Chapter 28
MARCO
“Where is she?”
“We don’t know, Marco. She didn’t talk to anyone before she left,” Armani says, adjusting his cufflinks as if he could not be any less concerned about Karina.
“So you’re telling me my wife just disappeared into thin air?”
The last time anyone saw her, she was mingling among the guests at Jessica’s memorial.
I got so wrapped up in my own conversations that I didn’t realize the service was about to start until I had no choice but to dash to my seat in a hurry, where I had expected to find my wife waiting.
But she wasn’t there. And then the service started.
Initially, I assumed she’d decided to sit elsewhere, or that she’d become emotionally distraught over the whole event and had gone back to the house.
But hours later, we still haven’t found her.
We did find her purse and her phone in my room, though, which is frankly all the evidence I needed to be certain that she’d been taken against her will, but that was where the trail of clues ran cold.
Unfortunately, none of the household staff or guards saw her leave the property.
Frankie checked all the bathrooms. Dante and some of our security team checked the entire house, top to bottom.
We searched the Bellanti offices, the tasting room, the winery, even checked the vineyard.
I blamed myself at first, thinking I’d pushed her too hard to attend the service and that she was hiding out.
But now it seems clear that something has gone wrong.
Our options exhausted, we’ve all regrouped in the lobby of the empty Bellanti offices.
“She must have gotten picked up while we were distracted. The service was the perfect cover,” Armani says.
I stalk closer to him. “What do you mean she got ‘picked up’?”
“Face the facts, man. She walked out. She arranged for someone to pick her up when no one was looking. Maybe that cousin of hers. Either way, she made a clean getaway. We didn’t see her. The guards didn’t see her. She’s gone.”
My heart begins to race. “She wouldn’t just leave us. She wouldn’t leave me.”
Dante’s hand shoots out and pushes against my chest before I even realize I was advancing on Armani with my fists clenched.
Frankie steps in. “Armani, what makes you so sure she left on purpose?”
I don’t give him a chance to answer. I already know what he’s going to say. “Because she’s a mole. Isn’t that right?”
Armani moves to stand in front of me, so we’re face to face. Dante tenses up at my side, ready to break up a fight if this turns violent.
“After what happened to Livvie, I can’t believe you’re not more concerned at my wife’s absence. Instead you just jump to the same old fucking conclusions,” I seethe.
“He’s right,” Frankie says quietly.
But Armani is just shaking his head, a look of disgust on his face.
“I told you that her pinpointing Livvie’s location like she did was a little too convenient.
You ask me, I think she outed the location too fast, screwed it up, and the Brunos have reeled her in.
Or maybe she played her role so well, they were ready to welcome her back with open arms.”
I expect a flush of anger at his accusations, but remarkably, I don’t feel one.
Could there be any truth to my brother’s suspicions after all?
Yes, it was a mighty big coincidence that she remembered the sound of the clock chime that she heard on that video.
I will admit that her sudden memories of the hideout rolled out a little too quickly, with a little too much detail.
But at the same time, I know Karina. I know my wife. She doesn’t have the heart to play spy.
“You’re wrong,” I say flatly. “She’s not a mole, and she never was. She has no loyalties to the Brunos. And look at all she did for us. Without her, Livvie wouldn’t be back home.”
Frankie stands straighter. “I agree with Marco. Besides, Karina knows the security measures we have in place. If she wanted to run, she’d have done it off the property.”
“A lot of fucking good those security measures did today,” I scoff.
God, I hate myself that I doubted her. For just a second, I thought my brother was right about her and that was a second too damn long.
“It doesn’t matter what either of you believe about her. It matters what the evidence shows,” Armani insists. “Don’t let your emotions get in the way of the reality of the situation.”
I spread my arms wide. “What reality, Armani? Do you have evidence that you haven’t shared with the rest of us?
Nobody saw her leave. Everybody was at the service.
Unless there’s something you’re not telling us, you need to stop suggesting she left of her own free will and treat this like the kidnapping that it is.
She was taken. We have to get her back.”
