Mrs. Russo asked her husband.“No, dear,” Mr. Russo responded. “And they don’t need to know about our guest. I don’t want them worrying unnecessarily. I’ll just show the young lady to the guest room.”“You’re a good man, amore mio,” Mrs. Russo said to her psychopathic brute of a husband as he took my arm and led me to the door.“Remember, you can’t kill me for another three months if you want to collect that two million and if I’m starved or beaten, then it will show up on the autopsy,” I said as Mr. Russo marched me through the house. “It’s actually only nine weeks. I’ve prepared a spot for you sleep in the basement.”“The basement. How quaint. Will there be dirt floors, cement walls, and a bucket for me to piss in?”He didn’t answer as he led me down a flight of stairs into a room that was only marginally better than I expected. The minute I saw honest to goodness shackles, I knew this was the room I would die in. It might have been a lakeside retreat, but it was clear that this was the place that Mr. Russo carried out his business.I felt all my hope slip away when he locked the cuffs into place. When I moved my leg, the heavy chains made an awful jangling sound. “I feel like some kind of medieval prisoner locked in a dungeon while the king and queen feast and make merry above.”“I left you a gallon of water, a glass, and food near your sleeping bag. Your chains are long enough for you to reach the half bath so you can relieve yourself and wash up.” With that, Mr. Russo turned and walked back up the stairs.I moved around, exploring this newest cage the mobsters had made for me. There was a sofa, but it was out of reach. The only things I could reach were an overstuffed armchair, a fold-up card table with a chair, and a sleeping bag which was thrown down in the middle of the floor with some blankets and a pillow.I walked over to the table and rummaged through the food. There was peanut butter, jelly, crackers, canned meat, a large bag of trail mix, some dry cereal, and a few other things that didn’t thrill me.I made my way about five feet to the restroom. There was a washbasin between the door and the toilet, hot and cold running water, and a large bar of soap sitting on the sink. This was going to be a sad, pathetic excuse for a life until he decided to kill me. And there wasn’t one damn thing I could do about it.I walked back out to the main room and sat down in the armchair. I heard something crinkle down the side. I slid my hand down and pulled out a housekeeping magazine. As I looked at the smiling face of the happy homemaker splashed across the cover, I knew this was going to be my only form of entertainment for the next nine weeks.I held the magazine to my chest and let all the tears I’d been holding back flow. I grieved for the parents that I never really knew, for the grandmother I loved dearly and lost far too soon, for the career that never really took off, and for the one man in the world I truly loved. I cried because of the hope and innocence I had lost at the hands of these mobsters.I didn’t know how long I sat there crying my eyes out, but at some point the light was turned off, leaving me in the dark. I slipped down from the chair and crawled over to the sleeping bag. Getting comfortable enough to go to sleep was beyond difficult with the shackles, and there was no way to zip myself inside. My arm ached like hell, and it hurt to take a deep breath as I lay there trying to convince myself that my body wasn’t one huge ball of white-hot agony. Once I was as comfortable as I was going to get, the tears started flowing once more. I didn’t know how long I cried, but when I woke up the next morning, I didn’t feel well rested at all. Forcing myself out of the sleeping bag, I washed up in the bathroom and then found something to eat.I wondered what it would be like when they recovered my body. Would the coroner perform an autopsy report on the contents of my stomach and other weird crap nobody cared about? Or maybe something would go wrong, and nobody would find my body. I couldn’t decide which of the two scenarios would be preferable.My mind drifted to Forge’s handsome smiling face, the way he warned me about going out and talked about his bad gut feeling. Oh, how I wished I’d listened to him. If only I hadn’t been so eager to enjoy my newfound freedom, I would be at the clubhouse wrapped in his loving embrace right now instead of waiting to die in this godforsaken hellhole.