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But I don’t care. I’ll take the cold as long as it means freedom.
Biting my lip, I thrust myself forward, squeezing my body through the narrow opening. I’m terrified that the Carters or Mark will decide to check on me and see me halfway out the window.
I wiggle my hips, scrabbling at the dirt and grass to hopefully provide me some stability. I fight back a cry as I pull myself forward, my heart pounding.
I can’t afford for the Carters or Mark to find me. They’ll throw me in a windowless room then with no means of escape.
“Come on, come on,” I whisper. With one almighty push, I wiggle my hips through, scraping my bare thighs on the edge of the rusty window. I fall face first into the dirt.
But I’m out. I’m free. I scramble to my feet and run, trying to put as much distance between myself and the Carters.
I don’t get very far before someone yanks me by my arm and pulls me to a hard, unforgiving chest. The cold metal of a gun presses against my temple, and I flinch.
This can’t be happening, my mind screams over and over again.
“Don’t you make one fucking sound,” a voice growls in my ear. “If you run, you die.”
3
DAMIAN
The pulsating beat of the music reverberates through the walls, the bass line thumping in sync with the lights that strobe in a dizzying array of colors. The dance floor is packed with writhing bodies, moving as one sweaty, undulating mass to the driving rhythm.
At the bar, people jostle for the bartenders’ attention, shouting drink orders over the booming bass that seems to rattle my bones. Colorful liquids slosh into glasses, garnished with brightly hued fruit and tiny paper umbrellas.
The thumping beat can be heard all the way into the basement where I lean against the wall, my eyes fixed on a struggling, bloodied Invicta soldier tied to a rickety, wooden chair.
“I’m going to ask you again,” I say in a bored tone, picking an invisible piece of lint off my shirt. “What is Invicta planning?”
The soldier spits a bloody gob of mucus at me, and Edo backhands him, the soldier’s head snapping back from the force of his hit.
I sigh and remove myself from the wall, circling the Invicta soldier like a predator would their prey.
Although I have an air of nonchalance, I’m raging on the inside. This fucking asshole won’t tell us shit.
In a recent gun fight against Invicta, one of my soldiers was captured. He was returned to us in pieces, which enraged me.
He was a goddamn good soldier.
This Invicta soldier was caught prowling around headquarters and was swiftly captured and brought to The Underground, where we do our best interrogations.
Normally, Edo’s methods extract the best information from our prisoners, but this Invicta soldier won’t fucking say a word.
The soldier laughs and smiles at me, showing off bloodstained teeth. “Invicta is always watching you, Damian Iacopelli,” he taunts. “The Boss can’t wait to finally eliminate you.”
My hand curls into a fist.
Invicta’s Don claims my father ordered a hit on his girlfriend and daughter fifteen years ago. As revenge, Bobby Shields had my father, mother, and sister killed.
We’ve been at war with Invicta ever since and it’s been escalating in the last few years.
I grind my teeth together. I had nothing to do with my father’s hit on Shields’s woman and kid, and Shields got his revenge by killing my father, so what the fuck is his issue?
Invicta needs to let this fucking go, but Shields is hell-bent on destroying my gang so I have to fight back. It’s what my father would have wanted.
Goddamn, Dad. Why the fuck did you eliminate Shields’s girl and his brat?
But I can’t let this fucking creature know he’s annoyed me. Instead, I crouch down by the soldier and look him up and down. Blood runs in rivulets down his body from numerous knife wounds. His one eye is nearly swollen shut and his nose is crooked.
