Chapter Twenty-Six
Krampus
I always imagined that Italy would be beautiful, but this, standing underneath the glowing moon above us, staring into the eyes of the woman who’s made me believe in possibilities, has me worshipping every cobblestone like it was made just for us.
Amber and Drac romantically sway in the ocean, the waves lapping at their ankles as the moon showers them in its large yellow glow.
It’s the kind of glow that makes you believe in second chances, because that’s what their relationship has always been… one big second chance that shouldn’t have had a happy ending, but they’ve somehow made it work. It’s the kind of relationship I strive for, maybe even die for one day.
“Wanna go for a walk?” Mindy asks, her eyes half lidded from all the wine she’s drank.
“Yes,” I murmur, kissing her hair before lacing our fingers together.
Romantic music fills the air as we move away from the tent and onto the barren, empty streets of an Italian corridor, the cool stone curving beneath our naked feet, as we carefully walk under the fairy lights strung over the ancient walls, and towards the hotel where our night will come to and end.
Mindy looks unreal under the moonlight with her light blue dress billowing behind her like she’s walking on air.
Her red hair is pinned up loosely, curls escaping around her face. When she smiles at me, the world narrows down to that curve of her mouth, the way her eyes shine like she’s daring herself to believe this is real.
“You ready?” she asks softly, fingers gripping me tighter.
I squeeze her hand. “Always.”
Italy hums around us as soft laughter drifts down from open windows as dishes clink together, and people converse so easily, not even realizing that when they speak it’s like their language rolls off their tongue in poetic waves.
She cuddles against me, my arm fitting around her shoulders until she’s buried deep in the crook of my arm. There will be no sleeping tonight, not if I have anything to do with it.
We walk hand in hand unhurried, enjoying every bend of architecture like we personally sculpted it ourselves, and they weren’t constructed thousands of years ago. It’s amazing how much history is stored in every brick and rooftop.
Mindy suddenly stops, her breath hitching as she lets out a shaky, “Oh.”
I follow her gaze, equally as mesmerized.
A large fountain sits in the center of a small piazza, hidden away in a secret alcove you wouldn’t have seen unless you were wandering and exploring the streets on your own.
Marble figures carved centuries ago, spill water from cracked urns, dark moss creeping up the stone like it’s reclaiming the art.
The moon’s soft light reflects off the water that’s impossibly beautiful, illuminating the various coins and wishes thrown into its water over the years.
She steps closer, enchanted.
“It’s gorgeous,” she murmurs. “Can you imagine how many people have stood right here, clutching a coin in their hand, silently murmuring a wish for their future?”
I smile tenderly at her. “Are you romanticizing the architecture now?”
She laughs, pinging my heart with the quiet sound I’d recognize anywhere.
“I just—” She reaches out, fingers hovering over the cool stone like she wants to take it home with us. “I just want to never forget this night.” She produces a single coin, then whispers something against the copper shell before tossing it into the fountain’s depths.
“What you wish for?” I ask her, arms sliding around her waist as my lips trail up her neck.
“Something permanent. I want this moment to last forever with you, Rich.”
She leans back into me, hands clutching mine as we share another sweet kiss. “We can relive this moment any time you want, Mindy. Just say the word.”
She turns in my hands, facing me so that our eyes meet in a blissful happiness that seems too perfect to be real.
“Let’s play a game,” she announces, smiling wickedly. “You’re gonna give me a ten second head start, and I’m going to take off into a sprint. If you catch me, I’ll give you the best blowjob of your life.”
“Man, woman, you make it sound like a bad thing.”
She giggles. “I’m faster than you think.”
“So how about it? You ready to play catch and release.”
“Sure, but I hope you know. If I catch you, I have no plans of releasing you.
“Oh, that’s exactly what I want, she says with a wicked gleam in her eye. Alright, close your eyes, count to ten, then come find me.”
“Okay, but don’t go too far.”
“Why not?”
“Wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
She spins around, throwing open her arms as she laughs. “Nothing can hurt us in Italy, Rich. We’re invincible here.”
I hear her giggle echo down the corridor.
“One…two…three…”
“Come find me, Rich.”
“Four…five…six…”
“I’m getting away!” Her voice is practically singing; the joy and happiness in it uplifting my heart.
I may have peeked, seeing a pop of blue disappear around the building up ahead.
“Seven… eight… nine…”
I’m almost to ten when the night splinters apart, altering our fate forever.
She screams, and it’s the most gut-wrenching sound I’ve ever heard. Instantly, I’m on my feet and moving forward so fast that I trip on a rock, my knees hitting the pavement just as the alleyway opens up onto a roadway.
