Savage Heir {Dark Mafia Romance + Thriller}

Chapter 45

****PLEASE be aware: This scene contains a depiction of attempted sexual assault and it may be triggering to some readers!! 

My head must have split apart and then scabbed over while I was knocked out. At least, that's what it felt like when I came to.

A fusty odor, like chlorine mixed with mildew, reached up my nose to knock me out of the darkness. The room was dim, but my eyes adjusted quickly to bring a few more details into view.

Unfortunately, the rusty pipes and stained concrete walls around me were worse than being unconscious. The hiss of steam in the distance made it very hot and very hard to think.

I tried moving, but that was a bad idea. Sharp fissures shot up and down my limbs, which is how I figured out I was tied to an old mattress.

"There she is," a familiar voice sang off-key. Detective Nowak's new Slavic accent added to my disorientation. "Miss America. There she is, your ideal."

"Why-?"

"Why am I doing this to you?" He cut me off with a revolting grin. "You know, Pryntsesa, not everything is about you. Well, in this case, it is. In the real world, however, it's not. For example, I don't care about you."

"No, that's not what I was going to ask," I groaned, trying to keep him talking long enough drop a clue about where we were. "I want to know why you're singing that stupid song?"

"I thought every American girl knew that tune," his crooked smile matched his off-kilter laugh. "Very catchy, sort of like you. Everybody wants a piece of the long-lost pryntsesa."

My Uncle Rob told me that I wasn't a mafia princess (which is what I think the detective was calling me).

He told me that my real dad, Elia, was a well-respected assassin for the Bianchi family in western Sicily. That made us members of la famiglia, but not high-enough ranking to warrant much attention.

Detective Nowak's boy-next-door looks twisted into a bestial sneer that made my heart stutter. He'd worn his mask of normalcy so well that he was almost unrecognizable in his true form.

I stared into his cruel green eyes, watching the way he watched me.

Then, he shrugged out of his plaid button-down to reveal his yoked torso and arms in a white undershirt. It was the first time I'd seen the malignant motif covering his body. Half of his ink looked like crude prison tattoos, while the rest were exquisitely drawn and seemed religious in nature.

Detective Nowak's dreadful smile widened when he caught me following the identical five-point stars on his shoulders down to the enormous screaming griffin on his forearm. The deftly drawn creature loomed large, clutching bloody daggers and hissing serpents in its talons.

"Do you recognize that, Malen'kyy? You were very young when you first encountered that tattoo," He asked, pointing at the brash creature and arching one of his brows before climbing onto the mattress. "I'll tell you a little secret. Those who see this symbol know they aren't long for this world."