13. Vitorio
My phone security alarm buzzes urgently, letting me know that there has been a disturbance at one of our sites.
I open the notification and my heart sinks when I see the location.
It is the old abandoned warehouse that Nicki has been asking about ever since one of the informants mentioned it.
I told her so many times that it was empty and not worth our time. I went there myself, about a year ago, and it is falling apart, with nothing useful in it.
But with the alarm going off, the tight feeling in my gut tells me that she went there alone, and I don't like the idea of that at all.
I don't even want her to go to the shops alone, with everything that is going on right now, every move she makes without me by her side is a huge risk.
"Fuck." I mutter under my breath.
"What's that?" the man sitting opposite me says.
I glance up at him. "Sorry, Jethro, I have to go. Thank you for your time. Stay safe."
He chuckles. "Nobody would dare come after me." He smirks.
Jethro is arrogant and stupid, and he didn't have anything of value to share with me. He was a complete waste of my time and I actually got the feeling he just wanted to pretend to have information to bribe me.
"Still, be careful out there." I stand, sliding my phone into my pocket.
All I want to do is get to that warehouse to find Nicki.
I should never have left her alone.
My car revs towards the abandoned warehouse, my brows knotted as worry floods me.
As I approach, I can already see the commotion from a distance away.
I park my car and climb out, wandering through the array of security vehicles. The warehouse is swarming with men, searching in all directions.
I spot my brother and my uncle, standing amidst the chaos.
"Luca, what is going on?"
"Female, early twenties, one of the security guards caught her snooping around in here." His eyes are right on me.
My uncle glances between the two of us. "Luca thinks he knows the girl," Marco says.
"I do fucking know her, and we are going to find her." Luca snaps angrily.
"Who was it?" All I can think is that I have to delay their thoughts and decisions long enough to give her time to get somewhere safe. I just need to keep them talking for a while.
"Don't play dumb with me, brother. You two have been causing shit in our business and poking around creating drama where there is no drama to be found."
My brows shoot up, as though I am surprised.
"You think this was Nicki?" I ask, looking perplexed.
"Of course, it was her." He snarls.
"What have you got against her?" I say, feeling myself getting heated, wanting to defend her.
"Why couldn't you just stay away from her, Vitorio? She was mine. You were never meant to get involved with her. You never know when to back off. You stole her from me." He spits.
"Stole her from you? Are you kidding? She is perfectly capable of making her own decision, and I have to say brother, she did not look too happy to be there with you that night."
Luca glares at me with venom in his eyes. "You are always taking what doesn't belong to you."
"And you are always treating people like you won them like they are your toys to use and discard at will; she doesn't deserve that."
"What the fuck do you know about what she deserves, and what I would do for her? You don't know anything about her. She has belonged to me since the first time I saw her, and you are fucking this up. I am going to find her. I know she was here, and when I do, she will have to answer to me. This is private property, my property. She already owes me, and she will have to pay up one way or another."
"Don't you dare threaten her?"
"Threat?" he snorts. "It is a promise. She will give me what I want."
I am stuck in a standoff between my family and protecting the woman my heart is obsessed with. My brother, or Nicki. Where does my loyalty sit?
I clench my teeth in anger.
"It couldn't have been her. She was with me this morning."
"Was she now? And what were you two doing this morning?" He tilts his head, his eyes full of accusation.
"I just left her now."
Nausea pushes up in my throat.
I am lying to my own family. I feel sick, knowing I am betraying them with my words.
Luca's jaw muscles flex and he rolls his shoulders back.
"You have been spending a lot of time with her. Are you saying she stayed over at your place? Are you two an item now?" the bitter resentment in his voice is thick and dark with jealousy that flashes over his face, as he clenches his fists.
"I am saying that it can't have been her as I was just with her," I say with force, leaving no room for further discussion.
Luca glances over his shoulder, towards the search that is continuing in the old warehouse.
He looks up towards the top of the building and then turns back towards me with a menacing smirk on his lips.
"I guess the security cameras will be able to confirm that. So there is no need for us to be having this conversation. I'll head over to the security offices right now and have a look for myself."
His boots crunch against the gravel as he walks towards his car.
"You better hope I am wrong, Vitorio." He calls out, without turning to look at me.
Marco shifts his weight from one leg to the other and lets out a sigh of frustration.
"Vitorio, whatever it is you are doing, you need to stop. The word out there is that people are making moves against you, and every step you take to cover up for this girl - do you even know her? What if she is playing you? Listen, man, I don't know what is going on. But you need to stop this bullshit."
