Page 125 of The Beast Who Broke Me
Shit. This is all I fucking need. I’m being pulled in three directions at once and can’t move fast enough in any of them.
“Pep, I need an hour or so,” I say, torn. “Tell Seb I’m looking for Sammy, but I’ll come as soon as I can after I?—”
“It’s about Sammy,” he says quickly. “Big Gee got him.”
I grab him by the shoulders. “What the fuck? Why?”
“Come on,” Pep says, pulling me back the way he came. “I’ll tell you on the way.”
I run down the street with him until he takes a hard turn into an alley.
“Hold up,” I say, slowing down. “Why are we going this way?”
“Shortcut. Seb’s waiting at a diner down this way. Come on.”
My relief at hearing someone knows something about Sammy got in the way of my sense. Because now I can see Pep is jittery as hell, living up to his nickname as he bounces up and down on his toes, eyes darting around.
“Tell me why Big Gee would want to grab Sammy,” I say.
“I guess he heard Sammy was talking shit about him, thought he was in on Seb’s plan to take Big Gee down.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I growl.
Pep stops bouncing. He grins. Shrugs. “Who the hell is Sammy, man?”
But I’ve already heard the quick footsteps coming up behind me, so I duck when a baseball bat comes swinging at me, and it glances off my shoulder.
I get a shield up automatically, catch the second swing on my forearm, and throw a punch that connects with someone’s jaw hard enough to send him sprawling.
It’s Meatball. He gets to his feet, shaking his head, but he’s not the only one here. Paulie and Big Gee’s other bodyguard, the one whose name I never learned, are charging down toward me. Behind them are four more at the mouth of the alleyway, one of them cracking his knuckles like a complete motherfucker.
I don’t have time to think.
I put Paulie on the ground with a knee to the gut and break Meatball’s nose with an elbow. A two-by-four catches me across the back and I stagger. I grab the guy who swung it and throw him head-first into the wall, but someone gets me in the kidneys when my back’s turned. I swivel and drop him with a right cross.
But I’m losing ground. They’re pressing in from both sides, pushing me back against the wall so Pep Pardini can dart in and jab me in the arm with a fucking syringe. I throw them off, but my next punch doesn’t connect, and then my legs give out.
I crash to my knees, and the last thing I think before the dark swallows me is,Who’s going to protect Caligula now?
There’s blood in my mouth. My head is splitting.
One eye is swollen shut, the other barely cracking open.
My wrists are bound, zip-tied to the chair arms so tight my fingers are numb. I get one eye open and see nothing but concrete and fluorescent light. A basement somewhere. Could be any of a dozen places the Giulianos use for this kind of work.
I know this kind of room. I’ve worked in rooms like this. So I know what’s coming.
“Wake up, Sunshine,” says Pardini, standing in front of me with his arms crossed. Behind him are Paulie and Meatball and five others, all of them taped up or holding ice packs to their jaws.
At least I made them bleed for it.
“So the only way you assholes could take me,” I croak out, “was with eight on one and a needle. You must be real proud of yourselves.”
Pardini hits me. Open-handed, almost casual. “Big Gee sends his regards.”
“Tell Big Gee he can shove his regards up his ass.”
That earns me Paulie, who steps up and drives a fist into my ribs. Something cracks. The pain is white, and I ride it out the way I’ve ridden out pain my whole life: I let it pass through me while I think about something else.
