Chapter 18
Lorenzo
Cesaro arrives just before midnight.
Elizabeth is asleep in our bed upstairs—if she’s truly sleeping and not simply lying there in the dark, hating me. Given the way I left things with her, it could be either. Normally, that would be enough to occupy every corner of my mind.
Tonight, I have no room for it.
I let Cesaro in myself. He steps inside carrying a briefcase, his expression alert and cautious. He knows me well enough to recognize the mood I’m in. He also knows better than to comment on it.
“How was the flight?” I ask.
“Good.” He shuts the door behind him. “Mrs. Conti was upset I was leaving.”
I start walking toward the dining room. “Did you tell her where you were going?”
“No, sir. But her father was there. He pressed for answers.” He pauses. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a call.”
A laugh almost escapes me, but there’s no humor in it. “Noted.”
In the dining room, I’ve already laid papers across the table—flight records, names, timelines, anything I had on hand before he arrived. It looks like the beginning of a war.
Cesaro sets his briefcase down and glances at the spread. “I see you’ve already started.”
“Time is of the essence.”
My voice is hard. I don’t bother softening it. Because upstairs there is a woman sleeping under my roof who is pregnant with another man’s child.
Cesaro unclasps the briefcase and begins pulling out folders. “This is what I was able to find on short notice. So far, everything points to Russo being the one who got Miss Miller out of the States… and your home…”
The words hit like a match to gasoline, and a slow, poisonous rage uncoils in my chest. I drag the first file toward me and skim it, eyes moving fast over the pages.
Financial transfers. Known associates. Travel gaps.
Contact points. Nothing definitive yet, but enough to paint the outline of something ugly.
“How did he get her out of the apartment?” I ask.
Cesaro hesitates and I look up.
“What?”
His expression tightens. “It seems… they may have been in contact before she disappeared.”
Every muscle in my body goes still.
“Before?” I ask quietly.
Cesaro nods once. “Since the night at the nightclub.”
For a moment, the room ceases to exist.
The same night Sienna died.
The same night blood slicked the pavement and the world tilted on its axis.
The same night I thought Elizabeth had been another victim of chaos, of timing, of bad luck and worse men.
A vicious heat floods my bloodstream. Have I truly been this blind? Have I spent all this time hunting shadows while she was speaking and sleeping with my enemy behind my back? Was I the only fool in the room?
“Boss?”
Cesaro’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. I blink once and realize I’ve crushed the edge of the file in my hand.
“Go on.”
“From what we can tell,” he says carefully, “Russo gave her a burner phone. That’s how they were communicating.”
He reaches back into the briefcase and pulls out a plastic evidence bag. Inside is a cheap phone. For one second, I don’t move. Because suddenly I don’t know which possibility I hate more—that she was manipulated, or that she chose it.
Then I take the bag from him.
“There wasn’t a code?” I ask.
“No, sir.”
Of course there wasn’t. I slide the phone out and unlock it.
The screen lights beneath my thumb, dull and ordinary and completely capable of detonating the little restraint I still possess.
I scroll, seeing just how often they were in contact.
Each line drives the anger under my skin into something hotter. Meaner. More personal.
Fuck.
She was texting him all along. Not once and not even under duress, as far as I can tell. For months. The realization lands like a blade under my ribs and twists.
And it gets worse.
Buried in the thread is enough implication to make my vision sharpen: hints, evasions, careful wording that says far too much.
Dante all but suggests he had a hand in the shooting at the apartment.
Not directly—not in the way only an idiot would confess—but enough for a man like me to read the truth in the spaces between the words.
And I fell for it.
A savage laugh leaves me as I keep scrolling, jaw locked so hard it aches. Every message feels like another insult. Another betrayal. Another reminder that while I was drowning in rage and grief, Russo was already building something with her in secret.
Was she running to him? Or was he reeling her in? Right now, I can’t tell. And the uncertainty only makes me angrier.
My hand tightens around the phone.
“So,” I say softly, “he gave her a secret phone, kept contact with her for months, and now threatens bloodshed the second I have her back.”
