My Mafia Madness 2

Chapter 31 - Running into Trouble

Alexa was out the front door and down the street long before Dante had even managed to hand over his platinum credit card to Francesco in order to pay the night’s bill, and then to go on after her.

By the time the Mafia Don made it outside and looked around, he had no idea of which way she had gone.

Should he go left or right?

Did she manage to catch a taxi back to the Castello?

Or was she on foot?

Countless questions ran through his head as he suddenly realised what to do and pulled out his phone, dialling Nicola.

The phone rang once before his faithful second-in-command answered with his gruff voice on the other end.

“Boss?” he sounded confused.

No doubt unsure of why Dante was calling him in what should have been the middle of his dinner with Alexa.

“Nicola, Alexa’s gone. She left the restaurant and I need eyes on her immediately.” Dante commanded sternly, deciding to head right and marching off as if on a mission.

“What? What happened?” Nicola questioned, but Dante quickly cut him off angrily.

“Nicola, track her phone. I need her location, now!” he demanded, panting as he moved from a march into a steady jog down the darkened streets of the city.

“I'm on it.” Nicola quickly replied before hanging up the call.

-

Walking along as if in a trance, Alexa felt as her heart broke in two, while tears continued to well within her chocolate brown eyes.

She felt more lost now than she had ever felt in her entire life.

What a fool she had been, to willingly give that man her heart and allow him to make her feel that way towards him.

She felt like such an i***t, having trusted someone like Dante Romano with something as fragile as her own heart.

Sniffing and seemingly ignoring the few random people she continually passed by on the footpath, Alexa wandered on, holding both arms around her waist in a much-needed effort to comfort herself in such a horrible experience.

Of course, it was all too good to be true.

Of course, a man like Dante Romano would be engaged to someone else.

She was probably some wealthy heiress living somewhere fabulous. Probably drop-dead gorgeous too. With an amazing face and body to match.

Alexa was her own worst enemy right now, not thinking of where she was going or what she would do when she got wherever she was headed.

All she knew right now was that she needed to get away.

Away from him.

From all of the lies and betrayal.

Stepping off the curb side and crossing the empty road, she continued along to the other side of the street, completely unaware that a set of eyes were currently focused on her from across the road.

They watched with a keen interest as the well-dressed woman, clearly in some sort of distress, continued to walk along at such a late hour in the evening.

Grinning, the lone figure followed along after her, sticking to the shadows as he moved.

-

Dante stopped jogging for a second and dialled another number.

Once more, it only rang once before the call was answered.

“Yeah boss.” Luca’s voice replied.

“Luca, bring the car around. Use my phone to track my exact location.” Dante commanded, glancing around in search of Alexa.

“On my way now, capo.” Luca replied before Dante hung up.

The only lighting of the surrounding city came from the dimmed street lights, and besides those most of the buildings and businesses around him were now closed for the evening.

“Where are you bella?” Dante spoke to himself aloud.

-

Before too long, Alexa happened to glance up and notice the symbol for the local bus station and in that exact moment, she knew where she was headed.

She felt some comfort in that small fact.

Making her way towards the station that she could now see just up ahead, Alexa hadn’t yet noticed the shadowed figure closing in from behind and with each passing second, he crept closer and closer towards her from behind.

Eventually, he was hot on her heels and with one final glance around him to make sure that no one else was around to see them, the male figure lunged forwards.

In the flash of an instant, he had wrapped both arms around Alexa before she could make a sound; one around her midsection and the other around her neck, covering her mouth with his large palm.

Panicked by being seized like this in the middle of a darkened street, Alexa tried screaming out as loudly as she could, pulling at her arms which her attacker had wisely wrapped both his arms around.

Her cries came out as strangled muffles from beneath his palm.

“Stai zitto!” (Shut up!) the male attacker snapped viciously at her from behind.

Whoever this person was, he had a strong Italian accent.

This complete stranger...

With a good hold on her, he began dragging Alexa out of the street and towards the curb side while she kicked her legs along vigorously.

There was a space between two buildings nearby which appeared to be badly lit, and he decided in that moment to take her in there to continue his attack on her.

“Mmmph!” Alexa tried to scream out for someone… anyone to help her.

Within a matter of seconds, the attacker had Alexa in the darkened section between two closed stores and he suddenly threw her down onto her hands and knees.

She hit the floor hard on her knees, feeling the immediate sting as she grazed both knees before turning herself around and trying to crawl backwards away from the strange man now looming over her.

“La tua borsa! Dammelo ora!” (Your bag! Give it to me, now!) he demanded sternly.

Her eyes were wide and filled with fresh tears as she pulled herself away from him, only to notice him closing the gap between them by striding forwards each time that she did.

“Please… please, don’t hurt me!” Alexa begged.

“Ah… you speak English, huh?” he spoke in clearly broken English, grinning sadistically.

Her lips began to tremble as she panted heavily, overcome with fear.

She suddenly found herself backed up against the brick wall of a building behind her and felt as panic washed over her.

She was cornered, with nowhere else to go!

“You got any money?” he demanded with a nod of his chin.

“M…money?” she repeated, her voice trembling along with the rest of her.

“Give me your money!” he suddenly shouted angrily at her.

“Now!”

“B…but, I don’t h…have any on m…me.” she stuttered her sentence, finding herself paralysed with fear as he came to stand right over her now.

The man standing before her seemed very thin and had dark eyes, almost black in shade.

His hair was fairly long and ratty, coming down to just below his shoulders and his clothing looked old and torn in various places.

This man must be living off the street or something, she thought to herself in that moment.

But what frightened her most was what he did next.

“What a shame…” he mused darkly.

