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  Caged

  By

  Alta Hensley

  Copyright © 2019 by Stormy Night Publications and Alta Hensley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.

  www.StormyNightPublications.com

  Hensley, Alta

  Caged

  Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

  Images by iStock/AS-photo, Shutterstock/Irina Fischer, iStock/Paket, and Shutterstock/Gabriel Georgescu

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  More Stormy Night Books by Alta Hensley

  Alta Hensley Links

  Prologue

  Nayla Bell

  The chorus of today had become one of gunshots. A rapid, metallic song of pop after pop. Cries of pain and death accompanied this melody, forming the dark and morbid soundtrack.

  I could almost smell it coming as the hairs rose on the back of my neck. My fingers, intertwined with the rosary I held as I sat in the pews of the Church of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx, New York, shook in anticipation. I sat among fellow prosecutors for the D.A. as well as police officers, detectives, FBI agents, and family grieving a young undercover agent who didn’t deserve to die.

  I could hear the staccato of death in the distance. One bang, then two. They were coming for us.

  We should have all known better. We should have known that even a funeral for a man who died in the line of duty would hold no sacred ground. No. In the turf war between the Vasco and the Moretti families, there was no mercy. There was no time-out. There was only opportunity for more bloodshed and carnage. Even in the house of the lord, there would be no peace between the two mafia kingdoms and their enemies. Wealth, power, pride, and a thirst for revenge were the tenets of their religion. We had done their families wrong by recently putting many of their men behind bars, and now they were going to make us pay for our persistence for justice.

  Was it the Vasco or the Moretti family attacking us?

  Did it even matter?

  It was the mafia.

  The fucking mafia was here to seek vengeance on all who dared to stand against their street authority. We may have won in court, but they were here to show us who the true victors were.

  “Get down,” I said, barely louder than a whisper, to one of my coworkers who sat beside me dabbing her eyes with her lace handkerchief. “Get down!” I screamed as the blast of gunshots announced the assassins’ presence as they charged through the double doors.

  Turning to see men with AK-47s, Colt M1911A1s, and other weapons of destruction enter the church shooting with vengeance and zero mercy, I reached for the woman’s hand. I pulled her down while other agents and officers jumped out of their seats, drawing their own guns to join in the killing sonata. We were paying the price for all of us foolishly sitting in the same room at a funeral for unfortunate Officer Antonio Ricci. We, of course, had security at the doors, snipers positioned on surrounding rooftops, and every single law enforcer was armed to the teeth. But that only added to the rain of bullets falling upon the poor Catholic Church that would surely be the location where many would die today.

  Falling to the floor to shield the stunned lawyer I had barely known personally, though I had spent countless hours working with her, I tried to hide from the massacre. I watched as the priest giving the funeral service was shot in the arm as he crawled for cover, only to then be fatally shot in the back of the head before he was able to reach safety.

  The sick melody of my life continued on as volleys of bullets ricocheted off the walls, the pews, and even the Virgin Mary was marred by the attack. Stained glass shattered all around as people screamed while ducking for cover.

  “Get further under the seat,” I ordered, struggling to push her body beneath the pew.

  I wanted to fight these bastards too, but carrying a gun as the assistant district attorney would never be allowed. I was not a cop even though there had always been a secret part of me that had desired that occupation. But no, never. Nayla Bell, the Harvard graduate at the top of her class, would never be anything less than a someday district attorney—or at least in the eyes of her parents. I had been groomed my entire life. And I was close... so very close to reaching my goals. Unless, of course, today was the day I died.

  When I was met with resistance from my coworker, and she wasn’t listening to my command, I shouted again, “Get under there.” Bullets were blanketing the church, shards of glass were flying, and splinters of wood from destroyed pews made every inch of space a battleground.

  With another shove, I pulled my hand away in horror to see my recently done French manicured nails covered in this woman’s blood. I turned her limp body in my arms, looking into her face. Her body was still warm yet she was clearly dead as her eyes stared up at me void of any life.

  My cries blended with the last of the gunshots as the lullaby of this nightmare slowly came to an end when the remaining Mafioso attackers retreated back to their hole.

  I looked up to see Dylan Bush—the district attorney—rushing toward me. “Nayla! Are you hurt? You’re bleeding,” he said as he knelt down to where I still sat. His words blended with the sounds of sirens in the distance coming too late for our rescue.

  I looked down and saw that I was covered in blood, though none of it belonged to me. “I’m okay. It’s not mine.”

  Physically I was fine.

  “Who was it? Moretti or Vasco?” I asked.

  Dylan shook his head as he helped me to a standing position. “I don’t know. But whoever it was, aimed to kill.”

  “This isn’t Eddie Vasco’s style,” I said as I stared at the dead priest and then looked at all the other countless bodies.

