In the End

5 │ Luciano DiMarchi

"Alexei, if you don't shut your mouth this moment, I'm going to fucking smash your head into the wall."

"Your threats are old Solomon," Someone replied, presumably Alexei. "Maybe you beating me up as a child is why I'm so immature, you've caused me brain damage."

"I haven't fucking caused you brain damage, you idiot."

"Sounds like you have," I thought.

A scoff, "So sleeping beauty is awake."

Shit, had I said that out loud? Slowly, I peeled my eyes open, blinded by the bright lights that surrounded me. I pulled together my surroundings quickly. I wasn't in a hospital, nor anything that even relatively looked like a doctors office.

No, I was in a bedroom. Judging by the lack of decoration and overall cleanliness, one that wasn't used too often.

I had a man on each side of me, who I could only assume by the conversation, was Solomon and Alexei.

The two men were practically identical, excluding their eyes and a slight difference in their jaws.

Alexei grinned with a lazy smile, pushing his hand in my direction, "Welcome to the world, love, how are you feeling?"

Solomon leaned over and slapped his hand away, causing Alexei to coil back. "You know what Boss said, no interaction."

"Solomon, you are a party pooper." Alexei poked his lip out childishly, "A pretty girl deserves to be acknowledged, I know you agree with me on that."

Solomon just rolled his eyes.

My eyes widened. He was strangely familiar, then, it clicked. "Solomon... Um, um, um, Solomon Espositio! I served you at the cafe, not that long ago."

Solomon raised his eyebrow. "Hmm, it would seem that you did, what a coincidence."

I tried to pull myself up, only to find that I was strapped to the bed, "What am I doing here? What's going on? What's the time?"

"Disclosed information." Solomon pulled out his phone, tapped the screen for a few seconds before putting it back in his pocket. "Boss has been alerted, he'll be here in a minute."

The two men stood up, any joking tones that had been coming from Alexei completely disappearing. They crossed their arms in front of their torsos, standing tall as they faced the doorway.

My heart started to beat uncontrollably. "What's going on? One of you tell me what's happening right now."

Neither replied.

I started to move more intensely, fighting against the bonds that kept me stuck to the bed. Light was filtering through the window, meaning that it was daytime, but no clock anywhere. Looking over my body, still completely covered in my coat. While I had no idea how that had happened, I was thankful. I could feel the paper notes on my chest, which meant that my phone was almost definitely still in my pocket.

I needed to find some way to contact Cassie, to make sure she was still ok.

Then, the door opened.

"Quindi è sveglia?" A man said, pushing himself aggressively through the door.

My heart stopped in my chest. Tanned, olive skin, accompanied by black and grey tattoos that seemed to cover every inch of his body that I could see. Dark black hair laid effortlessly on the top of his head, a few strands falling into his honey brown eyes.

He was dressed to the nines, a tightly done black suit with a white undershirt, the tie that was obviously meant to be done up was laying undone on top of his broad chest.