Reaching in behind his back, the attacker suddenly pulled out something long and sharp.

Alexa’s terrified eyes noticed as it seemed to glint brightly, reflecting in the faint light coming from the streetlights nearby.

She knew exactly what he was holding in his hands right now.

A knife!

“Either you give me money, or I’ll have to cut you, beautiful.” he warned, suddenly lunging down at her and grabbing her by her throat.

Pulling Alexa up to stand on her feet again, the attempted mugger squeezed at her throat tightly with his fingers as he held the blade of his knife up in front of her face to further frighten her.

Not that he needed to.

Alexa was already terrified beyond belief right now!

Grunting, her breaths came out as pained gurgles as she dropped her purse to the floor and tried to grab at his hand wrapped around her throat.

She couldn’t breathe and her head was starting to spin into a dizzying pit of darkness.

The sudden sound of a distant voice calling out from the other side of the street somehow managed to pull her out of her blurred state.

Also hearing the voice, her attacker frantically turned his head towards it and panicked, loosening his grip around her neck and lowering his knife to his side.

Right as he did, Alexa gasped a desperate breath of air and made a rather foolish choice in the heat of the moment.

She tried to struggle free from his hold in a last-ditch effort to escape the attacker holding onto her, pulling at his hand with both of hers.

Quickly realising that she couldn’t pull his hand away from her neck Alexa jabbed her right hand up aimed directly at his face.

The bottom of her open palm somehow manages to connect hard against his chin, forcing his head upwards and causing him to grunt in both pain and surprise.

In the surprising move against him, Alexa had managed to free herself as he released his hold on her neck and stumbled back for a moment, dazed.

But she had also enraged her attacker.

Gritting his teeth together his dark eyes glared back at her in a furious expression.

“Puttana del cazzo!” (f*****g w***e!) he snapped angrily.

Fearful for her life, and with the life of her unborn child also lingering in the back of her mind, Alexa tried to run around him, but he wrapped an arm around her neck from behind and held her in a chokehold.

And then she felt it…

The sharpened sting in her stomach, along with a powerful force behind it.

Her entire body froze in shock as it happened, her eyes widening as she gasped loudly and felt another sting before he then released her.

Everything around her seemed to slow down into slow motion as she felt her heart thudding slowly, over and over within her head.

Then the pain came as one tremendous surge of agony and she felt herself physically become nauseous from it as she lifted her hand up to locate the centre of her newly found pain.

Her fingers felt wet all of a sudden and she frowned.

Glancing down, she pulled her hand away from the side of her stomach to reveal it was now covered in her own blood!

Her eyes widened upon realisation.

She had been stabbed in the stomach!

In her stunned state, Alexa hadn’t yet noticed as her attacker grabbed her purse and ran off, headed in the opposite direction of the voice she kept on hearing, calling out.

Each time she heard it, the voice grew louder and louder.

Until finally, she could hear it clearly enough to understand what the person calling out was actually saying.

“Alexa! Where are you?”

As she tried to take a step forward, towards the voice in a desperate search for help, her legs gave out on her and she tumbled to the floor landing on her side and breathing heavily.

-

At that exact moment, Dante had just been met by both Luca and Nicola who had arrived in the limo together.

The second-in-command had texted a message through to his Don with the exact coordinates of Alexa’s phone only moments earlier and they had tracked it down to this location.

Luca looked up, noticing a shadowed figure running off, headed in the opposite direction and he quickly pointed towards them while calling out to alert the others.

“Hey, over there!” he announced.

Both Nicola and Dante spotted the man, running off with Alexa’s purse.

“He came from down there.” Nicola pointed out, watching as Dante suddenly led the way running straight into a sprint.

The Reaper turned the corner and noticed the darkened section between the buildings.

Squinting his eyes in the darkness, he began to move into the shadowed surroundings and froze.

He felt his heart sink as his eyes caught sight of her, laying there on the ground up ahead.

“ALEXA!”

His voice was strained with the truest of horror and intense fear as he instantly bolted into a sprint straight towards her, followed along closely behind by both Nicola and Luca.

Skidding to a halt beside her, Dante threw himself down to his knees and picked her up in his arms, assessing her in a new-found panic.

“Bella, talk to me…” he pleaded in desperation, his brows furrowed inwards with concern.

“Please…”

“Capo, she’s bleeding!” Nicola announced.

He too had crouched down to assist in assessing Alexa and immediately noticed the wound to the side of her stomach.

Nicola turned to look up at Luca as he also crouched down to assess the extent of her wound.

“Luca, how bad is it?” Nicola asked him with a frown.

Luca moved in and used his fingers to move aside the hole made in her dress, noticing immediately what had caused the injury to her.

“She’s been stabbed. We need to get her to a hospital.”

“No! No hospitals.” Dante cut in sternly, while Luca pressed down on her bleeding wound with both his hands.

“We need to stop her from bleeding out.” Luca announced.

Upon hearing this, Dante didn’t hesitate and quickly removed his jacket, placing it over the top of Alexa’s wound just as Luca removed his hands from it.

Grabbing his Don’s hand, Luca pressed Dante’s palm down hard over the jacket sitting on her stomach wound, causing Alexa to cry out in pain.

“Ahh!”

“Keep pressure on it, capo.” Luca ordered and Dante nodded his head.

Dante did as he was told as Nicola now stepped in to perform his part in this.

The large man then proceeded to lift Alexa up into his strong arms, with Dante walking along beside him, keeping pressure on her wound as instructed while they returned back to the waiting limo.

Once they had her inside and stable enough for the ride home, the limo screeched off from the side of the road, speeding along off into the distance.

Time was running out for poor Alexa…