Chapter 27 Andre
TWENTY-SEVEN
Andre
Something’s wrong. I can feel it even before I’m fully awake. Something is fucking wrong.
My eyes fly open. There’s enough ambient light to show me the dim stretch of the empty bed. I sit up, throwing the covers aside. I look toward the bathroom, but it’s dark. Everything is dark.
I get out of bed and turn on the lamp, wincing at the light. I don’t call out because I can fucking tell …
I prowl through the apartment turning on lights. My heart is racing so fast that I get dizzy. I find my phone and pull up the camera footage, scrolling back a whole goddamn hour to see Elias get up and get dressed and leave with his phone.
“What the fuck,” I mutter.
I track him with the hallway camera to the elevator, which he takes up to the office. I only have one camera in there, which is pointed at his workspace. It catches a glimpse of him as he walks to the mess of my overturned desk. I lose him there, but I have audio. He’s rifling through the mess.
After a while, I hear Elias say, “It’s me. It’s Elio. I want to come home.” Then a moment later: “I’ll be at the Spring Street Park by the statue in thirty minutes if you want to meet me. I have to go.”
What the fuck.
I pull up tracking on his phone and find him at the northern edge of the city and moving fast. He’s in a car.
I catch myself against the kitchen counter. I almost drop my phone.
My thumb hovers over the call button, but I don’t know who he’s with.
Except … I do, don’t I?
Elio, he said.
I want to come home, he said.
I can’t fucking breathe. My vision goes out. My ass hits the ground and my phone clatters to the floor.
I pick it up. I make a call.
“Andre?” Noah says, then when I don’t reply, “What happened?” Then, “Take a breath.”
“Elias is gone,” I gasp.
“Take a fucking breath.” When I do that, he says, “Another.” Then, “Tell me what happened.”
I tell him. I stumble through it, but his questions help me focus.
When we get back to the present, I ask, “Why would he …” I can’t finish the question, and it’s not something Noah could answer.
Instead he asks, “Do you believe him? That he wants to go home?”
“That’s not his fucking home!”
I’m on my feet now. I grab one of the kitchen chairs and sling it across the room. I start pacing.
Noah is silent at first, then he says, “Answer me, Andre. Do you believe him?”
I make myself stop even as the waves of anger roll through me. But it’s not just anger. It’s fear too. Because …
“No,” I answer. “I don’t believe him.”
“I don’t either,” Noah says. “So why would he do that?”
A terrifying thought occurs to me. I start walking. I leave the apartment and take the elevator. The call drops.
My phone starts ringing as I walk across the moonlit office to the overturned desk.
There are only two things that Elias might have come up here for.
The first I find lying on the floor, separate from everything else like Elias pulled it out to use it.
It’s Piero’s card, and Elias needing it means he didn’t already have his father’s number.
The other thing I can’t find.
The ringing stops when my phone goes to voicemail, but it starts ringing against almost instantly. I answer it.
“He took my gun,” I tell Noah.
“Shit,” Noah says, though he doesn’t sound surprised. “He’s gone after his father.”
“But what car is he in? He doesn’t have one and—hold on.” I pull up the security footage for the parking garage. My vehicles are still there. Then I pull up the exterior cameras, going back to the time Elias left. I see him walking. I watch until he’s out of frame.
“Andre?” comes distantly from my phone.
I put it to my ear and say, “He must have walked to the park and met someone. He must have gotten in their car. But I need to check there. I need to see if—”
“I’ll do it on my way. I’m coming to get you. Do not leave. Promise me. Andre,” he growls when I don’t reply. “We do this together. Fucking promise me you’ll be there when I arrive.”
I close my eyes. I make myself remember that I can trust Noah. I make myself yield.
“I promise.”
* * *
I’m standing outside The Axis in a black hat and the black clothes that I’ve often worn to stalk Elias, when a familiar black van pulls up. Wes glances at me from the driver’s seat, but he doesn’t roll down the window to say anything.
A second van, different make and model, pulls up behind.
The back doors of Wes’s van open and Noah, also dressed in black, steps out. “Andre. I’ll explain on the way.”
I walk toward Noah, studying the second van. There’s a tough-looking guy driving it, and I can tell there are men in the back.
There are men in the back of Wes’s van too. Rafael and Dominic, plus another that I don’t know. They’re all dressed in black, all armed and armored, all with gaiters around their necks ready to cover their faces. I have one too. We can’t be caught on camera.
I get in and sit on the bench beside Rafael. Noah gets in behind me and pulls the doors shut. He sits on the bench across from me, beside the man I don’t know.
“Nothing at the park?” I ask as the van starts rolling. I feel weirdly calm. I’m not sure why.
“Nothing,” Noah confirms. “And no sign of struggle.”
