Chapter 92 Chapter 92
Damien’s POV
I had just arrived at the safe house, barely taking time to see everyone settled before my phone started buzzing with urgent calls.
The city. My turf. Business that couldn’t wait.
“I have to go back,” I told Kai, who looked unsurprised. “Keep everyone safe here. Don’t let anyone leave the property.”
“Understood, boss,” Kai said.
I didn’t even stay long enough to properly say goodbye to Hailey. Just a quick check that she was resting, then I was back in the car, surrounded by my tight surveillance team.
The drive back to the city felt longer than it should have, my mind already racing through the reports I’d been receiving. The Morellis were making moves, testing our defenses, looking for weaknesses.
They weren’t going to find any.
When I arrived at one of my warehouses on the east side, Lorenzo was waiting with a grim expression.
“Report,” I demanded, stepping out of the car.
“The Morellis tried to bypass one of our drug networks,” Lorenzo said, leading me inside. “Attempted to reroute a shipment, intercept it before it reached our distributors. But our men were ready. We outsmarted them and caught some of their people.”
“How many?”
“Five,” Lorenzo said, opening the door to the warehouse’s basement level.
I descended the stairs to find exactly what I’d expected five men tied to chairs, all of them bearing the marks of interrogation. Blood, bruises, terror in their eyes.
Good.
“Leave me,” I told the guards. “Just Lorenzo stays.”
The room cleared, and I approached the first man.
“I’m going to ask you questions,” I said quietly, my voice calm and cold. “If you answer honestly, this will be quick. If you lie, it will be very, very slow.”
But one of them spat at me.
What a well picked wrong choice.
The interrogation lasted through the night. Hours of methodical torture, extracting every piece of information they had about Morelli operations, safe houses, supply routes, planned attacks.
One by one, they broke. One by one, they told me everything.
And one by one, they died, until only one man remained.
He was younger than the others, barely twenty, and he’d watched all his companions die screaming. The terror in his eyes was absolute.
“You’re going to live,” I told him, and I saw hope flicker across his face. “But first, you’re going to deliver a message.”
I nodded to Lorenzo, who brought over the branding iron. We’d heated it until it glowed orange-red, the metal formed into words.
The young man started screaming before we even touched him.
“Hold him,” I ordered.
Lorenzo and two guards pinned him down while I pressed the burning iron against his back, carefully, methodically, making sure each letter was clear and legible.
His screams echoed through the basement, raw and animalistic.
When I pulled the iron away, the message was seared into his flesh in angry red welts that would scar permanently:
“WE ARE COMING!”
“Let him go,” I said, stepping back.
The guards released him, and he collapsed to the floor, sobbing and gasping.
“Get up,” I ordered. “Go back to your bosses. Show them what I’ve written. Tell them the Crimson Syndicate is coming for every single one of them.”
The young man scrambled to his feet and ran, stumbling up the stairs and out into the night.
I watched him go, feeling nothing but cold satisfaction.
Lorenzo approached, his expression troubled. “Boss, there’s something else. Bad news.”
“What?” I asked, washing the blood from my hands in a nearby sink.
“The doctor who checked Hailey,” Lorenzo said quietly. “He’s dead. They found his body this morning. They framed it as a suicide.”
My hands stilled in the water. “The morreli killed him.” I said with a smirk.
“Most likely tortured him first,” Lorenzo said. “Tried to extract information about Hailey’s condition, about the safe house location. We don’t know what he told them before he died.”
Fuck.
“Double security at the safe house,” I ordered. “And put out word that anyone who even looks at Hailey wrong will face the same fate as those men downstairs.”
“Already done, boss,” Lorenzo said. Then his expression shifted slightly. “But there is good news.”
I looked at him sharply. “Marco?”
Lorenzo nodded. “He woke up from his coma. Two hours ago.”
Relief and hope surged through me, the first positive emotions I’d felt in days. “Is he stable? Can he talk?”
“That’s the complicated part,” Lorenzo said carefully. “The doctors say his voice box was ruptured during the shooting. He’s awake, he’s conscious, but he can’t speak. And it’s going to take time to recover.”
“Take me to him,” I said immediately. “Now.”
We drove to the hospital.
Marco was in a private room, hooked up to various monitors, his body covered in bandages and stitches. But his eyes were open, alert, tracking our movement as we entered.
“Marco,” I said, approaching his bed. “Thank God you’re alive.”
He tried to speak, his mouth forming words, but no sound came out. Frustration crossed his face, followed by pain as the effort aggravated his damaged throat.
“Don’t try to talk,” I said quickly. “The doctors said you need time to heal. Your voice will come back.”
But Marco shook his head violently, his eyes desperate. He kept trying to speak, kept forming words with no sound, his whole body straining with the effort.
“Boss, he’s trying to tell you something,” Lorenzo said.
I could see that. Marco’s eyes were wild with urgency, with the need to communicate something critical.
“Can you move your hands?” I asked. “Write it down?”
Marco tried to lift his arms, but they barely twitched. The damage to his body was too extensive he couldn’t move his arms or legs yet, the nerves still healing from the trauma.
Trapped. He was trapped in his own body, unable to speak, unable to write, desperate to tell me something but completely unable to communicate.
“We’ll get you a communication board,” I said. “Something where you can point with your eyes. The doctors can set it up. But Marco, whatever you need to tell me, it can wait until…”