19. CAL

Disoriented. My head buzzed trying to cling to what was going on around me. I felt like a ragdoll being pulled in all directions. My body didn't feel like it belonged with me anymore, part of me felt like I was floating in space, and another part of me was in pain.

A sharp sound pulled focus. I was in a room with blue walls and bright light pulling in from all directions it seemed. Moving my head to either side, I realized I was laying on something.

"You're fine," the voice from my waking nightmares spoke, and the light in my eyes vanished. "No concussion. It looks like you just need to get yourself adjusted and then someone will be up to bring you down for breakfast." His lips pressed against my cheek. "I've missed you."

I'd tried to raise my head and smash it into his face, but I could barely move since the room was still spinning around me.

I caught a glimpse of a man dressed all in black, carrying an assault rifle in his hands. He stood behind Grant, almost like he was on patrol, making sure I didn't try anything.

None of it made sense.

Laid on the hard mattress in the room, I stared up at the ceiling trying to piece together everything I knew. Grant had kept me in a stinky basement where he tortured me for his own personal gratification. If he'd had all this money to hire people as bodyguards then, why didn't he not just keep me somewhere else. Not that I wanted to be kept. My stomach was turning in knots as I sought for a way out of this.

Lifting my head, I glanced at the window. There were grated bars on the inside. This had been his plan all along.

I raised both my hands up. The searing pain in my right wrist was begging for my attention. I was thankful there were no burns from the rope. And that he hadn't taken the bracelet or ring that Frankie had given me.

"C'mon," I mustered to myself. "Get up, Cal. Get up."

Once I was sat upright on the bed, I saw the pile of clothes on the floor. I assumed he wanted me to get dressed in those. I knew the only way to get through this was to gain a little trust, and if I had to dress up in clothes for him to do so, then I would.

It felt like I was betraying Frankie, although this is what he would've done. He would've told me it was all going to be ok, and that I needed to look for a weakness. Once I found the weakness, I could exploit it.

The room was bare, except for the wooden bed frame and mattress. I wondered if this was where he planned on keeping me this time.

Stepping toward the window, I could've survived the drop into the yard out back. There were trees and bushes out there, covering the view from the neighbors. I tested how stuck on to the wall the bars were, and the answer was very.

After a moment of pacing, I knew I had to change out of my clothes. I didn't want him to touch me like that again. I didn't even want to look at my thigh where he'd grabbed me and dug his fingers in, but as I undressed, I saw it anyway. He'd cut into my skin and fresh purple bruises in the shape of his fingers marked me.

There was a clean pair of underwear, a t-shirt, and a pair of sweatpants on the pile, alongside some socks and slides. I screwed my eyes for a moment intensely, trying to feel Frankie's words in my brain.

But there was nothing.

I dressed in his clothes and tore up the midriff of the T-shirt to crop it. It was my fuck you to him for picking out clothes for me.

A loud knock came at the door. "Five minutes," a deep voice called out.

With the excess fabric in my hands, I wondered if I could've fashioned some type of garrote. It was fabric instead of wire, so potentially useless. I looked around the room with an eye for other items that I could use.

I stared at the bed frame as an idea hit. A wooden stake seemed old-fashioned, but they'd been known to kill monsters, and from where I was standing, Grant was a monster.

Coughing, I masked the sound of me side-kicking the wooden leg of the bed. It splintered into two. Almost like it was meant to be, the bed stood with only a slight slant, and I had a piece of wood with a sharp point.

The knock came again. "I'm coming in."

Sliding the splintered piece of wood into my pocket, it stabbed into my leg above my knee. The door opened and a man in that same all-black uniform and rifle combo entered. I forced a smile on my face as I stuffed a hand into my pocket. I moved the wood a little so that it wouldn't poke me.

Leaving the room, I noticed more men walking around on patrol. We headed down a flight of stairs and I was directed into a dining room. There was no decoration or color to any of the walls, except for the bedroom I'd been tossed into.

The dining room had a long table with two place settings.

The man nodded to a chair and told me to wait. He then stood guard at the closed door, hand on his rifle, ready to shoot.

I stayed still on the seat, my back ached as I commanded it straight against the back of the chair. There was a plate and a bowl on the table, a spoon, a butter knife, and a fork. I looked on ahead to see a much sharper knife at Grant's side. There was no way I could take it without being seen. A knife would've been better than the sharp end of this wood.

The door opened and he walked in, dressed in a T-shirt that had matched mine. There was a heart on it, and I suddenly realized that after tearing mine in half to crop it, I'd split the heart in two.

"Good morning," he said, a big smile on his face. "I think I remember your favorite breakfast. Pancakes, right?"

They weren't, that sugary crap Frankie never let me eat was my favorite. "Sure," I lied. "Thank you." I almost vomited at myself after saying it. "Might I get a different knife; I like to make sure I cut them properly."

