Page 53 of Forbidden Confessions, Volume 2 (The Forbidden Volumes #1)

I ’m reluctant as fuck to leave Kristi, but she’s as safe as I can make her until I smuggle her and Sammie out of this shithole. I have an hour to find the evidence to bring this organization down. Time to get moving.

At the end of the hall, I wave to the big guard with the movie-star teeth. He and Ingram are still waiting for their shift to end. “Seen Donzelli?”

“He showed up a few hours ago. Nothing since.”

“Good.” Since it’s barely five a.m. and Marco doesn’t do mornings, he should still be snoozing. “I’ll be back.”

Once I’m past their line of sight, I haul ass to the stairwell, charging up to Donzelli’s suite.

Jimmy and his crew hooked up the cameras in the “merchandises’” rooms. Are they set to merely view—or record?

If the latter, I’ll handle last night’s footage with Kristi.

I don’t want anyone else seeing us together.

Then what? Three years undercover comes down to now.

I need hard evidence. The idea of touching anything in Paulie’s whack-off corner in the third-level basement hits my ick button.

Sorry, his “command center.” But I’ll get over it.

The other problem? Donzelli never gave me the key to the place. But I won’t let that stop me.

There’s no one else in Marco’s suite. Even the casino floor is nearly deserted just before dawn. From here, I can almost smell the puke and regret.

Ducking through the nondescript door tucked into the adjacent hallway, I zero in on the surveillance monitors lining the long wall.

As I lean over the desk, I press buttons to change the view.

Casino floor, high rollers’ area, hallways, and elevators—no.

Café, buffet, kitchens, and south lounges—no.

Boutiques, gift shop, concert hall, and meeting spaces—no. Finally, I see the view I need.

My hands shake as I scan the victims in their eighth-floor rooms, most sleeping, sitting nervously, or pacing. And yes, Donzelli has been recording every captive—including Kristi—since they were moved from the basement. Damn that shit stain.

I watch a snippet of me seducing my Little Red.

Sal is wrong about a lot of things, but not Kristi.

She really does have a great rack. And watching myself make love to her is totally better than porn because I remember this moment.

It felt fucking awesome, but being with her wasn’t a mere pleasure.

Even though Rudy and Sal watched us—which is still not okay—they’ll never understand because what we shared goes way beyond lust.

I delete the file, promising myself that once we’re safe, if Kristi is game, we’ll make home movies together. Maybe a dirty video series as her pregnancy progresses… That would be hot as fuck.

But I’ve got to focus on now. Marco is probably in his bedroom at the end of the hall, sleeping off booze and pussy. I tiptoe that way and peek in. Sure enough, he’s crashed out and alone.

Best to make sure he stays that way.

A length of rope on his nightstand catches my attention. He probably used it to tie up some unwilling victim, poor girl. She’ll never have the opportunity to mete out her own retribution, so it seems fitting to use this rope to make sure Donzelli pays for his sins.

I snag the rough length from the bedside table, then creep back to shut his bedroom door behind me with the quietest of clicks.

Thank fuck the rope is long enough to reach from here to the security room door and wrap around both levers a few times before I knot it off.

It won’t hold for long, but since the asshole isn’t likely to wake up, this should detain him until the feds come.

Time to hit that locked room of Paulie’s.

Leaving Donzelli’s suite via his private elevator, I plunge down to the third-level basement. The humid space still smells of unwashed bodies. The stench grows stronger as I trek deeper, wall-hugging to bypass the surveillance camera and plucking the security door combination from memory.

My heart thuds. I sweat. Finally, I might uncover the proof I’ve been seeking since Luca Antonelli approached the feds and I became his “nephew,” Rafael.

With ground-eating steps, I round the last corner. The guards are gone now, thank God. The cages, too. But I’m standing at the door to Paulie’s domain…without a key. The good news is, I’ve acquired some less-than-noble skills during my three years on this op.

I pick the lock and let myself in, plopping into Paulie’s chair and starting his laptop. It’s password protected.

Fuck. I have to think like the big lug? That’s terrifying. What safeguard would he use to keep people out of his machine that’s still simple enough for him to remember?

It takes me a couple of tries to figure out the bonehead’s big security measure was his dog’s name and the year of his birth. Really fucking original …

But I’m in.

