Chapter 80
LUCA
Pacing back and forth across the helipad, I gritted my teeth as I stared at the lost signal on the tracking app on my phone.
I was losing my mind.
I was losing control.
Knowing I had put Alex in this situation made every sensible part of me shut down. I was becoming the thing I feared most—the uncontrollable psychopath who craved blood. Without Alex here to level me out, I was ready to explode from all the rage bubbling up inside me.
Marcello cupped my shoulder, snapping my attention back to reality. “We’ll find her. Give it time.”
I threw my hands in the air. “We don’t have fucking time, Marcello! They will sell her to the highest bidder. And that person will kill her to spite me.”
The sickos in our world never kept women long.
They either hurt them so badly that they died from their injuries or put them out of their misery.
The men who held the private auctions did not reveal the buyers’ identities.
So we had one option—find Alex before they moved her to the Il Circo location.
My fingers itched as I waited for a text message with the details.
They didn’t hold auctions in the same place more than once, making it harder for us to anticipate their next move.
“They must know there’s a tracking chip in Alex’s necklace,” Marcello said.
I nodded.
The local Knights gathered on the helipad at my estate, waiting for me to issue an order. Aiden stood beside his grandfather, who shot me a stern look. The Wellingtons had every reason to blame me.
All of this was my fault.
I should have told Alex the truth about her brother.
What difference would it have made? She was going to be our queen and had every right to know.
If I had been honest with her, she would have sat with Marcello and sketched a new Devil painting for me.
My girl would still be here. We didn’t have a solid lead on Alex.
If we moved in the wrong direction, we could lose her forever.
“I knew we would regret working with the Kurtis,” Marcello said through clenched teeth.
“I looked into their operation,” I told him. “Even I didn’t see this coming.”
“The Kurtis specialize in trafficking by water,” Sonny said.
“Alex could be in a shipping container on a carrier halfway across the country by now. So far, no large vessels have left Connecticut, New York, or New Jersey ports. No unusual traffic reports from the Coast Guard. I think Alex is still on land.”
I turned to look over my shoulder at Drake, our tech genius. “What do you think, Battle?”
Drake looked up from his iPad. “The Mercedes van went into the Lincoln Tunnel and never came out. We lost Alex’s tracker a few seconds later. I’m still looking for them.”
Drake’s company, Battle Industries, created most of the weapons and high-end tech used by the United States military.
He was on the verge of launching an artificial intelligence software that had attracted the attention of the Albanians.
Our allies and enemies were dying to get their hands on Drake’s AI.
That was their real motive for meeting with me, though they had disguised the meeting as a loan for weapons.
“Is it possible they switched cars before the Tunnel?” I asked Drake.
He shook his head. “No, I checked for loops in the feed and ran the CCTV footage through my AI to look for redundancies and inconsistencies. I don’t get it.” Drake sighed. “I didn’t see them switch cars. So, how did they disappear from the Tunnel? It’s not possible.”
Marcello tapped Drake on the shoulder. “Did you see any other Mercedes vans?”
He pressed his lips together, lost in thought. “Not that I recall.”
“Check again,” Marcello said.
Bastian and Damian strolled across the blacktop toward us. Damian raked a hand through his hair and yawned.
“Go do a line if you’re that fucking tired,” I told him.
He waved me off. “I’m good. Just haven’t been sleeping.”
“Kali keeps us busy,” Bastian finished for him.
I didn’t care enough to ask what was happening with Kali Marx. Since our senior year of high school, the two assholes had been sharing the senator’s daughter like a toy. Alex was my obsession, and they had theirs.
“I hope you told Kali to stay home,” Marcello told Bastian.
“Yeah. Kali won’t get in the way. She knows better.”
Like Alex, Kali was good at running away. Whenever shit got tough, she bailed on my brothers. No matter how much she fought them, they wanted her more.
I understood that shit on a whole other level because of Alex. She could do the worst thing imaginable—like run away and almost get herself killed by international criminals—and I would still want her.
I had every plan to spank her ass for putting herself in danger. She would feel my wrath for defying me. But first, I had to find her.
“We’re chasing the wrong lead,” I said to Drake. “Pull up the feeds again.”
Drake gripped the iPad and paged through the screens of security footage. I shifted my weight to calm my nerves, doing my best not to let anyone see how much Alex’s kidnapping affected me.
I considered myself a patient man. I’d waited years for Alex and had to exercise the same patience. One wrong move and I would never see her again.
“Cello,” Sonny yelled from the lawn.
Sonny had a thing with nicknames. He knew better than to give me one.
Marcello turned his head. “Got anything new?”
“I almost missed it.” Sonny groaned as he approached us.
“I was looking for unusual travel patterns. They planned this. I double-checked with the harbormaster in Beacon Bay. He said a small vessel left the port at its regularly scheduled time. We were looking for irregularities, not already scheduled trips.”
Sonny’s family owned the largest shipping company in the world. No one knew more about traveling by water than Sonny.
“Spit it out,” I growled.
He narrowed his eyes at me, looking as tired as the rest of us. His short blond hair was messy and falling into his eyes. “They’re traveling by sea.”
“Not possible,” Drake spat back. “I followed the Mercedes van to the Lincoln Tunnel.”
“Do the math, Drake.” Sonny shook his head. “There’s no way they could have gotten from Devil’s Creek to the Lincoln Tunnel that quickly. The van must have been a decoy to throw us off. Somehow, they moved Alex by boat and without raising suspicions.”
I tipped my head. “Do you have a lead?”
Sonny nodded. “They stopped at Mystic Harbor.”
“Drake, find them,” I ordered.
His fingers glided across the iPad. “I’m on it.”
A few seconds later, Drake shoved the screen in my face. Two men wearing dark shirts and pants carried a drugged Alex off a boat. Another two men followed. They dumped her on the dock, bound and gagged. She looked conscious, her eyes slightly open as she struggled against her restraints.
One man answered a phone call. The group exchanged words, then a tall man with black hair dumped Alex into the trunk of a black sedan.
I pointed at a dark-haired man on the screen. He dressed in a black suit and had a tattoo on his neck. “I know him. He’s Cal Kurti’s bodyguard.”
“I don’t see Kurti anywhere on the feeds,” he shot back.
“He’ll be at the final destination, waiting for her,” Marcello interjected.
“What can I do?” Aiden asked.
I glared at him. “You’ve done enough. Wait here with your grandfather.”
“No,” he snapped. “I’m going with you.”
He knew better than to talk back to me, but Aiden was always a pain in my ass. The Knights followed orders and knew their place. Aiden was just as stubborn as his twin.
Marcello climbed into our helicopter beside Drake, Bastian, and Damian.
“Fine,” I told Aiden. “But don’t get in the way.”
“I thought we were past this,” he shot back. “Haven’t I earned my place among the Knights?”
“We don’t have time to measure dicks right now. Your sister has less than twenty-four hours before disappearing from the map.”
Aiden held my gaze for a moment, his jaw flexed. “You better find her, Salvatore. If she dies, this is on you, too.”
I raised my hand and pointed at the second helicopter on the helipad. A few of the Knights waited beside it.
“Go before I change my mind. We don’t have time to waste.”
With an irritated scowl plastered on his face, he followed my command.
Fucking pain in my ass.
The Wellington twins would be the death of me.