Chapter 25 - Damien
Tight with anger, I clenched my jaw and continued to drive after leaving the perfectly secure Levov warehouse behind, frustrated and still at a loss about what happened.
It was obvious that someone sent me a fake text from Ari, and in my urgency, I didn’t bother to check the contact.
Someone spoofed the message, claiming there was an emergency, but I couldn’t understand why. Why would anyone take the time to get my number and send me to a false location when nothing was going on? I didn’t know how this person got my number, for that matter.
It was confusing and frustrating, but I knew it had to be on purpose. It was too perfect to not be intentional.
But why?
Why did someone want to pull me away and mislead me?
There had to be a motive I was missing, but beyond that, I needed to make sure everything was fine with the Levovs.
If someone sent that text with the hopes of separating me from the family, then there was a chance they could be in trouble. There could be a bigger plan at that, and I was stupid enough to fall for the cop-out.
I was supposed to have the rat caught and stopped before anything else happened. Before anyone else’s life could be threatened by them and their goons.
Frustrated and determined to make things right, I was about to call Ari’s real number when Lukyan’s name popped up on the dash display. Brows furrowed, I accepted it.
“What the hell is going on around here?”
“Does that mean you already know?” Luk asked, sounding slightly hesitant to even ask the question.
“What, the spoofed text? Yeah, after I already got all the way there—”
“No…about Sky,” he interrupted, apparently aware of something I wasn’t.
Immediately, my brows pinched together as my expression hardened. “What are you talking about? What happened to her?”
There was a beat of silence from him, and I lost my patience at once.
“What happened to Sky?!”
Luk was quick to respond after letting go of a breath. “I was watching over the live feed of the office when I was notified of movement in the parking garage…and I ended up seeing Sky there. She was knocked out and taken.”
“…taken? You’re sure?”
“Yes. I watched it all happen.”
My heart stopped, and my grip on the steering wheel loosened long enough for me to swerve slightly into the other lane before correcting myself. All the while, those words echoed in my head, and I knew I couldn’t keep going.
Flipping my signal on, I pulled over and put the car in neutral.
The longer I processed what Luk told me and what that all meant, a wave of both alarm and anger crashed into me at once, and I grit my teeth as I uttered, “Who was it?”
“I did some cross-referencing as soon as I could, and the visual match came up as Raf Ajello…one of the newer hires, and I believe someone you had suspected,” Luk explained, tone sounding both urgent and remorseful.
Raf. It was him.
My grip on the wheel tightened as that enraged heat burned within me, hardly able to keep myself reigned in long enough to respond. “He was the rat?”
“That’s my assumption. From what I could tell, he was hiding out and waiting since work was let out. He didn’t target anyone but Sky.”
All the while, the reality of the situation fell onto me at once, everything else started to click into place. It all made sense immediately.
The spoofed text…was to pull me away from the office and from the live feed. Once Sky was alone, he swooped in and took her.
“Holy shit…” I muttered, voice low as I tried to wrap my head around it all.
Even if my hunch seemed irrational at first, I had been right all along. Raf was the spy disguised as a journalist.
He had been there every day, lingering in the background collecting information. He somehow managed to eavesdrop on enough seemingly private conversations to find weaknesses in the Levovs’ security…he surely got information on us all at the same time I was trying to do the same to him.
At that moment, every instance of him being nearby in the office, seemingly working but actually following through with a plan to farm information about us, the Levovs, and likely other crime families in the city.
Even earlier in the day, I had seen him in the photocopy room while I was telling Daniil about the pregnancy. He had been right there, surely listening.
And that was probably why he struck when he did. He heard me mention Sky and the baby, and he wasted no time taking advantage of the fact that he wasn’t supposed to hear.
He did his job, and he did it damn well.
Gritting my teeth to the point of aching, I said through the phone, “Damn it…he knew. He knew about the pregnancy…”
“The pregnancy?” Luk questioned, sounding confused. “Sky’s pregnant—”
“Yes,” I interrupted him, trying to wrap things up so we could get to helping her. “She’s pregnant with my child…which is why we need to get her back immediately.”
There was the slightest pause from Lukyan before his voice returned with more urgency once again. “Of course…I’m working on finding her right now.”
“Trace her cell phone if she still has it, run his plates…anything. Try it all,” I demanded of him, losing my patience despite his cooperation.
My whole body felt like it was on fire, needing more desperately than anything to track down her and Raf. To finally confront him and the damn Pesci family before they could hurt her further.
I needed her to be safe. I needed to get her back, even if I had waited too long to act.
“I don’t care what it takes. Get as many guys out there as physically possible.”
Through the call, I could hear Luk’s fingers tapping quickly against his keyboard. “I’m dispatching our units right now, and alerting the others. They’ll be en route as soon as possible to meet you.”
Taking in a shaken breath to try and keep my rage at bay, I knew I wouldn’t be able to wait much longer. Knowing Sky was out there but not being able to do anything about it yet was driving me insane. I needed to see her…to see that she and the baby were unharmed. I needed to be able to bring her back home and guard her with my own life.
I felt like a failure for ever letting it happen. For being fooled by the fake text and allowing myself to be pulled away.
I never should’ve left that office. I should’ve stayed and I should’ve taken her home without question. Sky should’ve been tucked away safely at home, resting and continuing to grow our child in the comfort of my place.
But because of my hastiness, she was taken by the bastards I had been after for weeks.
“Alright…I found a location ping. I’m sending it to you now.”
At his words, a notification came up on my dash display, and I immediately accepted it, popping the location into my GPS. From what I could tell, she was still in the city, tucked away somewhere hidden within the mess of businesses and apartments.
But that was all I needed. It didn’t matter what I had to do, I would get her back. I would burn it all down just to have her with me again.
At once, I threw the car back on the highway and continued towards the heart of the city.
“I’m on my way now…tell the others to wait until I get there.”
After hearing Luk’s acknowledgment, the call ended, and I focused solely on the road and getting to Sky as fast as I physically could.
She had been a ray of sunshine that contrasted my gritty existence since the day I met her, and even if we had a rough start, it didn’t matter. She quickly became the centerpiece of my life, and regardless of our initial struggles and the back and forth we both endured, I wasn’t prepared to let the Pesci family get away with abducting her.
Sky didn’t deserve to be pulled into that world. She was so perfect and pure to me, and despite who I was or the business I conducted, no part of me would let those bastards and their rats snuff out that light of hers.