Taken by the Italian Mafia: A Dark City Romance (15 page)

Never had Whitney appreciated sunlight as much as she did in that moment. When the metal door leading out back of the building opened and natural sunlight poured down upon them, she lifted her head and looked up at the sky. Blue sky. White clouds. The harsh chill of winter on her exposed skin was a treat. Whitney sniffled and looked back at Rocco. The stony mask he wore while on the job was still plastered to his face, emotions impossible to read. It didn't matter. Deep down, Whitney knew what he was feeling. The fact that he came back for her and risked his life to save hers spoke more than a smile or a gleam in his eyes ever could.

A black car waited by the back door. Rocco hefted her to support the entirety of her weight with his uninjured arm and opened the front passenger door. With care, he set her onto the seat and looked down upon her. Dangerous narrowed eyes. Thin pressed lips. Stern features and hard angles.
How could one man be so gorgeous?

"I told you I'd track you down," he said at last. In the distance, a seagull cawed as though celebrating their fortune. There was no other noise. Whitney was speechless. The tears that formed in her eyes were no longer from terror or pain, Rocco's words touched her heart.

"There are many reasons why I'm an awful excuse for a human being," Rocco spoke evenly, "but if there's one thing about me that's good, if there's one smidge of humanity left in me, I swear to God, Whitney Greene, that it's because of you."

Lips trembling as they held back sobs, vision blurred with tears, Whitney couldn't bring herself to respond. Rocco didn't need words. His hand caught in her curls and held her in place, and then his lips were on hers, hard and possessive, but also protective and loving. Whitney kissed him back with everything she had, and when the kiss broke, she knew there was no going back. This was no Stockholm Syndrome, no misplaced affection, Rocco was in her heart and soul.

Soon enough he'd moved to the driver's seat and brought the engine to life. Tires crunching on the snow covered roads, Rocco drove from the warehouse.

Neither of them looked back.

T
here was nothing to say
, and yet everything to say. Rocco kept both hands on the steering wheel and kept his eyes glued to the road. The industrial path eventually gave way to the main street. With a smooth turn of the wheel, Rocco turned headed for the bridge. It would be easy to dump Whitney off at
The Avenue
, or a street corner and tell her to call a cab, but he knew that that wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't what he wanted at all.

Legs curled beneath her on the seat, head resting against the car window so that her curls were scrunched against her head, Whitney stared out the window and said nothing. From time to time, Rocco stole glances at her. Even with crusted blood smeared across her face and soaking into her hair, even in the oversized t-shirt tied at the hip, she was gorgeous. But it wasn't just her looks that forbid him to leave her behind for a second time. Whitney was worth so much more than her appearance. It was...

Rocco wasn't sure what it was. There was no doubt that she was different from other girls, but he found the differences hard to pinpoint. She was gorgeous, but so were plenty of other girls he'd brought to bed. She was tough, but so were the women in the industry that he hooked up with. She was gentle, but Rocco had seduced plenty of good girls that he'd had no issue showing the door the next morning.
So what was it?

Maybe, he thought as he glanced back to the road, it wasn't anything that could be explained. All the little bits that made up Whitney's personality happened to fit in just the right way to make her special, and that was all that mattered. Love was blind, or so they said.
Love. Was that too much, too soon?
Rocco couldn't be sure, but he knew there was no sense in trying to rationalize it. Rocco felt the way he felt, and it was foolish to try to dismiss it. He just had to figure out what he needed to do about it.

It wasn't until they were off the island that Rocco dared speak again. Whitney was still awake, but she was fading fast. Before that happened, he wanted to make sure that he knew what had come to pass after he'd left the safe house.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," she mumbled, turning her head to look at him even as it rested against the window. "It's just a lot to go through. I um, I guess you know that, though."

"Yeah." Had it not been for the adrenaline and the searing pain in his shoulder, Rocco would be in the same state she was in. It was in their favor that a kill refreshed the spirit and woke the body. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn't be able to sleep for a while. "What happened?"

"I was going to call a cab," Whitney said, arms crossed over her chest to hold herself, "and so I went downstairs to wait in the living room and the front door was open. I thought it was weird so I closed it. When I went to the living room, that man was there. He grabbed me. He told me that he was going to make me a star and that I belonged to him, and said some messed up things, and then... Well, I bit him. I tried to run, but he caught me and knocked me out. I woke up in the trunk, he brought me into that building, and you know the rest from there."

Rocco knew the rest better than Whitney did. The Russian mob in New York was nowhere near as prevalent as the Italian mafia, but the Lombardos saw every sect of crime as an opportunity. Dealings with the Russians were often tense, but Vittore had done his part to establish diplomacy. Mikhail did a lot of cleanup work for them, but it looked like those days were over. In the days that followed, recovering relations with the Russians would be a top priority. Rocco didn't need another group on his ass. The Black Mafia and Arturo's deranged attempts on his life were enough.

