Chapter 1~ Prison Break

Chapter 1

PRESENT DAY

Gold Coast, Chicago

•• •• ••

Vincenzo Mancini

•• •• ••

“Isn’t that exactly what psychopaths do?” Marcel snarled. “Make a point outside the frame and confidently present themselves as winners.”

I snatched the bottle from him, eyeing him when he tried to keep his grip on it. “You’re not going to have her, and that’s final.”

“A little touchy about this one, are we?” Marcel remarked with a sly smirk.

I reclined in my seat, “What can I say?”

A man might want to enjoy the soft hands of these sexy, naked strippers without the constant bickering of his brother and their, but not a man like me, apparently.

As it turns out, women and an endless addiction to sex and the unholy love for all the fucked up things you can imagine in the dark underworld are not the only things I share with my brother.

We also share a passionate desire to bite off each other’s throats.

Because, where is the fun in agreeing on a simple fact instead of bickering like two-year-olds? Nay, the point was proven long ago that whoever kills each other first among us gets a special place by the right-hand side of our lord and personal savior– in hell, of course, after our short sojourn on God’s green earth.

The stripper’s skilled fingers lowered to the tent which was slowly beginning to form in my pants, she squeezed my balls lightly, and my grip around the tumbler tightened.

Her fingers, ever so light, schemed towards my chin and slowly, she tilted it until my eyes were in the direction of her lips. They looked kissable, not exactly the nicest lips I’d seen, but a horny man couldn’t care less.

I reached for the back of her head and my fingers palmed a handful of her braids firmly enough to make her wince, but I didn’t mind.

I pulled her back and observed her for a minute. “You look fragile, are you sure you can handle me?” I growled.

“Kiss me and find out,” The girl dared.

She gripped my tie and twirled it around her fingers while her tongue moistened her lips, promising me things, things I couldn’t wait to find out.

Just as I pulled her in to finally get a taste, my cuckold brother snatched her right off my face and kissed her instead. I watched them with a mix of frustration and amusement because the whore didn’t seem to mind the change in client.

“I seriously need to get laid tonight,” I mumbled while refilling my tumbler.

“We could take her home,” Marcel quickly suggested between sloppy kisses.

The whore he was kissing reached forward and caressed my chest with one hand and Marcel’s growing tent with the other, but I quickly slapped her hand away.

“Alone.” I stated firmly, “And I need to get rid of you.”

A faint smile curved my brother’s lips, “Is this about that girl? You fucking backstabber! You want to have her alone, don’t you?”

A gave him a steely glare, “I’ve told you to perish every thought of having the bitch. She is not going to warm your bed– or mine for that matter.”

“Then why have you been so uneasy about her?” Cedro chipped in.

We were in one of my private clubs, there was buzz, strippers, music loud enough to make an infant go deaf, and yet Cedro’s ears always found their way to our conversation.

Frustration welled up inside me. “I’m done here,” I hissed, rising from my seat. The stripper shot me a disappointed look, but I ignored it.

Marcel immediately stopped his antics, his voice a taunting medicine to my frustrated bones. “Let me come with you.”

“No,” I replied sharply, “Enjoy. I just hope you go back to Canada soon enough.” Without another glance, I strode out of the club.

I slid into my car and steered it onto the dark, dead road, relishing the solitude while ‘Mirror’ by Bruno Mars ft. Lil Wayne blasted, lightening my mood.

Despite my status, I preferred driving myself and moving alone, a habit from my days combing the brutal streets of Chicago alone.

For a man who spent half his life, and that’s twelve years, believing he was just an unwanted bastard, and learning to survive the harsh streets of the Chicago underworld without a map, luxury certainly hasn’t erased my need for simplicity.

Not even discovering I was a Mancini, the family I had envied for so long before fate decided to frown on me and actually fulfill that unfortunate wish, could do that to me.

The first thing I saw as I drove into my compound was Aurelio. “I was just about to come get you,” he said impatiently. “There’s been another incident!”

My blood ran cold. Another incident meant more trouble—the fourth one this month. “Does this have to do with her?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

“Yes,” Aurelio confirmed, “Bitch damn near tore down the cell block, God knows what with.”

“With her teeth, I’d hope not,” I muttered.

You’d think holding a scrawny lady in a cell with fifty armed men on guard the whole block shouldn’t be this difficult, but no. This bitch has found ways to escape every fucking place I’ve thought of putting her in the short period of one month.

With the way she was going, I might just have to take Russel’s advice and throw her in a dungeon where she would never have to see the light of day again.

But I’m busy, too busy with actual important stuff to want to distract myself by indulging her, and certainly not in the mood to have another taste of her viper tongue—at least not for another two months.

The first and last time I took the gag out of her mouth, I learned the hard way why my brother kept it there in the first place.

