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“Down, girl,” Roman said, blocking his cousin’s path to the operating room. “She’s in there saving Luca’s life.”
“Is she? Or is she in there chopping him up?” Morrigan asked flippantly.
When Salvatore made a pained sound and darted to the door, Roman frowned at Morrigan. She simply shrugged, unconcerned with his ire. He could hear the doctor’s voice talking to Salvatore before his friend promised to behave and not touch anything. Then Salvatore tossed them one last frantic look and entered the room.
“Real sensitive, Morrigan,” Abel said dryly.
“Whatever.” Morrigan flipped him off. “Tell me what she said.”
Roman snorted softly. He allowed very few people to speak to him like that, but Morrigan was one of them. And she knew it. “She didn’t like being kidnapped or having a gun held to her head,” he offered.
“Can’t blame her for that,” Morrigan allowed, opening up a switchblade to play with.
“She throat-punched me and tried to bite my hand off,” Abel said dramatically. “And that’s after she headbutted me in the chest.”
Morrigan’s eyes lit up. “I gotta be honest, I’m trying very hard not to like her.”
Roman rolled his eyes. Abel and Morrigan had a love-hate relationship. Abel loved her, and Morrigan hated him. To be fair, Roman believed Abel insisted on chasing Morrigan purely because she was the only woman ever to turn him down. Abel also teased her because she was so damn serious, and he was anything but. The two were like night and day. Roman allowed the persistent bantering and threats of bodily harm because he knew Morrigan needed some lightness in her life. Not to mention the fact that she could handle herself.
“Ouch. That hurts more than my throat,” Abel told Morrigan, holding a hand to his heart.
“No fighting. We just came out of a war. I’m not looking for another one,” Roman scolded the pair.
“Go,” Morrigan bade him. “Beat some of that tension away. I’ll see what dirt I can find on your feisty doctor.”
“She’s not mine,” he retorted quickly. Too quickly, if the startled looks of his two friends were anything to go by.
“Just a figure of speech,” Morrigan assured him, appraising him with eyes that missed very little.
Roman kept his face carefully blank and forced himself not to shift. The last thing he needed was for his personal assassin to learn he had an inappropriate hard-on for their captive. “I want to be updated on Luca’s status every ten minutes,” he ordered. “And let me know what you find out about Dr. Hawthorne.”
“You’re expecting there to be something?” Morrigan asked curiously.
Roman nodded once. “I’m betting on it,” he stated. Then he stalked from the room, heading to the elevator and leaving Abel to risk his life by asking Morrigan out for the millionth time.
Once he was in the privacy of the elevator, he allowed his head to drop down, his chin resting on his chest for a few moments. He prayed, briefly in Italian, to any deities still listening to his sorry ass. Luca had to be okay. Because if he died, Roman knew he would be losing his brother as well as his best friend. As little as last year, he would have scoffed at the notion of a love like theirs. Now? Roman envied it.
When the elevator doors opened with a soft whoosh, Roman shook off the sentimental thoughts. He stepped out and glanced at the floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded a truly stunning view of the city of Monash. Because the Omertà complex was the heart of his legal and illegal enterprises, a prison of sorts was needed. His father had been into the clichéd version of dank basement torture chambers. It suited Vincenzo Romano Senior perfectly. But Roman was not his father. He offered only the best for the people at his mercy. As such, the interrogation cells were on the top floor. All four penthouse apartments had been converted into a place that made grown men piss their pants and beg for mercy.
No, Roman thought, looking around the light-filled room. No dark dungeons for me.
He nodded wordlessly to the handful of men keeping watch over the prisoners before striding into the center of the large space. “My baby brother is fighting for his life,” he stated, eyeballing the dozen men and women chained to the concrete walls. “Who wants to fight for theirs?” When no one answered, he tsked and shook his head. “When I ask a question, I expect an answer.”
“What are you going to do to us?” a woman with oily black hair asked. She was very pale and looked terrified.
“I’m going to kill you, of course,” Roman replied truthfully as he walked closer to her. He raised her chin with the tip of his finger, explaining, “And I’m going to do it slowly because I’m feeling tense and pissy. Your boss really fucked up.” The woman whimpered, and Roman let her go for now. He knew she was one of Raz’s sluts and privy to everything the sick man did. Roman had no sympathy for her.
“Please, let me go. I’ll disappear. I won’t give you no trouble,” a man pleaded to Roman’s right.
Roman stepped over to the man. “Oh, I know you won’t give me any trouble. Because this”—he whipped out his gun, shooting the man in the knee—“is no trouble at all. In fact, it’s a pleasure.”
He reached down and grabbed the man’s shattered knee with his left hand. He reveled in the screams as he pulled with all his might, flesh and bone fragments rending and tearing under his strength. He thought about his brother bleeding out on the street like a common gangbanger while he pulled the man apart piece by piece. A familiar bloodlust hit him, and he reveled in the sensation of the crimson liquid coating his hands as he made his way to the next man.
As he pounded the man’s face into a pulp, he surprised himself by offering up another prayer—this time that he wouldn’t be forced to do the same thing to the lovely, busty doctor with the spine of steel.
Because god knew he didn’t need another innocent ghost haunting him.
CHAPTER THREE