I’m not exactly sure if the information I need is in pictures, financial records, messages—or some combination. Quickly, I prowl through Paulie’s hard drive, and I discover something mighty interesting…

Paulie wired a camera in Donzelli’s room to spy on him.

Holy shit.

Marco is still asleep. I see him on Paulie’s monitor. And the camera is recording.

Is this the break I’ve been looking for? After all, Carboni must be spying on the boss for a reason…

Maybe the lug isn’t as stupid as I thought. Come to think of it, he’s been almost defiant lately. Because he’s got dirt on Donzelli? Is Paulie just waiting for the right moment to play his blackmail card?

“Let’s see what kind of shit you’re hiding, Marco.”

With a click on last night’s file, I start watching.

Donzelli in his room—on the phone, drinking scotch, picking his nose.

Nothing interesting. He presumably shits, shaves, and showers because he walks into the bathroom looking like any businessman at the end of a day and emerges Mr. Saturday-night Suave, pressing down the edges of his mustache like it he’s convinced it makes him more fuckable.

Room service delivers dinner. Donzelli pounces on it, takes more phone calls, then disappears.

He’s gone for hours, so I skip through the empty time—feeling the ticking of my own racing clock—and pick up again when he returns, rips off his suit coat, downs half a bottle of booze, then grabs his phone again.

He makes a terse call and breathes in his palm as if he’s testing his breath before he strides purposefully out the door.

The sick fuck, like Paulie, is sampling the merchandise. So what’s with the breath check? Is he hoping to impress the captive he’s forcing to his bed? Absently, I wonder who he chose to torment for the evening. My money is on the girl who looked maybe fifteen but had the curves of a woman.

Quickly, I scan through the next twenty minutes, fast-forwarding to the moment Donzelli enters his unit again. He rolls through his door, pushing a laundry cart. What the fuck? He doesn’t do his own wash.

Hastily, he stops the rolling receptacle, locks the wheels, then lifts out a smallish limp body with a sack over her head.

She looks smaller than I remember. A lot less curvy, too.

Is she someone who got plucked off the floor tonight?

Someone even younger than the girl who isn’t quite old enough to drive?

I wince. I expected Donzelli to be on the sick side, but seeing that he’s the kind of freak who gets off on girls barely old enough for puberty makes me want to puke.

He sets the prone form in the middle of his bed, ties the kid up with the rope I found on his nightstand, and peels off her hood.

From this angle, in this dim lighting, I can’t make out the face, just a mop of curls.

But when Marco starts removing her clothes, there’s something familiar about this figure. It tugs at me, ugly and dark.

Then the pants come off—and my jaw drops. “You sick fucking asshole.”

He hasn’t brought a girl to his bed but the little boy I saw in the cage. He’s going to violate a goddamn kindergartener?

Donzelli jolts the child awake. A struggle ensues. But his captive was already subdued. I can’t watch what comes next.

Fury permeates every cell in my body. I see red. My blood burns. I want to charge in and save that poor kid, but this is a recording, and I’m too fucking late.

But I can put Donzelli away and save others, including my pretty Little Red. I just have to move fast.

My phone dings suddenly, jarring me from the computer screen. It’s Ransom with a one-word message.

Done.

So that’s it. Paul Carboni is dead. Good. He deserved it. One less criminal to pollute the world.

But this whole piece-of-shit business is done, too. Today. I’ll make sure. I have enough evidence to put Donzelli away. If I keep digging, I hope I find enough to destroy everything else.

I copy the disturbing footage of Donzelli with the boy.

A scan through the recordings on the computer tells me this kid isn’t the mobster’s only dirty secret.

I duplicate those incriminating videos, too, then leak fifteen damning seconds of footage from last night to one of Donzelli’s counterparts in a rival family.

Anonymously, of course. And I make sure the boy’s face is totally obscured.

I don’t want him victimized more than he has been, but what I can’t undo now will save some other child this terrible fate later.

His rival is macho enough to think that mobsters who touch any male sexually for any reason should be run out, but still humane enough to believe children are off-limits.

Donzelli will be prosecuted and likely offed in prison, ordered to death by his own kind, so no one will care enough to come after me.

Hell, I might even be a hero for exposing the truth.