Requiem of Rage (Empire of Pain #2)

Chapter 1

Angelo

Chaos reigns supreme. Loose cables snake over desks and floors, no longer connected to computers. There are empty coffee cups abandoned on every available surface, and the employees still here stand around looking shell-shocked.

Agent Lincoln has been in his element. The man clearly believes he’s a heartbeat away from the biggest result of his pathetic career.

I forced myself to remain calm while Lincoln’s team ran through the place like a swarm of locusts, but inside, I’m livid. When I find out who this informant is, they will regret the day they crossed me.

There’s a nagging voice in my head that says Chiara could be the informant, but I refuse to believe my wife betrayed us. Besides, when would she have had the opportunity? She doesn’t have a phone or access to the internet, and I never let her leave the house without guards.

Chiara might be a pain in my ass, but she would never be so disloyal. She knows damn well that taking me and my father down would hurt Fina and Luka. Not to mention Kane.

Yes, Chiara might hate me, but she has a soft spot for my sister. And much to my annoyance, she definitely doesn’t hate my brother or Kane.

Kane wanders in with a fresh cup of coffee for me. He ignores Martin, who’s busy making phone calls.

“Have you spoken to Lorenzo?”

I shake my head. Dad will find out soon enough. “Did Chiara arrive back safely?” I sent her home ages ago.

“Let me call Carlo.” He taps his phone and waits for Carlo to pick up. Long seconds pass, and my sixth-sense flares to life. Carlo knows to pick up when we call.

“He’s not answering.” Kane tries Tucker, and then the other team. Still no reply. So he calls the house and has a terse conversation with the guards on duty. “Fuck. They never got there.”

I no longer care that I’m facing financial fraud charges and decades in jail. None of that matters if my wife is missing.

“Let me see where the cars are.” Every vehicle has a GPS tracker. My fist clenches as Kane opens the app to check the vehicles’ locations. Whatever he sees makes him swear loudly.

Martin glances up, concerned. Not wishing to distract him, I walk into my inner office with Kane and slam the door shut. Then I snatch the phone from him to see for myself where the cars are.

If the data’s correct, both vehicles are deep in gang territory. A poverty-stricken area where many of the lowest street gangs live and work.

Some of them are loyal to us, but not all.

She’s in danger. Not only because she’s an attractive woman caught in the middle of a pack of feral wolves who’d sell their own grandmother for a hit, but also because she’s my wife and some of the more desperate fuckers will see her as a bargaining chip.

If Carlo has betrayed me and deliberately taken her there, he’s a dead man.

My men maintain a secure perimeter as we step out of the car.

I glance at the gang graffiti daubed on crumbling concrete walls.

The stench of deprivation hangs heavy in the air as I gaze around, searching for any sign of my wife.

A used condom dangles from a scrubby bush like a fucked-up Christmas decoration, and I grimace in disgust. This is probably where the local hookers bring their johns.

The wind picks up, lifting loose refuse and sending it swirling skyward. The warm breeze helps cool the sweat prickling my skin.

I should be with our lawyers right now, discussing strategy, but I can’t find it in me to care about the mess I left behind. If the FBI had enough evidence to arrest me, they’d have done it by now.

My phone buzzes, but I ignore it. Dad has tried calling a dozen times. Fina too. They must have heard the good news.

“Angelo.” Kane gestures toward a burned-out car. The wreckage still smolders. I swallow hard as we approach, all of my senses on alert for a possible attack. Kane doesn’t look at me. His focus is on the vehicle.

The GPS chip signal died while we were driving here, but we already had the location mapped. This is the car Chiara left the office in. We passed the other SUV half a mile back. Both of the men were dead.

I can barely breathe as I reach the charred wreckage. Kane points to a corpse in the front passenger seat. It’s obvious from the skull damage they were shot before the fire, and from the build, it’s not Chiara.

“Must be Tucker. Carlo was driving,” Kane says in a low voice. Like me, he’s close to losing his shit.

Vinnie calls my name and hustles over.

“Bruno’s found Carlo’s body,” he pants. The fat fuck needs to lose some weight. He points to the half-open warehouse door to our left.

Kane and I head that way, both of us eager to leave the burned-out car behind. Once the identities of the corpses have been verified, I’ll have to call their loved ones.

I survey Carlo’s corpse. It’s lying in a pool of congealed blood, with a gunshot wound to the head, like Tucker.

There’s a note pinned to his jacket, written in fancy cursive on heavy cream paper.

One word.

Checkmate.

I stare at Kane. He seems just as confused as I feel. Then I spot a shoe. It could be any shoe left behind by a random hooker, but upon closer inspection, it’s a pink sneaker, a designer brand. I recognize it as one half of the pair Chiara wore today.

She refuses to wear business attire when she comes to the office. I don’t mind. I’d rather she dressed down so I don’t have to kill any employees for staring at her too long.

Fina gifted her these sneakers last week. They’re pink and sparkly, which is the exact opposite of her. Chiara is not sparkly.

Kane draws the same conclusion as I do. His jaw clenches.

Whoever has taken my wife will die.

“Yes?”

Kane’s phone rests on my desk, on speaker. I left Vinnie and two other guys at the warehouse to wait for the cops. Detective Constanza promised to fast-track the ID check on the car corpse to confirm it’s Tucker. His wife deserves to know his fate.

