My Mafia Madness 2

Chapter 42 - Which Finger Is It?

It was several hours later, and Vincenzo started to wake from his drug-induced slumber.

He now found himself standing right in the middle of a darkened room, wearing only a pair of shorts and nothing else.

His skin felt cold and was completely covered in goosebumps.

Blinking several times as his vision adjusted to his new surroundings, the hired hitman turned his head from side to side as he glanced around the interior of the darkened room.

“Che cazzo!” (What the f**k!) he cursed aloud, suddenly realising his latest predicament.

It was in that very moment that Vincenzo realised that both his wrists had been tied together, up above his head.

Looking up, he noticed that they were attached to a long chain which hung down from a large hook attached to the shadowed ceiling above.

He began frantically tugging at his restraints in an attempt to try and free himself from their hold, but every movement he made only worked against him, tightening the coarse rope wrapped around his wrists and causing him more and more pain.

When it eventually became too much for him to bear, he stopped struggling and instead began searching the room, scanning with his eyes for a way to somehow free himself.

Perhaps there was something he could use to cut through the rope?

The sudden ‘clank’ of the cell door as it unlocked from the outside immediately pulled his attention towards it and he watched as the door slowly opened inwards, revealing a dim ray of light coming from outside.

He couldn’t tell if it was sunlight or simply an artificial light, perhaps coming from a lamp.

Three shadowed figures stepped into the cell, one after the other before the iron door was promptly closed behind them with another loud ‘clang’, surrounding them in darkness once more.

As Vincenzo stood panting with heavy breaths, he waited for his captors to reveal themselves to him.

And with the sudden flick of a switch, the lights came on and revealed the details of the entire basement cell, including the identities of the three men now standing between Vincenzo and the doorway leading outside to freedom.

The fluorescent lights blinded him at first, but eventually his eyes seemed to acclimatise to the brightness and Vincenzo looked across at the three standing before him.

Nicola stood broad and tall on the far left of the three, his muscles flexing from beneath his royal blue dress shirt as his eyes remained fixated on the prisoner before them.

He wore a visible holster with a gun sitting comfortably inside.

Perhaps for intimidation.

On the other side, Luca stood holding a large silver case in his hand.

The silver case he carried was filled with different tools and torture devices that would soon be used to pry what they needed to know from Vincenzo.

Assuming of course that he wouldn’t comply with their demands.

In a way, all three men hoped that Vincenzo wouldn’t comply, just so they could have some fun with him.

And standing right in the middle was none other than the Reaper, Dante Romano himself.

Dante’s emerald green eyes stared unblinking at the man restrained before him.

He worked to remove both his golden cufflinks, pocketing them before rolling up the sleeves of his black dress shirt, one at a time to show off his fabulous arm muscles and inked designs running down the length of both arms.

“Do you speak English?” the Don queried, not making eye contact with his prisoner.

Vincenzo frowned in response.

Noticing that he had yet to receive a reply, Dante lifted his eyes up to bore directly into Vincenzo’s as he repeated the question one last time.

“I will ask you one last time… do you speak English?” he queried, this time a little more seriously.

Swallowing nervously, Vincenzo decided to respond and nodded his head as he spoke broken English with a thick Italian accent to it.

“Yes…”

Dante smirked.

“Good… I understand you were hired to do a hit recently…”

Dante spoke calmly, smoothly as he finished with his sleeves and crossed his arms over his chest, flexing his muscular inked arms.

Vincenzo looked between the men.

“You might want to elaborate on that a little more.” he responded rather cockily.

“I’ve had many successful marks in the past couple of months. I am hired by powerful clients to take out potential threats. And I’m f*****g good at my job.”

Once again Dante smirked, deciding to play along with his captive’s game as he walked over to the edge of the room and grabbed at the back of a wooden chair, sliding it over with him to position it right in front of Vincenzo.

“The particular hit I am referring to… was on a young woman, named Alexa Myers.” Dante explained, still choosing to keep his voice calm for the time being as he moved to sit down on the chair in front of his captive.

Recognition quickly flashed across Vincenzo’s face as he looked directly at the man now seated before him.

The man he had heard was infamous as a merciless killer and butcher of his enemies.

The Reaper, they all called him.

But he wasn’t letting his captor under his skin so easily. He would choose to push back and show no fear.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all coming back to me... pretty little blonde, right?” Vincenzo taunted Dante with a deviant grin.

