“I didn’t agree to that.” I squared my shoulders.
“I think you need to learn a lesson.” He laughed. “You don’t mess with me.”
“Why? You messed with me and my family!” I shouted at him. “Why should we let you get away with not paying us properly? Do you think I’m going to steal cars and take a quarter of the money? This is a free market, Marty, I can do what I f**king want.”
“You’re costing me money, Logan. I don’t like it when that happens.” He stepped towards me. “And neither does my boss. You have screwed us over one too many times. Your dad knew the deal. He stole the car, brought it to me right away, and took whatever money he got. He was grateful and happy. You’re just a greedy little boy. You’ve been causing way too much trouble. I tried to give you a warning, but you f**ked up one too many times, and now my boss is ready to take you down.”
“Huh?” I looked at him puzzled. “What are you talking about? What boss?”
“Logan,” Vincent hissed at me, but I was too busy staring Marty down to turn towards him.
“You’re a bully, Marty. Give me my money and f**king leave us alone.” I walked towards him, ready to take him by the scruff of his collar. I was surprised that he didn’t have his henchmen there. There was nothing to stop me from beating him up. And after him, I would beat up Joey. I knew he was a sorry motherfucker. I would get both of them so black and blue that they wouldn’t pull this shit again with anyone, then I would steal the money and leave town. “Where the f**k is the money?” I shouted at Marty. “Give it to me now before we take this down a very bad road.”
“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, Logan.” Another voice came from the left of me, and I turned around to see who had spoken. The voice sounded slightly familiar but I couldn’t place it. As I turned and saw who was there, the blood drained from my face, and I couldn’t say a word.
“It’s nice to see you again,” he cackled while staring at me with evil eyes. “Well, I can’t really lie, it’s not that nice seeing you again.”
“The feeling is mutual,” I finally spoke up, and took a deep breath as my head started spinning. What was the mayor doing here? I looked at Vincent and his face reflected the shock that was on my own. I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I felt like I was in a bad dream and there was nothing I could do to escape the impending danger I saw coming.
“You can go now, Joey.” The mayor smiled at the traitor casually. “Thanks for your help.”
I turned to look at him and he shrugged. “Traitor,” I hissed at him, wanting to kill him. My brain was screaming at me, I told you not to trust him. I told you not to trust him.
“You brought it on yourself.” He looked back at me with a hard expression.
“What do you want?” I turned back to the mayor, unable to stop the hatred spewing from my eyes. In that moment, I wished I had a gun because I would have shot him without thinking of the consequences.
“I want you and your family to leave River Valley. I don’t want you to call my daughter again, and you must never see her again.” His voice was cold, and I saw his upper lip twitch slightly. I realized that more than anything, he was mad about me seeing Maddie. This wasn’t about the cars or selling them to Marty; this was about me not being good enough for his little girl. As I stared at him, I realized that we had one thing in common. We both loved Maddie with all of our hearts. The only problem was that he was an evil bastard as well.
“That’s not going to happen.” I stared back at him, not moving. “I love Maddie, I will not stop talking to her or seeing her, unless she tells me not to.”
“Then I will call the police and tell them to come and collect you and your brother.” The mayor pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I will have you arrested for grand theft auto and for assault.”
“You won’t do that,” I called his bluff. “You have no leg to stand on. I haven’t assaulted anyone, and you set up the theft. I’ll have you go down as a co-conspirator. I will tell them that you knew what Marty has been up to.”
“I don’t think you get it, Martelli.” The mayor looked at me pompously. “Marty isn’t up to anything. He works for me. I run this town. How do you think you were able to steal so many cars without the police coming after you?”
“Marty has connections?” I frowned and looked at Marty, who stood there looking small and insignificant. Why hadn’t it struck me before? It was unlikely that Marty was in charge of the whole endeavor. I had never questioned what my dad had said about Marty having the police connections. “You have no connections, do you?” I felt my shoulders slump as I looked at him. “You’ve been working for the mayor from the beginning.” I shook my head as it all started coming together. My dad had started stealing cars because he had no other options and Marty had approached him. But if Marty had been working for the mayor this whole time, it meant that it was the mayor who had told Marty to contact me dad. “So you set my dad up on purpose?” I frowned as I realized the truth about the situation. I stared at the mayor as I spoke to him. “You set this whole thing up from the beginning, didn’t you? From when you were kids? That was your whole plan.”
“I’ll tell you this, you’re a lot smarter than your dad.” The mayor laughed heartily while he stared at me with cold eyes. “My father was in this business for years. He told me I needed to recruit someone to help with the business. I was friends with your dad. He was poor. I figured I had the perfect guy. I didn’t anticipate him becoming a loser, though. How is your drunk of a father, by the way?”
“Don’t you ever—” I moved forward to go and hit him, but Vincent grabbed my arm and stopped me.
“It wasn’t easy.” The mayor looked at us with a baffled expression. “I thought he would have jumped at the chance to make some extra money, what with him having none. But he wasn’t interested in hearing about any of my schemes. He just wanted to go to college, get a degree, and find a good job.
“So why did you have to take that away from him?” The words fell out-of-my mouth. What sort of evil person would deliberately do that to someone else?
“He stole the woman I loved.” His expression changed. “From the moment, I laid eyes on your mother, I knew. She was the one for me. She was my everything. And then your dad stole her, and I begged her to take me back. I told her I’m rich, I have the money, I can take care of you. And she said to me she didn’t care. Money meant nothing to her. She loved your dad and wanted to see where it went with him. Well, I took care of that.” He laughed bitterly. “She never had to worry about having too much money or that she was with him for anything but love.”
“How could you do that? You had Maddie’s mother.”
“Ha, I never loved her.” He shook his head. “She gave me Maddie, who is the light of my life. But I’ve never loved her or felt the same passion as I did for your mom.”
