CHAPTER 5
ARRAN
“Where is everyone?” Dario asked as he strode into the kitchen a couple of hours later.
I was pouring my fifth cup of coffee for the morning, in lieu of getting any actual sleep.
I’d barely gotten any sleep the night before after everything that had happened, and even when I did lie beside Cara and closed my eyes, I didn’t sleep fully, wanting to be ready if she woke from nightmares or in pain.
“Rafe went to get some sleep after Cara made him promise he would. Gia’s sulkin’ in her room, since Rafe stripped her of her electronics, as punishment for her shite last night. And Cal and Dante are with Cara, watching some romcom bullshit in the game room.”
“How is she this morning?” he asked as he sank tiredly into a stool at the counter.
“Tired and in pain, but strong, as always,” I replied. “Ye want a coffee?” I offered and he nodded.
“I met with Brax earlier. He showed me proof the kidnapping was the work of the Kozlov’s.”
“What proof?”
“Yuri Kozlov was one of the fuckers we took out last night. No other reason he’d have been there, except he was under the orders of his cousin.”
“It’s what we expected,” I pointed out. The Russians were pissed with us, ever since we shut down their operations in and out of our docks, after the police began looking into them for the murder of that young woman.
They’d made that clear enough with the shite they threw at us already.
Clearly they thought taking Rafe’s family would be the leverage they needed.
It was a huge fucking mistake that they would live to regret, but not for long.
“Rafe will want a meet with them as soon as we can set it up. He wants this handled fast.” Dario told me, and I nodded my agreement.
“Ye think we can get somethin’ set up fer tonight?”
“I’ve already set the ball rolling. We’ll have to see if Kozlov has the balls to face us. He must know we took out Yuri by now, and that we know it was them.”
“Then why would they even show at a meet?”
“They underestimate us. That’s why they took Gia and Cara in the first place. They seem to think we lack the power to retaliate.”
“Then they’re in fer a shock,” I smirked, knowing without question that there would be retaliation and it would not lack power, speed, or violence.
“Rafe will definitely be aiming to prove to any other doubters, just how powerful this family really is,” Dario agreed.
“We need to talk to Gia about her relationship wi’ Jase. Rafe was gonna speak wi’ her, but I told him we’d handle it.”
“Yeah. We definitely need to find out what the fuck that little prick, Jase, was up to. You mind going to coax Gia out of her room and meet me in the office?”
“Aye, though I’m ready fer her puttin’ up quite the protest. She was pitchin’ a fit again this mornin’ in the kitchen,” I sighed.
“Did Cara see it?”
“She was stuck right in the fuckin’ middle of it.
Gia really laid into her when Cara tried to just talk, told Cara she doesnae want her in the house, nor in the country.
Blamed Cara fer everything that’s happened, and accused her of a ton of other bullshit.
Rafe shut it down, but the damage was done.
I’m pretty sure Cara’s thinkin’ she needs to leave.
Rafe told her she wasnae going anywhere, but Gia was vicious, and Cara doesnae want to upset her anymore. ”
“What the hell is going on with that kid? I know she’s spoiled and she can be selfish, but this…the way she’s behaved since Cara returned, it’s so unlike her.”
“Something’s goin’ on. The way Gia hates Cara…it’s no’ just jealousy. Maybe Jase had somethin’ to do wi’ it? Maybe he poisoned Gia against Cara for some reason?” I suggested.
“We need to talk to her, and find out what Jase was up to. I still don’t understand why they contacted Cara and tried to lure her in, when they already had Gia.
It doesn’t make any sense? For some reason, someone wants to get hands on Cara and we need to work out who and why,” Dario growled, looking seriously stressed out.
He hated unanswered questions and he loathed not being in control of every situation.
“What would the Kozlov’s want wi’ Cara though? How would they even know about her?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe they were offered something to get hold of Cara, something they couldn’t turn down,” Dario mused.
“Like another route for their trade?” I questioned, and he nodded. “Ye thinking this is the Armenians again? They have their own routes.”
“Yep. But what I don’t understand is why the hell the Armenians want Cara? First those bastards trying to grab her in Chicago, and now this. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Do ye think Isabella could have been tangled up wi’ the Armenians somehow? They obviously do business over there. Cara said those guys who tried to grab her were American.”