"He was a bad man," Rocco said as though it mattered. Mikhail was a different shade of bad, but they were variations of the same color. Rocco couldn't claim he was any better.

"I know," Whitney whispered.

"I'm just glad you're okay. I'm going to make sure your head wound is cleaned up and good to go, don't worry."

Sweet and low, Whitney hummed an affirmative noise and closed her eyes. Now that the excitement was over and she was no longer in danger, her body begged her to sleep so it could recover. Rocco couldn't blame her.

The half an hour back to the safe house seemed much longer than it was.

When at last the winding driveway appeared in the distance, Rocco snapped from his stupor. The dirt driveway weaving between the trees felt easy to navigate compared to the day before.

As the car slowed and rattled over the uneven terrain, Whitney awoke from her slumber. With care she lifted her head and looked out over the forested area.

"The safe house," she murmured, voice cracking with sleep and dehydration.

"Yeah," Rocco said. "This time I'm gonna make sure that it really is safe."

If his dad was right about his prison sentence, it meant that the family business was in Rocco's hands now. While the responsibility was daunting, it also meant that Rocco could do whatever he wanted. If he wanted to bring Whitney with him, no one was there to tell him no. Not his father, not Arturo, and not any of the men who now worked beneath him. The Don's word was absolute. His rise to power couldn't have come at a better time. Under his law, Whitney would be safe.

They parked out front. Rocco killed the engine and dropped the keys on the driver's side floor. Whitney sat up straight and opened her door, the cold rush of air the reminder Rocco needed that he couldn't live in his head so much. Now that the drive was over, it was back to action. He had Whitney's wounds to take care of.

Rocco exited onto the lawn and directed Whitney towards the door. Mikhail had the curtesy to close it, but had left it unlocked. Rocco whisked Whitney inside.

"We've gotta get you cleaned up," he said once she was past the threshold. From the oversized shirt to her lack of shoes, Whitney was a mess. The soles of her feet had to be freezing, yet she did not complain. Her drive was admirable.

"No," Whitney said with a small shake of her head, "I need water first. Maybe food. I'm starving."

Already she was on her way to the kitchen, Rocco found himself trailing behind. For a man who was so used to playing the active role and taking charge, Whitney was giving him a run for his money. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn't afraid to help herself.

She'd taken his lesson about life to heart.

"Then get something to drink and let me cook you dinner," Rocco insisted. Each step forward left him feeling a little more light headed, and it was only then that he realized how much blood he'd lost. While Whitney blazed the way forward, he snuck a glance at his shoulder. Two deep wounds gaped there, bleeding slowed but not stopped.
How was it that he was more concerned with her than his own well-being?
The stony look returned. He wouldn't burden her with his agony.

Whitney didn't reply. She entered the kitchen and went straight for the sink. Cold water ran, and she washed her hands beneath it before using them to cup water to sip at. There were glasses in the cabinets overhead, but Rocco didn't have the presence of mind to tell her as much. Instead, he plopped down upon one of the kitchen stools and took a deep breath. Pain tore through his shoulder, all the adrenaline from the kill gone. The shitty part was about to begin, and he was going to tough his way through it.

When Whitney was finished drinking she turned off the water and turned to face him. No matter how impartial and detached his face looked, she saw through him. Those deep dark pools of her eyes knew his soul and could see past his defences. It was no surprise when her eyes trailed to his injuries and she pursed her lips.

"Before you do anything, we need to make sure you're patched up. Where are your medical supplies? If this is a safe house, you've got to have some."

Medical supplies. Both of them could use them. Rocco glanced through the kitchen, trying to collect his thoughts. If a job went wrong and he got hurt, there was a staff of doctors on the Lombardo payroll who saw to injuries without hospital visits. It was rare that Rocco took care of injuries like this on his own.

"In the bathroom upstairs, I think. Under the sink, most likely. Or in the medicine cabinet."

Water dripping from her hands, blood cleared from the front of her face, Whitney nodded.

"You wait here and I'll be back, then. Don't move too much."

That wasn't going to be an issue. Without the buffer that adrenaline offered, something as simple as clenching his fist sent pain ripping through Rocco's arm and chest. Not even bullet wounds were this bad. Mikhail wouldn't walk away from their fight, but that didn't mean he wasn't good at what he did. Rocco would be reminded of the Russian's skill for the next few months, or until the injury closed up in full. Mikhail's last act wouldn't be easily forgotten.

Rocco was just glad that it hadn't happened to Whitney in his place.

