Sin and Redemption

Fingers raked through my hair. A soothing touch that made me want to purr like that stray cat that occasionally visited my parents’ shelter and drove our dogs absolutely mad. I wanted to keep my eyes closed and enjoy it. But the scent of blood and my lack of memory of where I was shook me from my state of calm. I peeled my eyes open. They felt heavy, and when my vision finally cleared, a woman’s face with big brown doe eyes came into focus right above me. It took several moments before I recognized Sara Cancio. Her fingers were responsible for the gentle touch, and it must have been her blood I’d smelled because the left side of her brown hair was matted from a head injury. “You’re hurt,” I rumbled. My voice sounded even deeper and rougher than usual. I cleared my throat, but it felt as if I hadn’t drunk anything in days.

“You’re worse,” she said with a faint smile. She looked pale, and even though I wasn’t familiar with her facial expressions, she was clearly scared.

I sat up, raising my head from Sara’s warm lap. Her clothes were covered in blood where my head had rested. I touched my scalp and face—sticky with blood. I couldn’t recall what had happened. All I remembered was talking to Romero and picking up Sara at his request.

I looked around, and my body switched to high alert. We were in a cage, something that looked and smelled as if a wild animal might have lived in it, maybe some wild cat. The Bratva was big in the smuggling of endangered species. The cage was in a big warehouse near the harbor, considering many bigger wild animals arrived in shipping containers. The walls had been covered with noise-dimming materials. Three more cages were beside ours. All of them empty…

No. A half-dead bloody figure lay on the floor in the cell farthest from us. The man was still alive, but by the state he was in and the amount of blood pooling beneath him, I knew he wouldn’t be alive much longer unless someone helped him. Was he one of ours?

Captured by the enemy.

We had many of them. But this couldn’t be the Outfit’s doing. Their Capo, Dante, would never allow a woman to get hurt. The Camorra and Remo were certainly capable of every imaginable atrocity, but I didn’t think it was them either. That left the Russians or the bikers.

Neither option was good. Neither would spare Sara. My gaze found her again as she huddled beside me on the floor. Her blouse and skirt were covered in blood—mine and hers.

“I’ll get us out of here,” I promised without thinking. I didn’t have a hero complex. My job rarely allowed for acts of heroism. I did the dirty work. I maimed and killed. I didn’t save lives.

She licked her lips. “Is this the Outfit?”

I could hear the faint note of hope in her voice. The Outfit would have been her best bet. Fuck, I wished it was them. My fate would be the same no matter the enemy, but for Sara’s safety, it mattered.

I considered lying to lessen her fear, but my face must have given the truth away.

Disappointment filled her eyes. “It’s not, right?”

“No,” I said simply. I was as good a liar as I was a hero—unfortunately for Sara. I rose to my feet and glanced at the half-dead man in the other cell. From this vantage point, I could see more cages on the other end of the warehouse. Snow leopards, orangutans, and a few bears with black fur slept in them, probably drugged to the max.

Sara stood too and followed my gaze. Her eyes grew wide. “Why are there animals here?”

“They’re contraband.”

“And what are we?” Sara whispered.

I didn’t have an answer to that question. Bait? Leverage? A soon-to-happen bloody message?

Sara’s gaze moved to the cage with the bloody human body, and she swallowed visibly. “He hasn’t moved yet. Is he dead?”

“No. His chest is rising.” He wouldn’t make it much longer from the looks of it, though. Maybe they would feed him to the leopard later. It was a good way to get rid of the evidence.

“What do they want with us?”

I regarded Sara. She was beautiful, young, untouched. It wasn’t difficult to guess what some of our enemies would do to her. Had she been the target? Or me? I was notorious among our enemies for my brutal treatment of captives. Many wanted to get their hands on me to pay me back. But I wasn’t even supposed to pick Sara up. That was a last-minute change of plans. Had someone followed me unnoticed?

That was something I would have to figure out later. If there was a later.

I would definitely be tortured. I could stand the torture—I wasn’t concerned about that—but they would instrumentalize Sara, and that was a factor I couldn’t predict. I needed to protect her no matter the cost. I had promised Romero to bring Sara to him safely, and seeing her scared face, I wanted to protect her on a deeper level too. In recent years, two Famiglia girls who should have been safe were targeted. I had to protect Sara from becoming another victim of our feud.

