Your body has trillions of nerve cells running through it. These nerves are what allows you to feel sensations. Every single trillion of mine felt like they were set on fire and burning me from the inside.

The man, his name he had told me was Peter, seemed to be trained in such a way so that he knew exactly how to hit, where to burn, as to inflict the maximum amount of pain. My screams went out to uncaring ears if any at all. I begged him to stop but he seemed to take some sort of sick pleasure in inflicting pain.

He asked me if I knew anything about a retaliation plan from Joseph's mob. After what felt like millions of times of screaming I didn't know anything about any attacks coming. My fuzzy mind couldn't recall anything that point so even trying to tell him anything would have been useless.

"So you're Joseph Copland's girl. You know he and I have a bit of history together." He paused a moment seemingly thinking to himself. "Ah I won't bore with all that. Let's get back to the event at hand." His blue eyes gleamed in a way that would be burned into my memory for the rest of my life.

He raised his knife once more after his questions went unanswered once again. I winced and shielded away from the impending attack. His hand paused over my stomach when the door was flung open.

"Stop!" I didn't relax my stance on the floor when my torturer stood up and went to approach the intruder at the door.

I heard them whispering quietly to themselves. I couldn't muster the energy to strain to hear their conversation. I raised my hand to my face to wipe my tears away before either of them could see them, but the end result was smearing my bloody hand all over.

"What is this?! You were told not to touch her face!" Well that's comforting. I thought to myself.

"I assure sure I did not touch her pretty young face." Peter bent and ran his finger along my cheek. My face moved away instinctively from his disgusting hand.

"Enough. Get your hands off her." His hand withdrew from my skin as if he had been burned.

I could feel myself being picked up and held in the mans arms. The man I could now identify as the same person that had brought me down here. Every step we took I could feel my body prickle from top to bottom in pain. I could tell he was close to a run by how much I was jarring around in his arms.

"You're loosing too much blood." He said looking down at my blood soaked nightgown. I could see my blood trailing on the floor behind us. Cameron's words were confirmed when my vision swam and black dots began to invade my vision. I blinked slowly welcoming the release the darkness would provide. "I need you to keep your eyes open Jessica. We're almost there." His voice was panicked, and he began to run.

I was laid down onto a bed just before my eyes closed and my hearing dimmed down to nothing.

****

Joseph

Sitting at the dinner table and eating made me feel like throwing up anything that I had eaten. All I could think about was is she eating? Is she hurt? And how could I have let this happen.

I dropped my fork letting it clatter down loudly into my plate and exited the dining room uncharacteristically theatric.

40 feet. She was only 40 feet away when she was taken from the church's front steps. 40 feet away when the bomb went off. And now 2000 miles away, held by the 2 people I hate most in the world. Romano, and his pathetic son Stefan.

I made it to my office surprised to see the inside had been cleaned once again from my episode this morning when I received a call from Romano.

****

"Hello?" I answered the ringing phone, aggravated by its incessant ringing.

"Ahh Joseph so good to hear your voice again son." My fist clenched around the phone at the sound of the voice on the line.

"You bastard! Don't call me son! Where. is. she!"

"Oh let's not get ahead of ourselves. Your little girlfriend is here with me. She's actually with my dear friend Peter right now. You remember Peter don't you Joseph." All the blood rushed from my face. I nearly dropped the phone.

"Peter." I whispered, unable to bring my voice to normal. Hearing his name brought back the memories of when I was still young. When my mother was sent to me in pieces.

"Oh yes would you like to hear." His voice sounded almost giddy to my ears.

"Turn on the intercom." I could hear him say to someone in the room with him.

I waited in science until I heard it. Jessica's agonizing screaming made my blood boil. All the anger I had walled up inside me against this man came bubbling up to the surface.

"You sick son of a bitch! I swear when I come and get her I'm going to kill you in the most painful way thinkable, then after I'm done with you I'll do the same thing to your son. You will regret this Romano." My intense anger didn't allow me to try and calm my voice so it all came out in a very loud yell.

"Well first of all there's no need to bring my mother into all of this. Honestly Joseph I thought you were civilized. Anyway let's cut to the chase. We took your dear Jessica for 2 reasons. The first one being that my son has some odd infatuation with her. The second being that we want you hand over all of your control in the government of America to us."

I sat stunned. He couldn't honestly be serious. "You can't be serious Romano. That's absolutely propostrous. You're even more of a dumb ass than I thought you were if you think I would be stupid enough to agree to that."

"You should stop insulting me Joseph. My patience is running thin. Listening to our dear Jessica's screaming has me with a blistering headache. Now if you want to see her alive then you'll agree to my proposition. If she means as much to you as I was lead to believe I'll be hearing from you very soon." The line went silent. My eye began twitching as the full weight of what he said came down on me.

It was either give up her, or my entire empire. I rubbed my temples and groaned in frustration. I couldn't leave her. But I couldn't give up my government ties either. Her screaming echoed around in my head clouding me from thinking.

I yelled in frustration and wiped all the contents of my desk onto the floor. I ripped all the books from their places on the shelves. The walls were throughly speckled with holes my the time I leaned my bloody hands on the empty desk.

"Joseph? What are you doing?" I looked up and was met with the eyes of the one person I could trust with everything.

"Matthias. They're hurting her." For the first time in a decade I felt my eyes well up with tears. "I don't know what to do Matthias. They want me to give them control of the government, and if I don't they'll kill her. They'll kill her Matthias. I feel like no matter what I do I'm loosing everything."

"Joseph. Pull yourself together." He patted my back in a fatherly way. "We're going to get her back, and we're not going to give them anything."

"How?" I asked wiping the tear that slid down my face.

"I just got a call from your long lost cousin. He's going to help us get her back." He had a small smile on his face.

***

I was also surprised to see Matthias sitting in my office holding a phone to his ear.

"Oh, here he is." Matthias said handing the phone to me without offering any information as to who the caller was.

"Hello?" I said praying to god it wasn't Romano. I couldn't handle hearing his voice twice in one day.

"Joseph?" A boy whispered through the phone. "It's me Cameron."

"Cameron. We are going to have a serious talk when you come home." I couldn't keep the relief from my voice. "How is she Cameron?" I asked almost feeling afraid of what his answer might me.

"She's pretty beat up. Has a couple broken bones, some pretty deep cuts. I didn't know if she was going to make it there for awhile there."

"But she's ok now right." The thought of her actually dying briefly entered into my mind and sent me into a panic.

"I wouldn't go as far as to say she's ok. But she won't die. I got a friend that did some stitches and put on some bandages. Set the broken bones. She'll be in a world of hurt when she wakes up again, but she'll live."

"Ok." I swallowed hard.

"Stefan that sick bastard came in and tried to screw her while she was unconscious, but I told him she was almost dead and wouldn't be able to handle it."

My anger hit an all time high. "He what?" I said in a deathly growl.

"Yea I know like I said sick bastard. We have to get her out of here quick."

"What do you propose Cameron? I was told you had a plan." My patience was wearing thin.

"Next week on Thursday they have a huge shipment of weapons and drugs coming in from the south. It's supposed to be a secret, but I may have used some of your money to bribe some people. Anyway they'll have a lot of their guys handling and bringing in the shipment at 3:00 am. It's the only time you could possibly infiltrate this place and come out on top."

I stayed silent for a few moments running over the idea in my head.

"If you could hurry up that'd be great, I don't really have all day here."

"Alright. Let's do it."