Accardi (Genevieve and Matteo) by Allison Franklin novel Chapter 59

Accardi

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Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Gen had given up on finding where the first source of the dripping was coming from after she started to hear the

second. That one, she located rather quickly after Two had left her alone: it was her. She was still tied to the chair. She didn’t know how

long she’d been there. It could have been a few hours, maybe even a few days. “One,” at least, had not held up his end of the bargain to

cut her fingers off. One of the men behind the camera had tried. He came in with a cigar cutter and even put her pinkie inside but he

started to gag and settled for slapping her around instead.

Two came in after him. He said he had instructions from One to do with her what he wanted. Apparently he was still upset about the lip

thing. She smiled, reliving the memory of his terrified expression. The smile stretched the skin of her face and she went slack again to

avoid the pain. Two had cut her up a bit along her arms. That’s when the dripping started and it hadn’t stopped. She needed to get to a

hospital. A few ribs were broken, she could feel it… and hear it when she took in a breath. Her shoulder was dislocated from one of her

initial falls. She couldn’t see out of her left eye. None of that really worried her. What worried her was the dripping. It had been going on

for far too long and her strength was waning.

Shouts from the other side of the door startled her out of her journey into unconsciousness. She slowly rolled her head back so she could

see the door out of her right eye. Just the simple act of raising her head made her chest heave with exertion. The door burst open and

slammed back against the wall.

“He visited my parents, One. My parents!” Two screamed as he followed One into the room. There were no signs of the other two.

One walked up and sneered down at her. Or at least he tried to with half of his mouth covered in gauze. “You need to calm down, Rooster.

We’re fine.”

“Don’t use my name!” Two yelled, his eyes jerking back and forth between One and Gen.

One rolled his eyes. “Relax. You said he found your parents. He knows who you are now.”

“How would you like it if I told her your name then, T-”

Before he could finish, One had Rooster pinned to the wall. “Shut the hell up. You paid me to see this through, now let me see this

through.”

Rooster glared down at One. “I paid you to take Carmichael’s woman. Not Accardi’s!”

One scoffed and released Rooster. “That’s because you have no vision. Now, back to the matter at hand.”

“We should just let her go. The plane is waiting. We can let her go and he’ll spend the next day in the hospital with her. We’ll be at the

safehouse before he even starts looking for us!” Rooster argued, running his hand over his head.

One squatted down in front of Gen and brushed his thumb across her cheek. She had no fight left to flinch away. “What do you think,

Beautiful? Want to go on vacation with some guys who know how to show you a good time?”

Gen nodded, making One’s eyes widen in surprise. “Can I meet them first?”

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One chuckled. “Bleeding out and you are still a fighter. I like that.”

Without saying anything else, One stood up and procured a knife from his pocket. She stared blankly at him as he leaned forward and slashed the ropes tying her arms to the chair. Then he bent and undid the ones at her feet. Her skin prickled as blood rushed to the areas it had struggled to get access to until that point. Her eyes fluttered and she fell forward to be caught in One’s arms. He ran a hand down he: back as if he actually cared for her. For a moment she felt she might cry and hug him back. That feeling was immediately smothered when an explosion sounded outside of the warehouse.

One shot to his feet, causing Gen to fall forward and land on the ground. The concrete was cold and felt good against her skin. She pressed her swollen eye to the floor and sighed.

“What the fuck was that?!” Rooster screeched.

One pulled his phone out and looked at videos displayed on the screen. “Holy shit. We need to go.”

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Rooster asked.

One looked down at Gen and tried to smile. “Come on, Beautiful. We have a plane waiting.”

Gen groaned as One hauled her to her feet. He had to keep an arm around her waist as he hurried through the door of her cell. She glanced around and saw that they were in some sort of packaging warehouse. Large crates were stacked across the open floor plan. Gen limped as One walked her through the labyrinth of crates, around large machines, and through heaps of old ropes and trash.

Shouting came from outside of the warehouse. There was silence for thirty seconds in which One kept her at a fast pace. Then the gunshots started. Gen screamed and dropped to her knees. One followed after. He pushed her against one of the crates and cautiously glanced over the top of it to see what was going on. He pulled a pistol from his waistband and made sure it was loaded and the safety was off. A few crates down, Rooster was visibly shaking. She watched his face drain of color as the door to the warehouse blew inward. Gen

covered her head as shards of wood and metal flew past the crates on either side of them.

“Let’s go!” One shouted to Rooster over the chaos. One picked Gen up from the ground again.

“I… I can’t!” Rooster yelled. She stared at the man who had brutally beaten and cut her. The man she saw cowering behind the crate

seemed to not match with the man she’d created in her head. He almost looked like a teenager, waiting for death to pay him a visit.

One growled beside her ear. “Fine. Stay here and die then,” One hissed before gripping Gen’s upper arm in a vice and pulling her along

behind him.

A group of men entered the building. They were quiet but she could hear the shuttle of their feet as they spread out. A string of whistles

echoed across the warehouse floor, followed by a different set. Gen’s legs felt like jelly as One kept her in a crouch. Her breathing was labored and her vision was starting to tunnel from the blood loss. She heard One sigh in relief. She glanced up to see a bay door open toward the water where a small speedboat was waiting. His pace picked up and with it, Gen felt herself going slack from the exertion.

“Come on,” he hissed down at her as he neared the vessel. A gun shot hit a crate beside them.

Gen screamed as the bullet splintered wood that hit her in the face. In a flash, One caught her around her shoulders and spun her so that

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she was in front of him. He used her as a shield as he cautiously stepped backward. Gen stumbled on her own feet as he retreated.

“Come any closer and I put a bullet in her temple,” One warned as he pressed the barrel of his gun to her head.

Gen glanced up to see who he was talking to. There were at least eight men walking steadily toward them in a V formation. They were all dressed in black tactical gear with bullet–proof vests, extra ammunition attached at the chest along with large automatic rifles slung over their backs or shoulders. One or two of them even had grenades attached to their waists.

The man leading them seemed so familiar to her. As One pulled her backward his golden green eyes flashed. His face was set in stone.

Not a trace of emotion showed on his expression as he slowly advanced toward them, not heeding One’s threat. One came to an abrupt

stop and he cursed under his breath. They’d run into a crate. He started to move sideways. The man leading the tactical force tracked

them with his vacant eyes and the barrel of his gun.

“You’re going to let me go, Accardi,” One instructed.

Matteo? She took more time to look at the man in front. No, it couldn’t be. Matteo wasn’t this cold or detached. His face was never this

hardened. His eyes were never this practiced and deadly. He didn’t even spare her a glance or care that a gun was pressed to her temple.

The man in the lead didn’t respond. He merely continued to follow One’s movements.

“I’m warning you now. If you try to…”

The man in question at the front of the group blinked as if pulled from a trance. He raised the pistol an inch higher, bared his teeth and

fired. Blood sprayed against Gen’s face along with some kind of chunky matter. The arm holding her shoulders went limp. As One fell

backward, his body pulled her down with him. She gasped as they landed on the ground together, knocking her breath from her lungs. She

sucked in air as she tried to make sense of what had just happened. She rolled away from One. Still lying on the ground she looked over

at him. She covered her mouth with her shaking hand, now coated in his blood. Half of his face was gone. The half that remained was

coated in blood and brain matter. His remaining eye stared vacantly back at her. Gen felt the moment when her body went into shock. She

took in a few shaky breaths and then screamed in horror.

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