6. Paolo
Chapter 6
Paolo
Sonali went limp next to me as she stood. I pulled her into my arms before she fell to the ground. Using my free hand, I gripped the knife hidden beneath her dress—tucked between her legs. I turned to the man who’d once been like a father figure to me. If I hadn’t needed to get Sonali out of the restaurant, I would have plunged the knife right through his heart.
"Our deal is off," I snarled. "If anything happens to her, I’ll come for you and every single person in your family."
The old man merely rolled his eyes.
"It wasn’t meant to harm you or her. If you’d just eaten your food like she did, you would’ve woken up in New York. It was only a little sleep aid.”
Small relief washed over me that they didn’t know who Sonali was and this was all a ploy to get me back to New York. “I don’t give a fuck what it is. You broke the agreement."
Before he could reply, I strode across the room for the exit. Backup was on the way all I had to do was survive a few more minutes. Lance stood with his arms crossed blocking the door.
"You can’t take me on with her in your arms. Why don’t you just make this easy for all of us? There’s a cab out back—let’s all head to New York."
I spat back, "No wonder the family is losing ground having people like you around." Sonali was light in my arms. I shifted her to the side, steadying her with my one good arm—even though one of her legs dangled slightly. Seizing the moment, I stepped forward and drove the knife through Lance’s side. He screamed in pain and collapsed, which gave me the chance to drop the knife and swing open the door.
Vincenzo cursed behind me, shouting for me to stop and suggesting we could talk things out. Except there was nothing left to discuss. The moment he had laced our food to get what he wanted; the bastard had crossed a line I would never let him forget.
I pulled Sonali against my chest and jogged down the hall. When I reached the main dining room, several of Vincenzo’s men stared at me in surprise. They hadn’t expected to see me walk out.
Antonio jogged toward me. "You better have a fucking car waiting outside."
“Kat is waiting out front for you.”
Asher and Jake appeared in the main dining room escorting Vincenzo. I wasn’t sure what my boss had in mind for my old boss, but I didn’t care at the moment. Sonali was out cold and needed a hospital.
When I reached the reception area two men stepped in front of me blocking my path toward the exit. With their backs to the entrance they hadn’t noticed the door opening, and Kat took a step forward. I wasn’t sure what she said, but I caught the glint of a gun in her hand. Both men dropped their heads for a split second and shifted aside, giving me the opening I needed.
Outside, Antonio’s car was parked with the back seat accessible. I tossed Sonali in and buckled her into the seat beside me. Kat quickly rounded the car and jumped into the passenger side. I was about to ask what the hell she was doing, since she needed to drive when Antonio jogged out of the building and jumped into the driver side.
"Let’s head to the hospital," Kat insisted.
They might draw blood at the hospital and that could cause more issues for Sonali. “How about Dr. Renolds Clinic instead?”
“Sounds good,” Antonio replied as the car lurched forward. “Kat call Dr. Renolds and let him know we are on our way.”
I pressed my fingers against her wrist and felt her steady pulse.
"He’s not answering," Kat grumbled.
“Then call Mia and find out where the hell he is.” I countered.
Mia worked for Blackwood Mercenaries. A company we did a lot of operations with. She was also the sister-in-law of Quinton Renolds. Her husband was also a doctor and so were his other two brothers. Each one had a different specialty.
The phone rang through the car speakers three times before she answered. “Hello Kat. Who do you need to help bury?”
“Nobody. Quinton isn’t picking up at the clinic and we need him.”
“Give me a second.” The line went silent while we waited for her to come back on. I hated how helpless Sonali looked in the seat next to me.
“He was in the back running tests. Paxton is over there now as well. Did Paolo get worse?”
I caught the glare from my boss in the rearview mirror. “No, we had an op go sideways and need someone looked at. What the fuck can you tell me about Paolo?”
“It’s called HIPPA.” I grunted from the back seat.
Except Mia continued talking, ignoring my comment. “Paxton hasn’t told me any details about Paolo. All I know is that’s why he is over at the clinic with Quinton. They are rerunning a couple more tests on the blood sample he gave."
“Thanks for the information, Mia. Let Quinton know we are incoming.”
Sonia’s head bobbed slightly as the car sped through the streets. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to touch her. I reached out and held her hand, even though she remained unconscious. I silently vowed to take out Vincenzo and every person on his crew. It didn’t matter if she would be okay. If I’d eaten the food, then both of us would of ended up in New York. It wouldn’t take long for Vincenzo to realize who the woman with me really was.
“Where was Asher taking Vincenzo?”
Antonio glanced into the review mirrors. “Over to the interrogation rooms at Blackwood Mercenaries. Part of me wonders if they knew the girl was Sonali.”
