Chapter 17 Dante
DANTE
The gates are now nothing but twisted metal, along with the smoking wreck that until earlier this morning was an unmarked van. “Stay back,” Cesco warns when I move too close for his comfort. “We don’t know if the gas tank will blow.”
One of the two men who were in the guard house holds a bunched-up jacket to his bleeding forehead. “Guy pulled up, got out like he was gonna leave another package,” Max explains. “Joey ran out to the gate. We wanted to catch him before he drove off.”
“The driver must have panicked,” Luca muses. Like me, he looks like he was interrupted in the middle of something, dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants. He also looks like he’s as ready to kill.
Max nods, then winces in pain. “He dropped the package on the ground, and that was it. Boom!”
And now, both the mystery driver and Joey are dead, lying under blankets until we can have their bodies removed.
“This is a fucking nightmare,” I mutter, my eyes and throat scratchy from the smoke still hanging in the air.
“Could’ve been worse,” Cesco points out. “What if the bomb didn’t go off early?”
I can’t think about that. When I do, I lose the ability to think about anything else.
I need a clear head if I’m going to strategize.
Honing in on the sensation of grass under my bare feet helps focus my thoughts.
Someone bombed my front gate, and I’m standing here in nothing but a pair of pajama pants.
I’d laugh if it weren’t all so twisted, like what’s left of the gates.
“We need to get him looked at,” I announce, nodding toward Max. He’s dazed, blinking slowly up at me. “They’re familiar with us at Mercy General. Take him there.” After all, we practically built them a new wing after they discreetly took care of Emilia once Alessandro was finished with her.
“I can deal with getting the bodies removed,” Cesco offers. There’s an edginess to him, a jumpy energy. Normally, I would handle it myself, but I have the sense he needs something to do. A way to feel useful. Otherwise, he’ll explode.
That’s why I add, “And get some estimates on what it will take to replace the gates, if you can. In the meantime, I want cars blocking the way and triple the number of men out here working in shifts around the clock.” I glance toward Luca, who nods his agreement.
“You know what I think?” my brother asks as we start walking the driveway again, sidestepping clusters of tight-jawed guards on our way up to the house.
“That Alessandro Vitali is currently living his last day?” I ask, wishing it were that simple.
“Definitely on my mind, but I was thinking about Emilia and Sophia,” he adds before I can roll my eyes. “Are they safe here? Would they be better off if we sent them away until this blows over?”
I must be hearing him wrong. “Are you serious? Do you honestly think you could handle it, even a single day, not being able to see and touch her and know she’s safe?
” I can’t stand the thought of sending Sophia away, and we don’t have the sort of intense relationship they have.
I’d go out of my mind before the end of the first day.
Scowling, he mutters, “It was an idea, that’s all. Don’t bite my head off.”
“Nobody’s biting anybody’s head off,” I retort. “But no, I’m not letting Sophia out of my sight until I can be absolutely sure this is over and she’s all right.”
My brother snickers when we reach the front courtyard, where guards pace, angry and agitated. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you actually care. But that can’t be true, right?”
How he can bother trying to get under my skin at a time like this, I don’t fucking know. “She’s my wife. Mine.” And she is the only thing I want to see once I cross the threshold into the house, where voices overlap and echo like the chaos in my head has spilled out.
Mama rushes out of the kitchen with her arms extended and her chin trembling. “I don’t see why you had to go down there. What if there was another explosive meant for you?” Her tearful eyes are a knife to my heart.
“There wasn’t,” I remind her gently, letting her throw her arms around me. This isn’t the first time she’s been through an emergency like this, but it’s never easy. Nobody expects their morning to literally be torn apart by a bomb. “Where’s Papa?”
“In his study, looking over the footage from the cameras out front.” She’s shaking, still in shock, when she lifts her head from my shoulder.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” I whisper, unsure whether I’m lying or not. “It’s nothing that can’t be fixed.”
“Tell that to that dead boy’s mama.” She wears a brave little smile, almost defiant, wiping her tears with one hand. “But then this is the risk we take. I can’t help thinking like a mother, that’s all.”
