CHAPTER 11 - RED
CHAPTER
Red
“EVERYTHING HAS BEEN SPECCED OUT. Cal and Oscar are on the way around to the back of this regal-looking crescent of white terraces. All I’m waiting for now is a text telling me they’re in place.
My hand rests on the pistol stowed in my inside pocket. I have no intention of using it unless I’m given no choice.
The nerve above my eye twitches.
I want to use this gun. Christ, I want to use it. I want to blast Matteo Galvatore and Luca Bristoni in the face, torture them and send them to hell. That’s what I want to do.
But aside from giving my word, getting both men in the same place at the same time is slim. Shooting one of them, no matter which, leaves the remaining one to act, and I cannot chance any more harm coming to Arianna. God knows what’s already been done.
My fingernails dig deep into my palm, pressing painfully into the grooves from where I’ve done exactly the same time and time again. I’ll be surprised if I haven’t drawn blood, but I couldn’t care less.
Whatever I’d like to do and all but obsessed with doing must wait. If Matteo can arrange for his sister to be treated like this, then he’ll not hesitate to kill her - an even better outcome, provided it spites me.
Nothing is past that bastard’s lack of morals - even family.
Glancing up, I nod at a smartly dressed woman walking her dog.
Leaving the van a few roads away was the safest option.
I want no announcement of my presence or hint that we are here.
This plan stands to work only with the element of surprise.
The trust, however fragile, that Emiliano has supplied the correct information about Maria’s pretend arrival time is also vital.
If the information is wrong and, like Oscar suspects, a trap laid by the greasy old twat and his son to destroy me once and for all, then we’re all fucked.
In the twilight, I watch the woman and her dog continue down the tree-lined road. One tree of which I stand beneath, pretending to find my phone extremely interesting. But aside from that one woman, the neighborhood is quiet, which is what I’m counting on.
I glance at my watch. Come the fuck on!
Maria should arrive anytime now. That’s if she was actually coming.
But she’s not.
I am.
I stare at my mobile’s blank screen, willing it to light up with the text notification I desperately need, before glancing further up the road to the property I know to be number fifteen.
Very nice it is too. But I’ve done my digging, and whoever owns that house, it isn’t Matteo Galvatore, nor any name I recognize. But that’s only what I do myself with additional properties, including the one that I’m taking Arianna to once she’s out.
I force myself not to fidget as I wait.
In one of those rooms over four floors, behind a grand Georgian window, is Arianna.
So near, yet so far.
Christ, this is frustrating. How long does it take Cal and my brother to find a position to get inside the fucking house?
I’d be in there by now, and it should be me bringing Arianna out.
Me.
Instead, I must be the decoy.
I know what Oscar and Cal were thinking when they insisted on doing things this way.
My throat constricts tighter. It’s so tight I can hardly swallow.
I know full well that they’re going in because they’re not sure what they’ll find... As in, what state or situation Arianna is in.
My mind has done nothing but scroll through every possible unpalatable situation since the minute I learned she’d been taken. Each of those possibilities makes my flesh curl away from my bones and my blood heat with rage. I admit it’s doubtful I’d control myself to honor a thing if I saw...
I shake my thoughts loose. I’ll achieve nothing thinking of anything which...
Jolted by the buzz of my mobile, I stare at the screen.
[Text message received]
With sweaty fingers, I stab in my PIN code and open the message. It had better be from... Yes, it is.
[Oscar 21:15 21 Nov]
Ready + in position
With my heart pounding, I take a deep breath and stride up the road towards number fifteen.