Keys rattled, and a door to our side opened with a squeaky sound.

The moment I saw the face of the first man entering the room, I knew things were fucking bad. If it had been just me in this damn cell, things would already have been shitty, but with Sara in the picture, it was disastrous.

Jabba tilted his head. I always forgot his real name. Everyone called him Jabba because he looked like the ugly-ass creature from the Star Wars movies.

“What an unexpected guest! What an unexpected guest,” he drawled with a heavy Russian accent, sounding twice as stupid as he was, which was a feat, considering how big of an idiot he was. It didn’t make him less dangerous. He made up for his lack of intelligence with ruthless brutality, which had cost his men their lives on more than one occasion. He was one of the most important soldiers of the Bratva in our territory. When the Pakhan was away yachting somewhere in Europe, these idiots tried to hold down the fort. Jabba had caused us more than one headache in the past.

Because of that, he was very high on our kill list, and he knew. He might have ended up on my torture table one day like his cousin and uncle had only a couple of weeks ago. Now, things didn’t look too good for me—and Sara. Revenge could be the motive, and Sara got caught in the crossfire. I didn’t dare look her way. I didn’t want Jabba’s attention on her. Of course, his ugly bulging eyes zoomed in on her right away.

It was hard not to look at her. Even if she seemed unaware of her own beauty, it was a beacon in these bleak surroundings.

“And look at you,” he said, then let out a whistle and gave her a dirty smile. “This wasn’t the plan, but I think I can make it work.” He nodded, making his double chin wobble. “I can make it work.”

He stopped an arm’s length from the bars.

My muscles tensed in anticipation. “Scared to get too close?” I taunted.

He cackled but didn’t let me bait him into coming any closer. He was stupid, but not that stupid. “Not today, devil.” He smirked. “Not today, devil.”

“For fuck’s sake, stop repeating everything you say, Jabba.” I just wanted to shut him up for good, preferably with his cut-off tongue. Anger flashed in his eyes.

“What’s your name, poppet?”

Sara’s face was paper-white, and her hands shook, but she held her head high and tried to appear unfazed—without success. Fuck, she looked like something straight out of Jabba’s wet dreams: white wool tights, plum-colored tartan skirt, and a white blouse. Even though I wasn’t into the schoolgirl fantasy, Sara ticked all my boxes. “Sara Cancio.”

I cringed inwardly. Cancio was a name the Russians knew. Romero had loyally supported Luca’s quest to kill them for decades, long before wars with bikers and the Outfit had taken up our resources.

“Yes, yes,” he said. His gaze traveled the length of her, and my muscles clenched in wariness. Fuck. This could be really bad. I had to figure out how to get Sara out of this.

“You’re a real doll. A real—” He stopped himself from repeating the word with a glance in my direction. I smirked at him. If I turned his anger on me, Sara might be spared until help arrived. I could only pray that I’d sent a call for help before we got caught, but I still couldn’t remember a fucking thing. Jabba tilted his head like a fat bulldog and clucked his tongue as he leered at Sara.

She took a step back.

“I would love to sink my cock into her Italian pussy,” the man beside Jabba said. He was tall and made of sinewy muscle that made me believe he had a background in kickboxing or another combat sport, making him more of a threat than Jabba.

“You’d be dead before you could even get your small dick out,” I growled, stepping in front of Sara. They would have to come in to grab her. That might give me a chance to attack.

“You two aren’t promised, are you?” Jabba muttered.

“No, we’re not,” Sara said firmly. Her decision to answer so quickly—as if the possibility of being promised to me was unbearable—rubbed me the wrong way. I knew some people in the Famiglia still regarded my family as less worthy because of my father’s family history, but Sara’s father, Romero, had never seemed like he was one of them.

Jabba tilted his head in thought.

“Don’t hurt yourself thinking too much,” I said with a chuckle.

Jabba’s lips pulled into a grin. “I really like young pussy. But I’m also a businessman. I know you Italians think you’re more clever than us Russians.”

