Chapter 5

CHAPTERFIVE

LUCA STARED AT the tray of food Gabriella had sent up and debated whether to give any of it a try. He should’ve been starving, but he’d long since lost his appetite. Especially when he’d heard the click of a lock from outside his door.

Welcome to the family. Here’s your cell.

Hell, even at the Rossetti place he’d been free to move around inside, and they weren’t his blood. He thought he’d had it bad before, but being here, meeting Constantino Fiore and seeing the lack of familial warmth, made him feel worse than being tied up in the Rossettis’ basement. That truth shocked him to no end. At least before he held out hope that Dom had warmed up to him, that he’d one day set him free.

But here? These people? They were determined he live a life of their choosing, to groom him in all the ways that would make him as horrible a human as they were. There was no hope of escape, and definitely no hope of rescue. No doubt the Rossettis were furious to have lost him, but he couldn’t imagine them risking their lives to get him back. And the people he considered his parents were basically on Fiore’s payroll.

Could things get any worse?

He fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling fan that kept throwing off dust as it spun. This room wasn’t anything like the one he’d been in at Dom’s. It was small, barely fitting a double bed, and the one small window had bars on the outside.

Locked in all the way around. No bathroom, not even a bucket to piss in. Great. He’d need permission for that too?

He shot up off the bed and began to bang on the door. Surely if Gabriella cared at all, she’d at least let him out for a bathroom break.

A minute passed and still no one came, which only annoyed Luca even more. He’d been done with the meek prisoner routine days ago, and he sure as shit wasn’t going to make things easy on these assholes.

“Hellooo.” He pounded his fist on the door even harder. “There’s a Rossetti in my room. Better open up before he takes me.”

Luca didn’t hear the door unlock over the sound of his banging, but when the door was pushed open, he stumbled back.

It wasn’t Gabriella or her husband standing in the doorway, or even anyone Luca had seen before. The unfamiliar man had a scar on his face from his temple to the top of his lip, which, along with his steely glare, had Luca stepping back from the door.

“A Rossetti,” the man said, his lip curling. “Is that wishful thinking?”

The first word that popped into Luca’s mind was yes, but he’d never admit that. There was no reason he should think of Dom or anyone in his family at all, but a part of him missed the arrogant man who’d begun to lower his defenses.

Luca straightened his shoulders, not willing to cower in front of this man or anyone else again. “I need the restroom. And you can take that tray of food. I don’t want it.”

“Do I look like your fuckin’ slave?”

Luca clenched his jaw, willing himself not to flinch.

“I didn’t come here to do your biddin’, boy. I came to see for myself the kind of weak, sniveling schmuck that was grown out in the ’burbs.”

The man slammed the door shut behind him, and Luca took a step back, alarm bells ringing in his ears. Whoever this guy was, it was clear he wasn’t a fan, and the feeling was mutual.

It took everything he had not to show any kind of fear, but Luca would be damned if he let this asshole make him cower. He’d gone head to head with Dom Rossetti, for God’s sake. He could face down this guy.

“So you’re the golden child. The one sent to save us all.” The man scoffed, his words all but dripping with disdain as he came to a stop in front of him.

Luca didn’t dare look away, his eyes taking in the leathery skin and scar on the man’s temple up close. It was a nasty, jagged thing that had clearly been stitched back together by an amateur, and it immediately brought to mind Dom’s bullet wound and how his men had been prepared to put a Band-Aid on it.

Did these guys have a thing against doctors or something? No, Luca thought—they had a thing against explaining how they got their injuries.

“He’s lost his fuckin’ mind,” the man muttered.

He who? Constantino?Luca doubted the Fiore boss would like to hear one of his men call him that, but clearly this man didn’t care.

“I don’t want to be here,” Luca finally said, just in case this guy thought otherwise. “I don’t want to save anyone or be any kind of ‘golden child.’ I just want to go home.”

“Yeah? Well, you keep wishing in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first. Don’t stress your pretty head too much, though. I have a feeling you won’t be here too long either.”

What the hell did that mean? The analogy was crude but pretty self-explanatory. But if Luca wasn’t going home and he wasn’t going to be here, then—

“I’ve been waiting to meet the third Fiore son. The other two were dumb as bricks, but they were men who knew how to survive in this world and get the job done.”

A large hand whipped out and grabbed Luca around the throat. He quickly reached for the man’s wrist, trying to pull the hand free, but this guy’s grip was like a vise.

“You, however, I could gut with a knife right here,” he sneered, his top lip curling up in a way that made his face even more grotesque to look at. “You’re so damn weak.”

Luca struggled to no avail as the man’s fingers dug in even tighter around his neck, but as he began to gasp for air, the door opened and a voice he faintly recognized from the trip over here said, “Mick, let him go.”

Luca’s eyes were watering now, his ears ringing, and when “Mick” released him with a shove backward, Luca reached for his neck. He sucked several deep breaths into his lungs as he tried to focus on the two men now talking to one another, but the momentary lapse of oxygen made it difficult to concentrate.

This Mick guy was scary as hell. Luca thought he’d faced down the worst of them back at Dom’s, but this man very clearly wanted him dead or at the very least gone—in whatever way possible.

“What the fuck are you doin’, man? What if I’d been Constantino?”

Luca rubbed at his abused throat and tried to listen as his breathing became more normal.

“Then I’d be dead.”

“You need to get the hell out of here. If the kid talks—”

“Then he’ll be dead.” Mick glared over his shoulder at Luca. “Somethin’ I wouldn’t cry about.”

“Just go, man. Gabriella is going to want to see him again before she goes to bed, and if she catches you up here…”

“What do I care what she thinks? She doesn’t run this place.”

“Mick, you need to cool off. Long game, remember?”

Long game? Long game for what?

“Fuck this, I’m out.” Mick walked to the open door and at the last second turned back to Luca. “Sleep with one eye open, or you might not see tomorrow.”