Page 42 of My Solemn Vow (The Mafia Arrangement #1)
ANTONELLA
SKIN DEEP
Valor carries the boxes to the second floor, where the bedroom is, and sets them down inside the massive walk-in closet.
“Books and other —” But his phone rings. Valor looks down at the screen and shakes his head. He raises a finger to indicate that I give him one minute before answering. “Valor.”
His phone volume is low, and I can’t hear the caller. “No, bring him through the back. Don’t be stupid. I don’t want blood all over my floor. Just because I have a wife doesn’t mean she needs to do housework.”
Valor rolls his eyes at me. “Yeah, we’ll be down in twenty minutes. Don’t bother securing the delivery. We can do it ourselves.”
Valor hangs up and sighs. He starts taking off his dress shirt. “Change of plans. I’ve got to work, and I need your help.”
“Okay.” I draw that out, eyeing him. “What are we doing?”
“What I do best?” Mischief lights up his eyes. “Put on clothes you don’t care about getting bloody.”
I was so naive to think we’d never come to this point.
It was so easy to get caught up in the changes of my life, but of course the real world had to come crashing in around me.
The way Berto described Valor comes flooding back.
The cruel words and ghastly stories of the state of the bodies we managed to get back from the Cavanaghs fill my brain.
He fillets the skin right off the muscle, a thousand little cuts. .. I force Berto’s words from my mind.
Without argument, I pick up one of my suitcases and pull it over to a box to stack it. We change in silence, and when I put my hair up into a bun, I can’t take the silence anymore. I can’t take the noise in my head that I keep trying to block out.
The words come out in quick succession before I can overthink them. “Is it true what they say about you?”
“Depends on what they say,” Valor answers, propped against the frame of the built-in closet doing something on his phone, but he puts it away.
With his head cocked, a glint passes through his eye. It’s almost like they turn a different color for a moment.
“That you hurt others to get information?” I dance around the gruesome words and beg my stomach and its contents to stay in place.
“Is that really what you want to ask?” Valor steps forward, his eyes gleaming and changing again as he walks toward me.
I wonder if my eyes look weird in this light too?
He’s well within reach. Warmth radiates off his body, practically begging me to touch him.
“You know I hurt people for information.” Valor raises his hand slowly toward me. He pulls one of the short strands of my hair back out of my face and brings it back along my head, gently tucking it under the elastic band. “What you really want to know is if I enjoy it.”
My mouth is dry, and I try to swallow. It’s hard and I’m uneasy. But I nod a response for him.
“Yes,” Valor says coolly. “I enjoy my work. I’m good at it.
I don’t expect you to like it. But I need you to see it for yourself.
You need to be eyes wide open in this marriage.
It’s been too easy of a life this week. The D’Medicis were our largest and most vocal enemies, but that doesn’t make them the only ones. ”
I draw shallow, steadying breaths. We’re both stuck, examining each other, watching for something unknown to pass between us.
“Come on, I’ll show you the entrance to my lair.”
“Do you usually call it that, or is it for dramatic purposes?” I sass him.
That draws a slow smile across his face. “I like when you get sassy like that. Keep it up, and we’ll get dirty in other ways.”
My breath catches. I look away from him, and he leads the way out of the closet.
When we get downstairs, I head toward the kitchen. “How long will this take?”
“As long as it takes?” Valor says, following me.
I turn toward him. “Like I should put the dough in the fridge to slow the rise or we’ll be done within the next two hours?”
Valor shrugs. “Leave it. We can take breaks and come put your bread in.”
“This feels very much like a team-bonding exercise.” I eye him before looking down at the dough. “And the bread probably needs ninety minutes to rise.”
“So scientific,” Valor notes, coming to stand behind me.
I stiffen. But there’s nothing pressuring about it.
Instead, Valor rests his head on my shoulder and looks down at the dough.
With him so close, the rich scent of bourbon and chocolate floods my senses.
And I relax. How do I tell him I want more of this?
How do I convince him to be this way with me more?
“So, you can tell it’ll be ninety minutes because?” Valor wraps his hands around mine on the sides of the bowl.
“How much it rose in the time it took you to bring the boxes in and carry them upstairs, then some estimations about the yeast and how much it will rise, continuing on the same scale,” I explain with a small shrug, trying not to dislodge him .
