29. Josephine
Josephine
I’m pacing the apartment, the same way I have been for hours when Harper walks up to me. “Here,” she says as she hands me a warm mug. “It’s tea. Why don’t you sit down for a minute.”
Tears well in my eyes as the mug warms my hands. I think this is the first thing I’ve really felt since I walked into that basement. “I can’t.”
She doesn’t give me a choice. Putting her hands on my arms, she gently pushes me backward a couple of feet until my calves hit the edge of the couch.
Harper gives me her sternest look, and I know there’s no use arguing.
I drop onto the couch, and she reaches behind me for a throw blanket.
The moment she wraps it around me, I smell him.
It’s his blanket. The one he always cocoons himself in in the corner of the sectional.
And as the warm smell of him seeps into the very fabric of my being, I let the first tear fall. Then another.
“Oh, sweetie,” Harper says softly as she sits down next to me. She drapes her arm over my shoulder, and I let my head fall to hers. “They will find him.”
“What—what if they don’t?” The thought of my sweet Lorenzo never returning to me is almost unbearable.
Harper holds my head in her hands, forcing me to look her in the eye. “If they don’t find him tonight, none of us will stop until we do. That’s what we do. We’re a family.” Using the pad of her thumbs she does her best to wipe away my streaming tears. “We don’t give up on family.”
My head nods weekly in her hold. I know what she says is true.
She looks across the room to Finn and Sebastian, who are feverishly working on computers at the table. “Love, would you bring me that box of tissues?”
Doing as she asks, Finn grabs the box of tissues from the side table by the window and brings them to her. “Here you go, Angel.”
“Thank you,” she says as she smiles softly up at him before he plants a gentle kiss on her forehead. Finn looks down at me and runs his hand along the side of my face. I let myself lean into it for a moment.
His touch isn’t romantic in any way, he would never cross that line, but it is comforting.
Comforting to know that despite having a family of his own, I’m part of his now too.
He lingers for a moment before returning to the table.
Once we all realized Enzo had been taken, Ronan, Mac, and Finn were our first call. And when they arrived they decided it would be safest for me to return to the apartment with Harper, Finn, and Sebastian.
I didn’t argue.
I knew, despite how desperately I wanted to stay and help, that I would have been nothing but a distraction at that point.
They took Enzo right out from under our noses, and I didn’t want them to feel like they had to watch me every second when they should be devoting one hundred percent of their attention on him.
The four of them said they were going to follow the tunnel and search the rest of the house before returning here to regroup.
I know they won’t find him in that tunnel, wherever it leads. There’s no way in hell the Novikovs would be stupid enough to keep him anywhere close to that house.
I don’t know how they got the jump on him, but I do know that they weren’t prepared for our arrival. It was clear by the state of that house that we startled them. Their escape wasn’t planned, nor was them taking Enzo. But they saw an opportunity and they took it.
They took something of ours because we took something of theirs. Twice.
But when we find him, when we find our Lorenzo, I know that all of them, Ronan, Mac, and Finn included, will reign down a hell the Novikovs have never experienced.
Andrei and Maxim will wish they had died all those months ago with Aleksandr.
Because if I know anything to be true, I know this… my men, The Horsemen, will not bat an eye as they rid the world of trash like them.
“There she is,” Harper says, looking into my eyes. “I thought that fire went out for a minute there.”
Sitting up straight, I wipe at my cheeks with the back of my hand and shake my head. “Never.”
Harper winks. “Atta girl.”
I’m just about to take a sip of tea when I hear the familiar ding of the elevator door. I set my cup down on the coffee table and sprint to the door. As the elevator opens a wave of sadness washes over me when I don’t see Enzo, regardless of how sure I was they wouldn’t find him in that tunnel.
Without a word, