He was right, and I knew he was. Deep down, I had known I was being careless, but no one ever thinks they’re going to get kidnapped for fucking ransom. That shit only happened in the movies. Besides, I’d only been back home for not even a week. And it’s not like Phoenix and I had taken out an ad in the paper announcing our wedding. How the hell was I supposed to suspect I was up for kidnapping so soon?
Ignoring his lecture, and refusing to give him credit for the points made, I asked, “What about Robbie?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “What about her?”
“She’s my friend, Phoenix,” I stated. “I can’t have you hating her.”
“Frank-”
“No, Phoenix,” I snapped. “I never told her not to say anything. I never told her she couldn’t talk about it or not to say anything to her boyfriend.” He didn’t look moved. “She was shocked when I told her who Luca was. Then she was doubly shocked when I told her who I was. Who I really was. It’s not…a crime or even unexpected that she would share the news with her boyfriend. Especially since I knew him too, and you know this.”
His arms flew out to the side. “Frankie, you were beaten and almost sexually assaulted. Possibly killed,” he reiterated. “And you want me to just forgive her lack of judgement?”
“I was beaten because I taunted them, Phoenix,” I clarified. “Had I kept my mouth shut and kept my ass planted in that chair, nothing would have happened to me. I’m the one who dared them. I’m the one who called out their manhood. I’m the one who perpetuated it.”
“Frankie, I-”
“Robbie was beaten because she caught him texting me, Phoenix,” I continued, refusing to let him dismiss what Robbie meant to me. “She caught him and tried to protect me. You saw her. She looked like that because she tried to protect me. And what did you guys do? You treated her no better than Randy!”
“Oh, make no mistake, Francesca,” he sneered. “She got way better than what’s coming to Randy.”
He wasn’t going to budge. I could see it. Maybe later, but not now.
I was talking to The Ghost, not Phoenix.
Suddenly, I was exhausted. I was starving, in pain, and just plain fucking exhausted.
I lifted my chin and tightened my robe again. “Will that be all, Ghost?”
Phoenix’s fist was tangled in my hair before I knew what hit me. His face was a beautiful mix of fury and love if you could believe that. “Don’t you ever call me by that name ever again, Francesca.”
“Why not?” I whispered, so shaken, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to run from him or let my robe fall on the floor. “Isn’t that what everyone calls you?”
“Yes,” he replied, his voice low. “But you’re not everyone. You’re my wife. Start behaving like it.” With that, he let go of my hair and stormed out of the study, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter 23
Phoenix~
“You boys look refreshed,” I remarked, as the door to Ciro’s funhouse shut behind me. It was on an automatic lock with the same palm access as our apartments.
“I got some sleep while Luca was up to bat first,” Ciro happily explained.
“Then I got some sleep once it was Ciro’s turn,” Luca added, an honest to goodness grin on his face. The man rarely smiled that I almost forgot he knew how.
“Let’s see what you guys left for me,” I said as I made my way to the middle of the room. “Christ, Ciro, this place stinks like shit.”
“Well, what do you expect when someone shits themselves,” he retorted. He was sitting in one of the chairs outside the wet zone, while Luca was sitting on one of the steps that led up to the ceiling beams. “I tried to Febreze the fucker, but it didn’t help.”
“We should probably get the ventilation system looked at,” Luca casually remarked. “This building is kind of old.”
I stopped in front of what was left of Randy Masterson, and it was a grisly sight. Luca and Ciro had left his eyes unharmed, but that was mostly because, if they were swollen shut, you couldn’t see the life leave their eyes, and where was the fun in that?
However, the rest of him wasn’t fairing so well. His mouth had been sliced open to make him look like The Joker. I knew his tongue was no more just because that was one of Luca’s favorite things to do. He didn’t have patience for begging. I could see every finger he had-all ten of them-were broken at odd angles, some were even dangling off to the side. He’d been stripped naked and I could see the hundreds of precision stab wounds dotted all over his body.
See, what very few people knew was that Ciro didn’t spend all his time beating, killing, or screwing. Ciro Mancini was extremely intelligent, and he wasn’t lazy. That level of brain power drove Ciro to have a passion for learning. In the six years since we’ve been doing this, Ciro had learned damn near everything there is to know about the human anatomy. It’s how he knew how to inflict the greatest pain possible, yet, still keep his victims alive. He knew just how far to push before sending someone into cardiac arrest, and he knew how to cauterize and sew up motherfuckers. And it’s how he knew where to stab Randy and still keep him alive.
Ciro was a goddamn artist if you asked me.
I reached up and slapped Randy awake. “Hey, Randolph? You remember me?” His eyes fluttered open, and they were glazed over in pain and helplessness. “I’m back,” I announced. His head dropped, his body begging for it to be over.
I
