Guns n' Boys: Homicidal Instinct (Book 2) (gay dark mafia erotic romance) (29 page)

A hollow poke. Perhaps a
branch knocking on the window with a gust of wind, then a slight screech, but
when Domenico opened his eyes, all he saw was Seth’s profile. Handsome and
completely relaxed. Through the haze of sleep, he briefly wondered about the
slight breeze that moved the thick curtain in the window, but his body came
awake the moment he saw something fall. A can.

He jumped to his knees,
but the small container started hissing before he could even cover his mouth.

“Seth!” he yelled,
rushing around in the smoke. He knew the gun should be somewhere, but a step
later his knees gave up, and he fell to the wooden floor with a broken gasp.

Seth pushed up on his
elbows and looked around the room. Dom managed to push the can away, but he was
getting dizzier by the second. A crack of the window made him look up at the
three men in gas masks entering the house. If he only were closer to his gun…

“Catch!” Seth screamed,
just before he started coughing, and a gun fell to the floor by Dom’s elbow.

He raised his hand and
reached for it but all he could do by now was fight his own eyelids as they
wanted to close. Dom watched Seth drop to the floor next to him, Seth’s fingers
crawling toward the Beretta. One of the men came over in lazy steps, and a
moment before Seth could grab the gun, the assailant stabbed a hunting knife
into the middle of Seth’s hand.

Seth’s scream made Dom’s
heart pound, and with his last effort, he grabbed the soft fleece of Seth’s
shirt, but then his mind drifted off.

Chapter 20

Domenico’s skull was
tumble-drying his brain. His eyes popped open, and the blinding pain in the
side of his head pushed food up his throat. He threw up on the concrete,
disoriented as something yanked him back so he was hanging over the floor like
a puppet with badly tangled up strings. He saw his hair sweeping up dust, but
he had to quickly close his eyes as light stabbed his pupils.

“You done?” growled a
hoarse male voice from above, and upon his nod, he was jerked back into a
sitting position. With his head spinning badly, it took him a moment to realize
where up and down were. He was sitting in a heavy wooden chair. No, not
sitting. He was strapped to the chair with layers of duct tape that left his
fingertips slightly numb. He couldn’t move.

“Hey there, Sleeping
Beauty, rise and shine!” Another man grabbed Dom’s hair and yanked his head up.
Dom looked into a square-jawed male face with dark eyes. “You killed my
brother, motherfucker. Stabbed him with a fucking hook. You’re gonna regret the
day you were born.”

It was Seth’s groan and
the sound of a punch that had Dom’s vision focus around the edges as well. They
would both die horrible deaths, and all the memories of their time together, of
the love, of whispered words and gentle touch would die with them.

Domenico recognized the
large basement room where he’d taken the house owners. They were there, hurled
into a corner, trying to be as small as possible with gags in their mouths and heavy-duty
duct tape holding them in place. Domenico gritted his teeth and spat on the
floor, his eyes searching for Seth. He tried to loosen the tape on his hands
and legs. It wouldn’t budge. Maybe with time, but did they have any?

Vincente was in Dom’s
line of vision, covering Seth, but he turned around. He wore jeans, a blue
jacket, and the most tasteless pair of crocodile shoes Dom had ever seen. It
would be a damn shame to die at the hand of a man looking like a fucking pimp.
If Vincente wanted them dead, he could have killed them already. This would be
worse. Seth was in a chair opposite Dom, his face covered in new bruises. Blood
and saliva dripped from his half-open lips, and he was shaking slightly.

Domenico felt a wave of
nausea again as his head suddenly felt too full to work properly, split
thoughts and images assaulting his senses like a flash flood, merciless and
overbearing. Slowly he looked up into the dark, vicious eyes of Vincente.

“What do you want?”

“I’ve got unfinished
business,” Vincente said with a shit eating smirk on his face. “And since
Frederico wants to deal with you personally, Emilio here,” he pointed to the
man next to Dom, “wants revenge for his brother. Dealing with yours might be
fair, right?”

Seth inhaled a raspy
breath and slowly looked up to meet Dom’s gaze, but Dom couldn’t read him. His
bloodied face was devoid of all emotion, as if Seth were still in shock.

Domenico’s heart pulsed
fear all the way through his body. All his grim predictions would come true.
They would torture Seth in front of him. They would kill him. The only way out
he knew was to negotiate. If only his mind were ready to cooperate instead of
delivering tons of images that seemed to make sense without making sense at the
same time.

He gave Vincente a slow
grin. “Too bad I’m not gonna deal with Frederico.”