The white van door starts to close just as my hands dig into the unforgiving cobblestones, her frightened eyes begging me to move faster. To save her.
The masked man covering her mouth, smiles evilly as he points his gun straight at me. Then he says something in Italian, the gun firing before I even have time to react.
It whooshes past my ear, nicking it before splintering the concrete wall behind me.
It’s too much of a distraction. I barely blink before the van’s door slams shut, and the wheels squeal off into the night, stealing my girl along with it.
“NO!” I scream, racing after them. “MINDY!”
I don’t have my piece.
I don’t have a car.
I have nothing that can help me get to her fast enough. The guilt hits me so fucking hard, the silence that follows is deafening.
I stand there with my chest heaving, hands bleeding from my fall, more blood trickling down my ear as I stare at the empty street, pretending that if I look hard enough, I can rewind time and change her fate.
Something inside me shatters as a familiar roar of rage rips out of my chest, a feral battle cry that echoes off the ancient stone.
It’s a declaration of war I’m not prepared for.
Lights flick on in some windows above me, and a dog appears on a landing, barking so loudly that someone somewhere screams for him to shut up.
She’s gone. How the hell can she be gone?
I’m already moving; it’s like instinct, my body seeking out the only people who can help me. My brothers. My friends. Every step is one of desperation, knowing that the longer I take, the further away she gets.
My lungs give out just as I hit the sand, crumbling a few feet away from the happy lovebirds that are still dancing in the moonlight.
Voorhees gets to me first, kneeling down beside me to help me to my feet.
“Jesus, Rich, what the hell happened?”
“IT’S MINDY!” I shout, my voice being carried out by the waves. “Someone’s taken her.”
Everyone moves at once; both Drac, Phantom, and Amber’s friend Luca come racing over within seconds.
“What do you mean she’s been taken?” Drac asks, inspecting the wound on my ear.
Slapping his hand away, I glare at him, the rage inside me pushing through. “I’m fine!” I growl. “We’re wasting precious time here.”
Amber takes Drac’s hand, staring at me with wide, frightened eyes. “What happened?”
“One minute she was there. Right fucking there next to e. And the next… taken.”
“You gotta give me more than that, Rich. I know you’re angry—”
“I’m fucking furious!” I rage. “I’m going to kill anyone who dares to fucking touch her.”
“You need to calm down,” Voorhees tells me. “You’re working yourself up.” His arm comes around my shoulder, but I’m too worked up to care. I shrug him off too.
“I’m gonna do more than work myself up if they so much as harm a single red hair on her goddamn head. We have to find her. This can’t be the end.”
Drac and Phantom exchange a look.
“We got nothing that can help us, Krampus. We came here unarmed and oblivious.”
None of us thought the fight would follow us across an ocean, but it’s here, and now she’s gone because of it.
“This is all my fault. I should’ve never have left her side.”
“Rich,” Amber softly says, coming up to hug me. “You can’t blame yourself for this. You didn’t know. None of us did.”
My head shoots up, making her step back in fear when she sees the rage intensifying in my glare. “I let my guard down, Amber. I let myself believe she’d be safe. I have no way to protect her now. We’re helpless.”
Luca clears his throat. “Not exactly,” he informs us. “I have some friends who can help you. They’re already on their way here.”
We stare at the strange Italian man, wondering when and how he reached out to someone that fast.
The roar of motorcycles fills the night air just as a line of twenty bikers pulls around a street, stopping inches from the sand.
We all freeze. Shit, another thing we aren’t prepared for.
Luca walks up to greet him, shaking the hand of the man up front. He’s cleanly shaven, his chiseled jaw clenching as Luca says something to him in Italian that none of us but Amber understands.
“They’re here to help us,” she exclaims, hugging Drac tightly. “They’re part of Luca’s club.”
“He rides?”
She nods. “It’s recent, but yeah, he’s in a club just like you are.” Five of the men walk up to us, all wearing matching cuts that say: Fratellanza dei Demoni MC on the back. Whatever that means.
“Ciao,” he greets, extending a friendly hand.
“Ciao,” I repeat, shaking his firmly. At least I know enough Italian to say hello back.
“Luca tells me your girl’s been taken,” he says in almost flawless English. If it weren’t for his accent, you’d think he was born on the other side of the pond.
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
“Twenty, maybe thirty minutes.”
He snaps his fingers just as another man appears carrying a laptop.
