Bones (Dark Kingdom, #5) — Chapter no 37

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

BONES

THE SUN HAS fallen, and I sit in the passenger seat of Tristan’s car while he flies down the highway. Titan, Grave, and Cross are behind us in the Cadillac Escalade that we rented under Tristan’s alias.

I cock the gun, chambering a bullet, and lay it on my thigh, feeling the heavy metal. It soothes me. It’s been a long time since I’ve made something bleed for the greater good. It’s usually work-related.

I wasn’t lying when I told her my regrets involved her. Do I have others in my life? Of course. But they were ones that I had no control over. I chose to buy her and leave her. Twice.

Tristan takes an exit, and I watch the Kings follow in the side mirror.

He drives in silence for the next fifteen minutes as New York grows smaller in the rearview. The warehouse that Mr. Bianchi has is right on the ocean. Lots of ships import and export goods for John. The Mafia have their hands in everything and anything that can be sold.

I was terrified when I found out that Mia was in another auction here because I figured she’d go straight to the shipping yard afterward. That they’d place her in a shipping container, and that would be that. She’d be gone forever with no way to track her.

“We’re going to have to park and walk,” I inform Tristan. “He’s got surveillance on the warehouse. Don’t want to let them know we’re coming.” Nite informed us of everything we needed to know about the warehouse via text before he returned to New York.

He nods. “How far out?”

“I’d say at least a mile.”

My cell rings, and I look down, thinking it will be Mia, but it’s Luca. I hit ignore. I’m still not speaking to him. He texts me immediately.

Luca: Answer your damn phone.

I go to turn it off but pause. I can’t do that, in case Mia or Nite needs me.

Luca knows what I’m here to do, and he’s not trying to stop me. He just doesn’t like that I’m blaming him for her situation. The truth is, we’re both responsible for it. I’m just the only one who has decided to do something about it.

Tristan slows his car, pulling off onto a road where he brings it around a brick building before stopping. It’s dead silent out here. Not even any buzzing streetlights.

Getting out of the car, I see Titan pull in behind us. They get out and pop the hatch, grabbing what they’ll need.

“Ready?” I ask, tucking my 9mm into the back of my jeans while

grabbing the Glock my brother hands me.

“Ready.” They nod.

“Let’s go,” I say as Tristan slams his trunk, and we start to make our walk, knowing I’m about to do something that I never thought I’d do.

Isn’t this how wars start, though? A man falls in love with someone he shouldn’t.

Show me a man in love, and I’ll show you his greatest weakness.

My father’s words echo in my head, and I smile. He couldn’t have been any more wrong. My cell starts to ring, and we all come to a stop. I pull it out, thinking it’s Luca again but see it’s Nite.

“What the fuck?” Grave asks, wondering why Nite is calling. The man chooses to be mute. We’ll call him, but we never expect him to speak.

I hit answer and put him on speakerphone. “Nite—?”

He doesn’t even let me finish before he rushes out. “Mia’s gone.”

MIA

I GET OUT of the cab and stand on the sidewalk of the busy Manhattan street.

The thing about being a Don is that no one would ever fuck with you. And the police are paid off.

I enter the pizzeria with my head held high and shoulders back. This business has been handed down from my great-grandfather to my grandfather to my father. Luca or Nite will be the one who gets it next since I’m pretty sure they’ll be the only two living Bianchis left.

The first twelve years of my life were spent in Las Vegas, but my parents did bring me to New York a couple of times. And I spent those rare days

here, sitting in the corner booth with my nanny, where she taught me just enough to know that this wasn’t the life I wanted to live.

The place is dead this late—after ten at night. I walk past the round red tables and to the back. Pushing the door open, I enter the office. Five men stand around a desk where my father sits.

“Mia?” he barks out when he sees me. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He looks behind me, and I wonder if he’s expecting Dillan or Luca to be with me.

“I came to see you,” I answer as his men glare at me. Two of them even have their hands on their guns tucked in their holsters. The other three don’t see me as a threat. That’s their mistake.

“Mia!” My mother jumps up from a worn-out leather couch, running to me. She wraps her arms around me, picking my feet up off the floor. “Oh my god.” Setting me down, she pulls away and places both hands on my face. Her silvery-blue eyes that look just like mine fill with tears while they glance over the cuts and bruises as if she cares what I’ve been through. “Oh my God. My baby.” She’s crying now and sniffling.