“Who fucking knows? Cara said her Mum was barely lucid by the end, but before that? She would have done anything for drugs from what I know. Maybe she got into bed with the Armenians? There’s no limit to the shit that woman willingly dragged Cara into.”
“Let’s talk to Gia, see what she kens about Jase. We can go from there,” I suggested, and he just nodded, but he looked as tense as I felt.
There were too many unanswered questions, and far too much risk to Cara right now. It was putting us all on edge. We needed to know what was going on and put an end to it as soon as possible. None of us would feel better until we did; until Cara was safe.
DARIO
The door to my office was thrown open and Gia stormed in, just as I expected her to. It seemed her foul attitude was the only emotion she was willing or able to throw around just lately.
“What?” She demanded angrily as she stopped just inside the doorway and glared at me hard. She was dressed up as if she were headed out to a party or some grand event, make up painted on perfectly, not a hair out of place. What game did she think she was playing?
“Enough,” I said calmly from where I sat behind my desk. “Drop the attitude and sit.”
“Look at you playing big bad boss,” she sneered.
“Where’s Rafe? No…let me guess!” She crossed her arms over her chest, raising a manicured finger to her chin and tapping at it as she dramatically pretended to think.
“With his precious, perfectly broken little sister, right?” she declared with a venomous smile.
“Jesus wept, Gia. What the hell is yer problem wi’ yer sister? She’s done nothin’ but try to make nice wi’ yer,” Arran ground out. He had entered the office behind Gia and he was now leaning against the wall beside the closed door.
“So you’re sleeping with her too, huh? She really does get around, doesn’t she?”
“Gia!” I raged as I shot to my feet and leaned down over my desk with a deafening slam of my hands on it’s surface.
I got some satisfaction from seeing her jump at my outburst, and even more from the step back away from me she took.
It wasn’t that I wanted her to fear me. She was like a sister to me and I loved her.
I would lay down my life for her if it came to that.
I had just wanted to see a real reaction from her – to know the Gia I knew was still in there somewhere, underneath the bullshit exterior she had been wearing like armour ever since the day after Cara arrived.
“Sit. Down,” I told her through clenched teeth.
“Dario…” she began, but with one look from me she wisely stopped and moved to sit in one of the two chairs before my desk.
“I don’t want to hear any more of your crap right now. I have some questions which you will answer. I want the truth. Don’t even think about lying to me, Gia, because I will know. You’re not quite as good of an actress as you think you are.”
“And what are you gonna do if I don’t answer?
Drag me down to that basement, in the headquarters building?
Torture answers from me? That’s what you all do, isn’t it?
I know what you are….what you all are,” she spat as she turned to glare at Arran behind her briefly too.
“You pretend to be business men, but you’re monsters… all of you. Fucking monsters!”
“I said I didn’t want to hear any more of your crap!
” I barked. I definitely scared her that time as she jolted in her chair, then seemed to curl into herself, some of her bravado disappearing from her face.
I hadn’t meant to scare her so much, but I was exhausted, and stressed out after the events of the evening before.
I wanted answers and I just didn’t have it in me to deal with Gia’s histrionics.
She was acting like what she told us was news to her, and to us. It wasn’t.
Gia had known what business her family were in from an early age.
She had known what her father was when he was alive, and the life Rafe and I had both been raised to live.
Nowadays, we were more business men than the monsters we had been trained as, but she wasn’t wrong that monsters lived within all of us.
We knew it, and so did she. So bringing it all up now, like it was some huge revelation, was only more of her dramatics.
“You can’t talk to me like this!” she cried, her voice trembling just slightly. I might not even have picked up on it, had I not been trained to find weakness at every opportunity. It was something I was good at, a skill Marcello had seen in me, nurtured, and exploited when I was younger.
“I wouldn’t need to if you would come in here and act even just somewhat human.”
“Human? Whatever Dario! You have no idea what I’m dealing with right now!” she snapped.
“I’ll bet it’s all because of Cara though, right?” Arran growled sarcastically.
“She doesn’t belong here!”
“Yes, she does, Gia. She belongs here every bit as much as you or any other of us does, and you know it,” I corrected her.
“I don’t want her here! She ruined everything!”
