FORTY-TWO
Matt was at the wheel, his face grimmer than mine as he unblinkingly stared at the road lines disappearing beneath the hood.
Dante had called earlier – there had been no feed of Travis arriving at Alessio’s: the cameras had been pointed the other way.
He’d traced a battered car the bastard had stolen, though. The trail ended at the last road cam that cut out at the city’s outskirts, heading towards the same address on that goddamn flier, no doubt.
My gaze shot to the rear-view. Alessio’s black Range rumbled behind us, the same hard set to his face as Matt’s beside me. It extended to Gianna, who was riding shotgun with Alessio. Francesca was in the backseat with them, her face obscured by the night.
I didn’t care how they operated, nor why they carried illegal weapons with the calm of those who did this every day.
I just wanted to get to her. Wrap my hands around Travis’ throat and squeeze until something gave.
I rubbed my face, chewing on images of her alone and terrified. If she’d never met me, no one would’ve come. She’d be a name in the news.
Flicking a gaze towards the rear-view mirror, guilt ate through the soft tissue in my chest.
I didn’t want more trouble in my life. But it seemed that where I went, trouble followed.
A cacophony of ideas and reasons swirled in the back of my mind.
I ran my fingers through my hair – already damp with sweat and moisture from the air.
Glancing up into the clouds, it looked like it was going to rain.
Was she indoors? Outdoors? Was she cold?
An ugly, evil voice in my head whispered then: if I didn’t get to her in time… something worse than the cold would happen to her.
‘Stop with the fucking knee,’ Matt snarled through clenched teeth. The engine roared louder as he hit the accelerator.
I stopped my leg from moving – I hadn’t even noticed it.
My mind dragged back to that box.
That finger. The ring. The way the flesh had stiffened as if it had been severed a few hours ago.
It wasn’t Ezio’s despite the family crest. I knew that in my bones.
Whose, then?
The answer kept circling back until it landed where I didn’t want it to.
Vinnie.
Christ…
The thought pushed in like a blade into my chest. The silence in the car only made it worse, amplifying the churn of remorse clawing up my throat.
I should’ve sent Ezio back to the hospice with a taxi. I should’ve known something might happen to him.
I shut my eyes tight, his easy smile flaring behind my lids.
He’d always been the one to keep the world steady while I was falling apart; cracking jokes, dragging me out for drinks, patching up the chaos I’d left behind. And I’d repaid him by tuning him out, too wrapped up in my own obsessions to see anything else.
Now all I had left was a piece of a body, and the gnawing realisation that maybe the last time I’d heard his voice was the last time I ever fucking would.
Anger climbed up to meet the guilt until it was near-blinding. I gripped the seat beneath me so hard the leather bit into my palms.
If Travis had done something to him…
My vision flared red for a moment.
The part of me that had buried too much past trauma already whispered the truth I didn’t want to hear.
Vinnie might be dead.
The sceptic in me clawed to be let out. The hum of the engine masked the echo of his growl.
What of the ring then?
I dialled the hospice one-handed, not trusting my thoughts to stop spinning.
A nurse always patrolled the night. One picked up on the third ring.
She checked. Ezio was asleep.
Alive, then. Intact, or he wouldn’t be sleeping. But my chest didn’t ease.
So the digit wasn’t his.
My jaw flexed as I cut the call. Hollow thudding reverberated in my ribs.
‘Hm?’ Matt nodded a question at me.
‘My old man’s fine. It wasn’t his finger,’ I divulged sourly.
I caught my reflection in the window, warping under the streetlight glare. Inside me, something darker grinned back.
If Ezio had died tonight, would I have mourned him – or mourned losing my only lead to the truth: my mother, and Salvatore?
I’d wanted to kick him out of my life – still did – but some stubborn part of me still needed him to find real facts.
Nonetheless, that reckoning would wait until after I got my woman safe.
And Vinnie…
Blame twisted through me – I’d ignored him all this time. Pushed him aside. Got used to him fixing my shit.
I took out the flier crumpled in my jacket. That fucking address. It hadn’t just been there for show. It was a lure – a stage set for me.
This was theatre – and Travis wanted me to perform. He didn’t want to take her and vanish. He wanted me to come after him.
Beast on beast.
But, Paula wasn’t the woman he knew. She’d changed. She was still her, but the fear had changed. It had an edge now. So did she.
I rubbed at my neck, where she’d bitten me a while back, under the guise of Scarlett. I hoped I’d done enough for her to wear pain like armour. But I hadn’t taught her how to survive someone like Travis.
Christ… Someone like me.
The belt. Her breath. Her cries.
A sick mirror of what we’d done just a few hours before.
I punished her. But did I push too far? Did I make her vanish behind it? Or did she understand what I was trying to teach?
Did she like it?
Could she forgive me?
Would I forgive myself if that had been the last time I ever touched her?
‘We’re almost there,’ Matt said, and I took a sharp inhale.
He glanced at me. Once. Twice. Then nodded towards the road. ‘She’ll be fine. She has to be.’
Yeah, she had to be fine. ‘She always was, wasn’t she?’ I hissed at him, but I realised what it was as soon as it tore out of me – just shifting the blame.
Matt just drew his brows together without retorting.
