Chapter 39

THIRTY-NINE

MILES

Y ou know when something isn't right. Even when you're in those first moments of wakefulness. The room feels off, or your body feels off. This is just like that.

The energy surrounding me feels tense, and the air is cold. My eyes are heavy, and one is swollen and nearly shut. When I move, I hear the bed creak and groan beneath me. My body feels the aches of the crash that I can barely recall. Flashes of being dragged into a van echo in my subconscious, along with the sting of a needle. That was before the world faded away.

When I finally open my eyes and can get them to track, I find the room dingy and weathered. The chill is from the window that's busted open. It looks like someone tried fixing it with plastic once, but the sheeting is long and worn, blowing in the frigid breeze. I try to sit up, but the pain is too mighty to fight against. My ribs feel shattered, but I wouldn't be able to move even if I wanted to—my wrist tugs against a metal cuff that keeps me firmly anchored to the bed's railing. Further inspection tells me I'm in an abandoned hospital.

As the moments pass, everything I'd been worried about before the van ran me off the road descends on me, weighing me down. Aella did not answer. Braxton is flippant. Our mission is up in the air since we've gotten so far off track.

All that fades into the background when Vito Murphy enters the room. He's an imposing figure, sure. He's nothing like Braxton or myself, but I'm confident he thinks he's tough. There's a hand tattooed around his throat as if choking him. He's got dark hair, soulless eyes, and a smirk born of the Devil himself as he strides into the room like he's the king of the fucking world.

We have a working theory that The Jackals didn't want Cobras in their territory because of all the information Braxton has been diligently digging into. The drugs. It's much more profound than me fucking his sister atop a bathroom sink. However, that didn't help matters any.

I smirk inwardly. "All this because I fucked your slut of a sister? She should've told you I like to be tied up. Makes me so fucking hard."

His face changes as his hand reaches up to remove the toothpick he'd been chewing. Stepping closer to the bed, he looks like that teasing line will make him snap and forget his mission as it was intended. I need information, and he will only give it up if I throw him off his game.

"Boss," a man behind him warns, a meaty hand coming down on Vito's shoulder .

Vito shrugs him off. "You haven't learned your fucking lesson, Bardot, have you? You leave my family alone!"

I sit up as far as the cuffs will allow, not wanting to feel like the prisoner I currently am as I try to find a way off this fucking bed.

They'll have stripped me of weapons, so I'm going to have to use brute force. Force I don't fucking have at the moment.

"This isn't about your fucking sister, and you know it isn't. So, why don't we just cut the shit!" I deadpan at him, and his jaw ticks; a tell I can work with.

"You don't know shit," he spews.

I smirk. "Then why am I here?"

People don't kidnap people they think are unaware of their dirty deeds. He knows I know something, but he doesn't know what. If he knew what I knew, I'd be dead.

"String him up," Vito growls, turning and marching from the room.

The remaining man is massive, but his face grimaces at Vito's order. "Fuck, man."

I sit straight proudly. "Don't bitch out now. Finish the fucking job."

At the very least, I've escalated my torture to a tolerable level because I'm living like this, tied to this bed, probably bleeding internally until I drown in my blood, which isn't the way I want to go.

I should've kept my fucking mouth shut.

That's the line that I've been repeating over and over in my head as two men dragged me to the morgue and into a cooler. It's been transformed for their purposes. I can smell the stale blood that remains ingrained in the space long after they've tried to bleach it.

But one by one, they pierced my skin with meat hooks, four of them. Once I was secure, they hoisted me into the air and left me to hang. Eventually, my skin will break, and I'll drop to my death. That'll be a mercy. One I'm praying comes soon.

I've been floating in and out of conciseness, Aella and Braxton's images coming to me, giving me solace.

When Vito enters the cooler, the other two men stay posted outside it. The door closes behind him, and he takes me in. Something on his face says he doesn't have the stomach for his job.

"You shouldn't have pushed me," he grumbles.

Clearly.

I keep my thoughts to myself, and my mouth firmly clamped shut.

"You need to learn to keep your dick to yourself."

I shake my head as he walks around my body, stopping when he sees what his men did to me. Likely, he's covering his mouth like the bitch that he is. Trying to keep his stomach contents where they belong.

"Beautiful job, isn't it? I think I'm ready to go to the ball," I manage, throat feeling like a thousand needles are inside it.

"You just don't know when to quit, do you?" he counters, finally rounding from behind and coming back into view.

"Did you ever consider I'm just tougher than you? Unaffected by your little games?"

He snarls, his lip pulling up and showing a gold crown on one of his teeth that almost makes me laugh.

"This isn't about your fucking sister. Because I fucked her the once and never came back, Vito. Why don't we get down to business, hm? Why don't we discuss the drugs you're running and what I know?"

His face gets violent as his body stills, eyes searching my face before he spills another ounce of information. "You should've stayed in your fucking territory."

I shrug, and it earns me flashes of pain throughout my back. "You shouldn't have touched what was mine."

"You killed my man," he tosses out like we're having a tit-for-tat.

I laugh. "He tried to rape what was mine. Unlike you, I protect the pretty things that belong to me."

His eyes narrow as he steps closer. "You know nothing about what I have going on…"

I cut him off with a laugh. "I know you're running drugs, but I also know that someone high up is helping you. Offshore accounts and laundered money? That's far above your fucking intellect. For a while, I thought I gave a fuck, Vito. But I don't anymore. Even though I watch the drug game in my territory, I don't have the fucking motivation to watch it in yours, too. You're supposed to watch out for your city, not feed its nightly hunger pangs."

Guilt waves over his face, if only briefly, before his lip pulls up again, flashing that gaudy golden tooth of his. "That's fucking rich when you're fucking my partner's daughter."

My stomach sinks like I just swallowed a bag of rocks. That's what his problem was this entire time. He knew I had Aella. Which means Walter Montague knew this whole fucking time that I had his daughter. He used Vito to find out why I had his daughter. Was it the feud between Vito and me over his sister, or did I know about the dirty drugs he's been involved with in Portland?

Half of me wonders if some of those same drugs have been leaking into Twin Pines because everyone knows Walter splits his time between the two cities.

"There it is. Now you know," Vito says as if he's just dropped the mic, and I'll have nothing final to say.

"How long?" I manage. "How long have the Jackals been in the drug trade with Walter Montague?"

He straightens and crosses his arms over his chest. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you. Isn't that the saying? I mean, not that you won't die from all your injuries anyhow. There's no harm in telling a dying man something, right?"

I swallow, trying not to let him see the fear of leaving this world with so much undone on my features.

"Since my father ran this organization, he's had people like Walter in his pocket. They think they run shit, but they don't. Rich types, huh? They think they own the fucking world with the money they have access to. But we run what matters. We run the streets. We're in charge."

The Jackals are Walter's puppet, and they don't even know it. He's a lot more cunning than I gave him credit for.

So, now the question is: what did Mom find out that got her killed?

"So, he's using his factories. To move product and money," I realize, more to myself than to Vito.

He smirks. "Smart fucker, huh?"

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how he could move large amounts of drugs in airplane parts once I had a tiny shred of information. Once I knew he was involved.

"So, he killed my mom because she found out about his little business," I mumble. It's common knowledge my mother is missing, presumed dead, so it's nothing Vito doesn't already know.

He smirks. "Mmm, so not so fucking smart, after all."

He turns and heads for the door, and my heart pounds rapidly in my chest. "What do you mean?" I shout after him, but he keeps going.

He might not be an intelligent man, and he might not be as scary as he thinks he is, but he knows when to fold them, and sometimes, that's a more powerful skill than all the rest put together.