Chapter 58
CARMELA
I don’t remember much of the drive. My mind lurches between hysterical and zombie.
The last view of Christian fighting those men and another vehicle pulling in before we swung into the traffic is like a brain fever.
Vince doesn’t say much.
I think he’s in shock, too.
As we pull into the back of Peppermint Moon, and the guy at the door does a double-take when he sees me, the enormity of what has happened hits me all over again.
There’s a long, dark corridor.
Lots of soldiers with guns.
I’m in Dante’s arms, sobbing.
Leon is there, too. He curses and rakes a hand through his hair as he talks to Vince.
“They took Christian,” I say between sobs. The words stuttered over gasped breaths.
“I know,” Dante says.
How does he know? What does that mean?
Vince leaves. Dante carries me to a windowless business office. Leon follows us in and closes the door after barking orders at someone outside.
“I need to know,” he says to Dante.
“Christ, would you give it a moment here?” Dante snaps back.
“I’ll tell you anything. Anything that will help. Please. You need to get Christian. Someone took him in a car.”
“We’ll get to that,” Dante says. “But first, tell us what happened. What were you doing in the city? Did someone take you… Was it Cherry?”
Cherry?
Oh God. They can’t believe that… “It wasn’t Cherry.” My eyes dart between the two men, taking in the stark lines of Dante’s face and the cold desolation on Leon’s.
Cherry likes him.
They think Cherry had something to do with this, and it’s all my fault.
“She didn’t know.” I shake my head frantically. “I used my phone to record the keypad. I asked her to come up so I could… But she didn’t know… I used her… Please tell me you haven’t hurt her? I was going back to Ettore… I-I was going to kill him.”
Leon inhales sharply, strides for the door, and rips it open. He barks at someone on the other side before slamming it shut… then punches the door.
The sudden explosion of violence rocks me, and a scream tears from my lips.
There’s a dent in the door, and his fist is covered in blood.
“Leon!” Dante snaps.
It pulls Leon up just as he’s going for a second punch, and his head swings around; his eyes look wild.
“Go,” Dante says. “I’ll sort this out, but we need to talk, and it needs to be before his next call.”
Leon blows out a breath and slams out of the office.
What call?
DANTE
She left. She was going back to Ettore. If she stuck a knife in my gut, it wouldn’t hurt any less than this.
As for Leon—I didn’t witness whatever went down between him and Cherry, but I doubt any of it was good.
Carmela is on my lap where she continues to sob with her head against my chest. She told me everything from her planning to leave and her reasons, to what happened in the coffee shop and afterward.
My mind is hyper-focused. My chest feels ice cold.
The bottom line. She tried to do this on her own. She didn’t trust me or Christian. She didn’t trust any of us.
It’s not a knife in my gut. It’s a blunt spoon someone is using to scoop out my intestines.
Christian.
Fuck! My gut tightens at the thought of what they will be doing to him now. Every second is like a hammer against my skull.
“Do you know who took Christian?” she asks quietly. “Was it the Russians?”
My laugh is inappropriate and humorless.
“No. I wish it were.” We might be able to negotiate with the Russians.
“He’s with Ettore. And Ettore knows Christian was working with us.
The Russians were either working with Ettore or against him.
We haven’t worked out which. They certainly weren’t neutral.
Ettore was desperate, losing credibility and close to breaking the longer you were gone and scrambling, so who knows, maybe he asked them for help.
If you had returned to Ettore, saying the Russians held you, there’s a high chance he would have known it for a lie. ”
She remains quiet, but fresh tears begin to fall down her cheeks.
I can’t do this without you, Christian. I don’t fucking want to. Unorthodox as this is, it’s only now, as I can feel the beating heart being ripped from me, that I accept the rightness of it.
“I don’t have any control,” she whispers. “I’m just a piece being shuffled around a board by made men. I thought this would give me some. It didn’t, and now I’ve…” Her breathing turns choppy, and she can’t get the rest out.
I hold her tighter. The time between her leaving and now has wrecked me.
And now Christian is gone, and that is wrecking me in a different way.
“You think I have control? Oh, no, sweetheart. You have all the power here. Can’t you feel it?
Don’t you know everything I’ve done this past year has been about you?
You think Christian has any control, either?
None. He would do anything for you. I’d be the first to admit my brother is one of a kind, but when he loves, he does so with unwavering focus and commitment. ”
She fists my shirt, pulling herself closer. “I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him because I made a stupid mistake.”
