Chapter 25
ISLA
I didn’t make it past the airport doors before the tears crept up on me, rolling down my cheeks and turning me into a blubbering hot mess.
But I did manage to hold them off until I was in the back of an SUV, headed away from the sprawling casino and toward the ticket counter where I’ll be getting a flight back to Iowa and whatever fresh level of hell awaits me there.
I’m alternating between immense, heartbroken sadness and frustrated, hurt fury.
Part of me wants to rage at Alessio for cutting me out of his life so abruptly, without an explanation.
Without a goodbye. Without an acknowledgment that we were something to each other.
That the fire burning between us was real.
I want to slap his handsome face and then storm off into a life where I’m better off without him.
Except there’s one small problem with that fantasy.
I can’t help but think that we could have been good together.
That despite our differences and the fact that his world is entirely opposite from everything I’ve ever known, we could have given a relationship a shot.
The other part of me is wallowing in abject humiliation. She wants to curl up into the fetal position and not emerge until her plane touches down in the next city. So I settle for resting my head against the cool glass of the SUV’s window, watching the highway get blurred through my tears.
“You okay?” Rocco asks me from the driver’s seat as he glides the car in and out of traffic.
“I’m fine,” I tell him miserably before another wave of tears hits.
I’m so not fine. I don’t know if there is a fine after Alessio.
Being with him tore me apart and then rearranged me.
I don’t think I’ll ever go back to being the me I was before him.
I still have my things, and on the outside, I look the same.
But on the inside, I’m like a satellite image of a town after a tornado hit. Nothing but rubble.
Speaking of my things, it occurs to me that I still don’t have my phone. I’ve been operating without it for a few days, and it’s been strangely nice to hit the mute button on the cacophony of the outside world. No social media, no doomscrolling. I didn’t even miss it.
“Does anyone happen to have my phone?” I ask with a sniffle, knowing I’ll need it later, like it or not. “Or a tissue?”
My nose is stuffy from crying, and I’m annoyed with myself for not thinking about my phone earlier.
There’s a guard named Giovanni sitting next to me in the back seat and another in the front passenger seat called Santino.
I’ve never met either of them before, but I assume they’re trusted men, considering the undercover way I was bundled up and out of the safe house.
You’d have thought I was a state secret instead of the unwanted hookup of a Mafia kingpin.
He didn’t even fight for me.
Alessio just let me go.
Santino rummages around up front and then extends his hand back toward me, a travel-size pack of tissues resting on his palm. “Here you go, kid. Keep them for the trip.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him I’m not a kid, even if I may be a good twenty years younger than him. But I’m grateful for the tissues, and I’ll probably never see him again after I get out of this car, so I keep my mouth shut about that and take the tissues.
“Thank you.”
“Your phone is in the back with your luggage,” Rocco tells me. “You can have it when we get to the airport.”
“Why not now?” I grumble.
“Boss’s orders.”
I want to ask him which boss he’s talking about. Alessio? Priest? If I’m officially out of the picture and no longer in hiding, then it stands to reason that I should be able to resume my digital footprint like practically every other person on this planet.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I really want my phone.
I’m not even sure why. I’m too upset to look at it right now.
Maybe it’s just to thumb my nose at Alessio.
To break his rules and do what I want. A small fuck-you since I can’t give him a real one thanks to his decision to ship me out of town like a dirty secret.
“I really, really need my phone,” I try again, using my nicest wheedling voice. “Please?”
“Sorry.” Rocco shakes his head, impervious to my pleas. “It’ll have to wait.”
We head off the highway, and I see a sign for a gas station. “You know what won’t wait, though? My bladder. I need to take a pee break.”
“You can use the restroom at the airport,” Rocco tells me.
Of course I can, but I want my phone. I want to message Alessio and tell him what I think of him. That’s what I want to do.
“How far is the airport?” I ask.
“About ten to fifteen minutes.”
“Oh my gosh.” I shift in my seat like a five-year-old on a road trip who’s about to wet her pants. “I can’t wait that long.”
“Yes, you can,” he snaps, sounding irritated.
“It’s your seats.” I shrug. “Guess you don’t mind the mess.”
“Jesus,” he mutters, suddenly shifting lanes and turning at a traffic light. “I’ll take you to the fucking gas station. Get in the restroom and back out in under five minutes, or I’ll come in there to get you. Got it?”