Dominic leans forward to look around Rafael. “And you’re really fucking sure Elias wouldn’t have legitimately gone back to his father?”
Even in the faint glow of light through the back windows, I can see the ever-present aggression written across his handsome face.
“Dominic,” Rafael says in a knock-it-off tone.
“It’s a fair fucking question,” Dominic insists.
“It is a fair question,” I admit. “But I’m sure.”
“Okay,” Dominic says and settles back like that’s the end of it.
“Who’s in the other van?” I ask.
Noah says, “Some of Dominic’s men. They’re going to help us. And so is Dante.”
The man beside Noah says, “He doesn’t remember me. I can tell.”
I look more closely. I can’t see much in the faint light, but I remember the glimpse I had when the interior light was on: dark eyes, a sharply handsome face, a cold stillness.
An image flashes through my mind: a boy who always sat in the corner, silent and watching.
I let the image fade, but I don’t white it out. I don’t white anything out. I just sit with it in the quiet of the van. We all do.
Then we start laying out our intel. My signal on Elias has gone still, and we match it up with the satellite imagery of the Valenci estate and cross reference Noah’s notes from talking to Elias.
Elias isn’t in the main house. He’s in what he referred to as his father’s “hunting lodge” deep in the property.
He said he’d never been there, that it was his father’s private space.
We don’t discuss what that means, though we all know what places like that are for.
But Noah says, “That doesn’t mean anything will happen to Elias there. And it’s better that he’s not in the main house. This is easier to attack. So let’s figure it out.”
We discuss options. At one point, Wes says from the driver’s seat, “There’s a rocket launcher under Dante’s feet. If that helps.”
Rafael huffs a laugh. “Where were you the last several times we needed you?”
“I travel a lot,” Wes says. “And I work alone.”
“With a rocket launcher?” Rafael asks wryly.
Wes’s eyes flick up to the rearview mirror. “I prefer to work from a distance.”
“That doesn’t exactly answer my question,” Rafael complains.
“You didn’t exactly ask one,” Wes points out.
“Ooh, I like him,” Rafael says.
Dominic reaches between Rafael’s legs and grabs his balls. “Stop fucking flirting with him. You’re the goddamn worst, Rafael.”
Rafael leans into Dominic and nips the side of his neck. “Stop teasing me.”
“Jesus Christ,” Dante mutters. “Knock it the hell off, both of you.”
Things quiet as we get closer. I’m still calm. I still don’t know why. But I figure it out when we get to where we’re going to leave the vehicles and everyone gets out.
I’m not alone. And these men … I trust them. Even Wes. Especially Wes, in spite of our fight—or maybe because of it. I triggered him, and he still helped me. He’s actually been helping me, I think, all along.
But it’s Noah who’s brought all of us together. He’s brought these men to me, to help me tonight. And even if they’re actually doing it for him instead of for me, it doesn’t really matter. They’re here.
And … Rafael did offer to help me two years ago. As for Noah, he’s always been here, even if I didn’t let myself see it.
This has always been available to me.
Wes drags out his crates from under the benches.
He throws open the lids, revealing the promised rocket launcher, plus grenades, handguns, rifles, and drones.
Everyone is already armed but grabs extras from the boxes.
Dominic’s men look distinctly mafia, but they seem to know what they’re doing as they choose rifles and grenades.
Wes gets a drone up in the air and starts scouting the woods between us and the hunting lodge.
“So, um, what exactly do you do?” Rafael asks him.
Wes replies, “I run a sex fantasy service.”
“Ah,” Rafael says, as though that somehow explains the weaponry.
“A honey trap?” Dominic asks.
“Yes.” Wes doesn’t look up from his screen. “Four men outside, none in the woods. They’re not expecting us. It’s a good time to move, but we’ll have to be fast. There are almost certainly more men at the house. It won’t take long for them to arrive.”
Pulling up his black gaiter to cover his face, Noah says, “Once we’re in, we sweep in pairs. Dante, you’re with Wes. Andre, you’re with me.”
As the rest of us cover our own faces, Noah hands comm devices to someone in each pair.
“Rocco,” Dominic calls to the man who was driving the second van. “I need you tailing me and Rafael. The rest of your team is on perimeter.” More comm devices get handed out.
“Dominic,” Rafael complains. “I’m perfectly capable—”
“I know what you’re capable of. And I know how reckless you are, so you can shut the fuck up. Ain’t nothing fucking happening to you, Angel.”
Rafael sighs in obvious frustration and makes a point of checking his guns. Dante is still and ready. Wes is hyper focused on his task. Noah shoulders the rocket launcher and gets us moving.
We stalk through the woods, predatory and quiet, like a sort of pack. I’m still calm. So are the others.
But I know how fast their switches might flip. And I know that mine is going to, very soon.