53. My Personal Hell
CHAPTER 53
MY PERSONAL HELL
R affaele
“You’re saving an innocent girl’s life, Enrico.” Unfamiliar emotion constricts my throat, the words coming out garbled and hardly intelligible as I shake the old man’s hand.
He must notice it because he whacks me on the shoulder almost tenderly as he escorts me to the door. “Don’t make me regret this decision, Raffa.”
The sun is already high in the sky, the warm rays seeping into my skin. So much for being back at the apartment before Isabella notices I’m gone. My cheek is throbbing, and I can barely see out of one eye, but I’m alive. For a minute there, I didn’t think I’d be walking out of this house at all. I doubt Enrico did either. I sold out my father for my own life. After what he did to Laura, I think the deal was more than fair. “I don’t think you will regret it.” After all those years of guilt, it wasn’t until today that I finally realized it wasn’t my fault Laura was dead; it was my father’s. And he deserved the full breadth of Enrico’s wrath.
My former future father-in-law smirks. “You’ve come a long way in ten years. Maybe love and the resulting loss has changed you.”
“It has…” I step down the stairs and his piercing gaze follows me until I’m on the other side of the wrought iron gate. I whirl around to look at him for what will hopefully be the last time. “I wish I could have saved her, Enrico, for you, for her, but mostly for me. And I promise I won’t let the same fate befall upon Isabella.” I pause, deliberating on my next words. “I consider you an ally now, and I hope you do as well. But I know how this dark world works, and if that should ever change, and you come for her , I won’t think twice about blowing your head off, past be damned.”
A dark chuckle spreads his thin lips as he continues to regard me from the top step of his elaborate villa. “Laura would have been proud of the man you’ve become, Raffa.”
A jab of pain lances through my chest at those words. I failed her so badly, but I resolve never to make that mistake again. My fingers are itching for my phone. I’d turned it on silent before I arrived, and I can’t wait to check on Isa. “ Grazie ,” I mutter before turning toward the Vespa.
I slide the phone out of my pocket and cringe at the string of text messages from Isabella. Especially the last one which says she’s going to coffee with that damned professor. If he so much as lays a hand on her…
My fingers jab at the screen as I punch out a reply.
Me: I’m gone for a few hours and you’re already with him ?
I try to keep the tone light, but my insides are twisting at the thought. Where did he take her? How close did they sit? Did she go out with him just to piss me off?
I’ve been acting like a fucking idiot ever since the gun fight at the cemetery when I accidentally let the L word slip. It simply wasn’t the right time, and I want everything to be perfect with my principessa . I feel so damned guilty. She’s become a target because of me. How can I say I love you in the same breath as I’m the reason you’re in danger?
I glance down at my screen, and still, there’s no response. She can’t be mad for leaving before she woke, could she?
Me: You better not still be having that coffee …
Nothing.
Me: Isabella, answer me .
Me: I’m worried now .
I reach the Vespa and a mix of fury laced with inexplicable foreboding tighten my chest. “Fuck the messages,” I grumble before I jab my finger at the call button, Isabella’s bright smile filling my screen.
It rings and rings before finally going to voicemail.
She better not be ignoring me. That pit of dread blossoms, my pulse quickening as I scan my call list for Alberto. Stabbing the call button, I hold my breath for the familiar ringtone, but it goes straight to voicemail.
“Fuck!” I growl.
With anxiety now eating away at my insides, I search my contacts for Aldo’s number. He’s supposed to be in charge in my absence. My heart is a thundering war drum by the time he answers.
“What’s up, Ferrara?”
“Do you have eyes on Isabella?” I bark.
“No, she left with Alberto and her professor about an hour ago for coffee.”
“And no one else went with them?”
“They were just going right around the block.” His footsteps echo across the sidewalk, and I can just make out the rumble of an engine in the distance. The bastardo must have been outside taking a smoking break.
“Alberto’s not answering his phone. Neither is Isabella,” I snarl.
“I’ll run over to the café and check on them.”
“They better fucking be there, Aldo, or you’re a dead man.”
“I’ll call you back,” he mutters.
“No, I’ll stay on the line.” Paralyzing fear streaks through me, the blood icing in my veins. I’m torn between staying put so I can hear his answer and gunning the Vespa to get across town. I can’t just sit here. I twist the ignition and the engine ignites, shooting us across two lanes of traffic.
Horns blare and shouts echo from the cars behind me as I weave across traffic. I have to get to Isabella. She has to be okay. Why would Massimo do anything to her? It can’t be… There must be some logical explanation.
At this point, I prefer the idea of her in some tawdry motel with her professor than the alternative.
No… do not go there.
She’s fine. She has to be.
“Ferrara, you still there?” I can barely hear Aldo’s voice over the rushing wind.
I press the phone to my ear. “Yeah. Did you find her?”
“No one’s here.”
“You better have some fucking answers for me by the time I get home.” I press the red button and shove the phone into my pocket as terror’s claws rip into my heart.
This cannot be happening. Not again.
“Where the fuck is she?” I roar at Aldo and the remaining guards in the living room of our apartment, which has now become command central. I’ve already questioned every person on staff at the café where they were last scene. Everyone had the same story: Isabella left with Massimo and Alberto nearly two hours ago.
And now they had vanished.
I pace the small living room, my angry footfalls eating up the small space in long strides. Aldo is on the phone with the Kings’ connections in Rome and two of the other guards are out on foot canvasing the neighborhood.
My thoughts flicker back to my meeting with Enrico and what he’d said about the shooting at The Velvet Vault. Isabella’s bodyguard had been killed that night, leaving the position wide open. I still wasn’t sure I believed Enrico’s story. Why go through such lengths? But if Papà had…
“Still no sign of Alberto,” Aldo calls out from across the room, jerking me from the dark spiral. He throws his phone on the couch and skulks closer.
“He’s dead,” I mutter. “Don’t waste your time. Isabella is our priority.”
“But if he was with her?—”
“He’s not anymore,” I growl. “Clearly someone took her, and Alberto would have just been deadweight. The question is what role does Massimo play in this? Was he just at the wrong place at the wrong time or did he orchestrate this whole thing?”
“We haven’t found a single thing on the professor. He’s clean.”
“And his assistant?” Maybe there’s a reason he ended up dead on the rooftop.
“I didn’t?—”
“Get on it.”
“Sure thing, Ferrara.” Aldo trudges back to the other side of the room, like the other guards giving me a wide berth. As if my beaten, bloody, bruised face wasn’t intimidating enough, the savage scowl has kept them at bay.
I glance out the window and suck in a calming breath. This frenzy isn’t going to help Isabella. I have to stay calm, levelheaded. But all my training, all my procedures went to shit the moment I heard she was gone.
It has to be my father…
The last rays of sunlight dip below the horizon, and the setting darkness mirrors the black void that has become my chest. I thank Dio this is Aldo’s fuck up as much as my own and he’s as wary to call the big boss in Manhattan in the middle of the night as I am. If we don’t find Isabella before dawn, I’ll be forced to make the call that will rain down all hell upon us.
A personal hell I’ll never escape if I lose the woman I love.
Dio , I love her, and I was a fucking idiot not to have said it sooner. What if I missed my chance? My fingers dig into the soft skin at my palm as the encroaching darkness threatens to consume me.
No, it can’t be, I won’t lose her. I shake my head, forcing the devastating thoughts to the furthest corner of my mind. I’ll find Isabella if I have to raze the entire city of Rome in the process.
And I know just where to start.