50. Nico
CHAPTER FIFTY
NICO
T oday—much like the past several weeks—had been an absolute clusterfuck.
It was close to midnight when I got a call from one of my men about suspicious activity in Havre de Grace, a little touch at the mouth of the Susquehanna River and the head of Chesapeake Bay where nothing ever happened.
I was tempted to let someone else handle it, but something urged me to rush to it. There were whispers of resurrected belles auctions and trafficking. If that was the case, I had to make sure those didn’t touch my territories.
Thirty minutes later, I pulled over at the address, expecting to see my men there, but not Luciano and Cassio King.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed when I reached them, crouching behind a vehicle merely ten feet from the building. Their men, and my own, were strategically positioned all around the building and on top of it, waiting on me to attack.
My old friend’s response was curt. “I followed a lead.”
Annoyance flared inside me. Tensions were high between Luciano and me since the trainwreck at the Vitale party. But they reached an all-time high when my daughters vanished.
“To my territory,” I grumbled. “Must I remind you that?—”
“Can we argue later?” Cassio cut in. “Or would we rather get killed because we’re busy yapping like some old men?”
“Who are you calling old?” I snapped.
“I’m in my prime,” Luciano chimed, his brows puckered in distress. “Just ask my wife.”
“I’d rather not,” I grumbled. “Now do we know what we are dealing with here?”
“Not sure,” Cassio retorted. “There are five men and a doctor inside.”
“A doctor?” An uneasy feeling crept up my spine. “Why are we alerted by a doctor?”
“Because there are organ trafficking rumors,” Luciano snapped. “It would seem they are starting to hit our territories in revenge for shutting down Benito King two decades ago.”
“Or maybe you’re being paranoid and you’re just looking for excuses to fuck with?—”
The sound of a door smashing against the wall interrupted our bickering and all our attention shifted to the dark building, light streaming out from it. The guy lit up a cigarette, leaving the door propped open and fury slithered through my veins at the sight before me.
Two women were sprawled on what looked to be a surgical table, and I found myself struggling to keep my composure. Their naked bodies were cut open, from the top of their chest all the way down to the abdomen.
“What the fuck?” Luciano’s tone was low and deadly.
My eyes snapped to Cassio and I growled, “Keep the doctor and one guard alive.”
Straightening up, we charged after them. Since they were caught off guard, it wasn’t much of a battle. Everyone except for one guard and the doctor was dead.
While my men worked on securing the doctor and guard to the chairs for their torture session, I let my gaze travel over the filthy room. Blood-stained operating tables with two dead women butchered like animals. Cooler boxes with marked organs to indicate which is which. Little notes on them to indicate where they were headed.
“They fucking slaughtered them,” Luciano growled, his eyes on the battered young women.
Rage filled me as I whipped my head to the two tied men who were whimpering like cowards. I snatched an unused scalpel from the surgical table and strode to them.
I shoved the blade against the doctor’s throat and pressed it, cutting through the skin.
“What in the fuck were you doing there and where did you get those women from?” I shouted, shoving the blade harder against his carotid artery. Being a doctor, he would know how easy it was to end his life like that. “You better start talking or I’ll slice your throat and watch you bleed out, right here and now.”
“Please,” he begged. Cassio swung a bat at the guard’s kneecaps while the doctor shook with fear, his head whipping back and forth between Cassio and me. “Don’t kill me.”
“After what you did to them, you think you deserve mercy?” I roared, my body vibrating with the need for destruction. I pushed the sharp blade harder, his throat trickling with blood.
Cassio paused his beating of the guard and turned to look at me. “Nico, maybe we should all take a moment and calm down.”
“No,” I stated, my voice ice fucking cold. “I’ll calm down when I get my answers.”
Luciano slammed his fist in the doctor’s face. “You better start talking. My friend isn’t one to play around.”
“Who are you working for?” I demanded.
“I only… get email… instructions,” he whimpered, his words laced with a heavy Eastern European accent. I pressed the scalpel into his skin again. The doctor turned his head and spoke frantically to the man. “Tell him. You tell him.”