I feel nothing for her. She might not have had a say in what kind of life I was raised to live, but she didn’t do anything to protect me either. I begged her to let me stay in Vegas when my father and Luca told me it was best to go to Italy. Then I begged her to stay with me there, and she left me alone to come home and be with my father. If I’m ever lucky enough to have a child, I’ll never leave him or her for my husband. But I’d also never marry a man who would make me choose.

“Sir?” one of his men questions. Clearly confused about how to handle my arrival.

“Leave us.” He waves his hand in the air, and the men all exit the room, leaving me alone with my parents.

“What is it that you want, Mia?” he asks, sitting back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. “How did you manage to get out of Italy?”

That right there tells me he’s had no clue what I’ve been through. He didn’t order Matteo to kidnap me and sell me to a King. But to find out just exactly how much he does know, I ask, “Did you really expect me to get you Kingdom?”

He smirks. His black eyes drop to my Nikes and run up my bare legs, over my shorts, and then my chest. The way his smile grows makes goose bumps rise over my skin. Then they meet mine again. “There was a time

when I was going to use you to get what I deserved.” My eyes narrow on his. “But a King could never fall for a nobody. No matter how good the pussy is.” When he stands, I take a step back toward the door to put some space between us.

I hate that my stomach sinks at his words. That he could make me second-guess Dillan’s intentions with me. I’ve always been told I’m a nobody, so it’s hard to believe otherwise. Even when a King tries to convince you that you’re someone.

“Did you know Matteo sold me?” I ask and hate that my voice trembles.

He throws his head back, laughing, and I look over at my mother to see her reaction. She’s got her head down, and arms crossed over her chest. I can see by the way her shoulders shake that she’s silently crying.

She knew! I had a feeling she did, but I didn’t want to believe it. “Why?”

I scream, and tears sting my eyes. I hate that I care. And I hate it even more that he finds my lack of life entertaining.

“You were always meant to be nothing, Mia.” He takes a step closer to me. “You can spread your legs for a million men.” Another step. “But you’d still just be nothing.”

He reaches me, and I feel the tears running down my face while I glare up at him.

“You should thank me.” He tilts his head to the side.

“For selling me to the highest bidder?” I bark out.

“For making you worth something.” Leaning into my face, he adds, “If not for the Bianchi name, you would have been given away for free.”

I spit in his face, and he places his hand over my mouth, painfully gripping my cheeks and shoving me backward. My head hits the wall so hard that my vision blurs, and I fall to my knees as pain shoots down the back of my neck. In the distance, I hear my mother cry out while my head starts to pound like a drum.

I’m trying to catch my breath and blink away the dots and tears when I hear him laugh. “You should have let me kill her when I wanted to. She served us no purpose.”

Lifting my head, I glare at his back as he starts to walk away from me.

“Thankfully, it’s never too late to fix a problem,” he adds.

I get to my feet, reach into the back pocket of my shorts, and slide my fingers into the metal holes of the bunny ears keychain I found packed in

my bag. Thank you, Jasmine. This is my only chance. I knew coming here would end someone’s life, and there was a possibility of it being mine.

Running, I let out a scream as I jump onto his back. He spins around, throwing my back into the wall, and the tight grip my legs have around his waist loosens just a bit at the contact.

“You fucking bitch!” he shouts. His hand reaches over his shoulder and manages to grab hold of my ponytail. He yanks on it, and I cry out.

I reach around and slap my hand over his face to try and obstruct his vision, and he trips into his desk. He tilts his head, and I take the opportunity to shove the metal bunny ears into his neck.

When I yank it out, blood sprays all over me. He falls to his knees, taking me with him. I stab him again. And again. Until my hand loses its grip because the keychain is slippery.

Screams pierce my ears, and I wonder if it’s me. Something hard hits my body, and I’m on my back, looking up into a face that resembles mine. My mother is on top of me, hitting my face and chest.

“You ungrateful little bitch!” she screams, spit flying from her mouth to mix with my father’s blood. “You killed him!” She slaps me. “Do you realized what you’ve done?” Of course, she chooses him. Always has. He was about to kill me, and she was going to stand by and just watch it happen. “You will die for this!” Her fist connects with my cheek, and I twist my body to lie on my side underneath her and see the keychain that had slipped from my grip. I reach out and grab it. Turning onto my back, I raise my hand and shove the ears up her neck into her throat.

Yanking it out, I feel more blood cover me and choke on it. Shoving her dead weight off me, I get to my hands and knees just as the door bangs open. I did it. No matter if I die right here or not, I at least did what I told myself I’d do. I stumble to my feet just as my father’s guards enter.

