Nineteen
Maxim
When Carlo ordered me to move our stash after the shitstorm with Senator Rosa, I picked this abandoned factory. Only six people knew about it, and five of them are lying dead on the ground right now. No fucking idea what the hell happened here, but I’ll find out soon.
There aren’t many people in this country with the balls to cross the Bruni organization. That son of a bitch who killed my crew and stole the product will have to sell it eventually. And when he does, I’ll find him, and shove his nuts down his goddamn throat.
I close my eyes and massage my temples with my thumb and forefinger. Two long-ass weeks hunting that motherfucker Leonardo, and now this shit on top of it.
Lorenzo hangs up his phone and steps up beside me. “Cleanup team’s rolling in within the hour to wipe this place clean. Did you tell Don Carlo?”
“Tonight’s his monthly date with his wife. Nobody interrupts that.”
“Any idea who might’ve done this?”
I shake my head, eyes fixed on the corpses. By the time the cleaners haul off the bodies and scrub every last trace of evidence, the sky’s fully lit. I climb into the car and head home.
Before I step inside, I leave Carlo a message and pocket my phone. That’s when Alex approaches.
“How’s it looking, boss?” he asks.
He’s already pieced most of it together.
“I’ll fix it,” I mutter.
He shifts uneasily before finally saying, “Yesterday, after Ava dropped Aurora off at the hotel, she started walking through the park. A man approached her. I stepped in immediately, but Ava said she knew him.”
My brows shoot up. What man?
He keeps going: “They talked for a few minutes. When they said goodbye, I could’ve sworn he slipped something into her hand during the handshake. One of our guys happened to be nearby. I told him to tail the man.”
He pulls out his phone and holds it in front of my face.
Two men fill the screen and I recognize one instantly.
Leonardo. The bastard I’ve been hunting for days.
I shoot Alex a questioning glare.
“The guy on the left is the one who talked to Ava. And the one on the right…” He hesitates briefly. “Well, you know him yourself.”
Then he pulls out another photo and adds,
“I managed to track where Ava went the day she blew me off. She stopped at a phone store and bought herself a phone and a SIM card.”
He shows me a picture of Ava at the counter, obviously taken from the store’s security cameras.
“I searched the house, boss.” His expression darkens. “Unfortunately, the phone was in her bag.”
My memory flickers like goddamn film reels, replaying that night Ava spat in my face that she’d leave me at any cost. My ears burn red, my head heats up like a furnace.
This can’t be a coincidence, the same night Ava meets a stranger who’s got ties to my old man, one of our prime stashes gets hit. Unless…
Rage boils over, turning my fists into iron hammers, veins bulging in my neck like fucking ropes. I shove Alex aside and storm toward the house like a goddamn hurricane, taking the stairs two at a time before slamming into my bedroom.
I head straight for her bag and rip through it until I find the phone Alex told me about.
The second I turn it on, I check the calls and find one voicemail from an unknown number, sent last night right after I left.
My pulse pounds violently as I press play, and Leo’s sickening voice immediately fills my ears.
“Good job, sweetheart. Just like I promised, the tickets to London for you and your daughter are booked, and the money’s already been transferred to your account. Check your email.”
For a second, all I see is fucking red. I cut the message off and immediately open her emails.
There it is. The transfer confirmation. The plane tickets.
Booked under her name and my daughter’s.
A savage sound tears out of my chest as I throw the phone back into her bag blindly, my breathing turning rough and uneven while my eyes rake across the room like a predator hunting prey.
Then they land on the nightstand drawer.
My drawer. The place where I leave my phone every night.
I yank the drawer open and inspect it inch by inch. There, taped to the underside: the thing I dreaded finding. Some USB-looking gadget, stuck up there, and one look is enough to tell me what it is. A fucking bug. Someone’s been listening. Someone’s been stealing my data.
I crush the thing in my fist till it bites into my palm, racking my brain for what else might be on there that could screw Carlo. Nothing. The only dirt that could’ve burned us was that shipment. And right then Ava walks in.
If she were a man, I’d snap her neck right now.