“Please,” the guard pleaded through snot, terror trembling in his voice. “We were just doing what we were told.”
“Tell me fucking everything,” I growled.
“If we do, will you set us free?” the doctor asked with hope.
I smiled cruelly. “Oh yeah, you’ll be set free.”
“The Belles and Mobsters auctions… they are a way to p-procure o-organs,” the guard stuttered. “A demand for organs on the black market is everywhere. There’s been a buzz about it in Europe for months.”
“Who’s giving the order?” Cassio demanded.
“W-we… don’t know,” the doctor cried. “We just receive an email with a location. This is the first transaction we’ve done in the States. So far, all transactions that I know of have been conducted in Europe and Asia. That’s all I know, I promise.”
My eyes locked on Luciano and Cassio, their expression mirroring my own rage.
“Give me the device you use to receive those emails,” I ordered.
The guard and the doctor shared a terrified glance. “It’s gone. We get a new burner phone delivered to us ahead of each shipment and we’re required to destroy it right after receiving instructions via email. But the email address is always the same.”
“What is it?”
“Th-the email?” the doctor stuttered and I nodded. “It’s always from @kingsforever.com.”
My brows furrowed. “Anything else?”
He shook his head. “Please let us go. We know nothing else.”
“These guys are useless,” Luciano muttered, pulled out his gun, and shot them dead. Then he turned to face Cassio and me. “Why is it that every lead we chase with this gives us nothing? Crumbs at best.”
“The person behind it all is good at covering his tracks,” Cassio answered.
“They ensure none of the men know much,” I grumbled. “But that’s not even the worst of it. Why would anyone want to bring the Belles and Mobsters Agreements back? The key players have long been dead.”
“We’ll find out,” Cassio stated matter-of-factly.
“Nothing and nobody remains a secret for long in our world,” Luciano quipped. “It’s probably a copycat that somehow heard about the belles and decided to play. Although there is one thing Matteo mentioned and now that this doctor mentioned that email handle?—”
He stopped mid-sentence and I stiffened at the mention of the fucker.
“What about the email handle?” I gritted.
“There are rumors of Benito King’s heir roaming this earth. Somehow I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these auctions and the heir resurfaced at the same time.”
“Fuck.” If I never heard that fucking name again, it would be too soon.
“My thoughts exactly,” Luciano muttered.
Dropping the bat that clanked against the floor, Cassio turned to one of the men and instructed, “Clean up the mess and get rid of all the evidence.”
“Snap pictures of the women’s faces.” When Cassio and Luciano shot me a curious look, I explained, “Their families should know what happened to their daughters.”
We owed them at least that much because these women paid the ultimate price for our sins.
“I’ll see you tomorrow—” Cassio glanced at his wristwatch before he corrected himself. “—today at the D’Arc celebration, right?” Cassio asked.
“Don’t refrain from going on my account,” Luciano deadpanned, but I chose to ignore him.
“Yes, I’ll be there.” I pinched the bridge of my nose as I exhaled a tired breath. “We should probably alert other families of the possibility of poaching and organ trafficking on their territories.”
Because it would seem our ancestors had come back to haunt us.
“Cara mia?”
Bianca didn’t hear me, her eyes glued to the remnants of the planetarium she’d built with so much love.
It’d been a week since Hannah had set the building on fire. Allegedly. I insisted on using that word in my statement. Even though I had footage that showed her pouring gasoline around the planetarium, I would ensure it never saw the light of day.
The part that worried me was that nobody had seen or heard from her since. Hannah had disappeared into thin air, everything pointing to her running.
And then there was my other daughter. Arianna was on the run too—whether going after her twin or running from that fucking boy, I didn’t know.
Arianna had stolen a few million from Luciano’s safe and then disappeared without a trace. I would have been fucking proud and impressed if not for the irony that I couldn’t locate either one of my daughters.
Yes, I’d taught my children a thing or two, but there was something unnerving about the fact that both their digital footprints kept getting erased. Neither of my daughters were tech-savvy enough to be able to pull that off.
