20. Kyle
20
KYLE
Caleb, Bash, and Terry are waiting for me when I enter Caleb’s office at 3 a.m. Their faces are ashen. Their eyes are bloodshot. Bash and Caleb are still suited up, but their ties are loosened, and crystal tumblers stained with whiskey litter the coffee table between them.
They all stand while I close the door behind me.
“What’s going on?” Caleb is the first to speak. “When are they releasing Cash?”
“It isn’t going to be that simple.”
I sit heavily on one of the couches and accept a shot of whiskey from Terry.
“What do they have on him?” Caleb remains standing. He’s running on adrenaline.
I sip the liquid in my glass; it burns, and my eyes water. I’ve had a couple of hours’ sleep in the last forty-eight hours, but more importantly, I’m acutely aware that in putting my brother first, I’ve let Sienna down. She’s currently on our private jet, traveling to Ireland with Seamus, probably having convinced herself that I was never going to make that flight.
Her disappointment cannot come close to matching mine.
“Supplying narcotics, money laundering.” I’m leading with the easy stuff.
“Tip-off?” Bash is a live wire tonight, his facial expression and his muscles twitching in sync with his thoughts.
“Don Dragonetti is working on it.” Pause. “We suspect the Bogrovs.”
“Caelan’s fucking son.” Caleb starts pacing. “Has to be. We should’ve taken him down when we first found out where he came from.”
“Can’t be that hard to track down.” Bash aims this at Terry.
Terry is quiet. He has been a mafia enforcer for almost his entire adult life. He knows how this works. There’s more to come.
“Not to mention the homicide of Luca Benito last month.”
This one sends jagged spears of panic through my chest. The police commissioner’s wrists must’ve been bound with razor-wire and a gun to his temple for him to act on this one, which means that he’ll be satisfied that the NYPD can make the accusation stick.
“What’s Cash’s alibi?” Caleb stops pacing momentarily. His eyes look haunted.
“He was in his apartment.”
“With?” Bash asks.
“With a woman whose name he is currently refusing to mention.”
“Fuck!” Bash stands too.
We all think better on our feet.
“Stupid fucker! I knew this would come back to bite his ass one day.”
Caleb’s eyes narrow. “You know who it is?”
“I can guess.”
“I’m assuming that she’s married.” Terry’s voice is steady.
His brain is already working behind the scenes, figuring out his best options for destroying whatever evidence the Bogrovs have planted with Cash’s name on.
“To a sick bastard who would liquidize Cash’s balls and feed them to him through a straw if he ever found out.”
I swallow the rest of my drink and fill a tall tumbler with water from the jug on the coffee table. “We can’t let it get that far. Terry, can we apply pressure to the Bogrovs? Find out their connection to Nick Morris?”
He must have a role to play in this. The proposal. Cash’s arrest on the night I’m due to leave the country with Sienna. It’s like one of those jigsaw puzzles where you have no picture to follow; we’re aimlessly jiggling the pieces around to make them fit, and his name keeps cropping up bang in the center of the picture.
“And any update on Sienna’s father?” I ask.
“He’s a slippery bastard.” Terry scratches the back of his neck. “Has more connections than we gave him credit for. Either that or the Bogrovs have already buried his feet in cement and tossed him into the Hudson.”
“We can’t rule him out.” I still can’t figure out why Sienna let him back into her life, but it isn’t important right now. “Robert Hooch and Nick Morris. We need to find out their connection. There’s a reason why he was here at the Wraith while the gallery was being trashed. But where was Nick Morris?”
“I’m heading over to the Titan. I’ll sort Cash’s alibi.” Bash already appears lost without his twin in the room.
The Titan’s staff were handpicked by Cash; loyalty is the driver in this world. Bash will choose someone he can trust and make them an offer they won’t be able to refuse, but we still need Don Dragonetti to shovel some dirt the Bogrovs’ way. Attack the charges from all angles.
Terry’s phone rings. He doesn’t check the Caller ID but raises the handset to his ear without speaking. His eyes instinctively slide my way.
My heart thumps sickeningly. He doesn’t need to say a word for me to know that this is bad news and that it involves Sienna.
“I’ll be right there.” He ends the call.
“Is it Sienna?” My breaths are already growing too shallow to pump sufficient oxygen to my lungs. “What’s happened?”
I haven’t heard from her. I was informed when the private jet departed and assumed that she was on it.
Fuck!
I should’ve cancelled the flight. Kept her safe in my apartment until this situation with Cash was resolved and I could travel with her. She didn’t want to travel alone. She told Victoria that she’d never been anywhere alone, and I dismissed it. I’m part of a fucking mafia family—we quickly learn to trust our gut instincts, and yet I didn’t trust Sienna’s.
“Seamus’s body has been discovered at the airport,” Terry says.
“What about Sienna?” My legs wobble as I stand up, and I raise my inhaler to my mouth.
All eyes are on me.
“She’s en route to Ireland as planned.”
“But Seamus isn’t with her.”
My chest is tight. The whiskey and lack of oxygen is making me feel lightheaded, but I can think clearly enough to understand that Seamus was killed because someone wanted him out of the way. They wanted him out of the way so that they could get to Sienna.
“Find out if anyone else boarded the aircraft.” My voice sounds dull even to my own ears. “See if we can get it turned around.”
“How was Seamus killed?” Caleb asks.
“Slit throat.”
