Watchers in the Dark
**DAMIEN**
“What the fuck is your malfunction, Vee?” Tiny snarls in my face once we’ve tired ourselves out so thoroughly that I don’t even know where we are anymore.
I’m on my back in the wet sand, the foam of the ocean riding up against my clothes as I lay there panting, blood oozing from my busted lip. “That was fun,” is my only reply as I sit up and gauge how far we’ve somehow tumbled from the house itself.
*Shit. We’re clear on the other side of the beach.*
*Ruby is going to be so pissed.*
“Fuck,” I snap,pushing to my feet and shoving Tiny away from me. The little bastard is a good little scrapper. I only got a few taps to his face as we rumbled over the sand in a furious whirlwind of flying fists and well timed kicks.
“That went on for too long,” Tiny comments, spitting a mouthful of blood into the sea. “We shouldn’t have left our post.”
“Back to being a robot I see,” I quip, hedging around the crop of shattered rock that shields Santos’ cottage from my immediate sight.
“Fuck you Dickhead,” Tiny breathes, grinning as the pair of us charge through the sand back toward the house. “Thanks though. I think I needed that little tumble.”
*Asshole.*
The little fucker is hardly winded and if I didn’t feel like I’d just failed Ruby for the second time I knock his fucking teeth into his throat.
**ROMANY**
My heart is thudding in my chest, my ears burning at the tips as I watch the familiar face materialize from a shadowed figure cut in a crisp Italian suit into the dreaded corporeal form of someone I really had not wanted to ever see again.
The back door swings open behind Ruiz and for the briefest second his eyes meet mine with what I hope is understanding.
“Angeletto,” Ruiz says plainly, a wicked smirk turning his lip before he heads toward the bar.
*Bastard. He knew this shit was coming. He knew this fucking douche was headed here.*
“Hello again, Gorgeous,” Antony Angeletto says as he saunters in from the back patio. “Fancy meeting you here.”
My lip curls up in distaste despite the very real fear that gnaws on the pinpricks of my nerves and I leap to my feet before I can stop myself, every fiber of me being readying to run for Santos’ room in the back and to Ruby who is somewhere trapped behind the wall.
*Does Santos know this fucking slimeball is here? Did he know he was coming?*
My mouth falls open to scream for Ruby, or Jaime, or even Anna for fuck’s sake, but I’m suddenly gripped from behind, my body pinned across the rock hard chest of that demon Ruiz. *Wait… no. Not Ruiz. Then who?*
The man behind me is wearing a suit and smells like molded cigars. Trying to slant my head toward the left, toward the bar, only makes the stranger behind me tighten his hold and I can’t help it, I whimper uselessly. Every single inch of me recoils, but it does me no good as the man stretched along my rear wraps his arm tight across my front, locking my arms behind a steel band.
I tune my ear into my surroundings, trying like hell to garner any sort of noise coming from the kitchen where Jaime and Anna had disappeared.
Other than the sudden clip of carefully acquainted footsteps, it’s dead fucking silent and that worries me in all sorts of ways.
If Jaime were still in the kitchen, I’d hear his mouth for sure.
*Unless - Jesus Christ! Is he part of this too?*
No, no. I refuse to believe that the fun loving, hilarious, jovial pilot I’ve just met is as evil as the rest of these devils.
“Me encanta lo que he atrapado en mi red, hijo. La puta de Scavo.” ***Look what I’ve caught in my net, son. Scavo’s whore.*** A dark, treacherous voice hisses behind my head and I’m no expert, nor do I speak a lick of Spanish, but I’m fairly certain the man just insulted me. Or… threatened me. Or worse.
Ruiz’s voice filters through the madness, the soft link of ice cubes dropping into a glass, the edge behind his words, “Slow down, padre. No need to manhandle the girl, eh? You see what she is wearing. Hardly battle gear. She is not armed. Let her be. Have a drink, she is not going anywhere.”
A derisive snort sounds in my ear, then the hot wet words of some old Homer’s tongue, “You will behave, eh, Little Whore? You will keep your tongue silent. If you do not? I will hand you your fate *now.* by peeling your skin from your bones and removing your vocals with my bare fucking hands.”
I suddenly wish I had the balls to bite this man, Ruiz’s father. I want nothing more than to sink my teeth into his disgustingly putrid flesh, but I nod, playing the only hand I seem to have in front of me for now.
Ruiz’s father shoves me forward and back onto the sofa with so much force the damn thing teeters for a moment and I smash my face into the headrest hard enough to feel a bruise swelling behind my eye.
Before I can spin back around to face the newcomers in the room, I catch Ruiz’s gaze from behind the bar and what I see there has confidence bubbling behind my breast.
He’s pissed. I can see it in the way he crunches the ice cubes between his teeth as he stares over my head at what must be his father’s face,, but he makes no move to stop the man when I feel his hand in my hair to rip my head backward.
Suddenly I’m staring into one of the ugliest mugs that has ever cursed my vision. The image of this man is rendered upside down, yet it is still potent enough to send a spiral of nausea into my belly.
*Do I know him? Where have I seen this beast before?*
His skin is dark word leather and beaded with warts and moles in the sizes of fat deer ticks that freckle his features. They cover up more of his face than the wrinkles of his skin, and when he smiles beneath his carefully clipped gray mustache… I remember him.
I remember his face.
*Oh. Oh my God.*
“Nice to see you again, Little Whore. The last time I enjoyed the pleasure of your view, you were speared on the tip of Enzo’s dick.”
Then he flips me around with a twist of his fist, my body having no choice but to do his bidding as he wrenches my neck to the side by use of my long coiled hair.
“Where is Santos?” Another voice enters, and I would look at him, but my eyes are sealed to the old devil’s. One of the men of my nightmares. One of the watchers in the dark.
And suddenly more of that *fateful* night returns to me and I cannot even breathe.
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