“Definitely more clever than you,” I taunted. I’d met many very intelligent Bratva soldiers in the past. Under the current Pakhan, intelligence just wasn’t a priority anymore.

Sara gave me a worried look. She obviously thought my provocation would make our situation worse. She didn’t know these guys. They wouldn’t show us mercy. All I could do at this point was to provoke them into stupid actions that might give me an opening to kill them and allow Sara the chance to escape. Or, at the very least, bode enough time for her. If they started torturing me and ignored her for the time being, that could be enough to spare her a lot of pain and humiliation. Just the thought of Jabba or one of his men touching Sara made me sick.

Jabba simply smiled stupidly. “Luca isn’t the unquestioned king over his empire like he used to be. Some don’t like that he’s gotten himself in a war with us, the bikers, the Camorra, and the Outfit. Lots of enemies to have.”

“Luca has loyal men who’ll die for him.”

“I think I’ll be patient today,” Jabba said. “I don’t care for virgins, you know? All the squealing and whining grates on my nerves, you know? And I have a new wife. I can’t fuck around so soon.”

My stomach tightened.

Sara looked even paler than before. She was clever. She knew this was heading in a very, very dangerous direction. Fuck. How could I save her?

“Luca puts a lot of trust in you Trevisan men. And your dad is one of Luca’s most loyal followers,” he said the last with a nasty look at Sara. “Sow discord, that’s what wise men do. It destroys from the inside.”

I had no clue what the fuck he was talking about. From the empty expression on his men’s faces, neither did they. If they followed Jabba’s command, they weren’t the brightest candles on the cake.

“This is what’s going to happen, Maximus. You are going to fuck the pretty doll. I bet you’ve been secretly lusting after a high-ranking pussy like hers. With your fucked-up family history, a cunt like hers is out of reach, right?”

I stared at him, blood pumping in a vein at my temple. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sara’s horrified expression.

“I won’t touch her,” I gritted out.

“No?” Jabba raised his bushy eyebrows. “I think you will. Or do you want Yevgeny to go first?”

I stormed toward the bars, gripped them, and tore at them like a madman. They shook in my hold. Some plaster fell, but the bars didn’t give in. Jabba took a step back. “Nobody will touch her!”

“You will,” Jabba said. “Or we will all fuck her in front of you. Or maybe we’ll just put a bullet in her head because she’s not part of our plan.”

They would fuck her either way. Unless someone saved us or I got my hands on Jabba, it was inevitable. “Yevgeny will record everything for Romero’s and Luca’s enjoyment. I hear that’s what people do nowadays. Record nasty stuff and post it everywhere.”

I pressed my lips together, rage and despair flooding my body.

I didn’t want to look at Sara. Fuck, we were doomed.

“Don’t play noble, Maximus. You’re a bad man. And bad men always want what they shouldn’t,” Jabba said.

He was right. I was one of the worst in the Famiglia, as bad as they come, but I’d never wanted Sara. I had never allowed my thoughts to go that way. I had gone after the available pussies in the clubs. Why would I set myself up for disappointment?

I took a step back from the bars, then thrust my entire weight against them again. More plaster rained down on us.

Jabba and Yevgeny pulled guns on me, but I jumped against the bars again. A shot rang out, missing Sara’s head by a couple of inches. Sara shrieked and dropped to her knees. I froze in my tracks.

“Grab a phone to record everything,” Jabba ordered Yevgeny.

“The bikers didn’t break the Famiglia when they recorded Marcella; they only fueled our rage. No matter what you record now, our rage will burn even brighter.”

“Sure, but this time, one of your own is hurting a poor Famiglia woman. That’s going to sting. I heard a story of how warlords in Africa break the moral of their enemies. They forced fathers and brothers to rape their own family. Clever, right?”

I grimaced, sickened by his words, but I didn’t say anything. Things weren’t looking good, and I knew they’d get far worse if we didn’t get help soon.

Yevgeny took out his phone and held it up, ready to begin filming.

My mind was blank. What was I supposed to do?

I had never forced a woman. I’d never understood how a guy could get off on it. I finally glanced toward Sara. She sat motionless on the ground, face ashen, eyes full of fear. Her white tights were ruined—ripped and covered in dirt and blood. Her gaze met mine, and she swallowed hard.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.