  I didn’t know everything about the boss of the Vasco family quite yet, but since Dylan Bush had his hands full working on an indictment of Leon Moretti, he had handed off the Vasco case to me. I had spent day and night trying to build a case on the man, and if anyone could call themselves an expert on someone, I would be in regards to Eddie.

  “He’s religious and wouldn’t dare disrespect sacred ground like this,” I added, realizing I sounded more like an FBI profiler than an assistant D.A. “He’d save his killing for a dark alley. Someplace where innocents couldn’t get harmed. His reputation of a ruthless killer stops when it comes to women and children.”

  “Agreed. This screams Moretti,” Dylan said as he cast his eyes around the carnage of the cathedral. “Fucking monsters. They’re all fucking monsters.”

  This battle was over... for now. This song, this ballad of death had turned to an eerie sound of silence as the surviving mourners in the church stood to assess the damage.

  “The good guys are losing this war,” I mumbled to myself as my body began to shake.

  “Yes,” Dylan agreed, clearly hearing my words.

>   The Vasco and Moretti families were stronger, more ruthless, and after today’s deadly attack, outnumbered us. Something had to be done. I was close to having enough information to indict Eddie Vasco. I would do whatever it took to end this war. The Vasco and Moretti families would pay with their freedom. But I would personally take great pleasure watching as they put Eddie Vasco behind bars and threw away the key because of me. I would bring him down. The good guys would come out of this as the victors, and the animals would be put away in a cage forever.

  Chapter One

  Nayla Bell

  I had stared at the wall of pictures in my apartment so many times, I could see every single detail of every single picture, even with my eyes shut. The entire wall of my living room—floor to ceiling—was covered in over a hundred pictures of Eddie Vasco and his crime syndicate. For over a year I had been working on this case with a revolving door of different detectives, but my obsession had kept it alive when others may have let it go cold. For a mafia crime boss, Eddie Vasco kept his nose clean... on the surface. I couldn’t get enough to indict him, even though I knew the man was guilty of every possible crime I could imagine and even some I couldn’t. But I had one shot to bring Eddie down, and I would need all the evidence I could to make a conviction stick.

  For a man who was feared by so many, the pictures on my wall spoke of a different story. There was no bloody mayhem or torture. There was not a single picture of Eddie holding a gun or weapon of any kind. Though he was over six feet tall, muscled from head to toe, and had tattoos on every part of his arms, the pictures never captured him in any form of violence or intimidation. The man was a killer, yet the pictures didn’t reveal that fact in the slightest. There were pictures of Eddie dressed in an expensive suit going in and out of a black town car, or into five-star restaurants. There were also pictures of him dressed far more casually as he entered the local Italian restaurants that had been in the neighborhoods for decades. I had pictures of him going to Catholic mass, or buying a hot dog at the corner stand. Pictures of him had been snapped as he sat by an old Sicilian hitman by the name of Bobby Dancer—long retired—in Central Park. That was about as close as I could get at having anything worth mentioning in an indictment.

  I even got the feeling that Eddie knew the pictures were being taken. There were some pictures on my wall that haunted my dreams—pictures where Eddie stared directly into the camera, his dark brown eyes locking with mine as I gazed at the four-by-six rectangles taped in the center of the photo collage. I don’t know why I’d organized them so that every picture where Eddie stared directly at the camera were in the center of the wall, but I had. His face often mesmerized me as I tried to find his secrets that eluded me. How could I bring him down? Where were the bodies hidden? Who was Eddie Vasco, and how could he rule the Vasco family and the streets of New York with such an iron fist, and yet we had nothing on him? How could this be?

  My career was on the line, but this mission had become more than that. As I stared at one picture in particular, I often felt it was Eddie daring me to approach. The facial expression almost possessed a level of charm you would find in a billionaire at a fancy cocktail party. There was no threat, but there was something in the way his head tilted, the way his mouth smirked, and the way his rich eyes twinkled.

  “I dare you...” the picture taunted. “I fucking dare you to enter my world.”

  I needed a break. I had been working nonstop since the shooting, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. I knew that Dylan Bush was feeling the same way with his case against the Moretti family, and it killed me that we weren’t making any progress.

  Turning away from the pictures and walking over to my window, I stared down at the patrol car that had been stationed in front of my apartment since the church massacre. Maybe my life was in danger. Maybe it wasn’t. But the NYPD wasn’t taking any chances and had been so kind to have someone guarding me at all times. At first, it had felt extremely invasive. I had always been a very private person my entire life, so having someone overlooking my every move unnerved me. I would attempt to hide from their protective eye much to the dismay of the police department. Lecture after lecture had informed me they were there to help and not harm. So now, as I stood in the window wearing nothing but an oversized Harvard t-shirt that hung mid-thigh, I no longer cared. If the rookie agent wanted to steal a peek of my bare legs, then so be it. I was home and wanted to be comfortable. Wearing a suit and five-inch heels every single day meant I was desperate for casual clothing the minute I walked through my door.

