Chapter 34 Alessio
ALESSIO
Joey’s father sits three feet away, and he hasn’t said a word since he walked in. Hasn’t looked at me either, which is probably for the best.
He lights a cigarette with shaking hands, every drag sounding like judgment.
If our eyes met, he’d see the truth written all over my face: I killed your son. Not with my hands, but with my arrogance. With my brilliant fucking plan that got a twenty-two-year-old kid poisoned with the very drugs we still can’t trace.
He’s mafia through and through, three generations deep, so he won’t say it. Won’t even let it show on his face. We follow orders, we accept losses, we move forward. That’s the code. But behind those dead eyes, I know what he must be thinking. If it were Austin—
I cut that thought off before it can take root.
“Nobody named Aron.” Luca’s voice cuts through my self-flagellation. “Not in any of the circles I’ve been running with.”
“Fuck.” Lorenzo’s palm hits his forehead, the sound sharp in the quiet room. Dario flanks his father’s right side. “That name was our only lead.”
The thought spreads through my veins like poison. Joey died for nothing. Not even a breadcrumb to follow.
“You haven’t gotten any closer to finding a dealer?” The frustration bleeds through my attempt at neutral.
Luca’s jaw tightens. “Don’t you think I would’ve mentioned it if I had?”
“Maybe we’re coming at this backwards,” Dario interjects, fingers drumming against the table. “Bottom-up isn’t working. What about top-down?”
Lorenzo’s eyebrows lift. “Meaning?”
“Go straight for whoever’s running this operation.”
“The Bratva,” I say. It’s not a question.
“Has to be.” Dario leans forward. “We hit them where it hurts most.”
“Knowing that doesn’t help unless we can find where they’re cooking this shit and burn it down,” I counter.
“Based on the volume Joey and I saw moving through campus, there are dealers everywhere.” Luca’s voice carries an edge of desperation. “We just need to find the right one. Someone who actually knows something.”
Lorenzo’s fist crashes against the table. The sound ricochets off the walls. “We’re talking in circles. Joey’s death is the key. They killed him for a reason—he was getting too close. I want every detail of his last twenty-four hours.”
Shaw, our tech guy, breaks his silence from the corner of the room.
He pulls out his laptop, fingers flying across the keyboard before Lorenzo even finishes talking.
The clicking fills the silence while we all pretend we’re not watching Joey’s father from the corners of our eyes.
The smoke from his cigarette hangs between us like a suffocating cloud.
“Got his class schedule.” Shaw’s screen glows against his face.
“He actually enrolled?” Dario sounds surprised.
“Cover story. Had to look legitimate.” I move behind Shaw, scanning the list of classes Joey signed up for but probably never attended. My eyes snag on a name that makes my blood turn to ice water. “Aronov?”
I tap the screen. “That’s Russian.”
“You think that’s what Joey was trying to tell us?” Luca’s on his feet now.
“Has to be.”
Shaw’s fingers dance across the keyboard, pulling up everything the internet knows about Professor Nikolai Aronov. “Philosophy professor, three years at the university. No tenure. Thirty-four years old. Born in Moscow, came to the U.S. in 2006 to live with...”
The pause stretches like a rubber band about to snap.
“What?” Lorenzo demands.
I read over Shaw’s shoulder, the words hitting like punches. “His aunt, uncle, and cousin. Cousin’s name is Danyl Volkov.”
“The Bratva’s Danyl Volkov?”
“That’s him,” I confirm.
Lorenzo doesn’t need to hear anything else. He’s on his feet before I finish my sentence. “That’s our guy. Call Matteo. Call Paolo. Tell them to meet us at this bastard’s house. Shaw, send the address. Dario, bring your best. Let’s move.”
The room empties fast, everyone eager for blood. My blood rushes with the promise of violence, of finally having someone to make pay for all of this. I’m already imagining what I’ll do to this professor when we get our hands on him.
Dario slides into my passenger seat as I pull out my phone to check the address. It rings before I can open the maps app.
The number makes my stomach drop before I even answer.
The bodyguard I stationed at my building.
“What?”
“Sir, I’m sorry. It happened too fast. I couldn’t—”
“Spit it out.” But I already know. My body knows before my brain catches up, adrenaline flooding my system like poison.
“Nina and Austin. Someone took them.”
The world tilts. I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t do anything but grip the phone hard enough to crack the screen.
“They came from nowhere, sir. The van blew the light. I tried to follow but a Porsche T-boned me at the corner. I lost them.”
“You lost them.” The words taste like acid. My pulse hammers so loud I can barely hear him stammer excuses.
My family is gone, and this incompetent piece of shit lost them.
A buzzing fills my ears. My vision tunnels. All I see is Nina’s terrified face. Austin’s small hands. And a fucking van door slamming shut.
I hang up and jam the car into gear, tires shrieking as I rocket out of the lot. The wheel jerks under my hands, but I don’t loosen my grip.
“What’s happening?” Dario grabs the door handle as I take a corner too fast. “The address—”
“Forget the professor.”
“What? Why?”
I look at him, letting him see just how far past reasoning I am. “My son and his mother just got taken.”
The speedometer hits ninety on a surface street. Still not fast enough.
I’m coming, Austin. Nina. Hold on.
And whoever took you better pray the cops find them first. Because when I get my hands on them, I’m going to make them understand what happens when someone touches what’s mine.
I’m going to make them beg for hell.