Ferrari threw me off my game the entire day. The smug look on his ever so stoic face made my blood boil, I imagined how he must've felt knowing he got my sweet sister to fall for his reserved facade.
"Tell me, is this all you've got?!" I barked at Elio, the subordinate I had gotten shot over trying to help. I had asked him and some of my other men to get me everything a background check on Ferrari, but the results were not what I expected.
"Boss, we've dug as deep as we can. All we know is that he was adopted at age sixteen by a husband and wife who died in a car accident two months after his adoption, leaving him behind a fortune to live off of." Elio said with his hands behind his back.
Our hideout was one of the offices in an abandoned building in the city's gray area. It belonged to one of the Mafia bosses running that district, but after we ran them out of business, I took this place as my base of operations.
I tossed the two paged report on the desk, "You're basically saying you have nothing! Is he some sort of ghost? The adoption center, didn't you get anything out of them?" I couldn't have just anyone dating my sister, as her brother it was my ethereal duty to weed out the scum.
Just like the last druggie she was dating. Jas had never been a good judge of character, which was why I did the judging for her. And, there was just something about Ferrari that made me feel uneasy around him.
"Boss, they said that he was transferred to their orphanage when he was fourteen."
I frowned, "He barely stayed there." I pointed out, "Did you get any information from his old orphanage? Anything at all?"
Elio frowned. "Sadly, the orphanage burned down and the children who survived were scattered and distributed to various orphanages. All the records from that place has been burned and deleted from the main database."
I didn't need a magnifying glass to know that there was some shit playing out. So the orphanage Ferrari grew up in just happened to burn down, and then the parents who adopted him just happened to pass away barely two months after?
It was as if someone was trying to bury everything about this kid.
"And the couple that adopted him, do you have any information on them? The reason they were looking to adopt? Any ties to Ferrari?" Maybe they were the link I needed to place a label on this guy.
Elio hesitated for a second, but then he responded, "Actually, they paid large monthly donations to the orphanage, and what's off was that they only did that when this kid was transferred there. Aside that, there's no other discriminating thing."
"No, that's plenty, for them to start giving to charity the moment Ferrari shows up means that they had an idea of what was going on. Press on them and find out all their past connections, and I mean even the ones off the books." If I knew anything about death, then it was the blaringly obvious difference between natural ones, and murders.
"Yes boss." He bowed slightly, "That'll be all, and remember to keep this confidential." I told him then had him sent away.
Once he left, I reached into one of my drawers and took out a shiny silver pistol. I started to stroke it's surface, something I did to clear my mind whenever I wanted to think.
If this Ferrari had just been an infatuation like all the others then I would've just scared him off with a sound warning never to go near my sister. But, unlike the others when I tried to get him to back off, things took an escalated turn…
*Two months ago*
I slipped on my black torture gloves on each hand whilst taking calculated steps into the room where Ferrari had been taken to last night, after his date with Jas. They had gone on some romantic roadmap that Jas spent a week planning out.
Right after I had the driver pick Jas up, my men grabbed him and forced him with them. From the report Elio gave me, he didn't put up much of a struggle, the bastard must've been scared out of his mind.
"Take the blindfold off." I ordered in a commanding tone.
"Yes boss." The two behind him said, and proceeded to take off his blindfold.
I tossed him a wicked smile and gestured one of my men to get me a wooden baseball bat. Of course, I'd never lay hands on a civilian, I just aimed at intimidating the guy into leaving Jas the hell alone.
"So, you're the bastard who think he can get under the sheets with my little sister." I said, running my fingers up and down the bat, making sure his eyes noticed how thick it was.
It always worked. Once they pictured how fucked they'd be from one hit, they all cowered and backed out. I expected him to resist at first and threaten me with the cops, but I knew how to work my way around those empty threats.
I approached him swiftly and grabbed him by the collar, bringing our eyes to meet. "Listen here, I'll make this easy for you, stay the HELL away from my sister, and I'll let you walk out of here with your legs intact." I said, looking down on him.
For about five seconds, the fucker just continued to stare into my eyes, up until I started to feel weirded out by it, and looked away first.
Fuck!
I didn't want to concede.
But then, the son of a bitch went to say, "Is this your idea of torture? Or are you just playing pretend?"
"What the hell did you just say?!" One of my men raged against him and tried to punch him square in the face. Before I could give the order not to, Ferrari broke through the ropes and slammed the guy face first into the floor!
The hell…
He stood over the guy and tucked his fingers into his pockets, "If you want to tie me down, you're gonna need something much stronger." He declared suggestively.
I held tighter onto the bat, had I maybe gone too easy by asking them not to make the knots so tight? I had had some violent ones in the past, but this man was a monster for a twenty year old.
"Don't push your luck kid, I have over twenty men surrounding this room. So if I were you, I'd do everything I tell you to do." I tried to threaten him, but instead of cowering he treaded towards me, ignoring my men who were more than ready to shoot.
"I've seen your eyes and I knew that you don't have the potential to kill me." He bragged, putting his height to good use and towering over me.
I wasn't tall like him, but I wasn't short either, just a bit above the average height, enough that I was taller than Jas and Camille, but a head apart from Ferrari.
Well, maybe a head and a shoulder.
I scoffed and pointed the bat at his chest. "You're a worm, I could step on you and kill you in an instant without thinking twice."
He rested his hand on the bat, "I doubt that, but let's say I believe you could do some damage to me. What are you going to tell Jasmine when my body is found?"
Jasmine?
"Don't bring my sister into this, you don't have to get hurt if you just back off—" I tried to reason with him but he cut me off.
"But I don't feel like taking orders from a half-assed Mafia boss." His taunting voice fueled my anger.
Half-assed?!
I maintained my cool and deflected the conversation. "You're being reckless, over a woman who you don't even love." This was the part where he insisted that he had fallen head over heels over Jasmine, and claimed he would fight to protect her until the very end.
"It's true that I don't love Jasmine, but that's not why I'm doing this." He admitted, getting even more under my skin.
I knitted my brows. "So you're just playing her?!" I was so mad that I might've swung that bat at his fuck boy face.
"I don't need to be in love to have sex, I can do it to anyone." he told me in a low tone that sent chills down my spine. I could tell by the look in his eye, he wasn't joking when he said that, this bastard fucking meant that.
"You're a whore." I spat at him.
He chuckled slightly, "So I've been told." The slight amusement in his eyes died as he made me a threat of his own.
"I only came with your men to confirm for myself what your 'work' actually was. Now that I've seen what it is you do, let me ask you this, which one of us is really playing Jas?"
"Don't be ridiculous! I'm doing this for her sake!" I raised my voice, just a slight provocation away from slugging him. My men were also impatient, but I hadn't given them the signal to attack.
"That's a deluded string of thought. Not that it's any of my business. But what I will say is…" this time he leaned in, and rested his hand against the wall, boxing me in. I looked up at the piercing gaze he shot me, he was completely unfazed by the guns pointed at his head from all angles.
In one of the scariest tone I had ever heard he threatened, "The moment you ever pull this shit again, I'll let Jasmine in on what her precious older brother is up to. And I won't just stop there, so keep that in mind, Coco." He said, only for his lips to swerve into a quick smile towards the end.