I briefly think about what the implications of head-butting him in the dick would bring, but stop when something catches my eye. Something dark, strapped to his belt, beneath the flap of his blazer.

Bingo.

"Doch' toy ital'yanskoy svolochi." Unlike with me, the inept Shrek sounds hesitant and weary with his tone. (the daughter of that Italian scum)

I catch a variant of the word Italian in his spiel and suddenly know where all this is stemming from.

I heave an annoyed sigh.

Since the beginning of time, the Italians and Russians of the criminal world have not gotten along. They never formed alliances, always worked against each other in business, with neither of them playing nice.

I didn't involve myself in this drama, but I knew enough to know that things had settled down over the last decade.

And this right here marked the end of the unproblematic era between the two.

But I didn't give a shit, and wanted no part in any of this. Petty crime empires weren't my cup of tea anymore.

"Ona ne." His voice reeks of indifference as he makes a move to turn around, while my gaze is trained on the gun. "Ubey yeye." (She's not. Kill her.)

I'd be a fool not to take the opportunity.

Which is why I do so, swiftly slipping my hands out of the knot and swiping his gun out of its holster. It takes me a mere twenty seconds to jolt up to my feet and have the gun aimed at him.

He's taller than I'd anticipated, which is exactly why the barrel of his own gun is pointed at his chest and not his head.

Clicks sound off around the room, and I glance over to all the men and women now pointing their own guns towards me. Yet the man in the centre of all the attention barely blinks at my sudden display.

No surprise, no alarm, nothing.

It irks me.

"I'm a little offended that your men would think a shitty knot would do in tying up an Ademaro." I offer smugly.

The man turns to me, finally settling his gaze on me, as though he's finally deeming me worthy of an ounce of his attention. But even then, it's voids of any interest.

The lack of reaction to my antics makes me antsy. Never had I been undermined by something as simple as a reaction, or lack thereof.

My fingers tighten around the gun in my hand as I consider how things could escalate. Guns weren't my weapon of choice, nor did I necessarily like using them for personal reasons, but for him, I'd make an exception.

"Who tied the ropes?" The first words of English out of his mouth are smooth, punctuated with ease, and his accent isn't thick; it's merely hinted in a way some might find intriguing.

But I'm focused on the way the phrase comes as a simple demand. One that sounds far too casual and dismissive for my liking.

But that's not what sends my mind into a spiral. It's the way his eyes examine me with indifference, yet he chooses to speak in English, not because he's speaking to me, but because he wants me to hear.

An arrogant man. I hated those.

The man who'd spiked my drink, also known as the inept Shrek, steps forward, his head hung, eyes cast downward. "ya sdelal." (I did)

A beat of silence passes, while the man before me shows no reaction. It's as though he could not function like a normal fucking human.

The question must have been a distraction because in a matter of milliseconds, he snapped my wrist, twisted the gun from my hand into his, and fired one lone bullet, straight into the man's forehead.

His head quite literally explodes. It's a gruesome sight that sends blood splattering onto the people standing around him.

No one bats an eye or even flinches. Not even as the blood of a fellow companion trickles down the sides of their faces, clothes, and onto the dirty floor by their feet.

Nothing. They stand rigid, enslaved to their positions out of pure fear.

It's something I've never seen before, which tells me I'm in over my head. And this realization sparks the one where the gravity of the situation settles on my shoulders, like a dead weight.

Shit.

Whoever these people were, they operated differently. Loyalty and family didn't uphold any value in keeping your life, as they did with the Italians.

This man was a cold-blooded tyrant.

A type so evil he wouldn't bat an eye whilst shooting a man who'd probably stuck by his side and remained loyal to him.

At least the Italians slapped some sappy shit about family to keep everyone in check. This man didn't need to appease the masses to keep people in check.

Interesting.

Perhaps he'd done that to scare me, drill through his superiority over me, or get a reaction out of me. I don't give him any of those things as I give an unimpressed sigh. "Well, that was a bit dramatic, don't you think?"

He flips the gun back onto me with too much ease for me to catch his bluff. "Sit down."

The day Celina Ademaro listened to the demands of a man without fighting back was the day hell would freeze over.

I stand tall. "And if I don't?"

From what little I heard, the bratva was a close-knit family operating mainly in Russia.

This man, however, didn't operate under a crime family, where power was distributed, albeit unevenly. This was simply him and his army.

He held all the power.

"Your blood will stain my thousand-dollar suit." My response was in an attempt to anger him, annoy him. But once again, I get no reaction but cold indifference as he finishes his sentence. "And inconvenience my day more than it already has."

