47. Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Six
Alessandrio
I t felt like the longest fucking drive of my life. Emilio got the location finally for Lorenzo’s SUV from the tracking device. And what are the chances that the vehicle has been sitting at the warehouse rented by none other than newly deceased Marco Galdano? My claws buried in my palms keep me tethered to reality where my hands strangle the wheel. I promised her one of us wouldn’t walk away from this. We were mortal enemies all along, and she fucking played me like a fiddle.
“Lucia!” Emilio snarls, ripping me from my murderous thoughts as ahead of us a frantic figure is waving, the dark head of hair familiar and something eases in me. I draw closer, eyes scanning the road for any threats. “Lucia!” Emilio roars, the sound deafening as he jumps from the car before I have fully stopped the van.
The street is empty but I remove my gun anyway before climbing out and check every rooftop, window and dark shadow for a trap as my brother collides with his wife, lifting her into his arms. I want to collapse in my relief at the sight of her unharmed. God, if anything happened to her, my brother would never be the same.
“Where is she?” I snarl as I reach them, so much violence leeched into those words.
“Alessandrio,” Emilio snaps, trying to pull on my reins.
But I won’t be pacified. There are debts owing and I want to claim mine. Hell, Emilio is owed his own debts. She stole his fucking wife… and yet… and yet.
“I am so sorry, Drio,” Lucia sobs, her eyes wet with tears. “It was my idea.”
I stare at her as if horns have sprouted on her own head, her words filling my veins with ice. Stunned, I can say nothing as Emilio holds his wife away from him, assessing her with fresh eyes.
“What do you mean, it was your idea?” His voice is so quiet I almost don’t hear it over the rushing in my head and her eyes flick to him, tears falling harder.
“Riccardo got my number somehow—”
“What?!” Emilio roars, making Lucia flinch. “What do you mean?” he asks more quietly, trying to contain himself.
“Lucia,” I warn as everything I thought I knew gets turned on its head for the second time today.
“He messaged me and told me to deliver her.”
I snarl low and threateningly. My brother faces me with a warning glare.
“I would never have given her over,” Lucia amends, her doe eyes wide. “I would never have done that. I wanted this to be over. Not just for me but for both of you, for our baby.” Her voice breaks over that last part and yet I feel nothing.
“You should have come to us,” I seethe.
“So you could have both run off into something you didn’t know? I wanted the element of surprise. Knew it was our only shot of getting him off guard. I took Olivia’s plan…” her voice trails off. “She had a better one, a more convincing one, and I agreed. When we got here to execute it—I think she didn’t want to put me in danger.”
“Where is she?” I repeat my question, my voice cold as ice.
“I don’t know,” she pleads. “The GPS said we were four minutes away from this exact spot. I saw some paramedics go past before you got here. She told me to tell you this is for you.”
Lucia rips the world from beneath my paws. My knees actually buckle as I stagger and put out a hand to catch myself on the side of a building. It was my idea. Olivia didn’t betray us—or me. I was so quick to think the worst, despite the pain on her face as she executed whatever stupid plan she and Lucia had devised. My rage blinded me. The idea of her betrayal was truly abhorrent, the pain when I thought that none of it meant anything to her crippling. I shake my head in an attempt to dislodge the thoughts.
In a very distant place, I hear doors slam, familiar voices talking in quick succession, and a warm, heavy hand gripping my arm. A terrible face appears before me, darker in features, a thing of nightmares and yet the eyes are human, pale blue like my own. The mouth is moving, sharp canines flashing, but I don’t hear a thing over the emptiness in my head.
God, please fucking let her be okay.
“We have to go,” Emilio is shouting now. “The warehouse is swarming with NYPD.”
I shake my head, eyes sweeping into the distance over his shoulders. “I can’t fucking leave her.” My throat has to work around the rising lump.
“You go there and you will be shot on the spot. Lorenzo said we haven’t been the only ones hunting him. The NYPD set their own trap,” Emilio says quietly. I try to push past him, but the bastard pushes me back. “Come,” Emilio orders.
“You want me to just pretend like she isn’t out there somewhere?” I spit, grasping his shirt, and snarling in his face, like the vicious, wild things that we are.
“No,” Lucia cries somewhere nearby as I push him into a wall.
“If it was her, you would be ripping this city apart,” I rage, shoving him back into the bricks.
His arm comes around my neck, his strength overwhelming as he presses his forehead into mine so our eyes are so close.
“You are absolutely fucking right. And I would wind up dead because of it,” he snarls right back. “We are the enemy, remember? We are Mafia.”
“What would you do?” I gasp again, the pain unbearable.
My brother releases a deep sigh. “I would feel as fucking powerless as you do right now.”
The truth of his words brings tears to my eyes, because I do feel fucking powerless. I have never met a scenario where I couldn’t bend it to my will. It’s a hard pill to swallow and reminds me of the last time I felt this powerless. When my mother committed suicide, I relived every moment prior to her death over and over, as if I was watching a car crash happen in slow-motion. The signs were all there and yet I wasn’t enough to help her, the way I feel like I’m not enough to help Olivia right now.
“I have to find her.” I bare my teeth at him again, praying he takes pity on my useless fucking soul.
“You forget one thing, brother. As Mafia, we have insiders in every New York organization, and while you were driving, I had Lorenzo do his thing with the tech guys.” He smiles at me in a way that isn’t at all settling. “He already has information you and I both need to hear. Now come with us. That is an order; you will have your answers.”
Everything in my nature tells me to rage, to argue and to disobey. But he’s right. If I show up as I am anywhere, I’ll be shot down or put into some lab for science experiments. Emilio pushes me away, and I let him direct me toward a Greco SUV, anger morphing into anxiety. Our men are watching us, alert and ready as Emilio rattles off orders. He helps Lucia into the back before forcing me to follow. Just being in the same space as her right now is a testament to his trust in me, because I have never wanted to shake a person for their utter stupidity more.
The drive is even longer back to their home. I can’t even look at the other occupants in the car. Closing my eyes, I press myself back into the leather, praying it swallows me whole. Behind my eyelids I watch Olivia and my story unfold, from the moment I grabbed her at Ironwood until this morning when I held her close. Pain like nothing I have ever felt before lances through me, as if my chest is being ripped in two and my black fucking heart is being clawed from its cavity. I failed her because I couldn’t see beyond my selfish thought of her betrayal. When I swim back to the surface of the hole I fell into, Donatella is opening the door, her face pale.
“Go,” Emilio orders his wife and she doesn’t protest as our old housekeeper helps her from the car.
“Lorenzo is in my office,” Emilio says from across the car, his lips a tight line. “He has all the information we need.”
I should be eager to hear it, and yet my paws feel weighed down by shackles of dread. Each step is an effort as I follow him back to the pool house turned Mafia operation centre. Lorenzo is standing just inside as we reenter the space we seemed to occupy a lifetime ago, multiple emotions warring on his features as he takes us in.
“Riccardo Dolmino is dead.” His words stop both Emilio and I in our tracks.
But his words don’t bring me relief, they only make my stomach tighten more. “And Olivia?” Her name is a desperate plea on my lips.
“I don’t know much, but they took a young female into the emergency department.” His face becomes solemn. “Gunshot wound to the chest.”
I don’t even feel the pain as my knees hit the tiles. There is only a roaring in my ears, a sound that could come from my own throat, or maybe just inside my head? I don’t really fucking know. All I know is that if Olivia Dolmino doesn’t survive this, I don’t think I can be in a world she isn’t in.