"Not evil, just hurt"
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ROWAN STARKOV
Just two days ago, Dante entered the cell with me and Declan. Declan came in not too long after I was kidnapped, he was shocked when he saw my new appearance including Dante. My eye had healed pretty well from what they have told me, I mean, the sting eventually went away and now I'm blind in that eye. Lorenzo added to my wounds about every week when he was angry, at some point, my body just numbed out when they added salt or cleaned my wounds with straight alcohol.
What Valentine did to me from when I was twelve, was probably much worse than this. Or maybe it isn't. I couldn't quite tell because of my tolerance to the pain and the similar torture methods.
Declan only got light beatings but nothing like what I had done to me. His face or ribs would be bruised, a couple of broken bones, but it was nothing he couldn't handle. The only thing that really affected him was watching them torture me. He couldn't bear to watch and sometimes they would force him to which. Luckily for me, maids cleaned and stitched my wounds up well, some of the scars are barely there or will fade eventually.
Maybe Valentine was worse considering his scars are the ones still tainted to my skin.
My eyes drifted over to Dante, the dim light illuminated his deeply tanned skin marked with bruises and cuts. His green eyes met mine before he let out a deep sigh leaning back on the wall. "How are my girls?" I would have asked days ago but he was constantly in and out of consciousness from his injuries.
"We moved to London, Sofia loved the new mansion we lived in and made tons of friends there. She talked about you every day per usual, even had Gianna help her plant a ton of strawberries just for you because she knew they are your favorite and couldn't wait until you moved with us," Dante chuckled. A smile touched my lips, I could imagine her small voice rambling about everything on her mind like Gianna did as a child. That small little grin or the image of my princesses gardening.
"The day before we got kidnapped, she picked a big red strawberry, the way she looked when she found how proud of herself, she was for growing it will be an image I'll never forget. Gianna grabbed it and cleaned it off before having Sofia take a bite, then she ate the rest of it. And they were pretty good, I tried some later on and wow, your daughter has a talent." We both let out a small laugh, Dante looked down with a sad look.
"And Gianna?" Dante sucked in a breath.
"Gianna got a text from Declan when we first arrived, it was morse code for help, then it said Declan's name which helped us figure out who, and then it said your name. Gianna knew you were in trouble and tried to figure out where you were for months without doing anything too risky-"
"I never texted Gianna anything, are you sure it was me, or did it say my name because I needed help too?" Declan spoke, he rose a dark blond brow at Dante who had a confused expression on his face.
"Maybe it was a part of Lorenzo's trap," I added.
"It couldn't have been, we tried tracing the location of the other person, it said it pinged in Russia but before we could even see the detailed address, the data just shut off," Dante explained. We're not in Russia, though, from what I know, we're in New York at the Marcelio mansion. I recognize it because I stalked this place for months. Declan's things were also destroyed in a bombing Lorenzo caused shortly after kidnapping him.
I had to think, that maybe it was Valentine and his men but I know for a fact that he doesn't set traps like that. He goes for violence most of the time or straight-up kidnapping, but he's never been the one to use hacking or text to lure someone. He was old-fashioned that way. There was a possibility of it being someone else but I always thought he was dead. It could also be someone else who I'm thinking of but he got away from the mafia life with his daughter.
Could it really be him?
"Did you gather any other information?" I asked Dante.
He thought for a little before his eyes went slightly wide. "Well, out of boredom, I went back into the data to figure out if it was really Declan. I had to be sure of it because everything went to a dead end. When I tried digging deeper into the data, my computer froze before it just said "Error 555." My eyes widened with shock, I knew exactly who sent it, he was fucking alive. After all of these years, Kristian, one of my dad's best friends was really still alive.
"What are you doing?" I looked over Kristian's shoulder at the weird TV-looking device he was playing on. All I saw were numbers and letters pilling and pilling. It almost made me sick looking at it so I averted my eyes over to Kristian. His blond hair was a mess, hazel eyes zoned onto the screen behind his glasses as he hunched over the keyboard.
"I'm sending a virus to every device a man named Rico has so he won't be able to use them and sneak into my data," he answered still clicking away. I hummed in response, out of all of my dad's friends, he was the most honest with me even though I was only seven.
"Who is Rico?" I asked.
"Rico is a very great hacker that works for the Italian mafia or well-Silas Russo to be exact. They want to get into my data so they can find out more about that serum you always hear them talking about, I can't let that happen so I need to block him in every way possible for as long as I can." Kristian paused looking down at me with a smirk. I met Silas Russo not too long ago at the pub Octavia owned, he was a cool guy who my parents warned me about. "He may be good but I'm better, watch and learn."
I watched him click away on the device, the numbers and letters moved quickly, and different boxes popped up. I had no idea what I was looking at and my father would be angry if saw me watching this. Papa never includes me in his business, I don't even know what he does I only hear from people that he's a dangerous man. Maybe my dad is a gangster, like half of the other men I hang around with at Octavia's pub.
My attention turned back to the screen when it popped up with a box saying something was successful. Then moved to the other box-looking device and clicked away until all I saw was a box saying "Error 555." What?
"Error 555 is always my go-to code, it's like a mark, it's how you know it was me but very few people or anyone know about it besides you."
"You're Error 555 like how Octavia is known as The Viper?" I asked in confusion.
"Bingo, kid."
"Kristain Markov is still alive, he works for Octavia and was an old friend of my father's. He was sending a message," I whispered the last part to myself. Dante and Declan looked at each other before looking at me, then it clicked for them, they were thinking what I was thinking.
"Silas and Octavia are starting their attack, they're coming to get us," Declan grinned in victory.
"That's right, Lorenzo has no idea what's coming for him, he just got the deadliest assassins in the world and his Don going against him." A smirk lifted my lips, the only downside is that we have no idea how much they know or when they're coming to get us. All I did know was that we would make it out of this, then I was going to get my girls back from Lorenzo.
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