I would have suspected the Vitales, but it seemed unlikely. If they were capable of making them vanish, they’d do a better job of hiding Matteo’s tracks. The boy was flying around the world looking for Arianna.
The fact that I couldn’t easily locate the kids and fix this mess terrified my wife and made me feel so fucking helpless.
“Bianca,” I called out again, and she finally slid her attention to me. Her face was pale and there were dark circles around her eyes that worried me.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she murmured.
It was the tenth anniversary of St. Jean D’Arc and the celebration meant a lot to Gianna and the boys, but the absence of my other two daughters was weighing us all down.
“We’ll do it together,” I said calmly, despite the raging storm inside me.
I wanted to find that Vitale boy and murder him. But of course, he’d disappeared too. Motherfucking prick.
“Yes, the boys and Gianna need us too,” she murmured.
I exited the vehicle and came around, helping her out of it.
“I got you, cara mia,” I said as I wrapped my hand around her waist, and together we walked toward the gathering across the lawn where other families buzzed with excitement and gossip.
She released a long sigh. “I can already hear them talking about us.”
“Don’t concern yourself with them. They don’t matter—our girls are what matter. If they upset you, I’ll massacre them all.” She gasped, watching me wide-eyed, and I forced myself to smile, then added in a collected tone, “I’m joking of course. I’d massacre them metaphorically speaking.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think there is an ounce of metaphor in you, Nico.”
My wife knew me all too well.
“What if something terrible happened to them, Nico? The auctions…” She trailed off, her breathing escalating as sheer terror marred her face.
“We raised them well. They’re strong and smart… They’ll be just fine,” I assured her, although I had no business making that claim. Especially after learning that there were people—Marco King’s son among others—roaming this earth intent on destroying my family and many others by resurrecting those fucking belles auctions.
Our worst nightmare had come true. The auctions were back, but their sole purpose was to sell the victims’ organs, which meant that all our children were in danger.
If nothing else had come of our daughters’ recent disappearance, it had broken down walls between generations. Pooling our resources, we had been able to piece together some of what had been happening. Including the fact that Marco King had a son who was working behind the scenes with others to resurrect what we ended two decades ago.
But there were bastards roaming this earth who were hellbent on revenge and destroying our families. Our legacies.…
After our incident at Havre de Grace, I checked all my intel, and sure as fuck, the dark web was buzzing about it. Just like the doctor insinuated. The first auction had been kicked off in Albania years ago. Then it moved to Serbia, Poland, Turkey, Russia, Italy, and a few other countries before it shifted to the States roughly six months ago. Six fucking months!
I would’ve been putting all my focus on the matter—if only I could locate Arianna and Hannah. As it was, for now, we were all working overtime to protect our territories while Luciano and I multitasked. We were either monitoring online chatter, or at each other’s throats while our old friends played mediators.
What? You can’t blame me for making Luciano pay for his son’s mishaps, ultimately causing my daughters’ disappearance. They were both running from him and there wasn’t a soul on this fucking earth that would tell me otherwise.
My brothers-in-law thought I went a bit overboard, tearing into Luciano’s assets as my revenge. First my daughter stole from him, then I started wiping out one asset he owned each day. I started with the nightclub in which he met his wife, and I would end with the Sicilian villa he gifted her when they found their happily-ever-after.
The fucker could afford to lose a few buildings, and at this very moment, someone or something had to pay, regardless of our long-standing friendship. Judging by his reaction after losing the nightclub, the sentimental value of that Sicilian villa would hurt him, so he better deliver his son on a silver platter.
He wasn’t good enough for my Arianna.
Of course, nobody was, but that was neither here nor there.
I stroked my wife’s waist soothingly, the movement relaxing her and comforting me.
“Better, cara mia?” I asked in a soft voice.
“Yes. Now let’s get through this,” she sighed.
We greeted the DiLustros, then moved on to the Ashfords, before we stopped to chat with the Nikolaevs. Our children were all around, yet they managed to steer clear of us, as though we embarrassed them.
