Chapter Text
Nina was going to be pissed.
No, worse than that: she was going to be worried. At nine months pregnant, life was hard enough on her without adding concern for the father of her child to her plate. That would, in turn, add unnecessary stress to the baby. Our baby, he mentally corrected himself. Our son.
Stuart sighed as he pulled once again at the shackles around his wrists. Surprisingly, while many emotions bombarded him at present, the most prevailing feeling was that of unadulterated annoyance. He was annoyed to be in this predicament; cuffed and connected to a damn hook in a concrete, filthy floor, which had him kneeling there like a prone little child. Annoyed that the perps had been able to sneak up on him like that in the first place. Annoyed that his nice suit was now completely ruined by the blood from his head wound and annoyed that the attention of the JOC would now have to be directed at finding him.
Most of all, he was annoyed that his amazing, pregnant girlfriend would be in the position of having to wonder if he would ever be coming home. Ever meet their son.
Stuart shook his head at the thought and forced it from his mind. He had been abducted, which sucked profoundly, but he was a Federal Agent and he'd be damned if he let the fear, emotions and what ifs cloud his judgment. He knew the team was going to be looking for him: an ambush during broad daylight right beside 26 Fed would raise a few eyebrows at the very least. He also knew firsthand how effective they were at their jobs. But his best chance at getting out of here would come if he pretended as though he needed to save himself. That meant keeping a clear head, noticing every possible detail and compartmentalizing. Which he was good at.
So focus on the facts, Stuart thought to himself, clenching his eyes shut and taking a deep breath.
He had been simply walking out of 26 Fed for his usual coffee run to the nearby cart when someone had come up behind him and immediately put him in a chokehold with an unmistakable gun pressed into his back. He barely had time to react before he was being manhandled backwards towards the street and quickly found himself pulled into a van. And just like that, mere seconds, he was speeding off to God knows where with God knows who. He had, of course, tried to fight them off and would have gladly taken his chance at jumping from a moving vehicle, but a swift and painful crack to the side of his forehead with the butt of the gun previously held to his back effectively quelled that initial plan to escape.
After arriving at what appeared to be one of many abandoned buildings on the outskirts of the city, he now knew his abductors to be members of the wanna-be newest family of the NYC Italian Mafia. While the known Five Families had mostly found themselves involved in things like racketeering schemes and money laundering, the Cammaranos were trying to make a name for themselves and were trying to do so violently. The leader, Johnny Cammarano, was currently in the custody of the team under suspicion for the latest murder of a higher level member from one of the five main families, the Colombos.
With all of that in mind, Stuart's first and most reasonable guess was that they intended to swap him for their boss. Sadly, that was likely not something Isobel would be willing to do for obvious reasons, unless they truly didn't have enough to keep Johnny Cammarano in custody. But it also meant he at least had a little time to escape before they put a bullet through his head, or whatever flavor of death they were going to use.
"Gio, you almost done or what?" one of the guys across the large open area angrily asked his partner. "We've had this jackal an hour already and haven't even made contact with the feds. You know the Boss ain't going to like this timeline."
The man named Gio threw his hands in the air, "What do you want from me, Dom?! You want the signal to be untraceable but you got me in one of the worst areas of the city to pull that off with the least amount of equipment to do it. I'm not a superhuman, Dom."
Dom then plopped down pointedly in a fold out chair, "Sorry, I just want to be more comfortable as I listen to your long list of excuses. You were saying…"
Gio waved his hand towards Dom, clearly not wanting to engage any longer with him and his antics. Stuart tried not to be too obvious with his watching and listening but was learning quite a bit about his captors. Gio was evidently the brains and Dom more so the brawn. Stuart knew there were several more members of this "family," but these two were undoubtedly fairly high up there if they were, in fact, tasked with getting the boss back.
"Yeah, Gio, keep playing," Dom continued, standing up again to continue pacing. "We have a damn federal agent bleeding on the floor over there and still no closer to getting back on track."
Stuart looked directly at his chains again, knowing that the attention was back on him, at least temporarily. He definitely preferred when their bickering kept the attention elsewhere.
"Whose fault is it that he's bleeding?" Gio countered. "I'm not the one who clocked him in the head, am I?"
"That's because you were driving, not dealing with his skinny ass bucking and fighting back!" Dom yelled back, his hands waving madly in the air. "Geez, just finish the damn phone setup. And make sure it's a video call. That little head wound is the least of Agent Boy's concerns and I want to make damn sure his people know that. Honestly, maybe I should rough him up a little more before the call to make a point."
Stuart sighed deeply. There it was. They were going to attempt to video call the JOC, most likely demand a trade and happily torture him a little (or a lot) to prove their point. And apparently had enough sense to at least try to make it untraceable. With all of that now laid out, Stuart found himself coming to one particular thought: Please don't let Nina into the JOC to see whatever they had planned.