Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
I thought I knew what the location remote was but apparently, I was wrong. The further we drove outside of the city, the longer the roads were and the less there was to see. I swore we could’ve been in another state with how endless and different the scenery looked.
It was like a desert outside, nothing but flat cliffs and grassless rocks as far as the eye could see and I frowned, wondering why the fuck Antonio and his goons even made it all the way out of there for this one property.
There were dozens of properties they could’ve chosen from in the city, closer and more habitable. So why this one?
I wondered if I was linked to Antonio in some way, or maybe a former base or safe house that Elio had just so happened to get his hands on.
I glanced at Elio from the corner of my eye.
Or maybe he had already known of its connections to Antonio and decided to purchase it anyway. The reason was up in the air, and I wasn’t going to ask. We had more important things to worry about right now.
The road was bumpy, and I grabbed onto my seatbelt, wincing as the car rumbled, shaking back and forth across the rocky terrain until the warehouse was right before us, large and imposing. It was nothing more than a stone and metal building in the middle of sand and rocks.
For a moment, I wondered what the purpose of such a building even was. Elio stepped out, and I took a deep breath to calm myself before following him inside. There were a dozen cars already lined up outside, including at least four police cars.
I grabbed Elio’s hand as we entered through the door, the only one actually human-sized and not a big steel garage-looking one.
The moment we entered, both Elio and I tensed up.
The first thing I noticed was the smell—horrid, acrid, and incredibly pungent. It was overpowering, like we’d stepped into a sewage plant. It was almost sickly sweet in a way that had shivers running down my back.
I’d never smelled anything so disgusting in my life, and though half of my body wanted to run, I forced myself to keep in line with Elio’s steps, heading further inside. But as we rounded the corner, my stomach dropped to the floor.
Leo was right.
It wasn’t pretty at all.
Several cops were in the room, searching everything from top to bottom, and there was Leo, standing in front being asked questions with a very unpleasant look on his face. I didn’t blame him because he was standing inches away from what I could only describe as a mutilated corpse.
I swallowed, my hand over my mouth and nose as we approached. There was blood everywhere, all over the floor and trails smeared from everywhere.
He was face-down with bloody hands outstretched across the floor, and I winced as I saw the handprints smeared in blood like he’d tried to drag himself across the floor.
He must have been trying to get away, I thought.
It hadn’t worked, apparently because Alexi was truly and wholly dead. Beyond pale, he was whiter than a ghost, and flies had already accumulated around the body.
The worst part was his legs. They were just a gory mess of red and the white of his bones sticking through like he’d been beaten over and over with a sledgehammer or something else incredibly heavy. They were nothing but shattered and mutilated gore.
No wonder he had to crawl.
The only part of Alexi that remained untouched was his face. Staring endlessly into the distance, it was clear they had preserved it on purpose. But it was startlingly clear that it wasn’t the brutal bludgeoning of his legs that had killed him, but rather the gunshot right in his chest.
I stared emptily down at his body, a sense of distance between me and my body that I couldn’t quite explain like I was watching all of this from afar. Deep in my chest, there was only one thing that continued to anchor me there—pity.
I stared down at the bloody mess of a man I once had known, had talked to and gotten to know, a little. His life was now ended, nothing more than a footnote in a war between Antonio and us.
He’d been a message—an afterthought—and I doubted he had anyone who truly cared about him. There was no one left to mourn him, to bury him.
How many similar men had died by Antonio’s hand? How many had he slaughtered just to make a point?
I glanced away from the body, grasping firmly onto Elio’s arm as I stared at a fixed point on the wall. A few cops surrounded us as we approached, and I stayed quiet, just a pillar as Elio and I held onto each other.
Despite my shaken courage, Elio was unfazed. He answered their questions boldly, holding back on the mafia parts. John, the lawyer, stood next to him and just smirked, not saying a word, and I doubted Elio had even needed him there.
“From our investigation so far, he was crippled somewhere else and then shot, probably hitting a lung before he was left here to die. He bled out from his injuries,” the cop told us with a wince.
I could only imagine the pain he must’ve been in, the struggle as he had crawled to find help, to save his own life. But in the end, he died there for nothing.
Elio held my hand tightly as the cops took down our names and information and then closed off the area as they promised to take the body for the case. Elio nodded, not waiting another second before all four of us left.
The entrance and the bright air loomed just outside, a relief from the stench of death that hung around us. I paused right before leaving. I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath as I exited the building, leaving Alexi behind us.
Leo and John said their goodbyes, having more things to do, but Elio and I were free to go.
We got into the car, and as soon as we did, I glanced at Elio with a firm look, my burning questions needing to be answered now.
“Was that a property linked to Antonio?”
*Elio*
“No, it’s not,” I answered Caterina. “But it might have been. I’m glad I hadn’t gone there yet.”
Caterina nodded, relief visible on her face. We were safe… this time. But that had been far too close of a call. If they’d managed to plant any incriminating evidence or somehow get the body into my house, it would’ve been impossible to keep the police off me.
I wouldn’t be any use to our family if I got locked up for murder. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Junior. That bastard had been slinking around for far too long.
“I hate that Junior is still out there,” Caterina said, as though she had read my mind.
She shivered with disgust, no doubt imagining the things that had gone on when the two of them had been together. It made me feel disgusted as well, knowing that he had been with such a wonderful woman just to use her. The fact that it was Cat that he had taken advantage of made me even angrier.
I clenched my fists, trying to dispel some of the rage that was building within me. I needed to stop thinking about Junior. It wasn’t doing me any good to sit and stew in my own anger.
I pulled out my phone and called Leo. I was going to need his assistance with this.
“What’s up?” Leo asked as if he’d been waiting for my call.
“I need you to call Franky and tell him to meet us at the warehouse. We’ve got to discuss the next steps, and I need to tell him about the body. It’s time we retaliate. This has gone on long enough.”
“You got it,” Leo said simply before hanging up.
Cat looked at me expectantly, her sweet eyes wide in her face. I knew exactly what she wanted, and I knew she would never ask for it. She wanted to come to this meeting, but more than that, she wanted me to want her there. And I found that despite all my reservations about letting her get involved in such dangerous work, I did want her there.
Her skills were invaluable to us, she was great at reading people and even better at getting them to open up to her. Although things with Alexi had gone south, she had gotten some great information from him.
“You’re going to get your chance to come to a meeting now,” I said.
Her eyes lit up even as her face retained its grim expression. This shit was stressful, but my love wanted to be a part of it. She was so happy when I included her, and it made me feel like an idiot for not including her a long time ago. All I wanted in life was to make Caterina happy. I just wished there was a way to do that without involving her in life-and-death situations.
“Really?” she asked. “Thank you.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck, practically strangling me in her excitement. There couldn’t be very many people in this world who would be happy at the idea of joining the type of meeting that we were about to be a part of. But then again, Cat wasn’t like most people.
She was remarkable.