Valor pulls his phone out and sets it on the counter. The screen saver of Kerrianne and Captain gives way to the phone screen, where it shows his recent call from an unsaved number.
He goes to the clock app and sets a timer for eighty-eight minutes before pulling away from me. “Alright, let’s go.”
He tucks his phone back in his pocket, and I’m stuck following him. Dumbstruck by his care over my bread. He could have walked away and said nothing about it, but Valor took enough interest and concern for the work I’d done to set the timer.
I follow him back through the house, down the stairs like we’re headed to the shooting range.
But we veer off to the home gym, which I assume he uses during the day when I’m working since I haven’t seen him in here.
It looks normal, with only one way in or out.
And then Valor puts his palm against the mirror, and a light blinks through the glass before the wall opens.
He pulls the wall back, like a door, revealing a small chamber. “Your palm print will open this. If the house is, for whatever reason, invaded, take Kerrianne and yourself and go out this way.”
Valor flags me into the small dark chamber beyond the wall. A motion-activated light flickers on as I step in. He shows me how to pull the wall closed, and it locks behind us. Then Valor pushes another door open.
The butcher shop downtown looks dirty compared to the sparkling clean stainless-steel and white-walled room Valor leads me into.
It’s spotless and shiny. A computer table is set up on the left, with a tablet stand and monitor, followed by a wall with cabinets full of what I assume are torture implements and cleaning products.
It smells clean but not sterile or bleached.
A stainless-steel table is on the other side of the room, in front of a door, which I assume leads out.
But perhaps the most intimidating part is the central piece.
A stainless-steel chair, with spikes and sharp corners, is menacing. Chains and metal loops, clearly meant to restrain someone, make it all that much more foreboding.
“Afraid yet, princess?” Valor’s voice drips with something dark.
He walks across the room, gesturing for me to follow, and pushes a swinging door on the other side of the room from where we came in. Beyond the door is an underground parking area.
“I’m not afraid,” I tell him, looking at the vehicle stowed down here. “Though, I am wondering what your favorite way to kill someone is.”
It catches him off guard, but Valor recovers flawlessly.
“Depends on my mood. Now, as I was about to say... This tunnel leads two miles away from the property to a little shed owned by a friend of a friend of a friend of the family,” he tells me.
“Normally, the only people who see the tunnel are my most trusted confidants or my next victim. But the latter never get to see the way back out.”
I follow Valor back into the stainless-steel room and ask, “Normally, because I’m not a trusted confidant?”
“No. You’re not. But I trust you enough to get Kerrianne to safety and enough to keep your mouth shut about what you’ve seen.”
Valor is back to being so cold with me that it almost hurts.
There’s nothing more to say, but I wait with him.
In five minutes, the low rumble of a vehicle driving down the interior driveway comes through the doors.
Valor is still cold but now impatient. He walks back to the doors and leans, holding one open.
I follow, slowly, and get there in time to see a van, which I’m certain delivered my boxes a little over an hour ago, deliver a whole new cargo.
After opening the back doors, Neil and another man drag someone from inside the cavernous interior. He kicks and shuffles, trying to escape, but the bag over his head and his arms bound behind his back aren’t doing him any favors.
“Quit your sniveling,” Neil snarls at the man.
It’s an almost animalistic sound, and it startles me more than seeing them drag the man into place. I hold one door open out of the way while they bring him in. And in response, I get a grunted ‘thank you.’
“Table or chair?” the second man asks Valor.
“Chair,” he answers. “My wife has bread rising, and I don’t want the smells of intestines screwing up the joy of freshly baked bread.”
I try not to let my face change and remain impassive, but at the thought of what Valor is saying, I feel my features contort. If anyone sees, they don’t call it out.
They have the man strapped into the chair, and when I stand next to Valor, the second man offers his hand out to me. “I’m Gavin Cavanagh. Neil’s youngest. Nice to meet you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for your wedding. Pleasant surprise to see you now.”
“On such short notice, I don’t blame anyone for not being able to attend.” I shake his hand, indulging his attempt at small talk. It slowly creeps in, though, that we’re doing so with a man strapped to the chair in the room.
“Are you two staying for the information or do you want the notes?” Valor asks, looking between Neil and Gavin.