3. Enzo
Fuck, this hill is steep.
It takes us a good half-hour to traverse the ravine. Thirty minutes of navigating through cold, damp, slippery terrain that has me stumbling like a newborn giraffe.
It makes me wish I’d taken the car and left Dante to trek through the woods like a Boy Scout with a compass. But as soon as the brake lights flashed a second time in the distance, it was too late.
Because Dante’s right. I am led by my dick.
“Need a hand, sir?” Striker asks, his Neanderthal frame seeming strangely at ease in this rugged environment.
He’s managed to find the shallowest passage across. I knew it was here. I just couldn’t see it in the velvet pitch-black of a moonless night. Navigating blindfolded would’ve been easier.
As a child, these woods were a second home. But now, as an adult, my stature and thousand-dollar Italian shoes were about as useful as a wooden condom.
I refuse to grant Uncle Andre or his land an ounce of satisfaction. Or to cling to Striker’s hand like a toddler.
“No,” I say firmly.
With each ragged step up the embankment, my pulse quickens. Where is she? The thought of her body, beaten or unconscious, is too much.
Instead, I entertain the thought of Kennedy hiding and freezing in the dark. As hopeless scenarios go, it seems like the more glass-half-full option.
Once the ground levels out, we picked up to a jog, homing in on the car. With the trunk popped and a faint glow emitting from it, it appears deserted.
We rounded the other side, finding Clive’s scumbag body sprawled on the ground nearby, knocked out cold.
My foot nudges a shattered bottle of liquor, and Striker points to the ground. “Blood.” The trail disappears into the woods. Is Kennedy hurt? Or is this from someone else?
Striker scans the woods. “Do you see her?” I pressed.
He shakes his head.
All my rage erupts as my foot connects with Clive’s chest. “Wake up!”
His body curls into a fetal position as he groans.
My vision tunnels, engulfed in red fury. I seize his face, forcing him to meet my gaze. “Where is she, Clive?”
Wincing, he raises both hands in surrender. “It wasn’t me. I’ve been shot,” he whines like a pussy.
“Yes. In the arm. Because you’re a poor, innocent bystander who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” This time, I kick him so hard I envision that gunshot hole in his arm as my only chance at scoring a World Cup. “Where. Is. She?”
He howls in pain. “It was Andre’s man.” He begins to sob. “I was trying to help her. Rescue her. I smashed a rock over Rocco’s head so she could escape.”
I yank him up by the collar and slam him against the car. “You know what I hate more than people who try to mess with me?” I press the barrel of a Glock to his throat. “People who lie about it.”
“Enzo, wait!” Dante pulls up, voice cutting through my haze of anger.
It takes a moment for his expression to sink in, for the rush of almost pulling the trigger to subside.
He rushes to my right side, with Striker on my left, both pleading with me not to go through with it, despite the incessant itch of my finger chanting Do it.
“Don’t kill him,” Dante insists.
Seriously? He takes ten years to show up to the party, and greets me with this shit? Which team is he on?
“If you kill him, extracting information from him gets that much harder,” Dante says.
Striker holds up his phone. “Besides, sir, Clive is an accountant.”
I stare at him like he just fucked a hydrant.
I swear, the fact that Striker is Big Tony Santoro’s little brother almost doesn’t matter. Striker is a moron and needs to be put out of his misery.
Almostis the operative word because Big Tony spent ten years behind bars for the D’Angelos. Our family owes them a debt, not the other way around. If not shooting Striker repays even a fraction of that debt, so be it.
“I can kill an accountant,” I mutter dryly.
Striker shakes his head. “He’s one of Andre D’Angelo’s low level bankers. The dance school was a front for a laundry mat.”
Dante says slowly, “He washes money.” Each word is enunciated as if I’m slow. He has to nudge me to lower my weapon because I don’t want to. “We can use him.”
Rambling, Clive pleads for his life. “Yes. Don’t kill me. You can use me. I’ll spill everything you want to know. Anything.” He clasps his hands together in desperation. “Please. I’ll even tell you which way your girl and Rocco went.”
Dante raises a brow. “I guess everyone knows she’s your girl?”
“Shut up.” With a resigned sigh, I tilt Clive’s chin upward with the gun. “Well, asshole. Which way did they go?”