Pulling my mouth tight I glance up and down over my uncle's slender figure, trying to read his body language. With the way things are going, I am becoming suspicious of everyone and everything. He is right though. I am stirring up a shit storm by asking questions all the time, and people are moving against me. But the most frustrating part is that I don't even know which side the danger is coming from. Who is after me? Who wants me silenced?
I can't focus on that right now. What I have to do is get to Nicki and get her somewhere safe. The first place they will look for her is her own apartment, and then mine, where I am sure she is headed.
As I rush back to my car, I pull my phone out.
I wait until I am already driving away from the warehouse before I dial her number.
It rings twice and when she answers I feel every muscle in my body twitch with relief.
"Nicki, are you alright? Why the hell did you go to the warehouse without me?"
"Vitorio, someone saw me and chased me." She says, sounding panicked.
"I know. I was just there. They are searching the place, and soon they are going to come looking for you once they find out it was you from the security camera footage."
"I don't know what to do."
Her voice is tight with fear and all I want is to reach out and wrap her in my arms and let her know it is going to be alright.
"Meet me at my place; park your car underground. I will be there in ten minutes. Don't go upstairs, I don't know if it is safe. Wait for me underground."
I drive full speed all the way there, knowing I am racing against the clock, and that Luca will soon find out the truth. It is too late for me to try and talk to him again, he won't see reason. As soon as he knows I lied about being with her, the storm of tension is going to crack wide open. I know how my brother behaves when he's jealous of something that I have – that he wants. That was the look I saw in his eyes today. I don't think this is about the investigation for him at all. I think he is just angry that Nicki has chosen me over him.
My car engine growls in the underground parking lot beneath my penthouse. My eyes search everywhere until I spot Nicki, leaning against a wall, in a dark corner.
She rushes towards my car when she spots me, and I climb out to grab her into my arms.
"Nicki. Fuck. This is not good. I don't understand why Luca would be so pissed off about you being at the warehouse. There is nothing there but dirt and shit."
She pushes away from me and looks into my eyes. "There was something there." She says seriously.
I look down to see the file she has clutched against her chest. "You found something?" I ask in shock.
"I did, and it's bad."
"Alright, we need to get out of here. Right now."
I grab her hand and pull her towards the garages at the back of the parking lot. Pressing a code into a panel I hear a low electronic buzz as the door starts to slide open.
She follows me into the secure space.
"We have to take this car. No one knows it is mine, and I have emergency money stashed in here. We need to disappear for a while." I am throwing wads of cash into a leather duffel bag. I grab the car keys hanging on the wall.
"Get in. I am almost done."
She hesitates for a moment but then moves quickly to climb into the passenger side.
I press my fingerprint up against the safe lock and when the door opens, I grab the gun and ammunition.
My phone is buzzing in my pocket, but I don't have time to see who it is. We need to go. We need to get as far away from here as possible. There is no telling who will be coming after us if Nicki is right - and she has found evidence against someone.
I pull the car out and the garage closes up behind me.
It is time for us to disappear.
Nicki sits tensely next to me as I navigate the backroads. The windows are heavily tinted, and armored, but I still want to stay as much out of sight as possible.
I reach my arm out and place my hand over her thigh.
"It's going to be ok. I have a safe house here. We can spend the night, perhaps two. We need to wait for things to settle down before we do anything else."
She nods, still clutching the folder against her body. What did she find out? What is in there?
I pull the car into an underground bay and wait until the door slides closed behind me.
In the dark garage, I gather the things I have brought with us and climb out of the car.
Nicki follows.
At the locked door I lean close to the panel and say my own name. "Vitorio Vitali."
Voice activation processes for a second, and then the door clicks open.
I walk in ahead of Nicki, looking around the small apartment, just wanting to make sure it is safe - even though I know it is nearly impossible to break in here.
I breathe a sigh of relief, locking the door behind me and tossing the leather bag onto the sofa.
"It's small, but it has everything we need."
"We can't stay here, Vitorio."
"We have to."
"Does your family know about this place? Your brother? Anyone in your family?"
"The family lawyer knows about it, but not my brother. He also has his own safe house, and we each decided not to let the other know, in case our rivals used certain tactics to get the information out of us. We wanted to ensure each other's safety."
She shakes her head.
"I still don't feel safe here."
I pull her towards the sofa, and push her onto it, taking a seat next to her.
"It's time for you to tell me what you found in the warehouse."
She stares down at the folder, clutched in her hands, and closes her eyes as she tries to make a choice.