“How are you doing, Bianca?” Isabella, Vasili Nikolaev’s wife, asked. “You’re pale. Are you getting enough?—”
“I’m fine, Doctor ,” Bianca said, playfully rolling her eyes. “Just tired.”
Isabella flashed us a sympathetic look. “Understandable. If there is anything I can do…” Her voice trailed off, knowing full well this was beyond any kind of medicine she could offer.
Vasili extended his hand, and I shook it. “Anything I can do, just let me know.”
“Is it true that Arianna stole from Luciano?” Sasha’s shadow appeared out of nowhere, probably waiting for the opportune time to stir up more shit. It was his forte after all. “I’m so fucking impressed. If she ever needs a job?—”
“She doesn’t,” I cut him off.
Bianca sighed, but unfortunately, Sasha continued talking. “Nikola and Arianna would make such a lovely couple.”
“Shut up, Sasha,” Vasili hissed, his expression tight.
Unfortunately, lack of sleep made it impossible for me to keep my cool.
“Nikola better stay away from all my daughters.” My voice hardened, all his attempts to rile me up working too well. “You’re fucking crazy if you think I’d ever allow my daughter to be with?—”
“Now wait a minute,” Sasha drawled, smiling like a fucking lunatic. “Are you saying your daughters are too good for our Nikola?”
My jaw clenched and I took a step forward to get into his face, but my wife’s hand on my chest stopped me.
“Nikola is wonderful. Nico is just overprotective,” Bianca assured him with a sigh, playing the diplomat. “Right, husband ?”
“I see the party started without us.” I turned around to find Luciano with his hands in his pockets, Grace looking annoyed next to him.
“I swear to God if you start shit, you’re sleeping in the guest room for the foreseeable future,” she hissed, plastering a smile as she glanced around to face the spectators.
“Nobody is starting shit,” he drawled, smiling at me smugly. “Right, buddy?”
Note to self: wipe all his assets .
“Don’t fucking buddy me. Your son better not touch a single hair on Arianna’s head or I’ll tear him into pieces.”
“Nico!” Bianca’s brow furrowed as she watched me like I’d lost my mind.
“Too late, buddy. I think the two of them are pretty set on each other.”
“Arianna. Doesn’t. Want. Him.” My molars were about to grind to dust.
“I’m pretty sure she does,” Luciano deadpanned. “Might as well accept it.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Grace murmured.
“Nico, don’t,” my wife warned.
“Why don’t they ever serve fucking popcorn at these things?” Sasha asked, his tone serious.
Everyone’s words registered like a faraway noise, all my focus on Luciano. “If anything, fucking anything happens to either one of my daughters, there isn’t a corner on this earth that Matteo can hide where I won’t find him.”
“Maybe if you’d listened to my son instead of catering to Hannah’s every whim, we wouldn’t be in this mess, worrying that our children were being snatched and having their organs harvested.”
Bianca paled. Grace froze. Gasps from the Nikolaevs echoed.
“Nico,” my wife whispered. “What is he talking about?”
Luciano’s eyes darkened to almost black forest pools, his posture stiff. “Don’t tell me you didn’t share with your wife that her half brother’s bastard is scouting this earth and auctioning off our children’s organs?”
The buzz of the chatter around the lawn faded into tense silence, or maybe it was that my ears rang so loud I couldn’t hear shit.
All I could see was that fucking smirk on Luciano’s face.
“Make no mistake, Nico, my son will find Arianna. And this time, he won’t be asking for permission to marry her, because she’s already his.”
My fist collided with his jaw, a burn traveling through my knuckles, but at least his smirk was gone.
Luciano only let out a sardonic breath, holding my gaze with dark amusement. He swiped a hand over his mouth, then turned around and left.
Grace said something to Bianca, but I couldn’t hear a goddamned word.
All I could hear was the thunder of my own heart and feel the loathing for the Vitale men.
The fuckers wanted annihilation? I’d offer it on a silver platter.