I may not have been able to call his bluff, but I sure as fuck was smart enough to know no made man would go through all this trouble just to kill their collateral. "You'll need to try a bit harder." A smug smile graces my lips as I find the upper hand. "I highly doubt-"

My left ear rings, my eardrum threatens to burst, and a burning sensation prickles the entire left side of my face. I'd been shot at enough times to know that he'd not only grazed the shell of my ear with a bullet, but he'd sliced off an inch from a few strains of my hair along with it.

The glare I send him is doused in hatred as my hands shake at my sides and my body threatens to explode. It's in that moment, as I'm staring at his stoic face - void of any emotion, that I vow to kill this man before I die.

He raises his dark brow a fraction of an inch, a move so subtle I wouldn't catch it had I not been so perceptive. "Do I need to repeat myself?"

Despite the ringing in my ear, his voice pushes past it, loud and clear.

"When my father gets word of this, you'll be a dead man." It takes everything in me to bite my tongue and do what he says. "And I'll make sure I get the honor of slitting your throat."

He's unfazed by my threats.

I wanted his head, and I'd do it with my bare hands.

"Tell me your name." He doesn't even have the decency to form it as a question.

"Celina Ademaro." My teeth slam together as I grit out my response.

The man puts his gun away, a clear sign that he doesn't see me as worthy of being a threat, and instead pulls out his phone, before directing all his attention to it.

I sit there seething and plotting every single detail of his gruesome death while he clicks away at his phone.

He doesn't have a gun to my head, and my hands aren't tied, but he's proven that he doesn't need to. He could and would win.

Which is why I'm smart enough to shut up and comply, for now.

"Celina Ademaro doesn't exist." It's only when he slips his phone back into his pocket that he looks back at me.

My hands tighten around the metal of the chair in an attempt to keep my temper at bay. "My father didn't want me tied to his name." I grit, forcing out an explanation. "I took my mother's legal last name."

Despite the situation, it was the truth. Ademaro put a target on my back. This way, I was able to go to school and live a life away from the spotlight.

His tone is dismissive and cold once again. "Prove it."

No room for argument, nor is there any room for understanding.

"My father's ring." I make a show of holding my hand up in front of him. "If you focus your beady little eyes on this," I turn my hand and display the small engraving. "You'd see my last name engraved on it."

The man glances at it, no doubt spotting the Ademaro carved into the gold band. It was the same ring that the other two men who founded the Galanti mafia wore, only they had their last names engraved on their rings.

The man eyes me for a moment, almost in contemplation, before taking a step forward.

I sit, paralyzed as his large hands reach for the collar of my shirt and in one fast motion, he tears it down the middle, leaving me in nothing but my black bra.

Not only does he violate me so easily, but he doesn't look the least bit interested as a chunk of my shirt dangles from his hand.

I try to glare at him, but he moves behind me and so I use my words, "I'll kill you for that-" a hand curls itself around a chunk of my long hair and he pulls my head back before shoving the piece of cloth into my mouth.

And it's only after he's snapped a photo of me, restrained, gagged, and in nothing but my bra, does he slip his phone back into his pocket and look down at me, his stare so naturally unnerving I almost fear for my life.

"You'd die trying."

Celina

If you told me I'd be spending my Friday night tied to a chair, topless, with the most attractive man I'd ever laid eyes on. I'd be disappointed to know that it was to prove my relation to my papa as twelve - now eleven - people watched.

But alas, here I was, humoring this man while inadvertently humiliating myself.

The man's fingers fly across his phone screen, and I can't help the way my eyes linger on his hands as he sends out a text, the picture he'd just snapped of me no doubt the subject.

I debate on telling him that I'm the worst person to hang over the Italian mafia's head, especially when half of them didn't know I existed, and the other half alienated me. But I bite my tongue, knowing that if I did so, my chances of getting out of here alive would be cut in half.

With that thought in mind, I dart my eyes to the door.

Five people stand in my direct line of escape: four men, one woman.

I could take out the men with ease, but the woman, she was slim and small, meaning what she lacked in build, she made up for in skill.

She'd be a challenge.

I'd need to take her out first-

"You try anything, and I'll kill you myself." My captor's smooth voice breaks me from my thoughts, and I turn to look up at him, while his attention remains on his phone.

I spit the rag in my mouth at his feet, aiming for his shoe, but it seems like his instincts are more attentive than a trained assassin's, for he steps a quarter of an inch to the side, dodging the hit.

"I'd like to see you try." Despite the indifference oozing off him, my anger is clear as day in my response.

He slips the phone into his pocket and finally graces me with a glance, albeit fleeting and filled with disinterest, "I wouldn't need to try." There's no smug note to his tone; it's as though he's stating a fact.

I chuckle in disbelief, a sound that'd wound any man's ego. He doesn't take the bait.

