Owned by the Beast Read online

  Gael sighed and stared at the buttons lighting up in descending order as we dropped down to the parking level where we’d left the Lincoln.

  “It’s all for you, son.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder, hard. “Everything I do is for you.”

  ***

  I nosed the big blue Navigator out of the parking garage and into the heavy traffic on Euclid Avenue. I’ll say this for the Italians: they didn’t hide their light under a bushel the way The Outfit did. We kept things in the shadows for the most part, but Moretti’s building was right in the heart of downtown Cleveland, bold as brass. It made me wonder even more why Gael was getting us into bed with them.

  As always, I kept my mouth shut, but still Gael seemed to sense what was going on in my head. He lit a cigarette and tapped the button to roll down the passenger-side window. I hated the smell of it in the pristine Lincoln, but who was I to tell Gael what he could and couldn’t do in his own car?

  “This is just one step in a much larger plan,” he said, smoke drifting out his nostrils. “The Outfit will never go anywhere if we don’t consolidate. The sooner everyone realizes it, the better.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  Traffic thinned as soon as we got off Euclid and onto Detroit Avenue which would take us south to Ohio City and the Vines Club, a night spot that acted as the main front for The Outfit. We had another special meeting there tonight, but unlike the one we’d just left, this one actually involved the rest of the inner circle, including Liam O’Connell. It was the first time that all of us were going to be together after what had happened with Liam a few months earlier.

  “As far as the rest of The Outfit is concerned, this is all Liam’s fault,” said Gael. “He’s the reason we need the Italians. Remember that.”

  I was confused. It had taken months to patch things up after Gael and I had kidnapped and tortured Liam for betraying the Outfit. He’d taken up a secret side operation with a group of drug suppliers which went against the code we all followed, and the one laid down by his own father, Fintan. None of us were angels—far from it—but Fintan had gotten the Outfit out of the drug trade years ago when he was still the head of the family. So, we had to teach Liam a little lesson about loyalty and knowing his place. And, I have to admit, I was more than a little jealous of Liam for inheriting everything he got instead of working for it like me, so I went overboard on him. But that was my job: when Gael told me to hurt people, I hurt people.

  Then, a couple months ago, Liam showed up at our door again with a beautiful woman in tow. He said her name was Kaila and that he’d just killed the man who’d kept her as a sex slave for almost a year. I suddenly had a whole new respect for the guy, especially when we found out the man he’d killed was Sergei Kalashov, one of the top leaders in the Russian mob. Liam apologized for betraying the family, and practically begged Gael to let him back in. Gael couldn’t say no—Liam was the Outfit’s heir apparent, the son of the old boss, and he had loyal supporters in the operation. So, Gael agreed to a ceasefire as long as Liam agreed to let him keep running the day-to-day business. It was awkward—I mean, the two men would always hate each other, that would never change—but it was enough to get things back to some semblance of normal again.

  But then came the meeting with Dario Moretti, and everything changed.

  “What are you saying, boss?” I asked.

  Gael pitched his cigarette butt out the window as I stopped at a red light. “Liam put us in this position when he killed Kalashov,” he said. “I don’t care how bad the guy had it coming, it was a stupid move. And now Liam’s back with the Outfit which means we’re honor-bound to protect him when the Russians come gunning for him.”

  “You really think that’s going to happen?”

  “Of course it’s going to happen!” Gael snapped. “They already took out Andrew Smith!”

  I frowned. “Smith? You mean Kaila Talley’s boss?”

  “That rich asshole hired Liam to kill Kalashov!” Gael was really wound up now. “Smith and Kaila had a shared beef against the Russians. Something about a woman Smith had the hots for years ago; I wasn’t really paying close attention when Liam told me the story. And now we’re going to pay the price for it.”

  “I thought he had a heart attack or something.”

  “Official cause of death was a cardiac event,” said Gael. “That’s bullshit. There are plenty of poisons out there that can make it look like someone had a heart attack.”

  Now I was really confused. Since when did the Russians use poison in secret? They were all about public shows of force. They’d never do anything quietly if blowing it up with dynamite was an option.

  “And now, we need to prepare,” Gael continued as we turned down the street that would take us to the Vines. “Because now that the Italians are on board, the Outfit is going to war.”

  I drove on, keeping my mouth shut despite all my questions. That was my job, after all.

  Chapter 2

  Aria

  When the door suddenly opened, I almost peed myself.

  I think I can be forgiven, though. I mean, seriously, how many times have you been sitting in a tiny, windowless room waiting for a stranger to come in and tell you what your fate was going to be? I was so deep in my own thoughts—and my own shame—that I barely even knew where I was. Then a tall, beefy guy with a unibrow and a suit one size too small for him practically knocked the door off its hinges as he opened it to let the older man into the room.

  So yeah, a few tiny drops might have leaked out. If they did, believe me, that was the least of my problems.

  The man looked me up and down as the big guy closed the door and left the two of us alone in the room. He was tall and slender, the complete opposite of his employee, with delicate features that I wouldn’t have associated with someone who led an organized crime syndicate. But his eyes were hard as steel, and they were looking at me like I was his property.