“The b***h tried to fight me off, so I stabbed her. Would have finished the job too, if I wasn’t so rudely interrupted.”

It took everything within him to prevent Dante from unleashing his built-up rage upon the sly bastard restrained before him.

And it would have been so easy for him to do it too.

But Dante needed information from him first. That was their number one priority here.

Information first… fun later.

“First thing’s first… who hired you?”

Vincenzo’s eyes narrowed as he shook his head from side to side.

“Uh-uh, you know the rules, Reaper. I can’t disclose the names and information of my clients. For obvious privacy reasons, of course.”

Dante’s smirk grew wider.

“Of course.” he replied.

Moving to stand up from his chair, Dante strolled across towards where Luca was working to open the case and lay out a variety of different tools and implements for his Don to use.

“I was rather hoping you’d make things difficult, Vincenzo.” Dante announced as he searched for a particular object amongst the ones displayed there.

“Is that so?” Vincenzo replied with a wide grin.

“Yes…” Dante replied, reaching down to grasp at what he had been searching for.

“…it means that I get to have some fun with you before I eventually end your pathetic life.”

This changed the prisoner’s expression entirely as he watched Dante turn to face him with a predatory look in his eyes.

“You see, when you attacked Miss Myers you made a very big mistake...”

Vincenzo watched Dante carefully as the Don came to stand right in front of him, never once breaking eye contact.

He looked as if he wanted to lunge forward and begin peeling the skin from his bones right then and there; his expression was terrifying as he spoke again.

“You f****d with the wrong woman, amico (friend).”

The Reaper spoke, void of any sort of emotion now as his soulless eyes burned into Vincenzo’s.

Suddenly, Dante lunged forward like lightning, plunging the needle of a syringe deep into Vincenzo’s neck and injecting the creamy fluid within the matter of a second or two before pulling it out again.

“Hey!” Vincenzo snarled.

“What the f**k did you just give me?”

Dante’s head tilted off to the side as he fought to hide a smile from showing.

“Just a little something to help you be more honest with us, Vincenzo. No need to worry yourself too much.” Dante assured him.

“Now, I will grant you one last chance to redeem yourself for your crimes. Tell me who hired you to kill her, and I’ll consider releasing you.”

Vincenzo wasn’t entirely sure if Dante was bluffing here and now.

He didn’t know the man; only rumours that he had heard about the mysterious Reaper of New York City.

But he wasn’t sure if continuing to poke the bear was such a smart choice, given his current situation.

Instead, he chose to act smart and asked a question himself.

“You’re saying that if I tell you who hired me for the job, you’ll let me go?” he queried with obvious disbelief.

Dante remained void of expression as he spoke his response.

“You have my word. Tell me what I want to know, and I will release you.” he announced.

Pursing his lips together, Vincenzo thought it over for a total of three seconds before he began spilling all of his secrets.

“Dario De Luca hired me... he and some other Don were working together and needed the girl gone. They paid me fifty grand in cash to take her out. All I had to do was wait in the alley until I received a message from his associate, then follow her and finish her off. They wanted it to look like a mugging gone wrong…”

Dante’s eyes narrowed for a moment as he allowed this information to sink in.

“This associate of Dario’s. Do you have a name?” he questioned.

Vincenzo shook his head as he replied.

“No name… just that he wanted the girl gone, no questions asked. I received a message from him when the girl was leaving the restaurant. That’s when I knew to follow her.”

Dante suddenly got an idea and he turned, heading towards the others who waited nearby.

“Nicola, did you or the others happen to locate this i***t's phone by any chance?” Dante questioned.

Nicola nodded his head.

“Yeah, it’s with his other belongings. You want me to go find it?”

Dante nodded.

“Bring it to me when you do.” he commanded.

Following his Capo’s command, Nicola marched towards the door and opened it, slipping out into the dim light in the outside hallway before closing the door again behind him.

-

Soon after, Nicola returned with the hitman’s phone, along with other items they had confiscated from him when they kidnapped him.

Taking the phone out of the bag containing his belongings, Nicola handed the phone across to his Don and stood by watching with interest.

“What are you looking for, exactly?” Nicola enquired in curiosity.

Dante swiped across only to find that it needed Vincenzo’s fingerprint to unlock the main screen.

Not that it was a problem.

He showed it to his second-in-command who grinned back at him with the same sadistic idea his Don had.

“Boys, help me out with this, would you?” Dante grinned, leading his two henchmen across to where their prisoner stood, restrained.