Cesaro inclines his head. “That appears to be the situation.”
I look up.
“Appears?”
He doesn’t flinch. “It’s enough to act on, boss. Not enough to close the matter.”
No. Not enough to close it. But enough to start and enough to justify what comes next.
I set the phone down with care I do not feel. “He played me.”
Cesaro is silent.
I smile without humor. “That was his mistake.”
Because if Dante Russo orchestrated any part of this—if he used the chaos that night, used her fear, used her grief, used whatever she felt for me against both of us—
Then this is no longer a man stealing what another man wanted. My gaze drifts toward the ceiling, toward the room upstairs. Toward the woman who may have been deceived… or may have deceived me right alongside him.
Either way, the fury in me is now too large to contain neatly.
“Get me everything,” I say. “Bank records. Calls. associates. Flights. Security footage. I want every man Russo used, every place he touched, every lie he told.”
Cesaro nods once. “Yes, boss.”
“And Cesaro?”
“Yes, sir?”
I pick the burner phone back up and stare at the glowing screen.
“If he was behind the shooting…”
I let the rest hang there for a beat, because we both know what it means.
When I finally look up, my voice is cold enough to freeze blood.
“I don’t want him ruined. I want him buried.” I pause. “And I’ll deal with her baby later.”
“Her—” Cesaro’s face hardens in understanding. “She’s pregnant?”
“Yes.”
I’m too wired to go upstairs and lie beside Elizabeth—my Elizabeth, who looked me in the eye and lied so sweetly to my face—so I go to my study instead, closing the door behind me with more force than necessary.
The couch is lumpy as hell, but it’s better than sharing the same air as her, pretending I don’t feel betrayed down to the marrow.
I stretch out, one arm over my eyes, and stare at the ceiling in the dark. My mind will not shut off.
If Russo was behind the shooting at the apartment, then he knew I’d take Sienna home where she’d be safe. He knew my instincts. Knew my patterns. Knew exactly how I would respond under pressure.
But how the fuck did he know I’d take Elizabeth too?
The question needles at me, sharp and relentless.
I see her face in my mind—those wide blue eyes, that soft mouth, that fragile, innocent look she wears so naturally men line up to protect her without even realizing they’re doing it.
Christ. I fell for it harder than any of them.
I looked at her and saw something worth saving.
Something worth burning my whole life down for.
I scrub a hand over my face and sit up.
What does that say about me? That I was weak?
Blinded? Or just stupid enough to mistake tenderness for truth?
My jaw tightens until it aches. Not only did I fall for her, but I was also willing to give up everything for her.
My marriage. My reputation. My empire, if it came to that.
I would have torched every goddamn rule I’ve lived by if it meant keeping her.
And all the while she was texting him.
The thought curdles inside me.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, and let the fury settle. Not the hot kind. Hot rage gets men killed. No, this is worse. This is the cold kind that arranges bodies and signs papers and leaves no witnesses.
If Russo orchestrated the shooting, then he didn’t just take a shot at me.
He used Sienna and Elizabeth. I get up and cross to the desk, switching on the lamp.
The light is low and amber, throwing long shadows over the papers Cesaro brought.
Flight logs. Financial transfers. phone records.
Names. Half-truths and hints and missing pieces.
I stare down at them and start building the board in my mind.
Russo thinks he has the advantage because Elizabeth wants him. Because he has men gathering. And because he believes I’m reacting. Fine.
Let him.
The first move is obvious: information.
By morning I want everything. Not just what Cesaro could gather in a few frantic hours.
I want bank accounts opened under shell names.
Warehouse leases. burner phones. drivers.
private airstrips. the names of every soldier Russo has bought in the last six months.
I want his shipments delayed, his cash squeezed, his allies pressured hard enough to start wondering if backing him is worth dying for.
The second move is containment.
Elizabeth does not leave this house alone. She does not get a phone unless I control the line. She does not go near an airport, a port, or a public street without my men watching every angle. If Russo wants her, he will have to come through me.
And he will.
Men like him can’t resist proving they’re willing to bleed for what they claim is theirs.