He does, however, step forward, the move casual, yet his figure is large enough to naturally intimidate.

Despite his tall height, he's anything but lanky. Broad shoulders, hands creeping with the type of prominent veins one gets from building up physical endurance, and a lean build I could recognise even beneath his crisp suit.

I didn't like the threat he imposed when he stepped into my personal space, and so, with a jerk of my knee, I aimed for his groin. Before I can make contact, he uses his knee to swiftly nudge mine to the side and darts a hand out and around the base of my throat.

His palm is so large that his hand is almost able to span the entire circumference of my throat, albeit uncomfortably.

"I'd simply hold you like this." His stare is the equivalent of a man watching grass grow. Dull and tedious, while he uses the strength of his hand around my neck to drag me up to my feet so the tips of my toes skim the floor.

As my throat begins to close and my instincts kick in, I swing my foot forward, knocking my knee into his abdomen, which seems to be made of steel because the action doesn't deter him.

All it does is cause his hand to tighten its grip and lift me higher until I'm nearly dangling in the air, completely at his mercy.

I gasp for breath, and he doesn't blink an eye.

"And do one of two things." His voice is calm, his eyes too. The man feels nothing. I claw at his hand around my throat and swallow back my panicked breaths as he continues to tighten his hold, inch by inch.

To struggle would show him weakness, and I'd die before I begged for my life.

He pulls me closer, yet keeps me a safe distance away from him. "Either watch the life drain from your beady little eyes." My words are thrown back in my pale face as his deep voice seeps past the havoc he's creating in my mind. "Or use the gun at my waist and let you join him."

He doesn't clarify, nor does he need to. Not when a man is lying on the floor with a bullet lodged in his brain.

And that's precisely why it creeps into my bones. Like a plague, a paralysis, one that's reserved for the weak and softhearted. And for the first time in a long time, I feel fear.

It isn't the type that I find solace in, nor is it the type that draws my curiosity and captures my excitement. It's the type that makes me feel like a shell of the little girl I once was.

The little girl I refused to resort to.

And as the lack of oxygen flowing through my body darkens my vision, I begin to find peace in my inevitable fate.

That is, until it's ruined by the soft chime sounding from his pocket.

It isn't until he's pulled out his phone with his free hand, the one around my throat not slackening in the slightest, that the peace turns into anticipation.

My captor's blue-eyed gaze remains unchanged while I wait, unknowing of what he's going to do next.

The man was unpredictable, ruthless, and for once, I couldn't call his bluff.

He takes one glance down at the screen and must deem whatever he sees more important, for the next thing I know, he's letting me go with a simple flick of his wrist.

A flick of his wrist that sends me flying and nearly toppling onto the floor before I catch myself on my one steady foot. A move that causes my left ankle to burst with pain. The unbearable kind that tells me the chances of it being fine are less than stellar.

The pain in my ankle is quickly overpowered by the urge to suck in copious amounts of oxygen. I refrain, limiting myself to small, steady inhales, forcing the need to gasp and wheeze down to keep a small shred of my pride.

As though he's able to read right through me, the Russian tyrant moves his gaze from my face, down to my ankle. Never had I experienced someone look so unbothered while asserting their dominance and succeeding. This scar-faced monster has managed to do it with just one glance.

I didn't let men exercise their dominance over me often, but when they did, I grew to realise there was only one way to eliminate the power they had over me.

Kill them.

I force myself past the shortness of breath but find myself in a mental battle, fighting the urge to take a seat and relieve the pressure on my now sprained ankle.

It's only when my logic kicks in, telling me that a sprain is less of a disadvantage than a broken ankle, that I take a seat while he answers his phone, the voice on the other end booming on speaker for everyone to hear.

"You son of a bitch, you're a dead man-" Despite my tendency to refuse the comfort of others, my papá's voice causes the veins around my beating heart to loosen until I can breathe evenly.

A barely there nose of acknowledgement escapes the back of the man's throat, a hum but perfectly in tune. "How pleasant of you to finally return my calls." His composure is completely intact, while my father is so clearly seething on the other end.

"Where is she?" Come, my papá's demands.

"Right here." He eyes me like a commodity, one he's watching for any signs of emotion. I don't give him any.

"I can see why you keep this one away from the spotlight." He takes a step closer, and I jut my foot out to keep him away. He merely kicks it aside. "She's unbearable, unpleasant, and a terrible excuse of a woman." That gets a hint of anger out of me as I narrow my eyes. "Even more so than the other Italian women in your family."

My father remains silent, clearly considering his words carefully, but in the end, his temper gets the better of him."If you've harmed her in any way-"

My papá's behaviour begins to turn embarrassing, which is why I cut into the conversation. "I'm fine, papá."

His sigh of relief blares through the speaker like a scolding, "Are you okay?"