* * *
We walk in silence,covering ground quickly. Striker, with his ex-military tracking skills, and me, following close behind.
Dante handled Clive. How? Don’t know. Don’t care. As long as Clive Weston is out of Bella’s life once and for all, I’m good.
Dante’s also happens to be terrified of snakes, but he assured me that had nothing to do chomping at the bit to take care of Clive.
We trudge through terrain so thick, my shoe momentarily gets stuck. That’s when I see it. The crimson pocket square from my blazer, torn against a branch.
Striker moves to retrieve it.
“Leave it,” I say.
“You sure?” he asks, uncertainty in his eyes before reaching for it again.
“I said leave it.” This time, it’s a command. Part of me prefers not to get attached only to discover she’s dead.
And part of me—the one currently winning the arm wrestling match—has no use for things. It’s just a scrap of fabric. It isn’t Bella.
He does and moves along. As much as I hate to admit it, Striker’s skills are coming in handy. Between stealthily moving through brush and tracking the specks of blood like a hound, we’re plowing through this thicket of trees fast.
But it does nothing to quell the emotions rising against my insides like acid and consuming me whole.
Emotions the press credits me with lacking.
The problem is, we’re not just looking for Kennedy. We’re also hunting down Rocco, my uncle’s right-hand man. A notorious loose cannon, his violent streak and insatiable coke habit only add fuel to the fire, increasing the tally of rape victims in Chicago and across the state.
Without warning, all the visuals of Kennedy being served up on a platter to be his next victim explode with uncontrolled force.
Before I can even process what I’m doing, raw anger surges and my fist flies out, connecting with Striker’s jaw with a cold, hard thud.
Granted, his face is as hard as Mt. Rushmore and I might have a few broken knuckles, but I don’t let up. “When I say to scare someone, I don’t mean to break her fucking hand.”
That little nugget—that Kennedy’s already injured stirs in my gut like acid. I wanted her to call my goddamned number, not get roughed up by my own hired gun.
Striker doesn’t hit back, doesn’t retaliate. Instead, he remains eerily calm, a stark contrast to my own state of freaking the fuck out. “I get it. You feel”—he rubs a hand along his chin as if fishing for the right word—“out of control. But for the record, I never laid a hand on her.”
I’ll show him out of control. I level the gun between his eyes. “Did you or did you not hear me earlier? I hate liars.”
Both of his hands raise in surrender. “You said, and I’m paraphrasing, if I failed you, you’d have someone else do it.”
I lower the gun slightly. “And?”
“And, by the time I got to the bar, the guy was already roughing her up.”
Confused, I try to make sense of what he’s telling me when he lays a hand on my shoulder, clearly having lost his goddamned mind. “I get it, boss. You feel overwhelmed.” He opens his arms wide. “My therapist says a hug is always the answer.”
“A hug is never the answer,” I seethe, swatting his hand away. “What guy?”
Now it’s him who’s staring at me like I just licked an outlet. He points in the direction we’ve been tracking. “Rocco.”
And in that moment, all the pieces of the puzzle snap into place. What if Rocco connected the dots—his brother’s torture at my hand and my tangled on-again-off-again obsession with Kennedy? There’ll be no stopping him.
Rocco will unleash his vengeance with exacting precision—strike me right where it hurts.
He will torture her.
Rape her.
Destroy her at her core. He will strip Kennedy Luciano of her soul before auctioning off whatever’s left.
And with Uncle Andre’s power and influence backing him, he’ll be unstoppable.
I try to convince myself it will only hurt if I allow it. That it’s not too late.
There’s still time to peel Kennedy away like a second skin...shed her before she scales my defenses, cracks open my chest, and pierces my ice-cold heart.
“Boss?” Striker asks, his voice tentative. “Do we keep going?”
The realization hits me like a bolt of lightning, sparking a volatile mixture of rage and desperation. “Fuck,” I grit through clenched teeth.
“Someone’s coming!” Striker whispers urgently, his voice barely audible over the rustle of leaves. His eyes beg for direction, silently asking what I want to do next.
Disgusted, I shake my head. I know what must be done.
Without hesitation, I gesture away from the approaching footsteps and point back in the direction we came.
Confused, Striker furrows his brow. “Huh?”
Annoyed, I roll my eyes and snap, “Go!”