Page 59 of Breaking Lucia
Bonito makes a disgusted noise. “We saw enough! They’d fit right on a porno site! You fuckers, you don’t touch somebody’s family like that!”
Rage washes over me suddenly. I backhand him and send him flying to the floor, his nose slamming hard against the hardwood.
“You don’t touch somebody’s family?” I growl at him. “That’s rich, coming from the fuckers who had my brother murdered.” I kick him in the side several times, until he’s mewling in pain, but even that’s not enough to satisfy me.
“Stop it!” Lucia shouts from behind me. “You sent porn of me to my father and think everyone’s going to be calm and collected?”
She sounds pissed enough to give me pause, if only briefly, and I glance at her. Her face is taut with fury, cheeks red, and she’s fighting hard against the hand Victor uses to hold her down to his thigh. Damn, she’s hot like that. I’m tempted to go over there and lift her skirt a bit.
Actually, there’s nothing stopping me. It’s not like Bonito’s going to get up. He’s still wheezing and trying to recover from the kicks.
I stride over and squat down next to her. I give Victor a quick look, and he nods at me. I don’t need his permission to touch Lucia, but I guess this works with whatever his plans are. I’m not going to pretend to understand him.
I put one hand on the back of Lucia’s neck and stroke her thigh with the other. “Princess, relax. Remember why you’re here,unharmed?”
Lucia settles slightly, though she looks no less pissed off. She still grabs my hand to try to push it off of her leg. “Don’t do this in front of him,” she hisses.
“You aren’t in a position to give stipulations, Lucia,” Victor says, although he lets go of her hair. “Bonito, what did Bellini do with Francisca Frediani?”
“Who?” Bonito asks, entirely confused.
I let go of Lucia and go back over to Bonito, nudging his face with my boot. “Seriously? Nice blond girl, seventeen years old, Alberto Frediani’s daughter? You can’t possibly have forgotten the rape porn you plastered of her all over the internet. It took poor Saint fucking months to scrub it all from the internet, and it still pops up now and then.” I look over my shoulder at Lucia. “See what kind of man your father is?”
She can’t possibly think of her father as a good man. She barely reacted when I cut Freddie’s finger off. But the idea of us sending footage of touching her to her father? That affects her, humiliates her, and Bellini is so fucking hypocritical to be indignant about it.
She glares at me, obviously not seeing our side of this particular situation.
“Regardless of Bellini’s character,” Victor says snidely, “I think we can come to an arrangement here. Lucia, as you can see, is relatively unharmed right now.” He pats his thigh. “Sit here, Lucia.”
Lucia gets up, and for a moment, I’m not sure if she’s going to obey. But she sits down on his lap, glaring at both of us the entire time. Victor gives her a condescending smirk and puts his hand on the inside of her thigh, about as high up as he can without touching her pussy.
I’m a bit jealous, but I figure I’ll get to touch her again soon enough. For now, I’ve got an actual job to do. I reach into my back pocket and pull out my pocketknife. Bonito’s eyes widen when he sees it, and he wriggles around pathetically, like a fish flopping on land. I unfold it slowly, making sure both he and Lucia have a great view.
“So,” I ask, digging the tip of the blade into his temple, “what’s all this about a deal with Pavone?”
Bonito flinches away from the knife, but he has no leverage to go anywhere. “Lucia? What did you tell them?”
Lucia shifts uncomfortably in Victor’s lap, but he keeps her held in place. “They know about Pavone,” she says, her voice strained. “That Daddy has a deal with him to… trade me.”
“The thing is,” Victor interrupts, “I am doubtful that Lucia is worth much at all. So I’m curious as to what’s actually on the table.” He casually slides his hand under her “shirt” and fondles her breast.
Bonito can’t seem to look at her. He jerks his head to the side, very nearly slicing himself against the blade of my knife. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
If Bonito were anybody else, I might have believed him. But he’s one of Bellini’s top men, and from Saint’s snooping, he’s in charge of a lot of the gun running for the Bellini crime family. Besides, he’s even seen the videos of Lucia. There’s no way he doesn’t know about this deal.
I take the knife and make a jagged cut along his cheek. He hisses in pain and squeezes his eyes shut, but he must be used to torture. That’s no real surprise.
Lucia tries to sit more upright, but Victor’s hand squeezes her breast more tightly and she winces. “Leave him alone,” she says—like she has any room to give orders in this particular room right now.
“All he has to do is tell us what we want to know.” I run my finger over the edge of the cut, then dig my nails in and push into his flesh. I can see tears form in the corners of his eyes. “Try again, Bonito. What are the terms of the deal?”
Bonito grunts, his eyes going to Lucia then back to me. “Pavone gets Lucia. We get more territory. It’s not a complicated deal.”
Victor sighs loudly. “Which territory? And to do what with it? And how would Pavone assure this territory when he doesn’t formally operate here yet?” Without giving Bonito time to answer, Victor adds, “Cut his Achilles tendon, Angelo.”
“What?” Lucia says, shoving Victor’s hand off of her and trying to get to her feet—to no avail; Victor has her tightly held in his grasp. “You can’t do that to him.”
I snort in amusement. “I can do whatever I want, Princess.” To prove the point, I grab Bonito’s calf, pushing the cuff out of the way. Bonito starts struggling and shouting.