“Is this her?” He shows me some grainy footage of Mindy being stuffed into the van, then me falling just inches away from helping her.
“Yes! But how did you—”
He closes the laptop. “We have our ways. My name’s Lupo, and these are my brothers of the Fratellanza dei Demoni MC. In your language, that means Demon Brotherhood MC, I believe.”
Amber nods. “Yes, it does.”
Lupo nods. “We would like to help you track down your woman. There’s been quite a few kidnappings going on around here over the last few months.
” He nods towards one of his brothers. “Ombra’s sister was taken just a few days ago.
We’ve been trying to track her down since her disappearance, but haven’t had any luck. We fear the worst.”
Ombra looks over at us with pain in his eyes, the same pain I feel deep inside my chest.
“I’ve got my best hacker on it. Violare is tracking the van right now.”
The man with the laptop frowns. “I just lost them on cameras. It’s like they’ve disappeared.”
“Fuck,” I grit out. “This is bad.”
“We’ll do our best to help you find them,” Lupo exclaims. Then he hands me a gun. “But you can’t go into this unarmed.
Taking the gun from him, I stare down at the pistol, knowing whoever is behind this will meet every bullet in the chamber.
“Do you know anyone who might have wanted to take her?”
Drac nods. “A guy back home named Moseley, and his hired gun Rico Nostra.”
Lupo sucks in a breath. “Nostra’s involved?”
“You know him?” Voorhees questions.
Lupo nods. “Very well. He’s infamous around here. He’s head of the Salvati family. He’s Mafia. Very, very bad man.”
“But he’s back in Nevada,” Phantom disagrees. “There’s no way he followed us here.”
Lupo must see me holding something back, because he crosses his arms, eyes narrowing. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“The guy back in Nevada, Moseley, he has a contract with my girl stating she belongs to him. He was selling that contract to Nostra after the new year.”
“That’s tonight,” Amber gasps.
Lupo nods. “Contracts are very dangerous in our world. Binding. Hard to get out of. If your girl was sold to Nostra, he’d do anything to reclaim his property. Even follow you here.”
“Shit.”
Lupo uncrosses his arms. “If your girl was nabbed, he was definitely involved in some way. The hard part will be finding him now that the cameras have lost the van.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He won’t keep her long. The second he has a chance, he’ll move her, along with any other girls he may have.”
“So, what do we do?” Drac questions, sounding just as defeated as I feel.
Lupo shrugs. “Unless you have eyes in the sky, or a mole in his ranks. Nothing.”
“Basically, you’re saying it’s over?” I grit out, my hands furiously clenching by my sides.
He frowns. “I wish I had better news for you. But yes. Unless we find someone who can track him down, it is hopeless.”
It’s then that Autumn freezes, eyes pinching together in that weird way that makes my skin crawl. Phantom catches her right before she would’ve hit the ground, fanning her face with his hand.
“Baby, are you okay? Autumn, what’s wrong?”
Her eyes flutter open, blankly staring up at him as if her entire soul has been drained.
“It’s Krueger,” she whispers. “He says he can help.”
The Italian bikers exchange an unsure look.
“Autumn can talk to ghosts,” Amber informs them.
“STREGA!” one of them yells, stumbling backward towards his bike.
Lupo shouts something to him in Italian, forcing the man to come back, even though he looks at Autumn like she’s a witch.
Lupo’s gaze falls on Autumn, who’s holding her head in pain. “And this Krueger, what does he say?”
She pinches the bridge of her nose, clutching Phantom’s hand like he’s barely keeping her together. Then she cryptically stares at the sky, mumbling something none of us can quite make out.
“Babe, what are you saying?”
“He says the plane leaves tonight. You don’t have much time.
He says you need to head east out of the city.
There’s an airstrip there and a warehouse near the runway.
If you don’t move now, you’ll miss them.
Then she’ll be gone for good.” A single tear drips down her cheek, lip quivering with fear. “They plan to sell her in Mexico.”
Mexico?
Lupo seems impressed. “And a ghost told her all this?”
Drac nods. “Krueger was my dad. He kind of watches over the club for us.”
The handsome Italian biker grins. “I like your club. Must be nice to ride with ghosts. I know of this airstrip. We must hurry we don’t have much time.” He motions for us to follow him. “Someone should stay behind with the women, just in case.”
Luca steps forward. “I’ll stay.”
Phantom nods. “Me too.”
Two of the bikers hand them guns before taking a step back into their ranks.
“The rest of you will ride with us,” Lupo orders. “We save your girl tonight, or fucking die trying.”