I smile at him in the rearview. “Got it.”
We’re headed toward the gas station when suddenly a car flies past us and cuts us off.
Rocco slams the brakes, but it’s too late.
I brace for impact instinctively, and in the next second, we crash into the back of the car.
The seat belt jerks me, digging in painfully. My head flies forward then back.
“What the fuck was that?” Rocco is asking Santino.
A second car pulls up alongside us, and the doors fly open, a flurry of armed men getting out. I recognize one of them, and my blood goes cold.
“It’s the Russians,” I say, just before the panic sets in, like a vise squeezing the air from my lungs.
Saint
My phone is burning a hole in my pocket while we’re in the back of my G, headed to the meeting with Sidorov. I drum my fingers on my knee, telling myself I don’t need to check it again. Rocco texted about an hour ago that he picked up the package.
The package was Isla.
And I’m crawling out of my skin, trying to keep myself from jumping out of this SUV, hailing a cab, and demanding that the driver speed all the way to the airport. That would be stupid, if not impossible. She’s probably already through security by now.
She’s better off flying out of this city and out of my fucked-up life. I know that. Objectively. But I still feel like I’ve lost the best damn thing I never had.
“You hear anything from Scorpion yet?” Priest asks me, clearly misinterpreting my lack of chill.
He’s not out of the ballpark with that guess.
Because our brother has gone dark on us.
We know he’s off-grid in a cabin upstate.
We know he doesn’t have cell service in the mountains.
But he’s supposed to check in three times a day, and so far today, he’s missed his morning check-in.
It’s a bad fucking day for him to decide to sleep in, to put it mildly.
“Not yet,” I tell Priest, giving in to temptation and extracting my phone to have a look at it.
No further updates. No unread texts. No missed calls.
Nothing from Rocco or Scorpion.
Fuck me. I’d give everything I own just to hold Isla in my arms one more time. I’d kill a man to breathe in her scent. I’d take a bullet just to kiss her.
I slide the phone back inside my suit.
“What the fuck was he thinking, taking Sidorov’s sister hostage?” Priest grumbles, sounding annoyed.
“He was retaliating for the bombing.” I sigh, then crack my knuckles.
“Good thing I only need one honeymoon. I’m never leaving again. I’m gone for not even two weeks, and shit starts blowing up.”
“We know who to thank for that.”
Traffic is sluggish. Horns honk around us, and a taxi cuts someone off two cars ahead.
“I’m not happy that Sidorov is in power,” Priest says. “None of this shit would have gone down with Aleksandrov as Pakhan.”
“Right. The old Pakhan was also a psycho, but at least he was a predictable psycho.”
We’re at another standstill. I pluck out my phone and check it again. Still nothing.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I want to smash my fist into something. To break something. But I’m stuck in the back of the G, and the only shit to destroy is mine.
“What’s got you so rattled?” Priest asks me quietly.
“Scorpion should have checked in by now.”
That’s the truth. He should have. But it’s not what has me on edge.
“He’ll check in. Give him time.”
“Yeah.” I work my jaw, staring into the sea of cars on the streets.
“There’s something else,” Priest says. “This isn’t just about Scorpion and the Sidorov girl.”
I think about the screaming, kicking, fighting Russian woman I last saw Scorpion carting out of the safe house over his shoulder.
“She’s not a girl. She’s the spawn of a demon.”
Priest chuckles. “From what you told me, it sounds like our brother has met his match. Good if he has his hands full. I’m pissed at him for going after one of the Bratva women.
It makes ours vulnerable. If one of them took Luna, I’d rip out every one of their goddamn throats with my bare hands until I got her back. ”
I know how he feels, because I’d do the same for Isla. Only, I don’t get to keep her.
I give my phone another look and decide to shoot off a text to Rocco.
Update on the package?
“Who are you texting now?” Priest asks.
I don’t want to lie. My older brother has a way of finding out everything anyway, sooner or later.
God knows what will happen when he figures out there was a hell of a lot more going on between Isla and me than I let on.
By then, she’ll be long gone, settled back into her life and routine. It shouldn’t matter as much.
“Rocco,” I tell him. “Checking on the delivery.”
Priest doesn’t say anything, just watches me with a speculative air that I don’t like.
There’s still no response on my phone. So I text Lucky.
Any word from Rocco?
Not yet.