Chapter 4
LEO
I’ve been watching Emma on the security monitors for the better part of an hour, and I’m starting to realize I severely underestimated Connor’s daughter.
The camera feed shows her pacing the length of her room for probably the twentieth time today, and I can see the wheels turning in her head even from this grainy footage.
She’s not crying anymore, and hasn’t been for some time now, and that calculating expression is back on her face.
The one that says she’s looking for weaknesses.
She’s tried the door sixteen times in the last three days.
I know because I’ve been counting, watching her test the lock with increasing creativity.
First just turning the handle, then throwing her weight against it, then trying to pick it with a bobby pin she found god knows where, then attempting to remove the hinges with a butter knife from one of her meal trays before the guards started checking what utensils they left her.
She’s tested every window at least twice, running her hands along the decorative ironwork like she’s looking for a weak point in the metal or a way to bend the bars.
She’s searched the entire room for potential weapons or tools. Somehow she found a letter opener in the desk drawer on day one and I had to have it removed before she could stab someone with it.
She’s even examined the air vents, probably assessing if she could fit through them.
The answer is no.
I designed this room myself specifically to hold someone who doesn’t want to be held.
But I appreciate the initiative.
I really thought Connor would have beaten any real fire out of her by now and molded her into the perfect political pawn.
A chess piece that moves where it’s told and doesn’t ask questions.
Emma is clearly none of those things.
She’s pacing and plotting and probably planning my murder in graphic detail.
She’s also been refusing to eat, which is pissing me off more than I want to admit.
Three days.
Three fucking days of untouched meals being carried out by guards who report back that Miss Brennan won’t even look at the food.
Three days of watching her get progressively weaker and paler on these monitors.
It’s a hunger strike, obviously.
Her way of exerting control in a situation where she has none.
I understand the psychology of it and even respect it to a degree, but I also can’t let her starve herself to death because that would defeat the entire fucking purpose of taking her in the first place.
Connor needs to believe his daughter is alive and well.
A corpse doesn’t make for good leverage.
So this morning I went up there and made it clear that she either eats voluntarily or I’ll have it done by force.
She chose wisely, even if she did throw a fork at my head afterward.
I almost smiled at that—the sheer audacity of it, the way her green eyes blazed with hatred even as she was clearly weak and dizzy from lack of food.
Almost smiled.
I caught myself before I did because that would be inappropriate and also probably encourage more fork-throwing.
On the monitor, Emma stops pacing and sinks down onto the couch, pulling her knees up to her chest.
She’s wearing the pajamas I had stocked in her closet, soft cotton pants and a t-shirt, and her dark auburn hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail.
There’s no makeup, no careful styling, none of the polish I saw at the cathedral.
She’s still beautiful.
Maybe more beautiful like this, without all the artifice.
But that’s a thought I immediately shove away because it’s irrelevant and not necessary.
The last three days have been... complicated.
I spent five years fantasizing about making Connor Brennan feel a fraction of the pain he caused my family.
I played through dozens of scenarios in my head—ways to hurt him, ways to destroy him, ways to make him understand what it’s like to lose something irreplaceable.
Taking his daughter seemed like the perfect solution.
Elegant, symbolic, and guaranteed to cause maximum suffering.
Connor loves exactly two things in this world: power and Emma.
I couldn’t take his power without starting a war that would cost too many lives, but I could take Emma.
I could make him live with the terror of not knowing if he’d ever see her again.
Dante asked me that exact question about twenty minutes after we got Emma secured at the safe house, and I didn’t have a good answer then and I still don’t have a good answer now.
Do I keep her indefinitely? Eventually return her?
Use her as leverage for something else?
Kill her?
No. Again, that’s not happening.
I’m not that type of person, plus I do fear my mother on some level.
Gianna Santoro has very strong opinions about honor and innocence, and “I kidnapped her to hurt her father” would not qualify as an acceptable excuse in her book.
But keeping Emma here long-term isn’t sustainable either.
The longer this goes on, the more complications arise.
The Brennans are already threatening war.
The Lombardos are furious about their ruined wedding and alliance.