“The security footage is being combed over as we speak, so let’s just see what we can glean from that before we jump to conclusions,” Dante says. “For now, I’m done listening to you two bicker. There’s no sense in speculating. We don’t know what happened.”
“You’re taking his side?” I ask, incredulous. “Dante, Jesus. The Brunos have just declared their intention to escalate this feud even further, and fuck it, I will personally murder anyone who puts so much as a scratch on my wife. We’re at war. Let’s start acting like it.”
Anger pumps through me, hot and laced with anxiety and concern and the need to do something, right now.
But what? The Brunos will take her somewhere we won’t find her.
Sergio Bruno is going to make us wait, sweating it out until he reaches out with his demands.
And we can’t just go storming into the Bruno compound. We’d never walk out of there alive.
As for going to the police, it’s not even worth considering.
The Mafia’s code of silence and secrecy says you mete out your own justice and you never, ever talk to the cops.
My family has pushed the boundaries of that code in the past, but getting the police directly involved, even if it’s to help find my wife, would be a death sentence for the entire Bellanti family.
“I can’t just stand here and do nothing,” I growl.
I don’t need security footage. My gut is telling me who has her. It has to be the Brunos.
This is all my fault. I should’ve kept a closer eye on her, shouldn’t have left her side for one second.
But being on my home turf, security measures in place, and on a day of mourning, I felt a false sense of security.
Still, the guards should’ve seen something.
If Armani wants a mole, maybe he needs to be looking a little closer at his own men.
Just then, Armani’s phone pings with an incoming text message. He looks at his phone and scowls. “A florist’s van left here a few minutes before the service started. All the other vehicles exited the property hours later, and Karina was already missing by then. It’s a lead.”
Frankie’s forehead wrinkles. “Florist’s van? I signed off on all of the flower deliveries this morning. We weren’t expecting anything else.”
Armani hands her his phone and she zooms in on the grainy photo that security just texted him. “Branson? I don’t know that name. That’s not who we hired.”
I whip out my phone to do a quick Google search. No such business exists in the area.
“Fuck!” I slice a fist through the air. “Fuck!”
How could I let this happen?
“Here. Look.” Armani opens his laptop, sets it on the table, and starts playing the footage.
We gather around to watch. What we see is mostly mundane, normal stuff. But one of the back cameras caught footage of the van in question—and the moment a man rushed toward the van, his hand over Karina’s mouth as he half dragged, half carried her along.
“No,” Frankie moans, her hands going over her face.
Armani rewinds the video and plays it again. The room is dead silent as the horror unfolds on the screen. It feels like a slow-motion movie. I can’t look away and I can’t fully process what I’m seeing. I know it ends badly, but I can’t look away.
That man took my wife.
My fists clench as I watch the van door open from inside, Karina getting tossed in, the man climbing in after her. Then the door sliding shut and the van pulling away, careful not to draw attention by speeding like the criminals they are.
“Play it again,” Dante says. “Clayton, come look at this.”
He waves our brother-in-law over from where he stands guard at the door. They watch the laptop screen closely. My vision blurs and I close my eyes. Red flashes behind my lids.
“He works for Bruno.” Clayton points to the man holding my wife. “I’ve crossed paths with him many times.”
It feels bitter to have my fears confirmed. “Nothing we didn’t already know,” I seethe, aiming my glare at Armani for doubting what I’d been telling him all along.
“He’s a pay-for-hire,” Clayton goes on, “but Bruno is his number one boss. He hides deep in between jobs, only crawling out when the Brunos need him. He’ll deposit Karina and vanish.”
My body trembles. All I feel clearly is rage. Pure, white-hot rage.
“Do you have any idea how to find him?” Armani asks.
Clayton thinks for a second, then shrugs. “No, but I can talk to people who might. Give me a couple of hours.”
“Fuck! We don’t have hours. We need to move!” I shout.
I can’t do this. I just told Karina that I love her. I finally told her. And now she’s gone.