  It was dark outside... really dark, but I could still see the shape of the car. I often wondered what the cop did in the car for so many hours. What did he think about? What did he do? Did he play with his phone and surf social media? Or did he react to every single movement and car driving by? My neighborhood was loud and active at all times, so if that was the case, the man would have his hands full all night.

  My phone rang, interrupting the study of my bodyguard. Walking over to the table, I uttered a groan when I saw it was my father. I was half tempted to not pick up, but I also knew he was relentless and would keep trying all night until I took his call.

  “Hi, Daddy,” I said as I sat down on the couch. I stared at the wall of Eddie Vasco as if it were completely normal to do so.

  “Hello, ladybug. I’m calling to make sure you’re going to the Hamptons this weekend with your mother and me.”

  I had been dreading this question. The last thing I wanted to do was go to the Hamptons and especially with my parents. The high-class life of privilege and wealth wasn’t for me. Plus, every single time I went to the family estate for a weekend, my parents would try to set me up with some silver spoon-fed boy I could barely stand. I was the classic workaholic, had zero social life, but nothing was worse than a dinner date set up in the Hamptons.

  “I really wish I could, Daddy, but I have to work. Since the shooting—”

  “Yes, ever since that day your mother has been a nervous wreck. She keeps telling me that I need to get you out of that job. That maybe private practice would be better.”

  I swallowed down a deep sigh that struggled not to erupt from my body. “I’m close to becoming a D.A. This is what we always wanted. One more high-profile case and—”

  “But your mother has a point,” he interrupted again. “You could be wasting the best years of your life chasing this dream. You aren’t getting any younger, and though your career is important, so is marriage and children.”

  “Daddy—” This lecture was so damn old.

  “We were really excited about the Hamptons. We’re having the Millers over for dinner on Saturday. Their son is coming too. He’s a financial analyst who is just visiting for the weekend.”

  I would lose this conversation unless I did something drastic.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. But I am being sent to Chicago,” I lied. “For about a week. The tickets and hotel have already been paid for. I really wish I could have gone.”

  There was a long pause before my father said in a low tone, “Your mother is going to be so disappointed.”

  “I know. But I can’t get out of this. It’s work, and my reputation is on the line.”

  I knew using the word ‘reputation’ would win this tug of war.

  “Of course. We would never want you to soil your name. Well... next time.”

  “Yes, next time. Send my love to Mother. I’ll call you both when I return from Chicago.” There was a knock at my door. “The Chinese food delivery man is here. I have to go.”

  Hanging up the phone, I felt a tad guilty. I hated to lie, but there really was no other way when dealing with my parents. They were stubborn and always got their way. I was a powerful woman in the courtroom. I was someone not to be messed with. But when it came to my parents, I was weak and had no spine at all.

  Opening the door, I didn’t even bother to put a robe on. I had become a regular delivery of several times per week, and I think it was fair to say the poor deliver
yman was used to seeing me at my worst. It wasn’t like I was in some sexy lingerie or something, and I was covered more than any young millennial about to hit up the New York clubs tonight.

  “Hey,” I said with a welcoming smile, but instantly paused when I sensed something was different.

  The deliveryman—I had never bothered to get his name—appeared afraid. He looked at me with wide eyes and a pale face. My heart stopped for a split second, unsure what could make the friendly man look the way he did.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  My question was answered for me when the deliveryman was pushed aside, and Eddie Vasco stood in his place. I finally stood before my obsession in person—dark hair, piercing eyes, and wearing one of his suits that was in a picture on my wall.

  Eddie handed the man a wad of cash and gave a warning look that sent a shiver down my spine. “Continue on with your deliveries. Nothing out of the ordinary happened tonight. It would be a shame to have to find you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said and turned to quickly walk away. He didn’t even look at me, but I didn’t blame him. Who would stand up against Eddie Vasco? I didn’t think the money had anything to do with him leaving and no doubt keeping his mouth shut.

  Then it dawned on me that I should fear for my life as well.

  I tried to slam the door shut, but Eddie had already placed his black leather shoe in the threshold and used his arm to open the door even wider.

  “Now, Miss Bell, this isn’t how you treat a guest. With all your proper boarding school upbringing, I expected better from you.”

  My breath hitched as Eddie forced his way into my apartment, shutting the door behind him. I glanced over my shoulder at the couch where I had left my cell phone. I also considered screaming, but for some reason felt I should be very careful in how I handled this situation with Eddie. Screaming, running, or even fighting could get me killed. This was the mafia boss and not some random burglar. This was Eddie Vasco, and he knew exactly who I was.