SAVAGE RITES
The De Luca stronghold in New York wasn’t a brownstone or a townhouse. It was a fortress of glass and steel piercing the sky.
Nico drove the Aston Martin into a private freight elevator that opened directly onto the street level. We didn’t even have to get out of the car. The metal gates rattled shut behind us, blocking out the gray sun, and the platform began to rise.
My ears popped. That’s how high we were going.
When the elevator finally ground to a halt and the doors slid open, we weren’t in a garage anymore. We were in the living room.
I stepped out of the car, my boots echoing on polished concrete floors. The space was cavernous an industrial loft converted into a billionaire’s bunker. Three walls were floor-to-ceiling glass, offering a panoramic view of the city that was so sharp it looked fake.
But it was cold. The air conditioning was humming at a low, sub-zero frequency, and the furniture black leather, chrome, sharp angles looked like it had never been touched.
“Don’t get comfortable,” Nico said, grabbing his bag from the trunk. “We aren’t staying long enough to unpack.”
He walked over to a massive island in the kitchen area, tossing his keys onto the marble. He pulled out his phone and tapped the screen.
“Come here,” he commanded.
I stayed by the car. “I like it better over here.”
Nico didn’t look up. “Elena. Come here.”
I walked over slowly, wrapping my arms around myself. The cold of the apartment was seeping through my sweater.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“A safe house,” Nico said. “My father uses it for meetings that require… discretion. It’s off the books. No doorman, no cameras in the lobby. Just us.”
He turned the phone around so I could see the screen. It was a messaging app, encrypted. A blank chat window was open.
“We need to send a greeting card,” Nico said.
“To my father?”
“To the fence he is trying to meet. The fence works for the Riccis. And the Riccis work for us.”
He looked me up and down, critiquing my appearance. The wool trousers and sweater were practical, but they weren’t sending the message he wanted.
“Take off the sweater,” he said.
My hands flew to the hem of the wool. “What? No.”
“I’m not asking you to strip, Elena. You’re wearing a shirt underneath, aren’t you?”
I was. A thin, white camisole.
“Take it off,” Nico repeated, his voice hardening. “We need to show him that you are vulnerable. That you are being kept.”
I hesitated, looking at his flat, expectant gaze. I knew fighting him was useless. I pulled the heavy sweater over my head, leaving me in the thin camisole and trousers. The cold air raised goosebumps on my arms instantly.
“Better,” Nico murmured.
He walked around the island and grabbed my arm, positioning me in front of the window. The gray, stormy skyline loomed behind me.
“Look at the camera,” he said, holding the phone up.
I glared at him. I tried to pour every ounce of hatred I felt into the lens.
“No,” Nico lowered the phone. “Too angry. You look defiant. Defiance suggests hope.”
He stepped closer. He reached out and tangled his hand in my hair, pulling my head back so my throat was exposed.
“Look scared,” he whispered, his face inches from mine. “Look like the girl who screamed my name last night.”
My breath hitched. The memory hit me, flushing my skin with heat despite the cold. My eyes widened, my lips parting slightly in a mixture of shame and fear.
“There,” Nico said softly.
Click.
He stepped back and looked at the photo. He nodded, satisfied.
“Perfect,” he said. “The terrified daughter. The broken doll.”
He typed a caption. I leaned forward to see what he had written.
She’s getting cold without you.
He hit send.
“Now,” Nico said, sliding the phone into his pocket. “We wait.”
“What if he doesn’t care?” I asked, my voice trembling. “What if he thinks it’s a bluff?”
“He knows the fence,” Nico said, walking over to a chrome bar cart. He poured himself a glass of amber liquid. “He knows that if the fence has this photo, then the fence has sold him out. He will panic. And when rats panic, they make mistakes.”
He took a sip of the drink, watching me over the rim of the glass.
“You look cold,” he noted.
“I am cold.”
“Good. Suffering builds character.”
He didn’t offer me my sweater back. Instead, he gestured to the sprawling view of the city.
“Look at it, Elena. Your father grew up three streets over from here. He spent his whole life looking up at these buildings, wanting to be inside them. And now, his daughter is here.”
He smiled, a cruel, sharp expression.
“But you’re not looking out at the world you own. You’re looking out through the bars of a cage.”
He walked over to a panel on the wall and pressed a button.
Heavy, motorized blackout shades began to descend over the massive windows. The gray light of the city was slowly choked off, inch by inch, until the room was plunged into artificial twilight.
“Sit on the couch,” Nico ordered. “I have work to do.”
He sat in a leather armchair, pulling a laptop onto his knees.
I walked over to the black sofa and sat on the edge. The room was silent except for the typing of his fingers and the hum of the AC.
I was in the most crowded city in the world. Millions of people were walking below me.
But sitting there in the semi-darkness, watching Nico hunt my father through the screen, I had never felt more isolated.
Three hours.
We sat in that air-conditioned tomb for three hours. The silence was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic tapping of Nico’s fingers on the keyboard and the occasional clink of ice in his glass.
I was shivering violently now. My teeth chattered, a humiliating sound I couldn’t suppress. I sat hugged into a ball on the leather sofa, my bare arms covered in goosebumps.
Nico hadn’t looked at me once.
Finally, he stopped typing. He closed the laptop with a definitive snap.
“You’re loud,” he said, not turning his head. “Your shivering is annoying.”
