Captivated with Them (Dirty Twisted Love, #3) Read online

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  CAPTIVATED WITH THEM

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Captivated with Them (Dirty Twisted Love, #3)

  Chapter One | Kodee

  Chapter Two | Rue

  Chapter Three | Dillon

  Chapter Four | Rue

  Chapter Five | Dillon

  Chapter Six | Ryan

  Chapter Seven | Rue

  Chapter Eight | Dillon

  Chapter Nine | Kodee

  Chapter Ten | Rue

  Chapter Eleven | Kodee

  Chapter Twelve | Dillon

  Chapter Thirteen | Ryan

  Chapter Fourteen | Rue

  Chapter Fifteen | Dillon

  Chapter Sixteen | Kodee

  Chapter Seventeen | Rue

  Chapter Eighteen | Dillon

  Chapter Nineteen | Ryan

  Chapter Twenty | Kodee

  Chapter Twenty-one | Rue

  Chapter Twenty-two | Ryan

  Chapter Twenty-three | Rue

  Chapter Twenty-four: Three Months Later | Rue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Captivated with Them

  A Dark Reverse Harem Romance

  Dirty Twisted Love

  Book Three

  Marissa Farrar

  Chapter One

  Kodee

  THE APARTMENT FELT empty with only the two of us here.

  Me and Ryan. That was all.

  It was our home, but it no longer seemed like home. How could it, when two of the people we loved most in the world hadn’t made it back with us?

  Someone had clearly been in here while we’d been gone. The door had been forced open, and we were going to need to get the lock replaced. The mess Dillon had created the last time we’d been here was still exactly as we’d left it, only now we had extra to deal with.

  Whoever had been in here definitely hadn’t had any respect for our property. Tables had been overturned, couch cushions shredded, pictures torn off the walls. My bookcase, which took up much of the far wall, had been emptied, my prized collection of books scattered across the floor, many of them fallen open, the pages ripped.

  The door to our office also stood open. I crossed the apartment to check. At only the lightest touch of my fingertips, the door swung open. I was surprised to see our office had gotten off without too much damage. In fact, everything looked much as we had left it.

  I wondered why no one had stolen our equipment, but I guessed if this was the Capellos’ work, they would have known it was more use to them in our hands than someone else’s. Forgery was a delicate art, and they wouldn’t have been able to simply grab the gear and get one of their other men to whip up new identities. It needed skill and finesse, and sometimes, it felt, like a little bit of magic.

  Ryan’s voice came from over my shoulder. “Is it all still there?”

  “Yeah, looks like it.” I stepped back from the office and turned around. “They made a helluva mess of the rest of the apartment, though. I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t call the cops.”

  “Maybe they were warned not to,” he suggested.

  I nodded. “You’re probably right.”

  The Capellos held great sway over this city. Most people would know not to screw with them—something I’d warned Dillon about, though it was a warning he’d ignored. I couldn’t hate him for it, though. If he hadn’t, he’d never have brought Rue into our lives.

  Not that it had done any of us much good in the long run. I imagined a parallel universe where Dillon had never messed around with the Capello brothers. Rue would have still been on the path she was on, while we’d have continued our lives, unknowing. Maybe we wouldn’t have been in danger, but having her with us had given our lives meaning.

  My stomach knotted in fear for Rue and Dillon. They were being held by the Capello brothers. I understood exactly why Frankie Capello had done what he had. They needed Rue to testify against rival gangster Joe Nettie, and keeping Dillon meant they could be sure Ryan and I behaved ourselves.

  Ryan paced the apartment, his limp more pronounced than I’d ever seen it.

  “Sit down,” I told him. “You’re not helping anyone by not resting.”

  The massive hike through the forest had taken its toll on him, but he’d done better than most people with two fully working legs would have, and I was proud of him.

  I just wished things had turned out differently.

  He spun around to face me, his fingers knotted in his blond hair, his blue eyes flashing with anger. “How can I sit around here, when we don’t even know if Dillon is still alive, or if Rue is being raped by those sons of bitches right now?”

  “Dillon is alive. They won’t gain anything by killing him.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because the only thing that’s stopping us from getting our hands on some guns and going straight back over there to get Rue back is not knowing where Dillon is. If he’s dead, we’ve got nothing left to lose.”

  “And Rue?”

  His words were accusatory, as though I, alone, were responsible for this situation. Maybe I was. I’d always taken on the role of looking after them all, and I’d failed.

  I felt sick at the thought of what Rue might be going through. Even though it was nothing new to her—being sold and used was the only life she’d known before coming to us—I’d had the stupid idea that her time with us had somehow cleansed her of all that.

  “I don’t know any more than you,” I replied, trying to keep my voice level. We weren’t going to help anyone by fighting each other. “We just have to wait for the Capellos to contact us and take it from there.”

  “You know what these passports are going to be used for, don’t you?” Ryan asked.

  I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, I do.”

  He carried on, regardless. “They’re for girls like Rue to be shipped around the world, to be sold to the highest bidder into a life of slavery. You know they won’t get to keep the passports. They’ll be taken off the girls the moment they land in whatever their intended country is, and then they’ll be trapped.”