In a slightly unhinged way, I’m reveling in her neediness, in the way she is finally seeking my comfort and protection, looking to me to make this right.
Like she should have done from the start.
But I’m ice inside, and the moment carries an edge of melancholy: too little, too late.
“I can’t lose him either,” I say. “And I won’t.”
CARMELA
His cell phone dings, and he shifts me on his lap so he can take it out and read it.
“I’ve got to go.”
Go? “Where are you going? Is it Christian?”
He stands and puts me down on the couch where he was sitting. Taking my hand in his, he crouches in front of me.
He won’t forgive me if Christian dies, I can read it in his face.
I won’t forgive myself, so that really doesn’t matter.
“He’s tough.”
“But not indestructible.”
“No,” he agrees. “I’ve got to go. Soldiers are outside the door.”
My heart beats a sickly tattoo in my chest.
“If you stay, you do so because you want to… Because you want to be here when Christian comes back, because you trust me—us—to take care of you.” He cups my cheek, the hold is firm, and every bit of gentleness leaves his expression.
“But if you leave again, ever, know I will find you, and after, I will never trust you again. What you don’t do—fucking ever—is leave on a misguided crusade to save Christian or me. Understood?”
I’ve fucked up. I can’t reconcile how much I’ve fucked up. My terror knowing Ettore has taken Christian has me in a stranglehold of regret.
My mistakes are mine to own, and I can choose to learn and grow from them. I presumed to know this world, but I was looking at only half the picture. Someone I love is hurting because of me. That my actions come from a place of good intentions doesn’t mitigate the consequences.
I wanted some control over my destiny, but I went about it in all the wrong ways.
Nobody has absolute power. We are all subject to forces beyond our control.
But there is strength in submission, in trusting someone to take care of you because they have pieces you don’t, and you likewise have pieces that they don’t.
“I won’t,” I push past my raw throat. “I trust you—I trust Christian. Please. Whatever it takes. Whatever I can do that will help. I will do it, whether that is staying in this room until you say otherwise, or something else you ask of me. I-I won’t question you again.”
He plants his lips over mine, brief and fierce, and then he stands, and his hands slip away.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He leaves. I sit, staring at the closed door. Every second feels amplified. Every second I think about Christian.
Please, come back to me.
DANTE
“Is she okay?” Leon asks.
“Physically, yes. But she’s got a lot of guilt to work through.”
“And you?”
I swallow. “I’ve got a lot of trust issues to work through… How’s Cherry?”
He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his pants and stares out at the darkened club. “I could console myself by saying she’s suffered worse, but I’m not sure she has.”
“That good, hey?”
“I’ve crossed lines.”
“Haven’t we all… They’ve got Christian. They know he was colluding with us.
Ettore told us he will call at three with a list of demands…
We don’t have a fucking clue where he’s been taken.
We’re stuck waiting on that call and praying he doesn’t change things up on us and drop his body off on our doorstep. ”
It will be a miracle if my brother gets out of this alive.
If he gets out of it alive without being maimed, it will be an even bigger one.
One day I’m going to be building a pyre and putting Ettore’s head on it, but he’s got us at a disadvantage, so it won’t be today.
“It’s time we tested our negotiating skills,” Leon says, his expression empty as he turns to face me. “Get me a meeting with the Russians, I’ll handle the rest.”
“The Russians, as in their Pakhan? You think you can be in the vicinity of him and not strangle the fuck? Whatever we think we know of Ettore, there is a good chance they played a part in your father’s death.”
“You’ve profiled him—you’ve profiled every player exhaustively over the last year, but particularly Grigory Koslov, because he’s personal to me.
Do I think he played a part in my father’s death?
Yes. Do I want to kill him for it? Absolutely.
But you said yourself something is off about him buddying up with Ettore.
And I’m all out of other ideas. We knew the risks, we took the risks, and so did Christian.
But we’re not losing him like this… Not if there are options that allow him to live to fight another day.
One battle at a time, that’s all we have the bandwidth for.
They might go straight to Ettore and tell him we asked for a meeting.
They might do a lot of things, but they also might just give us an option that doesn’t see all of us dead. ”
He’s right. Getting Christian back is all that matters.
I’m willing to crawl to the man instrumental in the killing of my uncle, if that’s what it takes, no hesitation.
I just hope that, if I can arrange a meeting, now and at such short notice, Leon doesn’t lose his damn mind and off the fucker.
Because he’s right. We’ve lost any edge we had against Ettore, and we definitely can’t take on the Russians as well.
“I’ll get it done.”