Finally, she places the folder on her lap and pulls out a photograph, handing it to me.
"That is my father. I don't know who the man with him is, but there is a folder, with my father's name on it - and photographs of him - "
She waits while I examine the image.
I pull my mouth tight and my eyes lift towards hers.
"Nicki, the other man is my father."
I hand the photo back to her. "But it doesn't mean anything. It's just a photograph of them together. They look comfortable with each other. They don't look as though there were issues between them."
"Do you know my father? Did you ever meet him?" She asks, looking worried.
"No, I don't ever remember meeting him, sorry. My father often had dinners and his business associates and friends would come over, but I don't think I ever saw your father at one of them."
Nicki bites her bottom lip and hands me a piece of paper.
My chest tightens. My heart slams against my rib cage.
A bounty, for her father's death, signed by someone from my family.
The signature is scrawled in loose cursive on the bottom of the page.
It is messy, rushed, and smeared, but unmistakable.
"Vitali," I whisper.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out, remembering that it has been buzzing ever since I left the warehouse.
Unknown: Return the girl and what she found, or we will kill you both.
I swallow hard.
I opened the other messages that came through while we were making our way to the safe house, and there were around twenty threats of a similar nature.
"You are right. We can't stay here." I say, looking up at her. "We need to leave the city."
She bites her lips, and I can see the fear seeping into her bright hazel eyes.
"Where will we go?"
"For now, we just need to get away from here. I didn't think ahead. Our phones can be traced. We have to destroy them and leave, then we will just have to make a plan when we are on the road."
I hold out my hand and she shifts her body to pull her own phone from her pocket. She hands it to me.
I take both of our phones and crack them in half, pulling the SIM cards out.
"You are going to have to trust me, Nicki. I know you are still struggling with it, and I am sure that what you found in that folder is not helping you put your faith in me - but I need you to trust me. It's you and me against the unknown now."
We are back in the car as night begins to fall over the city.
I drive for a while, but the nagging feeling in my head is that I need to get us off the streets for now.
After finding our way into a part of town that I don't usually visit, we check into a trashy overnight motel.
At least this place has no ties to me whatsoever, and no one would think to look for us here.
I am well-known in this city, and easily recognizable.
There is already so much heat on us, from our previous investigations, and all of those people that have gone missing after we spoke to them - and now it is just escalating.
I know what people from my world do when they think you are causing trouble for them or their business. It's not pretty.
We are in a lot of danger from people with a lot of money, and a lot of power.
We are both exhausted, as we lay on the lumpy, old mattress, staring blankly at the pixelated screen of an old television.
The sound is muted, and we are both quietly lost in our own thoughts.
Suddenly Nicki jumps up and grabs the remote from the bedside table. I tense in fright at her sudden movement, immediately wrapping my hand around my Glock hidden beneath the pillow.
"That's us." Nicki gasps, pointing at the television with the remote.
Our faces are being displayed on the screen, with the words wanted written in bold red letters beneath the image. She presses the remote to increase the volume.
- on the run and considered extremely dangerous. These two are wanted in connection with the murder of Tony Balducci, a fifty-three-year-old man who was found burned to death in his car this afternoon -
"What the fuck?" I stammered, sitting up in the old motel bed.
"Do you know him? Tony Balducci?" She asks as tears threaten to fall from her eyes.
"I have never heard of him in my life. Someone is setting us up."
"The motel receptionist - they would have seen us coming in. Do you think they would call the cops?"
"Impossible to say, but it's not a risk worth taking. We have to leave."
Nicki is already off the bed and grabbing her things. I follow quickly, picking up the leather bag. I hold my Glock in my hand as we hurry out to the parking lot and climb back into the car.
"We don't have anywhere to go," Nicki mumbles, realizing the situation we are in. "As soon as anyone sees our faces, they will notify people of where we are."
"The mafia has so many contacts in the police force. I can only assume they have done this to get the public to help them locate us."
"They killed a man just to frame us so that they can find us." She says in horror.
I nod, not wanting to tell her what I think will happen if they do find us.
"Nicki, the only way out of this is to solve your father's murder. Clearly the closer we get to the truth, the more danger we are in. The person responsible does not want to be caught and will do anything to stop us. So we have to stop them first."
There is no one I feel safe asking for help at this point, not my family, not my friends. Everyone is a suspect to me right now.
I drive us out of the city and park the car deep in a thick forest of trees on some unnamed road. We need to sleep, and for now, this is the best option we have.