  Because that’s exactly what I was: his property.

  “Sorry for keeping you waiting, my dear,” he said with a grin that sent an icicle through my belly. Suddenly I found myself on the edge of tears.

  “It’s okay,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  He sat down across from me and crossed his legs. His suit looked like it cost more than my father made in a month, or had made when he still had a job. It had been quite a while since he’d worked.

  That was the reason I was in the room with this man. The thought stabbed at me and brought me even closer to crying. But I clamped down on the despair, desperate not to show it to the man across from me.

  “I suppose it is okay, isn’t it?” he asked, his grin widening. “You’re not in a position to complain about anything, are you?”

  I didn’t answer. I just lowered my gaze to my shaking hands.

  “But of course, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” he continued. “To get into a better… position.”

  His sexual innuendo made me want to retch, but I kept still. He was right—I wasn’t in any position to do anything to him, or to refuse him anything. If he wanted to, he could have pushed me onto the floor and stripped me naked, and I would have been forced to just lie there and take it. He owned me; the sooner I accepted that, the better.

  “Aria,” he said. “A beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”

  His comment underscored the fact that I didn’t even know this man’s name. No one had given me their name since I’d first been introduced to these people a few days earlier. I’d just been shuffled from one person to another, until I finally ended up here, with this man. I assumed he was the person who called the shots because everyone else seemed to bow down to him.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, clearing my throat. “I’m—I’m ready to do… you know, whatever you need me to…”

  “Oh, I know that,” he said dismissively. “And you’ll be doing it soon enough, but you won’t be doing it with me.”

  I felt a ti
ny amount of relief to hear that. The man wasn’t unattractive, but he was scary. If I had to give my body to someone, I’d prefer it was someone who didn’t make me fear for my life.

  As if I had a choice in the matter. My stomach dropped at the thought of being anyone’s slave. How could I possibly have let things get to this point? How could I ever get myself out of this? Would I ever have a normal life again?

  The man smiled at me again, and suddenly my memories threatened to overwhelm me, like a swarm of wasps, stinging me over and over and over again.

  ***

  The look on Papa’s face when I told him the news will haunt me to my dying day. It was as if he aged ten years in ten seconds.

  “I don’t understand,” he said in a low voice, his eyes wide. “How did it come to this?”

  He was sitting next to Mama at the little kitchen table in the apartment where I’d grown up. So many times we’d sat around that table in the years before I’d moved out on my own, eating Mama’s pasta and listening to Papa’s stories about his childhood in Sicily, or about the people who had come into his store that day, or a hundred other things. We never had money, but we had food and love and each other. They had given me everything I ever needed in life, and, thanks to hard work and saving, even a few things that I’d wanted over the years.

  And here I was repaying them with this. It was enough to make me almost collapse from shame.

  “I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. “It all happened so fast. I was at a party, and someone offered me some pills…”

  I proceeded to tell them the story of how I’d gone to my first rave at a warehouse down on the docks. I’d never done anything like it before, not as a teenager or in the four years since I’d graduated high school. Hell, I never had time; it seemed like if I wasn’t sleeping, I was working. The only way to make ends meet was to work fifty hours a week, divided between an ice cream shop and a makeup salon at opposite ends of the same mall. Even then, it seemed like I barely had enough to pay the rent on my little walk-up flat and put gas in my twelve-year-old Subaru, let alone go out and party.

  But then I actually got a Saturday night off, and I had a little money to spend on myself for a change, and the next thing I knew, my friend Chandra offered to loan me her little black dress and take me to a rave. I’d never done anything like it before, and I was so tired of spending all my time working. What young woman could have possibly resisted an offer like that?

  Maybe if I keep telling myself that, one day I’ll actually believe it.

  Chandra and I took an Uber down to the rave and we hit the party hard. We met some mutual friends, who introduced us to other people, and suddenly I was downing shots of tequila as fast as people were handing them to me. The lights and the music and the people all combined to make me let loose in a way I never had before. So, when one of Chandra’s friends offered me the ecstasy, I took it without giving it a second thought.

  When the drug kicked in, I found myself babbling to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. Suddenly I was surrounded by a bunch of good-looking guys who were hanging on my every word, and I wanted to hug all of them. I vaguely remember Chandra trying to get me to leave with her, and I told her one of my new friends would give me a ride home. She wasn’t happy with me, but I didn’t care. Everything was just so right with the world.

  But things quickly went so very wrong.

  The next thing I remember was being outside in the parking lot with two of the men I’d met earlier. They were practically carrying me over to a huge, black SUV that was parked in an empty corner where no one could see it from the warehouse. They said they were going to take me home, but then suddenly I saw a flashing red light coming from another car in the parking lot. The two men I was with disappeared into the darkness just as another man came up to me and shone a flashlight in my eyes. Meanwhile, I was still high as a kite on the ecstasy and had no idea what was about to happen.

  “Everything all right, ma’am?” asked the man with the flashlight. He wore a suit, just like the two who had just run off, and I thought he must have come from the rave.

