Conquered by the Mafia Boss

Hushed voices surround me as they talk in somber tones. It’s like I’m on my fucking deathbed-or at my brother’s funeral. There’s too much shit going on at once. We’re at war with the Devils, and Sal conspired against the boss and took my wife. The family is fractured.

She’s out there with that psychopath and I have no idea where she is.

Shaking, I stand up from my seat and check my phone for the millionth time, willing myself to not crack the screen in my firm grip. Sal’s round, smiling rat face hovers in my vision, taunting me. I told her John was the devil, but he was. He killed Mike. Why? I just want to fucking hear it-I want him to fucking admit it through those foul lips.

“Take my wife and kid and get them the fuck out of the city.” John’s voice booms out of nowhere, and I look back as he talks to the New Yorker. “Don’t let them out of your sight, Tommy. I’m trusting you with my family. Don’t let me down.”

“I won’t.”

Tommy shoots me a sympathetic look before walking out of the place. His footsteps echo sharply in the small room before the door shuts behind him. John runs a hand through his hair, looking shaken.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

“Where the fuck is Sal! I’ve got the whole town in my pocket and no one knows where he is?”

I stand up suddenly as a jolt of electricity runs through me.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t just fucking sit here, John. I have to do something.”

A placating hand held toward me only strokes the flames of rage.

“I hear you.”

No, you fucking don’t!

Then my phone rings, cutting across the room. It’s Beatrice’s number. I almost drop the phone in shock.

“Everyone shut the fuck up!”

Trembling, I accept the call and hold the hot metal to my ear. A feminine voice breathes through the speaker. My heart tightens and releases.

“Hon, is that you?”

“Jack!”

“Where the hell are you? Are you hurt?”

Cold wraps around my guts like a fist as a deep male voice replaces hers. “Not yet.”

Johnny leans forward, excitement widening his eyes.

I want to scream at that cool, detached voice. Fuck you. Fuck your mother’s rat-infested twat. I’m going to find you and rip you apart.

“What are you doing, Sal?”

“Getting what I want.”

The chair knocks to the floor and suddenly I’m standing upright, blood pounding in my ears. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

“I want Johnny dead. If he’s still alive, bring him to the MC compound, and I’ll give back your little biker bitch.”

Rage. I’ve never been this pissed in my life, never felt my brain squeezed like this, as though it were in a vise. “After Johnny’s dead, then what? You become boss? Are you a fucking lunatic?”

“They can fall in line or die. I don’t give a shit. Be here in three hours, or your wife’s pretty brains will decorate this wall.”

A stream of curses runs from my mouth, reverberating in my head like a stereo implanted in my brain. I don’t even hear him hang up, just the roar of everything else.

A hand grasps my shoulder and arm, shaking me.

“What’d he say? Jack!”

It’s as though there’s a parasite lodged in my heart, sapping energy while growing with a poisonous throb. It hurts. I’ve never hurt this fucking bad in my life, even when Mike died.

Even if I could, I’d never walk out of there breathing. That’s a fucking fact.

John grabs the back of my neck, squeezing hard. “Tell me.”

“He’s at the MC.”

“Which MC? Goddamn it, Jack-”

“The Devils. He wants me to bring you there. He wants you dead.”

The room breaks with that last sentence, the tension snapped like a guitar string.

“We should have never trusted those biker pieces of shit!”

I keep speaking in a monotone voice. “I have a few hours to bring him John, or he’ll kill my wife.”

That last sentence hangs in the air like an obscene phrase. It’s too horrible to contemplate. Biker daughter or not, she’s still my wife. A fellow wise guy going after his brother’s wife? There are lines that are never crossed in the life. Sal took a piss on that line and lit it on fire. He’s trashing everything we believe in. No fucking way will anyone willingly work for him.

“So that’s how he wants to play?” Johnny’s eyes are overwrought as menace creeps into his voice. “That goddamn moron won’t know what hit him.”

“That place is surrounded by reinforced concrete, John. How the fuck are we getting in there?”

“By giving him what he wants. Me.”

What?

A manic grin stretches Johnny’s face. “And maybe a peace offering.”

Other voices chime in with ideas, and my heart pounds harder when I realize what Johnny means to do.

“Sal’s mine,” I tell the room of people. “Touch him and you’ll have to answer to me.”

And when I get ahold of him, there’ll be no mercy.

* * *