“A cup of tea might help you feel better.” I steer her toward the kitchen again, where Luca has already found Emilia and is practically hanging on her. I’m not sure which of them is clutching the other one tighter.
My sister looks up from the blender, where she’s assembling what looks like a smoothie containing all of the fruit she could find in the kitchen. “I had to do something,” she explains, dumping blueberries into the pitcher.
“Is Sophia helping you?” I ask, looking toward the pantry, expecting to find her digging around in there. I need to see her. My hands are aching to touch her and remind myself she’s real.
She knows the worst thing there is to know about me. At least, most of it, and what did she do? Did she turn away? Convey her disgust and disappointment? She absorbed it all and turned it into softness. Understanding.
It has me craving her because it was the last thing I would have ever expected. That, and the drive to know she’s safe. To have my hands on her, to feel her heart beating.
When I look back at my sister, she’s frozen, staring at me. “Sophia isn’t here,” she tells me in a soft voice. “We assumed she was at your house, waiting for the all-clear.”
No.
That’s not right.
The announcement is a gut punch that leaves me reeling. “I sent her here.” There’s no reason for the sense of dread that’s suddenly burst into bloom, no logical reason, anyway. It’s only been twenty minutes or so since I left her at the house.
There are some situations where reason doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, and this is one of them.
By the time I’m on my way to the front door, the drum beat of my heart has turned into something frantic, something damn near sickening. She would have gone to the house, as I told her to, if she could have. I know it. She would’ve wanted to be with Mama and the girls to make sure they were safe.
The leader of a family like mine shouldn’t be seen panicking. I need to project calm at a time like this. That message never reaches my feet, moving swiftly down the front stairs, then along the grass still damp from the sprinklers this morning, before a bomb shook the ground.
She’ll be there. She has to be there. At least that’s what I tell myself before I see it.
The front door is open, the way I left it earlier.
“Sophia!” I hardly recognize the sound of my voice carrying on the morning breeze while my heart pounds and my feet fly. The full picture is starting to come into focus. I don’t want to see it, it can’t be real, but by the time I burst into the empty living room, I know. He played us.
She’s gone.
It doesn’t take a minute to search the entire house, compact as it is, and by the time I am on the porch again, my brother has only made it halfway down.
The dread stamped on his face is nothing compared to the firestorm blazing furiously in my head.
Panic is dangerously close, tapping me on the shoulder, almost seductive.
It would be too easy to give in. To hand over control of my mind and let the chips fall where they may.
“Get Giorgio on the phone,” I bark at my brother, then whistle and motion for the men patrolling the estate to join me while Luca breaks into a run. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I shout to the guards, “Scour every inch of the grounds. I want her found!”
Even before I start back up to the house at a sprint, I know it’s no use. She’s already gone because that was the endgame for her brother. To cause a distraction up by the gate and somehow breach the wall on the opposite end of the estate while we rushed around in the aftermath.
I played straight into his hands.
And my wife is the one who’s paying for it.
* * *
We’ve barely opened the car doors in front of Giorgio Vitali’s Italianate-style villa before his booming voice fills the air. “How could you let this happen? What kind of amateur shit show are you running?” he demands, meeting me halfway down a set of wide marble steps.
The reasonable voice in my head, the one that’s guided me for ten years, is miraculously silent.
But then nothing could stop me from taking the old man by the lapels of his silk shirt and pulling him in close to snarl in his face.
I’ve been on the verge of a meltdown ever since we found the ladders, one propped on either side of the wall only a few dozen yards from my back door.
Giorgio’s accusations are a match touched to the powder keg of my rage.
“Dante! No!” Papa barks behind me a split second before Luca separates us. Giorgio looks shaken, but waves off his men before they can do anything stupid.
“How dare you?” I grunt between gasps for air. “This was your maniac son. That sick fucking animal you should’ve put down years ago. He did this!”
Another voice floats our way from the top of the steps. “I hate to disappoint you, but I had nothing to do with it.”
Shock forces the rest of the air from my lungs while I turn my head to look up at the front patio. It can’t be. I’m seeing things. The tall, thin man with the gleaming black hair and healthy, tanned complexion cannot be who I think he is.