"What we need is to get the passport back," I replied. "The moment he sees her picture he will know that Sonali was right in front of him."
Kat nodded. "Maybe Antonio and I could head to New York and retrieve it before Asher even let’s Vincenzo go.”
“Or just let me take Vincenzo out.”
“No.” Antonio shot back.
I didn’t plan to argue with my boss and let him know I planned to do it once Sonali was safe. This was my past I had thought I could walk away from, but seems like it was one I would need to eliminate.
“CJ was able to trace the Facebook post back to Benson. Looks like Vincenzo told the truth.”
“How did this Benson fucker know Vincenzo would want her?”
“Zayla’s sister had put out all that information about Sonali on the dark web when she was trying to find buyers. My guess, Benson easily tapped into the information posted there. The delivery doesn’t make sense though. Why send people to her location? If any of the people who broke into her room and grabbed her. None would have paid him. Benson is up to something, and we need to dig deeper into his background,” Antonio said.
The only way his plan made sense was if he wanted her dead.
I sighed. "After this, we need an even more secure plan than sending her to Houston. Vincenzo knows my brother is in Houston. Maybe you guys need to send someone else to Houston to get the information about the app. But it seems tied in somehow.”
Kat waved her phone in the air. Her ninja was on the screen kicking wood planks. “Not necessarily. This game is an encrypted way to chat and not traceable. So, we think that is why you need to talk with Callie.”
Antonio mumbled, "Hold on," as he took the corner. I reached out to steady Sonali, so she wouldn’t hit the window. The car stopped at the front steps of the white modern facility. Mia was standing outside with her husband waiting.
I quickly unbuckled Sonali’s seat belt and pulled her into my arms. I carried her toward the entrance. Mia swung the door open, and Quinton directed me down a hallway to an open bed in the private clinic. Once I set her down on the bed. Quinton and Paxton fired questions at once.
“We were at dinner and our food was laced with what we think were sleeping pills," I explained.
Quinton slid a needle into her arm and attached the tubing to an IV.
Paxton walked over with a syringe in his hand. “We can take some of her blood to see what she was given.”
He trusted the Renolds brothers, but he didn’t know everyone that worked at the clinic.
“If you take any of her blood you need to run the bare minimum tests and destroy the sample you took. We should probably admit her under the fake ID CJ made for her. Sonali was an experiment,” I explained and sighed.
Even for the greater good. I didn’t understand how her mother thought it was a good idea to create a child who could cure anything. You would be sentencing that person to a life as a blood bank or someone who would need to hide. Some experiments weren’t worth the cost.
Paxton nodded. "Let’s get started. We’ll take some blood and run tests. If it’s just the sleep aid, Quinton can counteract it with another medication."
Kat and Antonio left the room, their hushed voices trailing behind them. I wasn’t about to leave Sonali’s side. I sat watching her still form. My only reassurance was the slow, steady beat of the heart rate monitor.
I hadn’t realized two hours had passed when Quinton returned. "She should be up soon. But since I have you here while we wait, how about we take that scan?" he suggested.
"I'm good," I snapped.
"You realize if you don’t take care of this, you’ll be a walking time bomb. Paxton came over to look at your results. We both think you have lung cancer, but I need to do scans to see if it has spread and determine what treatment we need to start you on." Renolds paused for a moment. “Hell, the treatment might be right here.” He waved toward Sonali’s lifeless body.
Anger washed over me that he would even mention using Sonali as a cure. “She is not the option. Don’t ever fucking mention that shit again.”
"You seem attached to her," Renolds observed.
"I’ve only known her for a few hours, but I’m attached because I nearly got her killed. There’s no reason I should have dragged her into a meeting with Vincenzo. You and I both know my goal is to find who’s after her.”
I couldn’t hold back the cough; it had gotten worse. I grabbed the napkin from my pocket and held it over my mouth. The tang of blood coated my tongue as I continued to cough.
Quinton cursed under his breath. “You’re coughing up blood. This is bad. Your goal of finding who is after her might not be realistic. There is a real possibility you could die sooner than later. We need to get you on a treatment plan immediately.”
I’d done a google search on lung cancer treatments. Cancer was my karma for all the bad things I did over the years, and I would accept my fate. “We can have this conversation after I know she is safe.”
Quinton shook his head. "I swear, I hate dealing with patients like you. There’s medication that could fix you, but you refuse it because of your twisted sense of fate. What about the seven-year-old with leukemia I’m treating? Was getting sick karma for them?"
“No.”
He didn’t stop. “This karma shit about your past is a bunch of bullshit. I bet if I let Antonio or Kat know what was wrong with you. Your ass would be benched and possibly chained to a bed in this clinic. Let me start with the scans and then we can discuss your next options, but if you choose to do nothing, I will tell your bosses.”