I knew he rode that thought. And I knew he loved her enough to feel the same thing.
I tapped at the side of my seat, noticing a hollow square shape in the distance – like a grave too large to fit in hell. There wasn’t a fucking thing in the vicinity, just dust and trees.
He was there with her.
Travis should never have been released.
Sentences like his didn’t just dissolve. Someone had helped him. Pointed straight at her.
How else would he have found her?
He’d crawled back out of the dark for her. And I hadn’t killed him when I had the chance – back when I’d watched him standing in front of my burning building. Back when I’d chased him out of her flat.
I gritted my teeth as I eyed the scaffolding that came into view with each shift of the gear stick.
I’d trusted the system once. Trusted mercy.
Should’ve snapped his neck sooner.
That was on me.
Now she was paying for it.
The streetlamps had stayed behind long ago.
The darkness swallowed us. Like the one that took over my penthouse after he’d lit it up, wiping out the last remnants of who I’d been.
And still, the heat inside me only burned hotter – not even as an outline of grief, nor loss, just vengeance clawing its way out. Tenfold stronger than it used to be.
Beside me, Matteo’s hands gripped the wheel tighter as his eyes scanned the surroundings, slowing down. Like a fucking Doberman.
It hit me then – for the first time in years – apart from Vinnie’s – I didn’t shove the help away. Because this time, I needed a family more than a weapon.
Because if I found her—
No!
When I found her, she might never come back the same. She might never come back to me.
And that would have to be enough as long as she came back. As long as she had a bed in Alessio’s house, surrounded by fucking guns and knives and shit her cousins kept in backpacks.
Matt and I launched out of the car the moment he yanked the handbrake.
‘I’ve got the perimeter,’ he called over his shoulder to Alessio, who stepped out of his Range like a man made of war – trench coat flaring, shotgun already racked with a click that echoed across the gravel.
Matt caught something Gianna threw at him – goggles. Night vision, probably.
Crazy fucking family.
I didn’t wait for the plan. Didn’t need it. The second my soles hit the ground, I was gone – tunnel-visioned, blood pumping in the rhythm of her name.
‘Hey! Hollywood! Where the fuck you goin’?’ Matt shouted after me.
‘Gianna and I will take the top floors,’ Alessio barked behind me. The sharp clack-clack of shells sliding into the chambers of his shotgun followed. Then Gianna: ‘We’ll start from the ladders and work our way down.’
I noticed them myself, now that I was closer to the thick walls. Several leaned against the concrete, leading up to the hollows that would soon become windows or doors.
I heard them scattering like ghosts behind me.
Sticking close to the outer wall, my shoulder brushed the cold surface. My hand went to the Bowie at my ankle, and yanked it free. Its weight felt right. Ready.
There was no sound from inside. No light. Just the hollow breath of a place expecting to be torn apart.
And I stepped through the breach, ready to burn the world down.
The air inside was spiced with dust. Every step crunched over sand and gravel brought in by busy soles.
Exposed beams cast long shadows across the floor as I moved low and silent, blade angled ahead, every sense locked on the dark.
A pipe somewhere dripped steadily, echoing like a heartbeat through the empty space.
Then I heard it—
A slap.
Sharp. Followed by another.
The sound was barely audible, but it cracked through the silence and turned the breath in my chest to fucking fire.
I broke into a run, chasing the echoes down the stairwell that drifted from the pitch-black basement.
The last step never met my foot—
Something snapped tight around my throat, jerking me backwards mid-air. My body slammed into the wall, stars exploding behind my eyes as the rope bit into my windpipe.
I clawed at it, gasping, but as a fist cracked across my jaw, it spun me sideways.
My vision swam. Instinct took over – I swung blindly, the Bowie stealing that little light that was coming from the stairwell. But it caught only air. I swiped it again, cutting the rope until my feet touched ground and I drew in a desperate breath.
A shadow moved in front of me. Somewhere beyond us came the faint slap… slap and the low murmur of a distant, distorted voice.
My opponent lunged.
We traded blows in the dark, each of his strikes met my counter too cleanly to be coincidence.
Whoever he was, he moved like someone trained – not a street thug, but military, or an athlete. Pain lanced through my ribs as he drove an elbow in, but I twisted, slashing low with the knife – and met resistance. The blade caught flesh. A hiss followed.
He stumbled back but suddenly pivoted, kicking me in the chest – right where my wounds were still healing from the fight in Obsidian.
A soft roar left me on a breath as I almost fell to my knees, pain searing through my body. In the split-second that I surged forward to finish the arsehole—
—he was gone.
Swallowed by the dark like he’d never been there at all.
My lungs were on fire as I pivoted, feet slipping over dust-slick concrete, my jaw throbbing, my vision adjusting just enough to make out the blur of shadows.
That wasn’t a kick for the sake of kicking. I hurt him. He needed to slow me down. So he aimed—
Shit!
He knew I was wounded there. The only people who knew that were Paula and Gianna—
And the fucker in the gold mask I fought in Obsidian.
Jesus Christ, how long had she been stalked?
My ribs protested with every move, but then—
A scream.
It ricocheted off the walls, lodged straight in my chest and splintered.
‘Paula?’ Her name cracked out of me, splintering through my lungs, faster than thought, faster than fear.