  I sighed and ran my hand over my face. “What are we supposed to do about that, Ryan?

  “We could go to the police and tell them everything.”

  “Men like the Capellos have insurance against that kind of thing. We’ll go in to give a statement, and suddenly that statement will disappear, and we’ll find ourselves either dead or badly beaten in some back alley.”

  He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “That’s not what happened with Joe Nettie. He was arrested and is going to trial.”

  I threw up both hands. “Yeah, and look at everything that’s happened to Rue because of it. Besides, if we go to the cops, what happens to her? What happens to Dillon? We’re literally putting their lives at risk.”

  “They won’t hurt Rue. They need her too much.”

  I shrugged. “Only for the next six days. After that, they won’t need her at all. And what about Dillon? Are you saying we should consider him to be collateral damage?”

  Ryan scowled. “I never said that.”

  “If we try, Dillon is dead.”

  I imagined Ryan’s helpless expression was much like my own.

  “So, we just do what the Capellos want?” Ryan asked.

  “I don’t think we’ve got any other choice. They’ve quite literally got us by the balls.”

  He let out a growl and swiped at something on the desk. “Fuck!”

  I thought for a moment then said, “We could always make sure whoever has those passports never gets to
where they’re intended.”

  Ryan turned to me. “What are you suggesting?”

  “That we put something in the passports that will look obviously fake to an expert.”

  “The girls will be detained at border control,” he pointed out.

  “Isn’t that better than them being sold on?”

  He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Do you think they’d be likely to talk when questioned? If they were able to give some names and descriptions, it might stir up some trouble for the Capellos, and trouble for us as well, if they realize we did something deliberately.”

  “How are they going to know? They won’t—not if we’re careful.”

  He exhaled a sigh. “I don’t know, Kodee. That’s a pretty fine balancing act. Creating something that won’t be noticeable to the Capellos, while being enough for us to be sure will get picked up on by border control. Do you think we have those kinds of skills?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I do. And I also think it’s worth a shot. Right now, we don’t have any other ideas.”

  Ryan started pacing the apartment, his limp practically a lurch as he spoke his thoughts. “We don’t even know when they’re going to be moving the girls. It might be weeks from now, which isn’t going to be any good to us. We need for this to happen before the trial if we’re going to stand any chance of them taking their eye off us, and off Rue and Dillon, enough for us to make a move.”

  I watched his movements, his pronounced limp concerning me. “There’s going to be a risk in anything we do, just like there will be a risk in doing nothing. The minute Rue walks out of that courtroom, no matter what the result, she will have served her purpose. The best we can hope for is that she’s returned to a life of being prostituted out by criminals, and the worst is that she’ll be killed.”

  Ryan balled his fists. “I hate thinking of her like that. It makes me more fucking furious than I’ve ever been before, and I’ve been angry for a good part of my life.”

  “I know how you feel. I hate it, too. It feels like someone is tearing apart my insides with a pair of claws.”

  As though all the strength went out of him, Ryan sank into the chair at the desk.

  “But before we do anything,” I said, “we need to correct our biggest mistake.”

  Ryan frowned. “Which is?”

  “Making Rue a passport. It should have been the first thing we’d done. If we’d just been able to get her straight out of the country, we wouldn’t be in this position now.”

  He chewed his lower lip as he thought. “But we don’t have Rue. How can we make her a passport if we don’t have access to her details?”

  “I’m not sure, but we’re going to have to figure it out. Maybe there’s a way we can get to see her.”

  Ryan shook his head. “The Capellos are going to be suspicious of us, no matter what we do.”

  “Yeah, I agree. We need to figure it out, though.”

  “And if we manage to get Rue out of there,” he asked, “what about Dillon?”

  I pressed my knuckles to my lips. “I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet. Fuck. I haven’t figured any of it out.”

  “We’re not going anywhere without him,” he insisted.

  “I know that, Ryan. I’d never abandon him. I’d never abandon any of you.”

  He put his head in his hands. “I just can’t believe this is happening. What if this is it now? What if we don’t get them back?”

  I moved to stand behind the chair and wrapped my arms around Ryan’s torso from behind and pressed my nose to his soft hair. “You can’t think like that. We will get them back. We have to.”

  Ryan’s shoulder’s hitched, and his voice broke. “But—but what if we don’t?”

  I squeezed him tighter, feeling the other man’s pain as my own. “We will.”

  Chapter Two

  Rue

  “YOU’VE GOT THIRTY MINUTES. I expect you to be ready by then. Don’t let me down, Rue.”

  Frankie Capello stood in the doorway of the room that was now my bedroom. After what had gone down at the pizza restaurant the Capello brothers used as a cover, I’d been bundled into a car and brought to Frankie Capello’s main residence on the outskirts of the city. Though I’d already accepted what was to become of me, my heart had sunk with every mile the car covered. I’d spent time at this place before, and I knew what was expected of the girls who were forced to live here. Frankie Capello liked to entertain, to make sure his colleagues knew he was a bigshot, and providing a little female company was only part of that.