Terry and Seamus had known each other all their lives; this murder will hit Terry hard, but his expression remains neutral. There’s a job to be done. Revenge first, grief later.
“I’ll lead a team across to the airport,” Terry continues. “I’ll pull whatever fucking strings I need to pull to get that aircraft back to New York City.”
I sense the unspoken ‘but’ at the end of that sentence.
Before I can question Terry, my cell phone rings, and my heart leaps with joy when I see Sienna’s name on the screen. I’m so relieved that I don’t question why she is messaging me from several thousand feet above the ground.
I open the message and my stomach lurches, nausea crashing through my body.
It takes several beats for me to understand the image on my screen. At first, all I can see is pale skin, a blanket, and blood. Then the shape comes into focus, and I realize that it’s Sienna. She’s slumped across two seats on our private jet, a blanket thrown over her as if she’s napping during the long journey.
But it’s the blood-smeared face that causes my pulse to race and every muscle in my body to constrict. Her eyes are closed. Her lips parted. I zoom in to find the source of the blood, but there’s nothing visible. Head wound perhaps.
The question is: how bad is it?
Another message pings through:
If you want to see her alive, you’ll hand over the Titan by midnight. Instructions will follow.
“Kyle?” Caleb’s voice brings me spiraling back to the room, clutching my phone tightly.
“They have Sienna. She’s hurt.” I feel numb.
“Who?” Caleb presses. “Where is she?”
“Still on the jet.” I need to mentally shake myself; I’m useless to Sienna if I can’t think straight, if I’m functioning on autopilot.
Terry heads into the boardroom with his phone pressed to his ear and closes the door behind him.
“Okay.” Caleb takes control; this is his forte, seeing the situation and being the first one to cross the starting line. “Terry will turn the plane around, and we’ll scour every fucking CCTV footage the airport can give us. The fucker who killed Seamus will lead us to the assholes who thought they could steal our aircraft, hurt Sienna, and get away with it.”
“What do you want me to do?” Bash is still here, but I can see the conflict playing out behind his eyes. His twin is in trouble. The ropes binding them together are stronger than any other family ties.
“Go to the Titan as planned.”
My cell phone is heavy in my hand. “There’s more,” I add before Bash can leave. “They want the Titan in exchange for Sienna.”
“They can fuck right off,” Bash growls, his jaw clenched so tightly I can hear his back teeth grinding. “If they want my brother’s business, they’re gonna have to go through me first.”
“They won’t be getting anything.” Caleb is outwardly still calm. Inwardly, I imagine him to be a seething, bubbling mass of molten lava. “The Titan is a stepping stone to taking everything that we own. They’re testing the waters, and we’re going to show them what a big fucking mistake that is.”
“Why the Titan first?” Bash asks.
“Good question.” Caleb stares at a spot somewhere above and behind my left shoulder. Thinking. “They must’ve known they could frame Cash. We need to tread carefully where that’s concerned, but I’ll speak to Mateo Dragonetti. Bash, run a background check on every member of the staff at the Titan. I don’t care who they are or who they know. No one gets overlooked.”
“You think these people have already infiltrated the business?” I ask, finally finding my voice.
“This is all a little too convenient, too flawless for it to have been actioned on a whim. Bash, who else knows about Cash’s alibi?”
“Apart from the woman in question? I’m not sure she’d even risk telling her best friend.”
“Suits us better that way.” Caleb turns his attention back to me. “Find her. I want to know everything about her. What toothpaste she uses. Where she buys her groceries. Who else she has messed around with behind her husband’s back. She’ll do whatever it takes to stop her husband from hearing about her infidelities, which makes her our best chance right now of getting Cash off the hook.”
The boardroom door opens, and Terry comes back into the room. “I can’t turn the jet around.”
“Why not?” My heart rate immediately spikes.
“The pilot has dropped contact with Teterboro and Dublin.”
“Last contact?” Caleb jumps in before I can speak.
“Dublin. Seems the pilot was still following the flight plan until I started asking questions.”
“What about Sienna?” I don’t need to spell it out.
She’s currently on a hijacked aircraft that may or may not be preparing to land in Dublin in a couple of hours. She’s injured and is being held to ransom against the Titan. Additionally, my instincts are screaming at me that Nick Morris is the man we need to find, because I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed Seamus and took my place on board that flight.
“We’ll do everything that we can to locate the plane.” Caleb’s voice softens just a little. “Terry, we need our men to be the first ones on the scene. Wherever they’re headed, they’re sure to have a welcome party waiting for them.”
“I want to be there,” I blurt out.
“Cash needs you here.” Caleb flinches as he says the words out loud.
“Would you stick around if it was Victoria’s life on the line?”
We already know the answer to this one. When Olivia Dragonetti abducted Victoria, Caleb didn’t wait around. He jumped onto his Harley and reached the abandoned warehouse before Terry could get there with his team. He walked into that hostage situation, alone, and without a second thought for his own safety because the woman he loved was in danger.
“That’s what I thought.” I take my time.
I’m still battling the same question: what’s the point of our wealth and our connections in high places if I can’t protect the woman I’m in love with? The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
“I won’t let Cash down. But I can’t let Sienna down a second time.”
She’ll never forgive me.
There’ll be no going back if I’m not there to save her this time.
Caleb nods once. “Speak to Mateo Dragonetti. His private jet will get you to Dublin before the next scheduled flight out of Newark.
I’m already crossing the room and heading for the elevator.
“And Kyle?” Caleb causes me to stop. “Be careful.”