Dante grabs my shoulders steadily and holds my body between his hands. I want to twist away, but after a moment, I realize that I’m breathing in time with my brother, that I’m focusing on his face and that some of the tornado inside me has calmed. He nods at me, and I nod back.
He steps back, his hands dropping. “Clayton, go. See what you can find out.”
Clayton claps a hand on my shoulder and leaves. I’m numb inside somehow. The rage is still there, but it burns less, and I can’t feel anything else. Just a dull, aching anger.
“We should talk to Livvie,” Frankie says softly. “Maybe she heard or saw something that could be useful.”
“She was held at an out of the way hideout, guarded by idiots too busy eating sandwiches to realize they were getting raided. What could she have possibly learned from them?” I say.
Armani cuts in, “I think it’s a good idea. She might remember something.” He heads toward the door. “Keep me posted. I’m going to make some calls. Get boots on the ground.”
Dante follows him out. Frankie moves to leave and I hurry to go, too.
We find Livvie in the living room of the main house, watching a reality show on the big screen. Frankie sits with her and turns off the television.
“What’s the matter?” Livvie looks at each of us in turn. “Was the memorial okay?”
“It was fine.” Taking a deep breath, Frankie reaches for her sister’s hand and says, “But at some point today, Karina was taken. We think by the same people who took you.”
Livvie’s face pales. “Okay,” she whispers, her eyes darting to me. “What do we do?”
“I need you to think about the things you overheard while those men had you. Phone conversations, in-person. Anything you might have witnessed that can help us find her.”
Livvie bites her lip, thinking, and then shakes her head. “I don’t know. They didn’t talk to me. The guys didn’t really talk to each other around me, either. I’m sorry.”
It sounds like the same thing Karina said over and over, until she did remember something—the very thing that helped save Livvie’s life. Maybe Livvie knows more than she realizes. Maybe there’s some clue hiding in her brain that she’ll suddenly think of later.
I just hope it won’t be too late.
She speaks to Frankie for a while, their voices intimate so the conversation stays between them. I find Dante in the dining room surrounded by phones and laptops and security, a pot of coffee at his elbow. Sinking into the chair across from him, I drop my head into my hands.
“We’ll find her,” Dante tells me, his voice reassuring. “We know who has her. They aren’t going to hurt their playing card.”
I don’t believe that. Sergio Bruno is capable of anything.
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s all they have to bargain with right now. Plus, she’s their blood.”
“That won’t stop him from hurting her and you damn well know it.”
Dante doesn’t falter. “I don’t think so, Marco. They could have just executed her, but they didn’t. They took her somewhere else.”
“That seems ten times worse,” I say. “Who knows what her uncle will do to her?”
Before Dante can try to talk me down again, Frankie joins us.
“Anything from Livvie?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not yet. I’ll keep checking with her in case anything comes up.”
Armani walks in now, jacket and tie gone, his shirt unbuttoned at the top. “I’ve got eyes around town looking out for anything related to Branson Floral with instructions to take down anyone they find associated.”
“It was a front. I’m sure that van has gone up in flames by now,” I point out. “Another fucking dead end.”
Brushing past my brothers, I don’t stop when Armani snags my sleeve.
I need to get into my car and drive. I’ll look for the fucking florist’s van myself, and I’ll do it by making a long, slow loop around the Bruno compound.
They’ll see me coming. They’ll probably have sights on me, but at least they’ll know that I know.
I know what they did, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to back down.
Dante tries to stop me on my way to the garage. “Where are you going? Don’t make yourself a target.”
“Let him go,” Armani says, and it’s the last thing I hear before the garage door hums open and I slam into my car.
The interior is cool and dim, the feel of the leather-wrapped steering wheel immediately calming as I press my palms to it.
I race to the highway, flooring the gas until my surroundings become a blur.
But I know there won’t be any speeding my panic away.
No amount of adrenaline is going to replace the fear that right now, something terrible is happening to my wife.
Where the fuck is she?
Taking the exit into town, I run a mental map of all the places that criminals might stash a van. I’ll check every corner of this city until there’s nowhere else to look.
I’m going to find her.
I won’t stop until she’s in my arms again.