“What the fuck did you do?” a guy shouts, charging at me.

I lift the keychain, and he hits my forearm with his, knocking it out of my hand. Gripping my throat, he lifts me off my feet. Placing his face in front of mine, he makes me gag from the smell of cigarette smoke.

I bare my teeth, and he lets go of my neck, but before I can even suck in a breath, he slams his fist into the side of my cheek.

Pain explodes up the side of my face and neck, and I’m then grabbed by my hair and slammed facedown onto my father’s desk. His computer and papers go crashing to the floor. My breath is taken away once again from

the impact. The taste of blood fills my mouth, and I spit it out onto the surface.

He holds me down with his large hand wrapped around the back of my neck. “Call Matteo,” the man orders to one of the other guards who has now joined us.

The side of my face slides across the desk from the drool that runs out of the corner of my mouth. I spot two of the other guards checking my mother and father for a pulse. When they realize that’s not a possibility, they move them to the corner. Throwing my mother’s body on top of my father’s.

A phone is placed next to me, and I see it’s calling my brother on speakerphone.

“Hello?” I hear his voice, and my eyes fall shut. He’s supposed to be dead.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” the guard states.

“You know how much I love those,” Matteo jokes. “She better be a blonde with big fake tits.”

I open my mouth to scream at him, but the guard slams the side of my face into the desk, making me moan instead while my vision goes in and out.

“More like a brunette with a flat chest.” The man laughs. “Seriously, you’ll never believe who showed up,” the guy holding me down says cheerfully. They don’t care that their boss is dead because they know my brother will now inherit it. They have job security.

“Who?” he asks.

“Your whore of a sister.”

I try to wiggle out of his hold, but he tightens his fingers into the back of my neck. I grind my teeth, refusing to give him the satisfaction that he’s hurting me.

“You-You have Mia?” he asks, sounding unsure. That makes sense, considering I’m supposed to be in France right now via the tracker he placed inside my neck.

“Talk, bitch!” the man growls while the other holds the phone up to my face.

I refuse to give them what they want. So the guy holding me down yanks my head up off the desk and the other holds a knife to my throat, his face in front of mine. “Tell your brother hi, or I’m going to cut up this pretty face

of yours.” He gives me a crooked-tooth smile. “They won’t even be able to give you away.”

I feel the cold blade pressed up against my skin, and I suck in a breath, hoping that will give me some space, but it doesn’t work. His smile widens when he sees what I’m doing.

“She’s really pretty, man,” he adds, his eyes dropping to my parted lips while I hold my breath. “It’s too bad she’s nothing more than a whore now.”

Baring my teeth, I snarl. “Go fuck yourself.” And spit in his face. It’s the only option I’m capable of.

The guy holding me down pulls me up and throws me across the room into the opposite wall.

Falling to the floor like a rag doll, I roll over, sucking in a deep breath, only to come face-to-face with my dead mother’s body. Blood drips from her face, eyes open and on mine. I get up as fast as I can and scramble back against the wall, shoving the blood-covered hair from my now bruised face.

My once high ponytail is now loose, hair falling all over my face.

“I’m on my way,” Matteo growls.

“I can’t promise she’ll be in one piece.” The guy holding the phone hangs up and then drops it to the floor before smashing it with his boot. He steps toward me, and the guy who threw me grabs him bringing him to a stop.

“We don’t touch her until Matteo arrives.” He glances over at me.

“Whatever you have planned for her, he’ll make sure it’s ten times worse once he sees what she’s done.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t play with her, right?” he asks, smiling.

One of the guards who hasn’t said a word goes over to the desk and opens a drawer. He pulls out some zip ties, and I get up to run but am met by another guard. He picks me up and tosses me back onto the desk, where my arms are pulled behind my back and secured. I can’t help the tears that run down my face. Matteo is going to kill me. But when he sees what I’ve done, it’ll be a slow and painful death.

Why is he alive? Where are Dillan and the Kings? I begin to cry.

“It’s going to be okay, whore,” one of the guards says. “We’re not going to kill you. Just play with you.” They all laugh at the situation I’ve put myself in.

They are not why I’m crying. It’s the fact that I didn’t get to tell Dillan how I felt about him before I left. He was going to start a war over me, and

I’ve ruined everything. At this point, all I can do is pray that he and the Kings forget about me because there’s no way I’ll survive. I once told him I was not worth it, and I meant every word.