The only sign of acknowledgement I get from the Russian is the slight raise of his brow, but even then, it's mockingly.

"Yes." I grit my teeth reluctantly, knowing I'd slit my eyeballs open with my fingernails before I admitted I wasn't in front of this man.

"Have you had anything to eat?" His pestering and the obvious worry in his voice do nothing for my case. In fact, the last thing I needed was to be babied before a room full of his enemies.

"No." I brush off.

"You need to eat." His voice hardens, "Get some sugar-"

"Okay, let me just ask the man who'd nearly shot my ear off for a fucking juice box." Despite the little voice inside my head saying it, I don't speak the thoughts aloud. Instead, I settle for a repeat of my previous statement.

"I'm fine, papá." The thought of him making me out to be some damsel makes my skin crawl. "Cosa vuole?"(Italian|What does he want)

There's a pause before he answers. "Non lo so." (Italian| I don't know)

My papá was as good a liar as he was at taming his emotions. He did, in fact, know, but he just wasn't going to tell me.

Luckily for him, I knew better than to pry, nor did I necessarily give a big enough shit to invest myself in this drama.

"Qualunque cosa sia." My voice is low as I stare into lifeless eyes, relishing in the way he'll need to scramble to make sense of my words. "Non darglielo." (Italian| Whatever it is, don't give it to him.)

"Non è più un'opzione."

(Italian|That's no longer an option)

I heave yet another sigh. If there was one thing my papá's world revolved around, it was family, and aside from everyone working under him, I was the only direct blood he had.

Silvio Ademaro was hardly ever vile; he upheld the image of a perfect gentleman. But right now, he was moments from making a rash decision.

I needed to be his voice of reason.

"Mi ucciderà quando otterrà ciò che vuole." I twist my ankle, building up a tolerance for the pain, and glance around the room at his army of imprisoned Russians.

(Italian| He'll kill me when he gets what he wants.)

I can feel papá's hesitation as apprehension seeps through his emotional mess of a mind. "E se non gli do quello che vuole? Cosa succede allora?"

(Italian| And if I don't give him what he wants? What happens then?)

I don't get the chance to speak as another voice beats me to it. "She still dies." The low baritone wipes the smugness from my face only for it to tighten as I fight the urge to hold back my surprise. "Only this time," he tilts his head, seeming to grow satisfied with my strained expression, "I have the pleasure of dragging it out."

My papá's curses flow through the air, but I stay silent, my eyes boring in on the man whom I had yet again underestimated.

Of course, he speaks Italian.

"You have forty-eight hours to get me what I want." Perhaps I'm imagining the satisfaction on his face, but he holds my eye while speaking into the phone. "Or I start sending her to you, piece by piece."

I don't get to hear what my papá has to say, for the scar-faced man hangs up on one of New York City's most powerful Italian men.

Perhaps the lack of glucose in my bloodstream is making its way to my head, because all I can manage is a pathetic observation. "You understood us."

He glances down at the watch on his wrist. "You underestimate me."

His ability to dismiss me so quickly, alongside the power dynamic he has while standing, has me shooting up to my feet.

"Go to hell." And while I'm not proud of stooping so low, I spit at his feet and relish in the way my spit finally lands on his expensive shoe; it's enough to make him pause.

The slightest bit of tension overcomes his body; it's minor, but the only thing I've been able to drag out of him.

"I'm already there." My action seems to have struck a nerve, for the next thing I know, he's moving his foot forward and kicking my feet out from under me. He does it so effortlessly while I'm left to crash back into the hard chair and watch his ever-so-large figure step up to me. "And for the next forty-eight hours, I'm afraid you'll be joining me."

I don't dare admit I'm the least bit intimidated by him.

Unimpressed, I roll my eyes. "Whatever it is you're so desperate to have from my papá, you won't get it." I force myself back up, ignoring the pain in my ankle as I push past all my emotions and assert my own dominance.

Truth is, the man needs me alive and in one piece for the next forty-eight hours, that is.

"The only way you'll get my father's compliance is if I beg for it." My eyes coast around the room, the number of people here for little old me restoring my confidence.

I stand a little taller and tilt my head up at the most powerful man in the room. "And I'll die before that happens."

He could beat me, harm me, and play mind games with me all he wanted. But I'd been trained for a day like this.

He wouldn't be able to break me without going insane himself.

Something flickers in his eyes, it's minuscule and gone in an instant, but I catch it.

Annoyance.

It should scare me and act as a warning, but all it does is excite the fire in my chest, begging to explode.

"Show her to her room," I note how he speaks in English, his tone stone cold as he turns and begins to make his way out of the room. "You have my permission to use force, just make sure she's still breathing by the end of it."