If she weren’t the mother of my child…I can’t believe she’s this filthy, feeding me lies like that.
Can’t believe what a dumbass I was to trust her.
I have to end her, make her a fucking lesson for everyone who thinks they can cross me.
Turn the floor red with her blood. Erase her from this world.
By this time tomorrow, Ava won’t exist, and that thought guts me with a grief I’ve only felt once before.
When I lost my mother. Goddamn this woman for making me crave her like this.
Picturing her gone floods me with such savage ownership that I can’t help it, I lunge at her, claiming what’s mine.
The whole time I’m buried inside her, I’m at war with myself.
I swore I’d make traitors pay, but now this bitch is unraveling every code I’ve lived by my whole life.
When I jam the gun into her head, I’ve got every goddamn reason in the world to pull the trigger.
But my finger won’t move. It’s like my own body is betraying me, some invisible force holding me back, refusing to let me end her.
And that’s when it hits me. It doesn’t matter how many men I’ve skinned alive and still sat down to lunch like nothing happened.
It doesn’t matter how many women’s throats I’ve slit, or how much blood I’ve spilled, or whether I burn in hell for every drop.
Every man, no matter how far he’s crawled into the devil’s lap, has a breaking point.
And Ava’s mine. This is the blood I can’t spill.
The line I can’t cross. The woman I can’t imagine living without…
and now can’t stand to live with. The only way out is to take my daughter and get the hell away, put miles, hundreds of miles between us.
I storm out of the house and call Diego, ordering him to pick up Aurora and take her to Carlo’s place with the other kids.
Then I grab Alex’s phone, forward the photos to Lorenzo, and tell him to dig up everything he can on that mystery bastard.
After that, I get in my car and drive off from that cursed house, because I know if I stay one more second, I’ll go back and I’ll claim that traitorous bitch for good.
Hell, I’d even throw down with Carlo over her. And that can’t fucking happen.
I don’t know how many hours I drift through the streets before Carlo’s name flashes on my screen.
“Maxim,” he hisses the moment I pick up. “Where the fuck are you? Do you know how many times I’ve called you?”
I suck in a deep breath. “Sorry, Carlo.”
His voice sharpens like a blade. “Sorry for what? Where’s Ava? What the hell did you do to her?”
“Nothing. I know she fucked you over, but I’m not letting you lay a hand on her, Carlo. She’s my kid’s mother. She’s—” I can’t finish. The words die in my throat.
All I can hear is his angry breathing on the other end, heavy and impatient. “I’m in your goddamn house. Get here. Now.”
The line goes dead, and it’s like a live wire rips through me.
Carlo’s not the kind of man who lets betrayal slide, especially one that cost him his men.
He’s there to kill her. I slam the car into gear and tear down the road toward home, calling Alex again and again.
No answer. Straight to voicemail every fucking time.
When I finally screech up to the house, I don’t even kill the engine.
I jump out and sprint through the yard, my pulse pounding in my ears.
Carlo’s inside, phone still in hand, his chest rising and falling with the fury carved deep into his face.
Brando’s off to the side, barking orders into his own phone.
Lorenzo and Giorgio stand nearby, silent and watchful, while a few of Carlo’s soldiers wait around them, tense and ready.
Carlo spots me, cuts the call, and turns toward me with a glare that could cut steel. My eyes dart around the room, frantic, searching for any sign of her.
“Where is she?” I ask.
He steps right up to me and smirks. “That’s the same fucking question I’ve got for you. What did you do with the girl?”
If I didn’t know Carlo like the back of my hand, I’d swear he was bullshitting me. I shake my head slowly, side to side.
“Nothing. Just told her to get out of our lives.”
His fists clench tight, knuckles whitening.
“Get out where? On what fucking charge?” he growls through gritted teeth.
No point denying it, I know Lorenzo’s already filled him in on the photos. “She worked with my father,” I snap. “Planted a device in our bedroom to spy on us. She betrayed me, Carlo.”
He drags in a heavy breath, jaw ticking hard, then holds his hand out toward Lorenzo. Without a word, Lorenzo passes him the phone. Carlo lifts it and shoves it in my face, showing me the same damn photos, Leonardo and that stranger.