  Despite knowing exactly what Frankie meant when he asked me to be ready, I couldn’t help but try to get out of it.

  “Joe Nettie’s men might still be after me. What if one of them is sitting around your table tonight, and you just don’t know it?”

  There was an annoying little whine of desperation in my voice, and I hated myself for it.

  “There won’t be. It’s a small group, and I’ve vetted each one of them. Besides, Nettie’s men are substantially thinner on the ground than they were only a few days ago. You’ll be safe.”

  There was a reason I’d been given to Dillon, Kodee, and Ryan in the first place. They’d known Nettie’s men would want to take me out so I wouldn’t be able to testify against their boss. They’d thought hiding me with a handful of nobodies would keep me safer than if I was with them, but they’d thought wrong.

  I tried again. “You can’t know that for sure.”

  His eyes narrowed, his lips thinning with displeasure. “I know each of the men who’ll be here tonight, and none of them would ever be stupid enough to betray me. Stop trying to get out of your job and do as I ask.”

  I clenched my teeth to prevent myself from begging. I wondered how his wife and kids put up with this bullshit. Were the big house, and the power, and the money enough to make her ignore the fact her husband was spending time with much younger women? They were all at it—all the men I came across who associated with this gang. It didn’t matter if they were fifty years old, they would happily pull some eighteen-year-old, scantily dressed girl onto their laps in the middle of dinner or a business meeting. Some of them probably had daughters the same age, and woe-betide any man who did something like that to their precious little princesses. But it was different with us. They didn’t see us as girls or young women, with feelings and ambitions, like they did their daughters. We were no more than meat to them—a vessel to give them what they wanted. It was easier for them if they didn’t consider us to be fully formed people, more like cardboard cut-outs who existed only for their entertainment.

  I’d been to these kinds of dinners often enough. I knew what was expected of me. I guessed I’d been hoping that since I was important to the Capellos because they needed me to get Joe Nettie sent down, they might have shielded me from some of the usual goings-on, but it seemed I was as wrong about that as they were about being able to trust Kodee and the others.

  I tried a different tact. “What about my friend? The one who got hit with the gun. Is he okay?”

  Frankie shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit pants and cocked an eyebrow. “He’s still alive, if that’s what you mean.”

  I was worried about how badly Dillon might be hurt, the crack of the butt of the gun slamming against the side of his head echoing in my mind. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the way he’d slumped to the floor and lain there, motionless.

  I knew the chances of the Capellos getting Dillon to a doctor were slim to none. Though they wouldn’t have wanted him dying on them because it would have removed part of the leverage they held over Kodee and Ryan, they’d have viewed it as only a minor inconvenience if he did.

  He was the Capellos’ insurance policy to make sure I showed up at court and did whatever it took to get Joe Nettie sent away.

  Where was Dillon? Had he been brought from the restaurant to Frankie Capello’s big home, like I had? Was he in this building somewhere? Or had they taken him to a different location? Moving
him would have problems of its own. If they were pulled over, they’d have a hard time explaining away the unconscious man in the car. I hoped they’d decided it was easier for them to keep us both in the same place, at least, until they got what they wanted—to see Joe Nettie go down for a very long time.

  I tried to take some comfort in the idea that I shared this building with Dillon, even if we couldn’t see each other. It was a tiny strand of solace—pathetic, even—but it was all I had.

  Frankie took a step back, toward the hallway, his fingertips resting against the doorframe. “You’re wasting my time now, Rue, and my time is precious. Stop asking questions and get dressed, like I’ve asked you. I’ve got guests expecting me.”

  Without waiting for another comment from me, he turned and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him with a bang.

  I scowled at the closed door. Bastard.

  I put my hand to my throat, touching the silver of the necklace the guys had given me for my birthday. I tried to cling to that memory of happiness, but we’d been lying to ourselves, even then. We’d acted like I was a free person, but I never had been. Our time together had always been finite. We should never have let ourselves get as carried away as we had.

  You love each other. Love isn’t getting carried away. It’s real.

  Maybe that was true, but it didn’t solve anything. I’d found myself back in the same situation as I’d been before I’d met them, and they were even worse off. If I’d never come into their lives, they’d have been safe and together, just as they’d been before.

  It didn’t matter how many times they’d told me this had all been worth it, that those few weeks with me had been enough payment for the debt they were forced to pay now, I would never believe them.

  How many days until Joe Nettie’s trial, I wondered? Six, now, I was sure.

  What would happen after the trial?

  My stomach tightened with anxiety. If Joe Nettie walked, I was a dead person. He would have seen me standing up there and listened to my testimony. Even if he didn’t go down because of it, it was the ultimate betrayal, and I would pay. Before all of this, I might have conceded that perhaps it was for the best, and my existence would simply wink out of this world as though I’d never even been here. But now I had others to think about. Kodee, Dillon, and Ryan had been dragged into this sorry mess, and if Nettie walked, he’d make sure the guys were killed, too. They’d killed Nettie’s men back at the cabin, and even though the Capellos had been the ones to kill those who’d tracked us to the forest, the blame would most likely be directed at the guys.