Code of Silence: A Mafia Romance (The Dark Kingdom Book 1)

“HELP HER OUT,” Rossi orders the young man.

He grabs my upper arm and yanks me out of the limo and shoves me forward. I look around the area, and fresh tears sting my eyes. The lights of Vegas are miles away. He’s brought us to the desert. And that only means one thing. He confirms it a second later.

Opening the trunk, Rossi pulls out a shovel. “Start digging,” he orders and throws it at me.

I catch it before letting it drop to my feet. Pulling my shoulders back, I lift my chin. “I won’t dig his grave.” I refuse to do it.

He gives me a cruel smile as he takes a step closer. “Cute.” He grips my chin roughly and jerks my head back. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out at the pain. “This is for you, Haven. I won’t let a Rossi be a disgrace to this family.”

Is he going to bury me alive? “I’m not a Rossi,” I grind out. “I’m a Knowles, you sorry son of a bitch.”

He throws his head back, laughing as if I just told a joke. “You are just like me.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I spit out.

“You are. You’re just too stubborn to admit it.” He gets in my face. “Your mother was a coward. And Jimmy was a coward. Luca did me a favor by killing that spineless bastard.” He shoves me away.

I rub my chin. “Why do you care who I marry?” I demand. “No one knows that I’m yours. Why should it matter about the Rossi name?”

“The Bianchi family has been a pain in my ass for years,” he answers. “He stole from me. Embarrassed me. And you marrying his son is his last step at taking over Vegas!” he shouts.

I almost laugh. I hate John Bianchi more than anything, and I refuse to die because of him. Not like this. Not now. “Well, I think you should have done more homework,” I say.

“What does that mean?” His dark eyes narrow on me.

“My father signed a contract.” I hate Jimmy just as much as Rossi does, but I’m going to rub it in his face. I place my left hand out, showing off my ring. “It was a marriage license. I’ve been a Bianchi for two weeks now. The ceremony was just going to be a formality.”

I don’t even get to smile in satisfaction at the look of pure rage in his black eyes. He doesn’t even allow me a second to take in a breath. His fist hits my face so hard that my head snaps back, and the last thing I hear is him ordering the young guy to put me in the car before the darkness swallows me.

LUCA

“Anything?” I ask Bones as he enters my suite.

He shakes his head. “He must have turned it off before he ditched it.”

By the time I got back to Kingdom, Jasmine was in tears and crying on the couch in our hotel suite. The location was gone. And so was my wife.

I run a hand through my hair and remove my suit jacket. It was too hot and the expensive fabric too constricting.

“Thanks,” Titan says before hanging up his cell. “James said that he watched her on the monitor, and she got in a limo parked in the back of the alley. He followed it for as long as our cameras would reach, and he ditched the phone just a block down the street. Threw it out the window.”

“How many men were in the limo?” I ask him.

“A man was waiting for her outside of Kingdom and walked her to the waiting car. He got in with her. There could have been multiple men inside. The windows were too dark to see.”

“Fuck!” I kick the end table by the couch, knocking it over. The glass filled with scotch hits the floor and shatters along with the lamp.

“We’ll find her,” Grave assures me from behind the bar.

I shake my head. “That’s not my fear.” Rossi will take me to her, that I know. What I’m afraid of is the condition I’ll find her in once he decides to call me.

Jasmine rocks back and forth on the couch, hugging herself while she cries. Nite stands over in a corner trying to come out of whatever Jasmine fed him. I haven’t asked and don’t care about at this point. He will handle that once he fully comes around. Right now, I need to find Haven and save her before it’s too late.

I look away from him, but then go back. My mind wanders. Running over to him, I grab his upper arm and pull him into the spare bedroom. “Where did they take you?” I ask him. We never spoke about what happened to him. Not in detail. I knew he was taken from his house and then dropped off at mine. He chose to take a vow of silence, and I honored it until now.

He rubs the back of his neck. “The desert. They tied me up and threw me in a trunk. About an hour later, the car stopped, and they made me dig a grave …”

“Fuck,” I hiss.

“It took about thirty minutes. But once I was done, they told me that was where they would bury me if I didn’t give them the information they wanted.” He clears his throat. “I refused to say a word. That was when they changed their minds and decided to take my tongue instead.”

But they were stupid. When they dumped him off at my doorstep, they left his tongue. I made a call and had a doctor meet him immediately to reattach it. They couldn’t guarantee full recovery, but Nite beat the odds.

“Do you remember anything about the location?” I ask.

“Not really,” he answers. “I was disoriented. They had beat on me pretty hard. It was dark …”

“What about afterward?” I dig.

He shakes his head. “They locked me back in the trunk.”

“Maybe—” My cell ringing back in the living room interrupts me. I grab it off the coffee table to see it’s a blocked number. “It’s him. Stay quiet,” I order, then answer, placing it on speakerphone. “Where the fuck is she?”

He laughs. “Well, hello to you too, Luca. Or should I call you son?”

My teeth grind. He knows. Which puts her life in even more danger. “Cut the shit, Rossi. Where the fuck is she?”

“She’s here with me.”

I fist my hands. “Where? Let me talk to her.”

“She’s unavailable at the moment.”

“Goddammit—”

“But there’s still time,” he interrupts me. “I’ll send you an address.”

“Rossi …”

He hangs up.