Taking out his trusty knife, Nicola held the blade firmly in his hand as Dante stood by watching in a rather casual manner.

Luca stood off to Vincenzo’s other side to assist.

“Which of your fingers opens your phone?” Dante questioned the prisoner.

Vincenzo glanced from the knife back to the Reaper.

“What the f**k are you doing?” he asked in a sudden panic as his eyes continued to flick back and forth between the knife and the larger man holding onto it.

He wanted to move as far away from the man holding the knife as he could, but his legs had suddenly become rather heavy.

They felt strangely weak, as if they weighed a tonne and there was no possible way he could even try moving them.

“Either you tell me which finger unlocks this phone, Vincenzo, or I’ll have Nicola here cut all ten of them off and we'll try each of them, one at a time…” Dante threatened.

Vincenzo’s eyes showed his fear as he watched Nicola step in closer towards him before violently grabbing onto his right arm.

Once again, he tried to pull his arm out of Nicola’s grasp, but his body wouldn’t respond to his commands as it usually did.

He tried moving his other arm but felt the same strange sensation.

He could feel Nicola’s hand wrapped around his forearm, but he couldn’t move his arm!

“What have you done to me?” Vincenzo announced in a sudden panic as Nicola began forcing his clenched fist open to get to his fingers.

He recalled the syringe that Dante had injected him with only moments earlier and put two and two together.

“I can’t move my arms or legs… what the f**k was in that syringe?”

“This?” Dante held up the empty syringe, still in his hand.

“It’s a powerful mixture of my own concoction. The main ingredient however, is Succinylcholine... To put it quite simply, I’ve paralysed you from the neck down. You won’t be able to move any part of your body, not even an inch, but…”

Dante paused with a sinister grin spreading wide across his face as his eyes flashed with mischief.

“…you will feel everything that I do to you.”

With his eyes wider than saucers now, Vincenzo looked up to see Nicola lifting the knife up, in preparation to sever one of his fingers from his hand as Dante spoke.

“Last chance… which… finger?”

“Pointer finger, on my right hand.” Vincenzo found himself blurting out in fear as he breathed heavily.

“Please, I’ll unlock the phone for you… just let me out of this.”

Dante gave him a dark and sinister chuckle.

“You’re absolutely right about that. You will unlock the phone for me...” the Reaper announced, then looking to his second-in-command and nodding his head.

“Now, try not to move too much, this may hurt... quite a lot…”

“No, wait!”

Vincenzo suddenly realised just how serious the Reaper was, as Nicola then proceeded to reach up and grasp at his pointer finger.

With the signal having been given, Nicola scrunched up his face as he began cutting into the base of Vincenzo’s right-hand pointer finger, severing it from the rest of his hand within a matter of seconds.

All the while, Vincenzo screamed out in sheer agony as his warm blood ran down the length of his arm.

“AAAARGH!”

Finally, with the severed finger in his blood-covered hand, Nicola casually walked across to where Dante stood waiting and handed the bloodied digit to his boss.

Taking it from Nicola, Dante then positioned it, pressing the pad of Vincenzo’s finger down to be scanned and to unlock the phone.

And just like that, the phone unlocked.

Vincenzo had told them the truth after all.

Whimpering in the background, Vincenzo continued to cry out in pain as he watched Dante scrolling through his phone to locate the text message that was received on the night that Alexa was attacked.

“Somebody shut him up, please!” Dante commanded.

Luca quickly grabbed a torn piece of cloth from the desk and gagged the wounded prisoner with it, muffling his pain-filled cries with the material.

Dante in the meantime was focused on locating the mysterious message. It’s sender, of course, would have to be Dario De Luca’s accomplice.

And of course, Dante already knew who he suspected it would be.

After what his brothers had admitted to him about their father, he would happily bet everything he had that the person they were about to call was none other than his father, Diego Romano.

Needing solid proof to back up their claims, Dante finally located the text message in question and read it to himself silently…

‘She is leaving the restaurant now. Do not f**k this up!’

Dante sneered angrily at the blunt and clearly unfeeling message he had just read, intended to have his beautiful woman killed.

He held his finger above the screen, about to press the ‘call’ button as his heart beat faster and faster.

This was it… the moment that would determine whether their father had truly done what he had been accused of and gone behind his own son’s backs to ultimately betray them.

Pursing his lips firmly together, Dante took a deep breath in and then lowered his finger down against the screen, pressing the ‘call’ button to connect him to the sender…