It wasn't long before Whitney returned with a medical supply kit and an extra box of gauze. Rocco remained on the kitchen stool as she'd told him to, unwilling to move any more than necessary.

"I'm going to clean it up with some disinfectants and make sure it's all wrapped up, and you're going to have to be careful to make sure that wrapping doesn't get wet, okay?"

"Right," Rocco said with a curt nod of his head. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the same. The Lombardo family doctors regaled him with the same tale whenever shit got bad, but he was surprised to hear it come from Whitney's lips. She knew what she was doing. "You said you were a bartender or waitress all your life. Where's this medical knowledge coming from? This isn't stuff I'd guess the girl behind the counter serving me drinks would know."

"Ah, well, you'd be right," Whitney said. The clasps on the front of the kit popped open beneath her supervision, and she took out some medical grade disinfectant wipes sealed in sterile packaging. "I didn't learn any of this at the bar or at a restaurant. I um, well. Does it matter where I learned it?"

"You bet your ass it does," Rocco remarked with dry humor. "It's not like we're talkin' about cookin' eggs here, I wanna know so I don't die of infection or something." The Italian accent he tried to suppress in public flowed strong and smooth. If she'd seem him kill a man and still hadn't run, it meant she'd stick by him even if he let his tongue loose.

Dark eyes caught his blues for a moment, hesitant. With a tiny shake of her head, Whitney relented.

"Well you know how I said I was caught up and lost in the foster program, right? How I went to family after family until I aged out of the system?"

"Yeah." Before Whitney opened the packaging on the disinfectant, she undid his shirt and slid it from his shoulders so his chest was bare. The shirt had soaked up most of the blood, but the area around his shoulder still looked gruesome. Whitney didn't flinch.

"Well, that had a really big impact on my life. I wasn't always the good girl you're so fond of calling me, you know. When I was a teenager, I fell in with some thugs. Back then I thought they were so cool, so edgy, so big and organized, but really it was just a twenty-something jackass and a bunch of his gangsta friends who thought they were all that. It couldn't have been more than a dozen people in that group, if I had to guess."

"Little crime rings can be bad news," Rocco remarked. Had he been able to, he would have shrugged; the pain was too much to risk such a gesture. "At least in organized crime you've got rules everyone follows, and clear consequences for your actions. Petty crime doesn't have that, and things can get ugly fast."

"Try telling that to sixteen-year-old Whitney and see how far you get. I thought I'd finally found a family. To me, it was like, here's this group of guys who stick up for each other no matter what and are willing to take the fall for one another when the situation gets bad. I thought that it was going to give me the love I needed. I was wrong. But I didn't come away from that experience without learning anything. I learned about respecting myself, and, most important for right now," she tore the packaging on the disinfectant open with her teeth and took the cloth from inside, "it taught me about cleaning up bad wounds on the down-low. When the boys got hurt on a robbery gone bad or a drug deal, I was there to patch them up. Another one of the guys' girlfriends was in school to be a nurse, and she taught me all kinds of things. And it stuck over the years."

"But you go to a doctor to get your hand stitched up after cutting it on a can lid?" Rocco asked, incredulous. Whitney rolled her eyes skyward in a playful manner and shook her head. "Not because I couldn't stitch myself up, but I don't carry tetanus vaccines around. I'm not interested in dying a horrible death because of a can lid."

"Point taken."

The cloth touched his shoulder, cleansing the spilled blood away. As soon as it drew near the wound, the injury started to burn. Rocco grit his teeth and endured. Right now he had to be strong, and around Whitney, he found himself compelled to be even stronger than usual. Pain like this was nothing. He'd take it for her all over again if he had to.

"So tell me about your thug boyfriend. He treat you right, or do I need to go bust his ass?"

Whitney smiled an uneasy, but satisfied smile. The pain in it was distant, but detectable, and it made Rocco uneasy. Despite the short length of their relationship, seeing her hurt felt like a personal blow.

"He was the type of guy he was," Whitney said. The disinfectant cleaned the area around the wound, then traced over it. Rocco winced. "I thought I was so in love, and he was so in love with me. I was wrong. He didn't treat me how a man should treat a woman, and when it ended, it ended badly. I don't think about that anymore. I'm a different person now."

Different, yet quick to slip between the sheets with one of New York's most dangerous men. Rocco ran his tongue over his teeth as his nerves took over.
Was Whitney just in love with the idea of danger and romance, or was she sticking by him for higher reasons?
It was hard to tell. But no matter the case, if she were to stick by his side, he'd win her over and give her reason to stay. If a woman was able to sway his hardened soul this much, she deserved a spot at his side. Rocco would keep her there no matter what.