“Then give me my sweater,” I managed to say, my jaw aching from the cold.
“Come here.”
“No.”
Nico spun the armchair around. He looked at me across the dim room.
“I have food,” he said. He gestured to a plate of sliced fruit and cured meat on the small table beside him. “And I have body heat. If you want either, you come to me.”
“I’d rather freeze.”
“Have it your way.” He picked up a slice of apple. He bit into it loud enough for the crunch to echo.
My stomach growled. A traitorous, audible sound. I hadn’t eaten since the sandwich Julian gave me in the Archives, and I had thrown that up later from nerves.
I looked at him. I looked at the food.
I hated him. But I was starving, and I was freezing.
Slowly, hating every second, I unfolded my legs. I walked across the polished concrete floor, my bare feet numb. I stopped in front of his chair.
“Sit,” Nico commanded, tapping his thigh.
I stiffened. “I’ll sit on the floor.”
“The floor is cold concrete, Elena. My lap is warm. Choose.”
I stood there, trembling. He knew I was breaking. He knew my physical needs were overriding my pride.
I sat on his lap.
He was scorching hot. Through the thin fabric of his dress p+nts, his heat seeped into my frozen legs instantly. I let out an involuntary sigh of relief.
Nico wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me back until my spine rested against his chest. He didn’t do it gently. He did it like he was securing cargo.
“See?” he whispered against my hair. “Survival is just a series of compromises.”
He picked up a piece of apple. He held it to my lips.
I opened my mouth. He fed me. His fingers brushed my lips, salty and warm. I chewed and swallowed, the food hitting my empty stomach like a stone.
“Good girl,” he murmured.
Suddenly, a harsh, electronic tone cut through the room.
It wasn’t a text. It was a proximity alarm from the laptop.
Nico stiffened beneath me. He didn’t push me off. He leaned forward, dragging the laptop closer, opening the lid with one hand while his other arm kept me pinned to him.
“Here we go,” he said. The boredom vanished from his voice, replaced by a razor-sharp focus.
On the screen, a waveform audio file appeared. It was live.
“The fence is wearing a wire,” Nico explained. “My men intercepted the feed.”
Static crackled through the speakers.
“Look, Rossi, I got the message. I saw the picture. The girl looks bad. De Luca has her.”
My heart stopped.
Then, a second voice.
It was tinny, distorted by the phone line, but I would know it anywhere. It was the voice that had read me bedtime stories. The voice that had promised me we were going on a “vacation” when we fled Ohio.
“Is she alive?” my father asked.
“She’s alive,” the fence replied. “But for how long? De Luca sent a location. He wants a trade. The diamonds for the girl. Tonight. Pier 17.”
There was a silence on the line. A long, agonizing pause.
I held my breath. I pressed my hands against Nico’s arm, waiting for my father to scream, to agree, to demand proof.
“I can’t do it,” my father said.
The words hung in the air of the penthouse.
“What?” the fence asked. “It’s your kid, Tony.”
“If I go to the Pier, I’m dead,” my father’s voice cracked. He sounded pathetic. Desperate.
“Nico won’t trade. He’ll just kill us both. I know the De Lucas. There is no mercy.”
“So what? You’re just gonna leave her?”
“She’s strong,” my father said. “Elena is a survivor. She’ll… she’ll figure it out. Maybe he’ll let her go when he realizes I’m not coming.”
“He won’t,” Nico whispered into my ear. “And he knows that.”
“I need a ticket,” my father continued, his voice rushing now. “Teterboro Airport. Private charter. Tonight. I can’t stay in the city. If they have Elena, they know I’m here. I’ll give you twenty percent of the stones for the flight.”
“Done,” the fence said.
The line went dead.
The silence that followed was absolute. It was the silence of a world ending.
I sat frozen on Nico’s lap. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
She’ll figure it out.
He wasn’t coming. He was running. He was trading my life for a plane ticket.
Nico slowly closed the laptop.
He didn’t mock me. He didn’t say ‘I told you so.’ He didn’t have to. The truth was a knife in my gut, twisting with every beat of my heart.
Nico shifted. He lifted me off his lap and set me on my feet.
He stood up and walked to the wall. He pressed a hidden panel, and a section of the plaster slid away. Behind it was a gun rack.
He took out a handgun—black, matte, terrifying. He checked the clip. Click-clack.
The sound was deafening.
He grabbed a shoulder holster and strapped it over his white shirt. He put his suit jacket back on, concealing the weapon.
Then he turned to me.
I was standing exactly where he had put me, staring at the floor, numb.
“Get your shoes on,” Nico said. His voice was low, devoid of any warmth.
I looked up at him. “Why? He’s not coming.”
“No,” Nico said. He walked over to me and grabbed my chin, tilting my face up. His eyes were gray fire. “He thinks he’s leaving. He thinks he bought a flight out of here.”
Nico leaned down, his face inches from mine.
“But Teterboro is De Luca territory. The pilot is mine. The tarmac is mine.”
He released my chin and grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the elevator.
“We are going to the airport, Elena. And you are going to be standing on the runway when I drag him off that plane.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t see him.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Nico snarled, hitting the elevator button. “You are going to look him in the eye when he realizes that he didn’t just sell his daughter… he sold her to the devil.”
The elevator doors opened. Nico shoved me inside.
“Try not to cry,” he said as the doors slid shut.
“Tears are wasted on dead men.”
TBC