Vincente shook his head.
“You want me to call him? I could make your death wish come true. You should
know better than to commit treason. You will be of no use to Frederico if you
are not loyal. I’m not even sure if he knows about your sick… whatever it is
that you have with Seth.”

A jar fell from one of
the shelves, and Vincente looked back to notice that the elderly man had moved
by the wall and was now looking at them with wide, watery eyes.

“Ah that, let’s just get
it over with.” Vincente turned around, and fired twice. Both people slumped to
the floor in a puddle of their own blood. It happened so quick they probably
didn’t even know they were dying. That was exactly what Domenico wished for
Seth.

The noise seemed to have
woken up Seth, who shuddered, staring toward the fresh bodies. “Oh God… oh
God…” he mumbled, slowly straightening up in his chair.

Domenico’s blood ran
cold, but he made himself smirk. “Killing an elderly woman with a gun? Smooth,
Vincente.”

Emilio punched him right
in the face. “Have respect for the new Don.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be
wasting bullets on your pig farmer.” Vincente looked back at Dom as he pulled
out a blade that had Domenico’s scrotum crawling back into his body. A big meat
carving knife, incredibly sharp.

Seth took a shivery
breath. “Vincente… I never wanted any of this.”

Domenico spread his
mouth into a smile. He couldn’t watch this. He should have just broken Seth’s
neck when he had the chance. “Why bother? If you shoot him with a single
bullet, I’ll agree to go with whatever Frederico wants. Obviously, I will have
no further distractions,” he muttered through his swollen lips. He tried not to
look at Seth, but the big brown eyes opposite him were so devastatingly
desperate Dom was drawn to them anyway. He was a disappointment to Seth. The
floor between them was lined with Domenico’s broken promises. He couldn’t keep
Seth safe. He couldn’t give him a wonderful life somewhere no one would find
them. He couldn’t even give him a painless death, apparently.

“What do you say?” he
asked, looking straight at Vincente again.

Vincente scooted by Seth
and one by one, cut off the buttons of his pajama shirt, despite Seth backing
off as if he wanted to melt into the chair. Seth’s chest and stomach rose in a
speed betraying his fear with each popping sound.

Vincente looked back at
Dom when he was done and sat down on a beat-up sofa. “I say, your loyalty has
been tested, and the outcome is - you can’t be trusted.”

Domenico gave a low
chuckle, his eyes searching for Seth’s. He needed to give him some comfort,
some peace of mind. “It would be a small price for me agreeing to be your
killer again. If you don’t do this, I will not cooperate.”

Vincente poked the tip
of his blade into the side of Seth’s body, instantly drawing blood as if it
were a scalpel. The way Seth writhed in the chair with a panicked shriek felt
as if that blade pierced Dom’s heart instead.

“I wouldn’t entrust my
dog to you, Acerbi.” Vincente looked up to Seth’s eyes, where two fat tears
slid down Seth’s cheeks. “Crying already?” He laughed, along with his fucking
henchmen. The second one was wearing Seth’s freaking headphones on his neck.

Domenico shuddered,
staring at the unbearable distress on that beloved face. The one thing he could
do was to take their attention off Seth. “That’s pretty much like you cried
after that bitch in New York City stuck her vibrator up your ass when you were
too drunk to care.” He was slowly moving his fingers and wrists under the tape,
but he needed far more time to loosen it enough.

“The fuck did you say?
You’re one to talk, fag!” Vincente instantly got to his feet and punched Dom in
the gut as Emilio held the chair. “Fucking your own brother, you sick psycho!”
He was getting red, and he used all that pent up energy to punch Dom’s face.

Dom could feel his brain
becoming mash in his skull, but for a second he didn’t even answer Vincente
when a surge of memories flooded his mind like a movie playing under his
eyelids. Seth staring at him in the darkness, curled up on the same bed as him,
their bodies folded so tightly together it would be hard to squeeze a match
between them without setting it on fire. He laughed.

“At least I wasn’t
ass-fucked by a woman. The fucking thing was pink and covered with your shit as
you finally got it out,” he spat at Vincente’s face, breathing hard. At least
Seth was safe for now. He could manage all the pain and discomfort. He
would
keep Seth safe. He remembered the promise he made to him. Not just because Seth
told him about it. He remembered it. It felt as if the memories weren’t yet all
there, but they were within reach. Like standing in a lake full of slippery eels,
and he could pull them out one by one.

Dom started laughing
when another merciless punch to his head woke up a whole new side of his brain.
It was as if a door in his mind burst, and it all flooded back in. Seth
dragging him through dark tunnels of the sewers, kissing him on the forehead
when Domenico couldn’t even speak anymore. Seth was the life he chose.