Which is why the third move matters most.
I am not going to wait here like a fool for him to strike first.
I pull a clean sheet of paper toward me and start writing names.
Cesaro in charge of internal cleanup. He’ll find out who on my side talked too much and who got paid to look the other way. I want Russo’s legitimate money squeezed until he has to touch the dirty reserves. Once he touches those, I can track where he’s weakest.
Then Chicago.
I stare at the word after I write it. In a week, I told Elizabeth. Not because I’m generous enough to give her time. Because I need the week. A week to let the rumor spread before I return with her. A week to make Russo think he knows our route, our security, and our timetable.
I can already see it.
He’ll hear we’re flying commercial out of Naples.
He’ll hear there will be a vehicle switch halfway to the airfield.
He’ll hear only six men are with me. Every detail will be wrong, but not wrong enough to smell like bait.
He’ll believe he’s intercepting me. What he’ll actually be doing is walking straight into the kill zone I choose.
My pulse slows as the plan settles into place. Yes. That’s how it has to happen. Not two men thundering toward each other blinded by ego.
A controlled demolition.
I’ll make him move his pieces onto the board, and then I’ll take his hands off at the wrists.
I lean back in the chair and imagine the moment he realizes it. The second he understands that I let him come. That every panicked call, every rushed arrangement, every whispered update from his men led him exactly where I wanted him.
A hard smile pulls at my mouth.
Then I think of Elizabeth again.
Of her standing in my office with tears streaming down her face, hand over the slight curve of her stomach. Of the way she looked at me like I was a monster. Of the way she said the baby was his
His.
The word hits like a bruise.
If it’s Russo’s child, that complicates things. Not strategically. Personally. A child binds people in ways even hatred can’t fully sever. It gives men like Russo something noble to hide behind. Something he can point to and call love instead of possession.
I won’t let him use that against me.
My fingers tap once against the desk.
No one touches Elizabeth. Not Russo. Not his men.
Not anyone. She may hate me, lie to me, even choose him over me, but she is still under my protection now.
And if Russo is the reason she woke up half-drugged in the back of a van, terrified of tinted windows and closed doors, then I will rip his life apart so thoroughly they’ll be finding pieces of it for years.
A knock sounds at the study door.
“Enter.”
Cesaro steps in. “You haven’t slept.”
“No. Why are you still up?”
“Miss Miller needed some water. I took it from that cute maid with the dimples, so she didn’t have to carry the tray. Earn some brownie points.” His gaze drops to the papers spread across my desk. “You have a plan.”
I look up at him.
“Yes.”
He waits. He knows me well enough to know I’m deciding how much to say.
Finally, I tell him, “Russo thinks he’s the one coming for something that belongs to him.”
Cesaro’s expression doesn’t change.
I continue, “I’m going to let him.”
A flicker in his eyes.
“We leak Chicago,” I say. “Carefully. Only through channels I want tested. I want to know who repeats it, how fast it spreads, and who it reaches.”
“Yes, Boss.”
“I want false routes prepared. Two decoys. One real convoy. Men I trust only.”
Cesaro nods. “Done.”
“And if Russo moves before then?”
I let the silence sit for a beat.
“Break him early.”
Cesaro inclines his head once. “Understood.”
He turns to go, but I stop him.
“One more thing.”
He looks back.
“While I’m in Chicago, I want everything in place here. His businesses, his accounts, his shipments, his political protection. I want it all mapped. I want names next to every weak point.”
Cesaro’s face goes hard. “You’re not planning a warning shot.”
“No.”
Because warnings are for men who still hope this can be solved cleanly.
I am past that.
When he leaves, I sit alone again in the amber light, the house silent around me.
Somewhere upstairs, Elizabeth is sleeping in my bed.
Maybe dreaming of Russo. Maybe dreaming of escape. Maybe dreaming of a life that no longer exists.
I look down at the word Chicago written across the page and circle it once.
Russo thinks he has stolen enough from me already.
He’s wrong.
Because now I know where to hurt him.
And in a week, I’m going to make him beg for the kind of mercy I no longer have.