Every day Emma is here is another day Connor has to plan retaliation.
I should have thought this through better.
I should have had an exit strategy, an endgame, something beyond “make Connor suffer.”
But I was so focused on revenge and consumed by half a decade of grief and rage, that I didn’t think past the kidnapping itself.
Fuck.
My phone rings and I already know who it is before I check the screen.
Dante has called me six times in the last three days, each conversation some variation of “what the fuck are you doing” and “this is going to blow up in your face.”
I answer on the third ring. “I know what you’re going to say,” I tell him without bothering to say hello.
“Then you know you’re being an idiot.” Dante’s voice is clipped, which is the tone he uses when he’s trying very hard not to call me a fucking moron to my face.
“Connor Brennan is losing his fucking mind. He’s called in every favor he has, contacted every family on the East Coast, and is currently threatening to wage war if we don’t return his daughter unharmed. ”
I roll my eyes and lean back in my seat. “Let him threaten.”
“Leo.” Dante’s patience is clearly wearing thin. “The Lombardo family is also pissed. Tony Lombardo was supposed to marry Emma and seal an alliance that would have given the Brennans significant shipping advantages. That alliance is now dead, and the Lombardos are blaming us for the embarrassment.”
“The Lombardos can suck my—”
“And,” Dante continues loudly, talking over me, “we’re getting pressure from our own allies who don’t understand why we’d risk a war over something that happened five years ago. They think we should return her, apologize, and try to smooth things over before this escalates further.”
I grip the phone harder, incensed. “They can think whatever they want. Emma Brennan stays here until I decide she doesn’t.”
There’s a long pause on the other end of the line.
When Dante speaks again, his voice is quieter, more concerned than angry. “What’s the endgame here, Leo? What are you actually planning to do with her?”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat. “I don’t know yet.”
I can feel Dante’s stare through the phone. “That’s not good enough.”
“It’s going to have to be.”
“You can’t keep her forever,” Dante says, and I can hear the exasperation bleeding through his professional calm.
“Eventually you’re going to have to either return her, use her as leverage for negotiations, or—” He stops himself, but I know what he was going to say.
Or kill her. “What happens when Connor stops threatening and actually starts acting? When he brings an army to your door? What happens to Emma then?”
I’ll worry about that later. “I’ll handle it,” I tell Dante impatiently.
“How? By doing what exactly? You’ve already got her locked in a bedroom like some kind of fairy tale villain. You’re having her meals delivered by armed guards. You threatened to force-feed her through a tube this morning—”
“How did you—” I stop myself. Of course he knows. The guards report to him too. “She was refusing to eat.”
“Can you blame her? You kidnapped her on her wedding day, Leo. Dragged her out of a cathedral at gunpoint in front of three hundred people. She’s terrified and alone and has no idea what you’re planning to do with her. Of course she’s not eating.”
“She’s eating now.” It comes out more defensive than I intended.
“Because you threatened her with fucking medical torture!” Dante’s composure finally cracks. “Do you hear yourself right now? Do you understand how fucked up this situation is?”
I breathe angrily through my nose. Why the fuck does Dante not see this the way I do? “Connor killed Gabriel—”
“I know!” Dante yells, cutting me off. “I know what Connor did. I was there when we found Gabriel’s body.
I was there when you had to tell your mother.
I know you want revenge, and I understand why.
But this?” He pauses, and I can almost see him pinching the bridge of his nose the way he does when I’m giving him a headache.
“This isn’t revenge, Leo. This is just you hurting an innocent woman to hurt her father.
That’s not justice. That’s just more violence. ”
“She’s fine,” I say, even though I’m not sure that’s true. “She’s safe, she’s being fed, she has everything she needs—”
“Except her freedom, her family, and any sense of control over her own life.” Dante sighs heavily.
“Look, I’m not saying Connor doesn’t deserve to suffer for what he did because I want to see the bastard burn for what he did to Gabe.
I’m saying this isn’t the way. And the longer you keep Emma, the more complicated this gets.
You need an exit strategy before this situation becomes untenable. ”
I clench my teeth so tightly they start to hurt. “I’ll figure it out,” I bite out.