Grant shook his head and tutted. "For the time being, we'll make sure you only use blunt tools. Got it?"

"Ok." I grit my teeth.

"If you need something cut, I'm happy to help you. In fact, why don't I sit right beside you. We're so far away from each other. I almost have to shout to speak." He laughed, almost like he'd told an insanely funny joke.

"If you want," I said, my eyes on the knife right beside him. I went through all the places I could jam it inside his body to make the most damage, but also to kill him the slowest. I knew that if I stuck him with a knife, I couldn't pull it out. I didn't want his death to be fast. It had to be slow and painful. Then I looked to the guard at the door. The moment I stabbed him, I'd be shot in the head.

"I've been gone for two years, tell me what you've been up to in that time," he said.

"It's all been a blur. I'd love to know more about your operation. I mean, comparing it to what I've seen, this looks professional," I said, only paying him the compliment as a tactic to disarm and charm.

"You think so?" he asked. It worked. "Well, I've just been planning, and my cousins have been helping on the outside. So, obviously, you know two years ago, I was dealing that compounded stuff that was killing people. Well, I was also telling people it came from the Borgesi family. I was doing my best to ruin their reputation. Then, I could come in and with my formula, I could take their business."

"Wow. That's a lot of planning. And they don't even know it was you?"

"If they did, do you think I'd be sitting here right now?" he scoffed.

A knock came at the door, putting a pause to my next question. Another one of his armed soldiers came in, wheeling a metal cart with two stacks of thick pancakes and several smaller bowls filled with toppings.

"I'm—I'm actually not that hungry," I said.

"You should try and eat something. We have a lot of catching up to do."

The man served us both our stacks and placed the toppings in the center of the table, alongside the boat of syrup.

"I had a big dinner last night."

"Ahh," he said, tutting his tongue. "I suppose that's to be expected after you kill someone in cold blood, huh? The first time I killed someone, it was an overdose, and I realized how fragile life was. You know—" he poured syrup over his pancakes before cutting into them and starting to eat. "That's why I believe we should all go after what we want. It's why I didn't stop pursuing you, and it's why you're here with me right now. Don't give up. Perseverance." He chomped and chewed on his food like an animal. I couldn't eat, even if I wanted to with the sounds he was making.

"Who are your other cousins?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"On the inside. You mentioned other cousins."

"Right, right." He continued to chew and swallow. "Three cousins. One of them you shot and killed, but I have forgiven you for that. Although it moved my timeline up by a couple weeks, so I'm still annoyed, but overall, forgiven."

It clicked. "You tried to kill Frankie."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Never tried to kill him. I did try and set up a trap, two traps in fact. He killed four guys the first time. The second one I felt like I knew he was going to fall for, but he didn't."

"The cop?"

He nodded. "Yeah. He'd been stalking that house all afternoon. We were sure he was gonna get caught. But nothing yet. Seems someone scrubbed the footage that had his license plates on."

A smirk crossed my lips. That would've been Sutton. "You did all of that for what?"

"A couple of reasons. Firstly, to get you back. Secondly, without him, that family loses a killer. A hitman. I figured that once the Irish found out it was him on their territory, they'd seek retaliation. That one is still in play." He held his fingers up and crossed them. "But the cop one. That was my big swing. Cop killers go to jail and never see the light of day."

I knew it had to have been something fucking with us, and all this time we'd been searching for him, he'd been watching us, planning on how to split us up. "I'm not that special."

"Of course, you are," he said, reaching out across the table. We were too far apart for him to touch me, and the gesture made me want to vomit. "You're the first guy who tested me, and we had a deep connection."

My hand was on the wood in my pocket, wondering how sharp it was, and how deep a cut it could make. "I don't believe that."

The guard at the door stomped a foot. "Sir, we need to leave."

A bullet smashed through a window nearby.

"Now," the guard said.

This was it. Frankie had come for me.

Grant stood. "Come on. We have another property lined up." He walked over to me and grabbed my arm.

I lunged forward with the wood from my pocket and stabbed it in his arm. It didn't hit anything major. Just stuck there in his skin.

He pulled it out and threw it across the room. "Don't be stupid," he said, before dragging me out of the room.

A shot hit the man at the door in the head. Blood went everywhere.

"Fra—" I tried to scream as Grant placed a hand over my mouth.

Another man came in and snatched me. His weighted grip around my body, constricting my arms together, and a gloved hand across my mouth. I watched as men behind were shot. And then I saw him. Frankie was coming for me. His nose was all purple with a couple white strips across it. Dressed in a suit and tie like my knight in Armani.

At the front of the house, there was a van already prepared to go.

Grant was in the front seat. "Get in. Now."

Thrown into the back of the van, I tried forcing myself back out. "Frankie!"

The man held a gun to my head.

"Do it," I said, biding time.

But they saw through it. The van door was slammed shut and it raced off out of the driveway.