“What? What has she ruined?” I asked. It wasn’t why I had brought her into the office, but if I could find the underlying cause of what was going on with her and Cara, I was going to pursue it.
Gia opened her mouth as if to start spouting more vitriol, then she seemed to think better of it and clamped her lips closed, looking away from me and down to her hands, which were folded neatly in her lap.
“What did you bring me in here to ask me? Let’s just get this done,” she said instead, more calmly now.
“Fine. Tell me how long you and Jase have been in a relationship?”
“What? Me and Jase? That’s….”
“I told you not to lie to me, Gia. Jase told Cara everything. We know you were seeing him. I’m guessing he was the one who helped you sneak out of the house yesterday, and probably several other times before too.”
“This is Cara again. She hates me. She’d say anythin…”
“Don’t lie!” I roared, slamming my closed fist down hard on the desk between us. I couldn’t listen to her say anything else about Cara. I wouldn’t stand for her accusing Cara of lying when I knew it was all shit.
“It wasn’t a relationship!” Gia cried nervously. “I…I just…I was nice to him so he’d help me…let me out sometimes and stuff. It was nothing. I just…we kissed a few times. I was using him. That’s it!”
“When did it start?” I asked.
“I don’t know. A while ago,” she shrugged.
“Did you know he worked for the Russians?”
“What? No! Of course not!”
“Did ye ever go to his home?” Arran cut in.
“No! Ew! I didn’t even like him that much. He just…he was interested in me and I knew I could use him. I don’t know anything about him except he works…worked for Rafe.”
“So you didn’t talk? Didn’t go out on dates, and get to know him?” I pushed.
“No. God! I just told you. I smiled, flirted. I kissed him a little and he did what I told him to. That was it. I didn’t know anything about him!
” I knew she was lying. I could see it in her face.
I also knew that Gia had been out with Jase enough, that her friends had been aware of him, and called him Gia’s boyfriend when they told Rafe and I about him, when we’d been searching for her.
But for now that wasn’t the most pressing point, so I let it lie and went on.
“Tell me what happened last night.”
“I was at a club with some friends,” she began, but I cut her off.
“Which friends?”
“From school. They’re new. You don’t know them.
Anyway, two of them had to leave, so I left with them.
We were waiting for our carshare outside, and this van came racing up to me.
Two men jumped out and grabbed me. I screamed, but no one was around, except for my friends, and they were too scared to step in, I suppose.
The men threw me in the van, and then I think they drugged me, because I passed out. ”
“What did the men look like?”
“Big. They were dressed in dark colours and they had masks over their faces…like balaclavas.”
“And the van? Can ye describe it?” Arran asked.
“White I think, but I’m not sure. It all happened so fast and it was dark,” she uttered. She’d lowered her head so she was staring at her fidgeting hands again, and she seemed a little shaken now. I didn’t want to push her too hard. She had been traumatised the night before, after all.
“Okay,” I nodded. “Did you wake up in the garage?”
“Yeah. They handed me my phone and told me to ring Cara. They told me they’d kill me if I didn’t get her there. I know I don’t like her, but I…I didn’t want to drag her into that. I told her not to come!” she argued.
“She came anyway Gia, because she loves you, She put her life at risk to save yours. Don’t you see that?” I pushed, desperate to get through to her.
“It’s too little too late,” she threw back as she lifted her head and set her fiery glare on me again.
“Yer bein’ ridiculous, Gia. Here ye are, given back the sister ye thought ye’d lost forever, and yer just throwin’ it away, throwin’ Cara away when all she wants to do is know and love ye,” Arran sighed.
“Whatever! Are we done here?” Gia demanded as she crossed her arms over her chest defensively.
“For now. Go to your room and stay there until Rafe decides what to do with you,” I warned.
“You can’t just keep me prisoner here!” she wailed.
“We’re keeping you safe, Gia. It says more about you and your attitude if you choose to see that as us keeping you prisoner,” I told her calmly. She just let out a loud huff as she rose to her feet and stormed from the room, slamming the office door closed behind her.
I hated that she was so angry and bitter about everything, but I had no idea how to get through to her and make her see any sense. We needed to know what was going on with her, and why she hated Cara so much, but that was going to be a hell of a lot easier said than done, it seemed.