  “I’m fine,” I said dreamily. “But I can’t see with that light in my eyes.”

  He shut off the flashlight and when my eyes finally adjusted, I could see he was middle-aged with close-cropped hair and a severe expression. That was when I realized he definitely had not come from the rave. He must have been sitting in his car in the parking lot.

  “Mind if I look in your bag?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I handed him my purse. “Why? Do you need something?”

  He ignored me as he rummaged around. Finally, his hand emerged and I could see something in it.

  “This yours?”

  In the glow of a light standard, I could make out a sandwich bag filled with something white.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “What is it? Sugar?”

  The man opened the bag and dipped the tip of his pinky finger into the contents, then touched it to the tip of his tongue. He made a face and spat onto the ground.

  “No, it’s not sugar,” he said gravely. “It’s heroin. Almost pure, as a matter of fact.”

  I puzzled over that for a moment. How did it end up in my purse? The men I met must have put it there.

  “That’s not mine—” I began, but he held up his hand to cut me off.

  “Sure it’s not,” he said. “What’s your name, Miss?”

  “Aria Rossi,” I said. The situation still hadn’t registered through the ecstasy in my system.

  Then he pulled a wallet out of his breast pocket and flashed me a badge, and I suddenly had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “Aria,” he repeated. “Pretty name for a pretty girl. Well, Ms. Rossi, my name is Detective Jerry Quinn, Cleveland PD, and you’re under arrest for possession of a narcotic.”

  Next thing I knew, my hands were cuffed behind my back and he had me in the back seat of his car. He sat next to me on the bench seat, his breath reeking of cigarettes. He told me that he’d gotten an anonymous tip that someone at the rave was selling heroin, and so he’d followed up on it. By that point, the ecstasy had almost worn off, but not enough for me to wonder why a detective would interrogate someone in the backseat of a car. But I would have plenty of time to wonder about it later on.

  The detective told me I’d be looking at ten years in prison if I was convicted of trafficking. I begged him to reconsider, tearfully telling him that the drugs weren’t mine. I’d never felt such panic in my life—I could feel my pulse in my ears as I imagined my whole life unravelling around me. I was only twenty years old!

  Then Quinn gave me an odd smile. It almost looked like he was about to let me off with a warning.

  Almost, but not quite.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I don’t like seeing a young lady in the prime of her life go to prison for a simple mistake.”

  My heart soared! He was going to let me off!

  Then I saw the look in his eyes and it stopped me cold.

  “But here’s the thing,” he said. “If I let you go and someone finds out about it, I could lose my job. So, it has to be worth my while, you understand?”

  My first thought was that he was going to ask me to have sex with him, and it sent a shock of panic through my belly. But what he had in mind was even more insidious.

  “I’ll happily look the other way for twenty grand,” he said. “Cash, small bills.”

  “B-but I don’t have that kind of money,” I sobbed. “I can barely pay my rent!”

  “Should’ve thought of that before you decided to be a drug mule.” He opened the car door and got out, motioning for me to do the same. “Now, you’re going to meet me back here at 8 p.m. two days from now with my cash. If you don’t show, I’m going to track you down and bring you in. I think I’m being more than fair, don’t you?”

  My heart was in my stomach. What could I say? He was giving me a chance to stay out of prison, but
I couldn’t possibly get $20,000 in two years, let alone two days! What was I going to do?

  “I’ll get the money,” I heard myself say.

  He grinned. “Atta girl. I knew you could do it.”

  Then he fixed me with a hard glare.

  “Two days,” he said coldly. “Or the rest of your life goes up in smoke.”

  With that he got back in the car and drove off, leaving me standing under the light standard, sobbing so hard I thought I might pass out. I was still crying when I talked to Mama and Papa the next day.

  And that was how it all started. After I finished telling my story, Papa told me he knew a man who could help us, a connected man. I knew what that meant, and I argued with Papa furiously, but he told me it was the only option we had. My parents owned a tiny storefront grocery in a rough neighborhood, and they were already deeply in debt. I can’t possibly describe the pain I felt knowing what I had forced them into.

  The next morning, Papa came home with an old briefcase stuffed with used $10 and $20 bills. It was more money than I’d ever seen in my life. I drove my Subaru back to the warehouse parking lot the following night and sure enough, Det. Quinn was there. He took the cash with a leering grin and told me it was a pleasure doing business with me. To this day, I don’t know whether he put the drugs in my purse or if it had been the men who took me to their SUV.

  In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter. The result was the same: my father owed the Italian mob $20,000. I told my parents I would give up my apartment and sell my car, move back in with them and try to put every penny I made towards paying off my debt.

  My father gave me a weak smile and simply shook his head.

  “There’s only one way out of a debt like this,” he said. “We can’t possibly afford to pay the kind of interest they’ll demand. I will have to do something for them that’s worth more than what I owe.”

  A few days later, I found out exactly what Papa could offer: the store would become a front for distributing drugs. It was achingly ironic: my parents would put themselves at risk for the same kind of arrest that they had just rescued me from. All so that I wouldn’t go to prison.