59. Angelo
59
ANGELO
I dropped to my knees in the receiving room of the sprawling home my father had built over the Sicilian vineyards where he’d gotten his start, howling with fury that once again, a parent had been taken from me. His staff had cleaned the blood out of the stone flooring and replaced the carpet, but they could never clean the stain on my soul.
I’d been in America. Frolicking with Ana. Indulging myself and my obsession instead of defending my father and enforcing his rule over his own empire.
“Angelo?”
Evangelina, the woman who’d run my father’s house since long before he adopted me, rushed to take me in her arms.
“Zia,” I murmured, holding her against me before peering at her face, her eyes red and puffy with tears.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she continued in Italian.
I led her to the sofa and gently pushed on her shoulders until she sat, ratcheting down the fury that threatened to explode everywhere. “What happened?”
“They took him,” she wailed. “They came for a meeting, and when he refused to call you, they took him. Just like they took her! ”
I closed my eyes, agony sluicing through my veins like gasoline. He’d been taken defending me, protecting me from my own bad decisions. Mother had done the same for my father.
She’d died for it.
I couldn’t let my father die too.
Even if it meant giving up everything I loved in the world.
I dialed Tchérnov’s number.
“Angelo,” he greeted me.
“What do you want in order to free Ana, my father, and Valentin’s mother?”
He laughed. “I have what I want in exchange for your father’s life. Your sweet, masochistic slut delivered herself to me and promised me her hand in marriage if I agreed to free them.”
My gut clenched, and I prayed she was nowhere near him for what I was about to say.
“So what? You’ve got an ill-behaved slut who’s been fucked by half of Europe. And a promise to release my parents. What does that get you, Boris?”
He was silent. “Ana? Do you hear what he thinks of you? Is this the man you’re giving up everything for?”
My heart galloped, desperate for the sound of her. “I didn’t give up a goddamned thing for Angelo,” she rasped, and I heard the physical pain in her voice. “I did it to save my grandfather and Valentin’s mother.”
“You’ll never have to give up anything for me, angel,” I said, ignoring the fact that Boris was on the line. “I swear.”
“What a perfect segue into my next request,” Boris said. “I have a shipment of girls coming in two weeks, and I want them to come down through Canada. I need the Costa’s network to get them to Yorkfield.”
“Fuck you,” I snarled.
Ana screamed in pain, and I immediately regretted my temper and inability to keep my goddamned mouth shut.
“No,” Ana whimpered when she was able to form words again. “Don’t do it, Angelo.”
“You can have anything you want, if you let her go,” I said. “I’ll sign over the Costa businesses. Order Gio’s men to follow you. Do whatever the fuck you need. Just let her go.”
“And you’ll tell your father to open up trafficking through Sicily to me,” he said. “So I can run slaves from North Africa through Italy.”
“Anything,” I remised. “Just let her go.”
“And if I won’t?”
I heard a deep breath on the other end of the line. “Boris, I will slit my wrists before I allow you to drag Angelo into a trafficking ring.”
“I’ll do it,” I said in a rush, my heart cracking in two as I could feel my mother’s frown from heaven. She’d understand. She’d forgive me. She’d know that life wasn’t worth living without Ana by my side and that I’d give up anything to have her back. No matter what it took.
Boris’s cruel laugh cut into my misery. “You’ll do it anyway, to keep her safe in my care.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me through the phone. “I will.”
“Amazing what a man will do for love, isn’t it, Ana?”
Love? This wasn’t love. This was obsession. This was need for her that was stronger than my next breath. This was my inability to live without her. She was everything.
“I’ll be in touch,” Boris promised and hung up to the sound of Ana’s whimpers.
Sì , I loved her. And I had to find a way to get her back.