“You’re an evil man.” I stepped towards him unseeing but ready to hurt. My heart sagged with pain and the thirst for revenge and I wanted to make him cry out. I wanted to hear him scream for my forgiveness. I wanted to make him pay. Vincent must have seen the look in my eyes because he reached forward and grabbed my shoulders. I tried to push him off of me, and he tightened his grip. “Let me go,” I growled at him and his eyes pleaded with me to stop.
The mayor looked at us both in disgust and was about to step forward when his phone rang. He frowned and pulled it out and answered it.
“Hello, dear, what is it? I’m busy.” His face paled and I saw him look at me quickly. “They took Maddie? What? How much? Don’t call the police yet.” He hung up and faced me, his face as white as a sheet. “What have you done with Maddie?”
“What are you talking about?” I felt faint as I stared at him. All my worst fears were coming true and I was scared to hear what he was going to say. All of my anger and hatred faded as worry seeped into my heart. I was scared that he was going to tell me that something bad had happened to Maddie.
“Maddie has been kidnapped.” His voice cracked. “They want me to deliver a million dollars for her safe recovery. They called my wife.” He looked away from me. “They said they would kill her if I didn’t give them the money.”
“Who took her?” I heard the words but they didn’t seem like they were coming out of my mouth. I had a bad feeling that I knew who had taken her. Everything around me seemed like it was spinning out of control, and all I could think was, what had I done?
“I was hoping you would tell me that.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at me and Vincent. “Where’s the third brother?”
“Home.” I swallowed hard, not wanting to believe Jared had anything to do with it. He was my brother. I knew he hated Maddie, but he also knew that I loved her. I didn’t want to believe that he could do this to me or to her, but as I thought back to the last few conversations we had had, I started to think that maybe he thought this was the only way. The mayor’s phone rang again and he answered it quickly. “Hello.” He spoke quickly and then he put it on speakerphone so we could all hear it.
“I have your daughter. I want a million dollars by eight p.m. tonight or I will kill her.” The voice sounded calm, and Vincent and I exchanged a worried look.
“Where is my daughter?” The mayor shouted into the phone. “I will have you arrested.”
“You can’t do anything to make my life any worse than it is. But I can make yours a lot worse. Trust me.” There was a sudden noise and then a high-pitched scream. “I will call you back in a few hours. Do not call the police or get anyone else involved, or you will not see Maddie alive again.” And then the phone went dead. We all stood there in shock and fright and I stared at Vincent wordlessly. I didn’t know what to say or do. I had to find Maddie and save her. There was no way I could live with myself if anything happened to her, but I was also scared about what would happen to her kidnapper. I knew I would do anything to get her back safely, but I also knew that it could cost me everything. Because I knew the voice on the phone. I knew who had kidnapped Maddie. It was Jared.
Chapter 13
Maddie
I shivered in the cold room and tried to keep my eyes open, though it was really hard because I hadn’t been to sleep as yet. I pinched myself in an attempt to stay awake and tried not to scream when I saw something scurry across the room. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. I saw Jared pacing up and down in the corner with a gun in his hands and I looked away quickly. I was scared and frazzled, and I knew I was out of it. I really needed to sleep for a few hours to refresh my brain, but I hadn’t been able to.
Jared had called me twice last night. The first two times I hadn’t picked up the phone as I had been busy with Joey and then with Logan. But when I saw his second missed call, I knew something was up. And then he called a third time, about five minutes after Logan had left, and he had asked me to come down to meet him outside, and now here I was. I looked around the sparse room and thought that it was straight out of a movie scene. I almost smiled to myself at just how surreal everything felt. I felt like I was an actress playing a role, though I’d never practiced being kidnapped before. All my senses were working in overdrive, and I buried my face in my lap for a moment, while I tried to gather my thoughts.
“Do you have any water?” I asked him quietly. My throat was dry and I really needed something to drink.
“No.” he shook his head. He stared down at the gun, and I shivered at the sight of the metallic weapon. “Sorry, I didn’t think about that.”
“It’s okay.” I looked away from him quickly, as I felt my eyes welling up with tears and I didn’t want him to see how upset I was. I couldn’t believe that it had all come to this. Everything I thought I knew about the Martellis was wrong. They weren’t the men I thought they were, and my heart broke at my complete and utter naiveté. My life would never be the same again, and I wasn’t sure how I would ever get past this, and that was if everything went well. I felt like this summer I had grown from a girl to a woman. I’d been so naïve when I had gone to meet Logan at the pier, my only hope had been to impress him and get to know him. I’d been thrilled and excited to finally meet him, and I hadn’t been scared of anything. It had been like one super-duper rollercoaster ride, and now I was starting to worry I was going to fall out and go crashing to the ground. It had been a mistake for me to pursue Logan like some psycho. I had convinced myself that all was fair in love and war, and that he liked me too, but now that everything had happened, I realized that I had messed up. All I had done was ruin people’s lives. And I had gotten hurt in the process as well. Every fiber of my person was crying inside at this moment. For everything I thought I knew that was wrong. For all the love and joy inside of me that had been captured and tied up. I felt tears welling in my eyes, but I wasn’t going to allow myself to cry. I couldn’t allow myself to cry.
“Your father better love you as much as you say he does.” Jared’s voice was harsh. “I sure hope you really are the apple of his eye and he loves you so much, he will do anything for you.”
“He does.” My words were short and simple. That was one thing I was sure of, my dad would do anything for me. “He’ll pay.”
“He better pay.” Jared sat down and I could see the strain in his face. He looked up at me with tired eyes, and I thought of Logan as he stared at me. “He better pay or there will be hell to pay.” He looked worried and tense. “And it won’t be just me who goes down, it will be Logan, and Vincent as well.”