25. Niko
CHAPTER 25
I smile as I pull into my parking spot because life is finally looking up for me. The conflict with Domalachego’s men has been moving in our favor, with him pulling his men even further back as each day passes. Our hold on the port is solidifying, and Domalachego doesn’t have the men to drive us out.
I’m married to the love of my life. If the text she sent from the iPad earlier is any indication, she made me a delicious dinner, and she loves me. Did I ever imagine winding up with so much?
I click off my seat belt and wave to the men as I pass. They salute me back. Weeks of maneuvering and commanding them have led to a shift from respecting the money I pay to respecting me. As I approach the front door, I practically bounce up the steps. No one important to my schemes died today except the Domalachego spy I intended to kill.
I put the key in the lock and press my thumb on the fingerprint scanner. It’s never wise to trust one method completely. The mechanism clicks before the door swings open, and instead of the wonderful smell of my wife’s cooking, smoke billows out.
A panic attack threatens as I inhale a huge breath of it, but I shove it down as I rush into the house, looking for the source of the smoke and Gi. I find the first fast enough. The smoke is so thick because it’s coming from the kitchen, which drafts directly toward the front door. The oven billows, spilling thick black smoke with a low-burning flame inside.
For the moment, it’s well-contained, and I consider running off to find my wife. Rather than listening to what the panicked moron inside me suggests, I grab the extinguisher off the wall and spray the hell out of our dinner. I turn off the oven once it’s oozing foam and any fire is definitely out. Then I open several doors to clear the smoke and shout for my wife.
“Gianna, where the hell are you?” This happened to my own mother a time or two when my father was cheating on her, and she was hitting the sauce a little too hard, but that doesn’t seem like Gianna.
She doesn’t answer. My heart still pounds, but there’s a touch more sense in my brain since she’s not burning to death.
“Gianna, where are you?!” I shout even louder this time, and still nothing.
I tear through the house, looking for her, shouting her name, growing more concerned by the second. I flip the little coffee table in her room once I’m sure she’s not in there, not anywhere in the house. A vase she just ordered smashes, and I guess it was me. I turn back around and head to the men outside. Why didn’t they call me? What happened?
“Where the fuck is she?” I shout as I open the door, and they all snap to attention, but none of them race to answer me.
A new guy stands near the edge, not one of my hired guns, but a young Gemelli goon.
“Calm down, sir. What are you talking about?” The stupid look on his face ticks my blood up to boiling. “Where is who?”
That does it. I pull out my gun. “The only fucking reason any of you are here.” And shoot him dead before anyone can blink.
Blood and brain spray out of the back of his head, and the men standing at his side look between us like they’re worried any of them might be next, like they might need to turn on me.
“Where the fuck is my wife? She isn’t inside!” I roar, feeling like something next to human. I could tear their throats out with my bare teeth for what they permitted to happen. Drink their fucking blood for allowing me to come home to my wife gone. Maybe I want to.
“She is, sir!” one of them squeaks, holding up his hands. “We’ve been here all day. She hasn’t come out.”
I strongly consider shooting him too, but rather, I open my security app to see what the hell happened. It doesn’t alarm for movement in the yard because it would be going off constantly due to the men. The security system doesn’t trip when the doors open anymore because Gianna is allowed outside.
I forward through the day, knowing she was home to put dinner in the oven. She couldn’t have been gone more than a few hours. Finally, I find the spot where she opens the side door and creeps across the lawn. I watch in horror as she intentionally avoids the guards and then climbs over the wall intended to keep her safe. What the hell was she going toward? Rage boils my blood. How fucking dare she?
I switch through the cameras, first finding the ones pointed at the back of the property toward the woodline and find none other than Carlo skulking in the woods. I scrub through the footage, and it reveals he spent the better part of the day there, walking back and forth, trying to get her attention.
I switch to the ones I have in the woods. This is a popular venue. A lot of people come here. Leaving large portions of the property without proper surveillance would be irresponsible. It protects against lawsuits as well as treacherous wives running off with their bodyguards. I should have known her marrying me was too good to be true.
He leads her to a car parked on a road on the other side of the property. I’m going to kill him for this. I nearly smash my phone but think better of it. I head inside, up to my office, where I might have a chance to get enough peace to think. She went with him, and I want to wring her fucking neck for it, but why would he come for her at all?
Where the hell would Carlo take her? What would he do with her now that Stefan is dead, missing, whatever the fuck he is. Carlo is one person who would never believe Gianna’s story in a million years if it made it back to him. Someone has to be paying Carlo. He never cared for Gianna out of the kindness of his heart. Who does that leave? Domalachego possibly.
I close the door behind me, thinking of the times I fucked her in here, how she covered the place in Antonine’s blood after she flayed him. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted in my life, and when I finally got her, I was stupid enough to trust her. I’ll never make that mistake again.
I’ve never had a direct line to contact Fyodor, and with how many bullets I’ve put in his men this week, I’m sure Gianna would only suffer more from a call from me. He could use her for leverage against me or to try to tease out Stefan. But if Carlo were working for Domalachego, wouldn’t he warn him that Stefan didn’t hold enough affection for either of his children for that to work?
I call my brother with no answer. “Fuck you, Pax!” I shout, turning over my own desk. Everything on top smashes across the floor, proving there’s not a damn thing I can do. No amount of force will make things right.
I pace the room, crunching over my own broken things as I make the next string of calls. But they all give me the same answer. No one has heard anything.
Rage and pain coat my stomach, my throat, and the backs of my eyelids. She fucking left me. I killed her parents, and I was stupid enough to trust her, to feel what it was like to have her, and then let her slip through my fingers. There’s nothing I won’t do to get her back. Gianna is going to pay for this when I get my hands on her. Then we’ll really find out why she’s been so strange these past weeks. Was it all a lie? Does she love me?
Is she telling Carlo how I raped her right now? I slam my fist into the sheetrock, punching a hole through it and tearing the skin off my knuckles, yet I still don’t have anything but my fucking rage and disappointment.
Do I have a wife or a prisoner I need to stuff back in a cage, and will it even matter if I can’t fucking find her? Should have put a tracker in her neck like a dog when I had the chance. The idea of her on that leash now pisses me off just as much as it turns me on.
As I’m racking my brain with all of this, a thought occurs to me. If Carlo waited all day before she saw him, was his luck really that good? Was this the first day he came? I check the recordings, and the answer is no. This is his fifth day waiting for her.
How do I get the woman I love back instead of turning into an indiscriminate killing machine? Five days is a long time to lurk on someone’s property without payback. I could drive into Gemelli territory and kill every one of Domalachego’s men I see. As I’m debating what the hell to do, wondering how I could be stupid enough to fall for her kisses, her proposal, I get a phone call from Mother Superior.
“Gianna is at the monastery with her old bodyguard. Come quickly.”