Taken by the Mafia King のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 401 - チャプター 410

TommasoThe next day, I headed down to my office after Paige had left for the shelter. I hadn’t woken up to any panicked calls from Stan or Carp that Gamal had broken loose, so I wasn’t surprised when I found the two of them, looking exhausted, in the chairs in front of my desk when I arrived. Shift change.“You two look like hot garbage,” I said. “Have Miranda make you coffee and breakfast before you leave.”Stan nodded. Carp just rubbed his eyes.“Shit, I’ll have her make some for all three of us now.” I texted the chef to just bring in a pot of espresso and three cups when she had a chance.“I’m not as young as I used to be.” Stan shook his head. “But I don’t know what Carp’s excuse is. As guard jobs go, the kid was a fucking breeze.”“My excuse is that I did the recon for the airstrip job last night,” Carp muttered. “And he was a breeze if constant whimpering doesn’t make you want to kill a very valuable hostage.”“Whimpering?” I asked.Miranda opened the door with the pot of espr

TommasoI stood in the mouth of a dark alley, the full moon overhead casting the brick walls and trash cans in stark relief. Technically, I was supposed to meet Hal inside the alley, but I wasn’t stupid enough to corner myself when meeting an unknown element. In the back of my mind, I kept picturing my dad, hitting the ground in an alley just like this one and never getting up again. Stan swore up and down that Hal’s dad said he was a good kid, basically, just a little thick. I trusted Stan, trusted his sense of others. But I still placed my back against a wall and didn’t walk more than a foot into the alley. I owned enough cops in the city that I wasn’t exactly going to get picked up for loitering.A few minutes after the chosen time, someone sauntered up to me. A younger man, maybe a couple of years older than Paige, with a dense thatch of blond hair that stood up at all angles and a haze in his eyes that told me he’d imbibed something before our meeting appeared. I swallowed down a

TommasoI tapped my fingers on the steering wheel of one of the many vans positioned a couple of blocks away from the Mansion on Friday night. Stan sat in the passenger seat next to me, and a team of hand-picked men occupied the back. Over an earpiece Lyle had given me, I listened to what Killian was hearing on the inside through a call he had open in his pocket.“Yeah,” he murmured to one of his allies. “We’ve got the numbers. You’ll know when it’s going down.”“Long live the new king,” the man replied.I took a deep breath. Killian had smuggled in more of his men than Marino would normally allow in other crews, and all of his allies had been willing to appear. I’d brought a fairly small strike team—for the balls of what we were about to do—counting on support once we made it inside.Room noise filled the speaker for a long moment. I only caught snippets of conversation, low music. I could picture the whole setup. The low lighting, the quiet music, everyone in masks. With that anonym

PaigeI sat in one of the many vans outside of the Mansion with Sera. We could just barely hear the few remaining gunshots, and Sera flinched almost every time. I sighed and fiddled with the radio.“It’s better out here,” Sera said.“No the fuck it’s not,” I spat. I would’ve given almost anything to walk in there with Tom, but he said that while my shooting was getting up to par, this was going to be all-out war. I wasn’t ready for a combat situation, so I had to sit in the fucking car. Again.She met my gaze steadily. “Let’s say you’re not gonna get hurt. Let’s say you can tolerate watching him get hurt. Would you really be able to walk back in there?”I swallowed and looked at my hands. Last night, I dreamt that Gamal, our house guest, was chasing me through the basement I remembered from my night at the Mansion, and all of the bastards I could remember bid on me when I accidentally stumbled onto the auction block. Once again, though, the dream ended before anyone won. But realistic

PaigeStanding in the basement of the Mansion, I handed the last woman a set of clean sweats and stepped back as she began to change. The ceiling, padded to reduce noise traveling upstairs in a way I hadn’t understood last time I was here, pressed down on me.No, it didn’t. It just felt like it did. I scrubbed my hands over the goosebumps on my arms and forced myself to stop looking. I didn’t need to see this place through all new eyes. Riccardo Marino was dead. No one else would ever be kept in the tall, metal cages I hadn’t known to appreciate when I was last here.That was another train of thought I didn’t want to follow. I turned to a couple of women, who’d already been checked out by Sera, sitting on the floor together and crying.“Is there anything I can get for you?” I asked. “We’re moving out soon”—as soon as Sera finished checking over the last few, if I had my say—“but if there’s anything immediate, I’ll see what I can do.”One of them looked up at me with her lower lip quiv