Vincente sneered at him.
“Really? A fucking faggot’s gonna tell me about shit?”

Domenico spat out frothed
blood and saliva, his mind searching for clues about Vincente. “Better being a
fag than a stupid-ass fuck who kills old women and shits himself all over a
fucking sex toy,” he said with a sneer and winked at the other two men, who
seemed confused by his act. Sadly, the provocation didn’t work as well as he
hoped.

Vincente shook his head.
“Gag him, I’ve had enough of his lies.” He punctuated his words by poking the
tip of the knife at Dom’s chin. Blood instantly dripped down Domenico’s skin.
If that knife got near Seth again, it would create carnage.

“I never wanted this,”
Seth repeated in a broken voice. “I didn’t want to be the Don. Why the fuck
wouldn’t you just let us be?”

One of the men walked
over with a thick piece of cloth, and Domenico smirked, his body pulsing with
fury, with the need for revenge and God’s curses, but in that one moment that
could well be the last time Seth would hear his voice, he only wanted him to
know one thing.

“Seth, I remember
everything,” he said forcefully just before his jaw was stuffed with a
bitter-tasting rag, a thick bandage tied around his head to keep it in place.
Their eyes met, and Seth took a deep breath, not even blinking. And despite the
blood dripping steadily behind Seth chair where his injured hand was, Seth’s
lips spread into a weak but honest smile. Domenico trembled, desperate to
communicate just how badly he wanted this to turn out differently. He had been
a horrible man, and Seth deserved much more atonement than what he got. If
Domenico only could, he would give him the freaking stars in the sky.

Vincente frowned at Dom
but quickly turned his attention to Seth. “And what? Risk that you come back in
a few years, when money runs out, and start meddling in Family affairs with
your guard dog around? Sorry, but that’s just not gonna happen.” Vincente
walked up to Seth again, making Dom shake with castrated fury. “No fag marriage
for you, little brother.”

Anger exploded in
Domenico’s chest, and he pulled on the chair, the legs rattling against the
concrete floor.

Vincente looked back at
him and shook his head. “You’re one annoying sonofabitch. I wonder what
business Frederico has with you.”

Domenico opened his eyes
wider when Seth used this moment of distraction to lean forward and bite into
Vincente’s hand so hard Dom heard bones and tendons crackle. The knife dropped
to the floor, but all it got Seth was a mouth full of Vincente’s blood and a
punch in the face.

Domenico growled through
the gag, jerking in the chair, but there was nothing he could do as Vincente
raised his leg high. Domo wanted to scream, but that wouldn’t help Seth as he
got the hardest kick in the nuts of his life. Seth’s cry filled the room for an
agonizing moment and he leaned forward, drawing his thighs together to curl up
as much as he could while tied to the chair.

“You fucking bitch!”
Vincente yelled and blew air on his hand before picking up the knife. “What did
you think that was gonna do, you pussy? Now you’re just gonna be dying longer!”

Domenico roared, but a
hard punch in the head managed to fuck with his mind enough that for a few
seconds he believed he lost his memory again. But nothing was worse than witnessing
Seth in pain. Domenico was praying. For God to strike this house with
lightning. For the Virgin Mary to soothe Seth’s pain in her motherly arms. For
the archangel Michael to skin Vincente alive and leave his carcass to be raped
by demon spawn and picked on by birds.

Please, spare me of
being Frederico’s lapdog again.

Domenico bit the rag,
shaking his head at the one memory he wished hadn’t returned. He’d rather die
than have Frederico get his old, veiny hands on him again and feed him that
disgusting cock.

Seth’s whimper pulled
Domenico right back to reality.

Vincente slowly pushed
his knife into Seth’s cheek until it went all the way through. Blood trickled
down Seth’s face, neck, all the way to his chest. With the blade stuck in his
face, Seth got as stiff as a statue, only the rapid rise and fall of his chest
was proof that he was still alive.

“I always wondered why you
never dated, but the mere idea that my brother, in my family, could be a
pervert… It wasn’t an option,” Vincente rambled on, basking in his victory.

Domenico was boiling inside,
and for a moment he believed there was a slight chance of getting one of his
hands free. The basement wasn’t that big. There was the washing machine in the
far off corner, and a coffee table next to the sofa, with an exit right next to
a battered bookshelf. If they managed to somehow confuse Vincente, Emilio, and
Headphones, that was the route they could take. But all Domenico’s attempts at
freeing himself proved futile. He was forced to watch Seth stiff with fear,
with tears trailing down his face, as Vincente started slowly pulling out the
knife. The other men laughed as if this were a circus performance. Domenico
wanted them all to die in pain.