He’s also agreed to keep the case on the down-low. The last thing I need right now is overzealous reporters up my ass.

Fina’s due here any minute. She knows about the FBI raid but not that Chiara’s missing. I need her to get ahead of any bad press, which is why I’ve called her.

“Milo. We have a problem.”

“And?” The guy Kane’s been working with sounds like a massive dick. Worse even than Orliov. I feel sorry for their wife. Kane doesn’t rise to the bait, though. He’s used to the guy’s shitty attitude.

“Angelo’s wife’s been taken. We need to find her. Money’s no object.”

There’s a pause. Fingers clack on a keyboard.

“I don’t need your money,” the dick scoffs.

My temper flares. “Look, you fuckhead, can you help us or not?”

“Of course I can help you,” the dick says in a condescending voice, like he’s explaining a simple concept to a toddler.

A female voice butts in. “Ignore Milo.” Orliov’s Italian wife, Thea. Her accent is a hybrid of Italian and American. It reminds me of my father, who immigrated to the US as a teen.

“Milo has no people skills. So you’ve lost your wife? Or has she run away again?”

“We’re wasting time.” Chiara could be anywhere. I have no clue who’s taken her or why. Other than the strange note left at the scene, there’s been no ransom note or phone call. Nothing.

There’s a muffled scuffle, and then Milo comes back on.

“Tell me what you know.”

I explain what happened. He already knows about the accounts stuff because Kane has him looking into the source of the deposits. Something I was unaware of until he mentioned Milo’s name and I put two and two together.

Orliov will be asking for my firstborn child in payment next.

“Is she chipped?” Milo’s question takes me by surprise.

Kane’s brows knit together. I shake my head.

“No, she’s not a dog.” This guy is really pissing me off. The only reason I haven’t hung up is that he’s the best at what he does. Allegedly.

Fina bursts into my office like a miniature tornado with Matteo on her heels. “What’s going on?”

I shush her and focus back on what Milo’s saying. He mutters about flight patterns and traffic cameras while I try my best not to say anything threatening. Kane’s gone into robot mode, like he always does when bad shit happens.

“A private jet took off from a small airport thirty kilometers from where you found the car. The flight plan says it was heading to the UK. The jet is owned by a trust registered in the Cook Islands. I can find out who the actual owner is, but it will take some time.”

“Where’s the jet due to land?” There is no guarantee the plane has anything to do with Chiara’s disappearance, but the note left does not seem the work of some random criminal hoping to score a payday at my expense.

My gut tells me Chiara’s kidnapping is connected to the other events; in particular, the mysterious deposits that have triggered an FBI investigation.

“It’s due at a private airfield in Scotland in four hours and twenty-six minutes, give or take a minute or two.”

I pick up a glass paperweight on my desk and throw it at the wall. It shatters into a million pieces.

“Oh that’s interesting,” he continues, oblivious to the mess I just made.

“Ooh, Kyril won’t like that,” Thea exclaims. Neither of them bothers to explain what the fuck they’ve seen.

“Care to share with the class?” My jaw aches from all the teeth grinding I’m doing. “My wife could be in danger!”

“Hey, you still haven’t confirmed whether she’s left of her own accord, stronzo. I heard on the grapevine she ditched you at the altar last time.”

“Wow, that’s harsh,” a third voice pipes up. This fucker has a Scottish accent. I suspect it’s the whiskey guy, the one whose family owns a pretty decent distillery. I have a bottle of their aged single-malt in the living room.

Kane rakes his hair while throwing me a warning look, letting me know losing my temper won’t help.

“She wouldn’t have left voluntarily,” Kane confirms. “Her dog and cat are here.” Coco yaps and scratches my leg. I suspect she wants to pee, but I can’t focus on the dog’s needs. At least the fucking cat knows enough to stay out of my way.

“I’ll take her outside,” Fina whispers. She’s picked up enough from the conversation to figure out what’s going on. I nod and wrangle my thoughts.

“Tell me what you’ve discovered.” Kane’s right. I can’t lose my shit. Thea seems like the sort of woman to hang up and block our number if we piss her off.

“My facial-recognition software picked up an image at the airfield of the jet that flew out then. Oswald Barrington was on that flight.”

Barrington…?

“He’s the new face of the English mafia,” Milo continues. “He stepped in to fill the void left after Lucian Forsyth died in a fire.” Thea snorts in the background, and I wonder why she finds the man’s death funny. Is she some kind of psycho like Orliov? It wouldn’t surprise me. Like attracts like.

“I know very little about the guy, but I’m struggling to see why he’d target me. We have had no dealings.”

“Hmm, a puzzle,” murmurs Milo. “I like puzzles.”

“This is not a fucking game!” I yell as the last thread on my temper snaps under pressure. Kane snatches the phone from my desk.

“Excuse Angelo, he’s worried,” he apologizes while I punch a hole in the wall.

“Not surprised,” Thea chirps. “Losing a wife once is bad luck, but twice? Hmm… that’s kind of careless.” I would never hit a woman, but if I ever decide to break my rule, she’s first on my list.

Milo carries on tapping away at his keyboard, oblivious to the drama.

“I’ll monitor the airport to see who gets off the plane and where they go. If your woman is on that flight, we’ll know in…four hours and twelve minutes.”

“And if she’s not?”

“Then I’ll carry on searching. My facial-recognition program will find her.” He seems remarkably confident.

“You better fucking find her,” I mutter.