A soft moan escaped Sonia’s lips. I rushed to her side and gently held her hand.
“Hey, are you feeling better?” I asked.
Her blue eyes fluttered open. “Where am I?”
“You're at one of our friend’s private clinics. Vincenzo slipped sleeping pills into the food and given how much you ate, combined with your exhaustion, you’ve been out for about three hours now.”
“Why did they try to knock me out?” she asked weakly.
“Well, they intended to knock both of us out,” I explained. “But I didn’t eat.”
Quinton raised a brow, “So, you don’t have an appetite either?”
I ignored his tone and squeezed Sonali’s hand. “How do you feel?”
“I’m still tired.”
Quinton nodded. “You will be. I want you to finish this IV bag and then you can be on your way.”
Antonio and Kat strode back into the room.
“We need find another safe house for Sonali. Houston is too dangerous now.”
I started to step back from the bed and Sonali reached out, grabbing my hand. “Please, don’t leave me,” she whispered, her plea hitting me like a ton of bricks. “I promise to be more careful when we go to Texas. I'm sorry I messed things up. I shouldn’t have eaten the food. I was so hungry,” she murmured.
“You have no reason to be sorry. Honestly, it’s my fault. I let you get hurt,” I replied softly.
She rolled her eyes. "You can’t protect me from the unknown."
Antonio cleared his throat, “Your brother reached out to the app developers. With everything going on and so many unknowns, we’ve made some changes. Jared Black, the owner of Nova Satellite Security, has a private island with only a few reservations this week. They’re letting us use it, and your brother is already en route to the island with Callie and her boyfriend. They’ll all meet you on the island.”
“Are we vetting every single person already on the island? We haven’t even said who Sonali is. She’ll go by her fake name on the island. We’re all playing this as the CIA mission, and nothing about Sonali’s condition will be mentioned,” I ground out.
“Jared used Blackwood Mercenaries for the vetting process we are good.”
“That solves that, I said, “but I still have an issue with Vincenzo. He needs to pay for what he’s done.”
A smile crept across Kat’s face.
“Why don’t you let me handle that for you?”
Antonio groaned and said, “Kat, you cannot take out the mafia boss and assume his position. We’re not joining the mafia or becoming its head. We can solve the problem, but you must promise not to try to take over.”
Antonio glared at me, as if I were the one to blame for not controlling his own wife. I didn’t comment—any word about Kat pulling his strings would put me on the chopping block too.
Solina, now more alert, spoke up, “We’re going to a private island. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but ... this might sound selfish—could I grab some art supplies before we go? I have a gallery showing in less than a month.”
Antonio crossed his arms. "Keeping you alive is a lot more important than a gallery. Call your assistant and cancel it."
Sonali glared at him. “I’m not canceling my show. Even if the threat isn’t gone. I’ll be back in Paris within a month.”
I squeezed her hand. “I’ll make sure you have all the art supplies you need.”
Paxton entered, holding a bag of medicine. “Take these.” He shoved it against my chest before turning to Sonali lying in bed. “Make sure he takes his meds and comes back here in no less than two weeks.”
Sonali raised an eyebrow. “Are you sick? Should we be going to an island if you need a doctor?”
“He’s just over acting.”
Paxton cocked his head. "This guy rushed you to our clinic to ensure you were okay. Do me a favor, while you’re gone if he has any spells where he is fatigued, or coughs blood call me.”
“What the fuck do you have?” Antonio demanded.
I grumbled, "I can take care of myself."
Just then, Kat’s phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen and announced, “Hey guys, looks like another group just showed up looking for Sonali. The team has taken them in for questioning. I think it is best you both stay here tonight and catch the flight first thing in the morning.”
“We are heading over to Blackwood Mercenaries to talk with Vincenzo. Call us if you need anything.”
Paxton and Quinton followed Kat and Antonio out of the room. I dropped Sonali’s hand and sunk into the hospital chair. “Why don’t you get some sleep.”
Sonali yawned, “I am still very tired, but you can’t sleep in that chair. Why don’t you join me in here?”
The thought of climbing into bed next to her was tempting, but I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands to myself. “I think it’s best I sleep in the chair.”
“After what happened today, I would feel more comfortable if you were closer. Can you please lay with me until I fall asleep?”
This was probably a horrible idea, but I climbed in the bed next to Sonali. She turned on her side and I wrapped my arms around her. The hint of strawberry filled my nose. I’d never cuddled with a woman before. The concept was foreign to me, but at the same time it felt right. And I wondered for a moment if I was making the right decision not to take the meds.