“Fuck!” I go to throw my cell across the room, but Bones grabs my hand.

“You’re going to need that.” He takes it from me. “Break this.” And hands me a glass sculpture that looks like the Eiffel Tower. “We’ll get her,” he says, nodding his head. “We’ll do whatever it takes to get her back. Understood?”

I nod, trying to convince myself when my phone dings in his hand. He looks down at it, and his jaw tightens.

“What is it?” I ask. My heart picking up with adrenaline.

He looks up at me as he shows me the phone. “It’s the desert.”

_______________

I drive about forty-five minutes out of town. The sun has started to set, and I know that he did this on purpose. He’s had her and her mother for over five hours. He waited this late, knowing that we’d lose daylight. He wants the advantage of knowing the area. And who knows how many guys he has with him. He’s either cocky and has no one, or he has an army.

I turn my GPS off. It shows I have a little over two hundred feet left, but I don’t need it. I can see the lights from the limo ahead. I take a deep breath as I remove the gun from my shoulder holster. He’ll assume I’m carrying, and I want to show him that I’m not armed. I just want her back safe. He can do whatever he wants with me.

I come a stop and turn off my car, but leave my lights on, needing as much visibility as possible. We’ll lose light very soon.

“Where is she?” I ask, slamming the door shut.

He stands there with his arms crossed over his chest and legs spread wide. A guy I know by the name of Donatello stands next to him. I should have killed that fucker that night at the chapel. I take a quick look around. The limo is the only other car out here.

“Pat him down,” Rossi orders his man.

I yank on my shirt; the buttons go flying. I shove the shredded material off my shoulders and toss it to the dirt. Throwing up my hands, I turn in a circle so he can see I’m not packing. When I turn back to face him, I demand, “Where the fuck is she?”

He looks over at Donatello and nods.

He walks over to the limo and opens the back door. He bends down reaching inside and pulls her out. My chest tightens when I see her. She’s wearing a fitted white lace dress that looks like a wedding dress. Her wrists are duct taped behind her back and a piece is over her mouth. Her face has bruises on it and blood runs from her nose, over the tape and onto the once white dress. It’s dirty as though she’s rolled around in the dirt since she put it on.

“Haven …” I step toward her.

Rossi pulls his gun out and holds it up at me.

I stop and throw my hands up. “Let her go!” I shout.

“You know, you two are like Romeo and Juliet.” He muses with laughter. “And we both know what happened to them.”

“Let her go!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

The smile drops off his face. All humor gone. He reaches over, grips her hair, and yanks her to him. She cries out behind the tape. He shoves her to her knees, yanking her head back, then places the gun to her temple.

“Stop! Stop!” He’s going to kill her and make me watch. He’ll kill me last. He may even let me live a few days after he throws her in the grave that separates us just to make me suffer. “What do you want?” I find myself asking even though I know the answer. I just need to keep him talking while I wait for my backup. They’re not far behind me.

“What I want is to shoot you dead, throw you in the grave, and then bury her alive with you!” he shouts. “What I want is for her to suffer for your family’s sins.”

“What sins?” I demand.

“You know, your father and I were friends once.”

“What the fuck does that matter?” I want to run to her, but I’ll let him waste time venting about the past.

“We worked together. Had plans to take over Las Vegas. But he took something from me. Something that could never be replaced.”

“What?” I ask, taking a quick look at Haven. Her eyes are closed, and tears run down her bloody and dirty face.

“She meant everything to me!” he shouts, getting angry all over again.

“Who was she?” I ask, not believing a damn word he says.

“Ava.”

“What?” I ask. That name makes my heart skip a beat. He must be mistaken.

“Ava,” he repeats, still holding the barrel to Haven’s temple. “I was in love with her. We had been sleeping together when your father took her from me.”

He was sleeping with my aunt? “I don’t understand …”

“Your uncle Marco … He was a conniving little bitch!” he screams. Shaking his head, he yanks Haven’s head back even farther, and she whimpers. “And now I’ll take a Bianchi …”

Just then, a light shines on all of us. When he takes the second to look over his shoulder, I pounce, running at him. My shoulder hits his chest, knocking all three of us to the ground. His gun falls to the dirt, and I pick it up, pointing it at Donatello running toward us and fire. He drops dead.

Then I punch Rossi in the face, knocking his ass out cold.

I hear car doors open and close. I ignore them, knowing they’re my backup, and storm over to Haven. I rip off the tape that covers her mouth.

“Luca—”

“You okay?” I ask, interrupting her. Gripping her face softly, I look over her bruises and busted lip. It’ll all heal. She’ll just need some rest and pain meds for a few days. “Does anything feel broken?”

“No,” she chokes out, shaking her head.

“Here.” I look up to see Titan come over to us. He kneels and cuts her bound wrists with his knife.

“Thank you,” she cries, rubbing them. “My mother …”

“Bones is helping her out of the limo,” Titan answers her.

We help her stand, and I push her into him. “Take them both to my car,” I say when Bones rounds the back of the limo with a crying Misty. She doesn’t have a scratch on her, though.

“No, Luca …”

I kiss her gently so I don’t hurt her busted lip. “It’s going to be fine. I promise you. We’re almost done.”

She nods, letting Titan guide them to my car and get them settled inside. Then he comes to stand next to me.

“Get him ready, Kings,” I order.