Apparently, assaulting a Made Man was not the only thing on her cunning forte. On her first prison break attempt, she seduced one of my most trusted men into unlocking her cell in exchange for a passionate make-out session.

The next attempt, she promised Santiago heaven and earth if he would just see to it that she was let out so she could ‘breathe’ fresh air for a minute or she would die. God knows what the bitch had in her tongue because yes, Santiago did release her.

The third time, she somehow managed to twist the guns out of the hips of my two men at her door and held them at gunpoint with the promise of blowing their brains out if they didn’t release her.

Trust me, nobody wants to die at the hands of a little lady—they’d rather live with the shame,. Except he didn’t live to experience it after I found out.

And now– well, God knows what she did!

I entered the cell to find scattered furniture, Aurelio explained that she had somehow managed to cut through the iron bar of the cell with nothing but her hairpin. I found it ridiculous until I saw the place myself.

The bar was cut just enough to fit her small hand, and the rest was self-explanatory. She slipped her hand through the hole and snatched the gun off Aurelio’s waist when he came to check on her for the night.

Her only mistake was targeting Aurelio.

He was the commander of my soldiers. So while her plot to get the gun from his hip worked, she hadn’t anticipated that he’d knock the air right out of her lungs the moment she turned.

That explained the thin trail of blood running down her nose.

I had specifically instructed all my men never to lay a finger on her because, even though she was no longer the princess she used to be, everyone under Region Mafia Men knew who her father was.

I might have instructed them not to touch her, but I said nothing about using force if the need arose, especially in cases like this, so Aurelio’s reason for hitting her was completely justified.

“Got your fucking nose broken, I see.” I remarked tersely as I reached her. She was huddled on the cold floor, her head hanging low. I removed the gag from her mouth and snapped, “Why?”

She looked up, and surprisingly, that defiant gleam was still in her eye. “I told you, Vincenzo, I’m not going to make this easy for you.”

I regarded her with a steely glare, “You realize that, will get you nothing but my wrath, don’t you?”

She sat up, squaring her shoulders with pride that both surprised and irritated me. “I don’t care what dungeon you put me in, Vincenzo ‘bastard’ Mancini,” she hissed. “I’m going to keep trying to escape you, and when I finally succeed, I’ll hunt down your fucking brother, gouge out his eyes, and feed his cock to his useless wife!”

‘Bastard’ was a name that traveled faster than the speed of light when it was rumored that I was Don Cosimo Mancini’s son, and even faster after the third DNA result proved that the pickpocket street boy was indeed a Mancini.

The title was like a rotten stigma that never left me, and I had grown to accept it. But hearing it from this girl had a way of grating on my nerves.

All the times she had caused a ruckus in her cell, I had Aurelio handle it, and he always insisted she needed to be taught a lesson Vincenzo-style. But I’ve always declined because I wanted to enjoy that privilege alone when the time comes.

Now I see just how much trouble he must have been through not being unable to smack the fuck out of that smart mouth.

“I’ve only talked to you twice in my entire life and I can tell why no one likes you,” it was supposed to be a silent thought, but it came out loud enough for her to hear it.

“I don’t need you to like me,” she snapped. “And I don’t like you either. I hate you so much that if looks could kill, you’d be toast by now.”

“Bold of you to assume I give a flying dog’s ass what a dirty slut in my prison thinks.” My tone was dry.

“I don’t like you because I love your brother!” It sounded like a confession she needed to get off her chest, so I listened with amusement. “I’ve loved him all my life! He’s the only man I’ll ever love—” her voice broke, “and the first one to reject me, apparently.” The defiance slipped back into her tone and she sprang to her feet, “But when I get out of here—”

I quickly leaned forward and snatched her wrist, pulling her back to a sitting position. “You know what’s worse than your present situation? Thinking I want you to like me. But what’s even worse than that ridiculous thought? The fact that if somehow you ever manage to escape me in an alternate universe, you’ll die as an old cat lady curled up in a hole in the filthiest part of the earth, hoping I never find you.”

For a moment, her eyelids batted in something close to fear, then she snapped and it was gone. “Why did you bring me here? Why didn’t you let your brother keep me?”

“Because, bitch, your father hurt me a long time ago, and you, my darling, are his price to pay.”

“My father is dead. Your brother killed him!”

My grip on her wrist tightened until I could almost feel her bones crack. “Unfortunately, his death wasn’t enough atonement, and by choosing this path, you’ll be suffering my wrath full time now.”

“Let me go!”

“Of course, my lady,” I released her hand so forcefully that she crashed her head against the hard concrete. “Aurelio!”

Aurelio came running to my side. “Yes?”

“Bring her to the dungeon and call everyone at Fog House. We have a show to watch tonight.”