“This guy,” he says, pointing, “the one meeting Ava, he’s your father’s contact, right?”
“Yeah.” My voice comes out flat.
“Do you even know who the hell he is?”
His tone’s got a bad vibe crawling under my skin. I stay quiet, and that’s all the answer he needs. Carlo’s smirk twists wider, sharp and bitter.
“I do. Remember when I ran Ava’s background before hiring her? This man is Gerard Niccini. He was her former boss. Supposed to be in the States right now with his wife, April Niccini, and their two sons.”
He pauses, eyes darkening, voice dropping lower. “Except April’s body turned up in New York this morning. And Gerard’s was found in Rome just a few hours later.”
My chest tightens like a vice. My brain connects the dots instantly, but my gut refuses to accept what it means.
“What are you saying, Carlo?”
Rage, regret, and blame twist across his face like a storm brewing.
“I’m saying they probably set her up for this shit. They leaned on Gerard, used his wife, to make him approach her, so they could feed you these photos and make her look dirty. We’ve gotta track her down fast, Maxim. Her life’s on the line.”
I rip my phone from my pocket and pull up the security cam footage. The second I see it, the blood drains from my face. What the fuck have I done? I swallowed their bullshit whole, Alex’s blind trust, Leonardo’s setup, and handed Ava straight to that son of a bitch on a silver platter.
Carlo catches a glimpse over my shoulder, curses under his breath, then turns to Lorenzo, voice sharp as a blade. “Take a team. Bring me Rosa and his son. I don’t care if you have to dig them out from under a fucking rock, find them.”
My throat’s dry as sandpaper when I rasp, “What the hell do they have to do with any of this?”
Carlo doesn’t flinch. “Leonardo doesn’t have the kind of money or pull it’d take to buy off Alex, drag Gerard and April into his revenge game, and smuggle them out of the States.
There’s a bigger player behind this, a real heavy hitter.
Someone who hates your guts. I’m telling you, Maxim, this whole setup reeks of those motherfuckers.
They’ve got a personal vendetta against you, and they hit you where you’d never see it coming. ”
I freeze, mind blank, while Carlo’s already on his phone, barking orders at the regional police chief, reporting the plate number of the car Ava was shoved into. The house erupts into motion, men shouting, phones ringing, orders flying, everyone’s moving but me.
I just sit there, gutted, choking on the weight of what I’ve done.
Carlo warned me. Over and over, he fucking warned me about Leonardo. And I ignored him, shoved my head so far up my own ass I didn’t see it coming. Now the only woman who means a damn thing to me is in the hands of a bastard who wants to tear me apart piece by piece.
I can see it too clearly, every filthy thing he’ll do to her, not to break her, but to break me. The image alone feels like it’s going to split my chest open.
***
Night drags past midnight, and still, nothing. No trace of Rosa. No trace of his son. No sign of the car that took Ava. Aurora’s safe, sleeping at Carlo’s place. And I’m here, sitting like a useless piece of shit, fighting the urge to put a bullet in my own skull before the rage does it for me.
Maybe after I get her back. Because God knows, even if it takes a lifetime, I won’t stop until I do.
Brando’s been on and off the phone all damn night. He finally ends a call and drops into the chair across from us, face grim. “We need to pull a crew and head to Naples.”
I push halfway out of my seat. “You hear something?”
He nods once. “Remember those underground fights I mentioned? The ones that psycho Roberto’s tied up in?”
“The sick fights?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He sighs, jaw tight. “Word is, they’re going all out to stay hidden this time. Only a handful of elite members get invites. Roberto’s one of them. If we find him, we find Ava.”
Carlo leans forward, his voice sharp. “You got the location?”
“Not yet. My contact’s still digging. The second I get a lead, we move in. This might be our only shot.”
I rise to my feet, muscles coiled, locking eyes with Carlo. I’m ready to tear through Naples barehanded if I have to.
Carlo stands too, steady as stone, voice unshakable. “Then we go in with everything we’ve got. Let’s go get your woman back.”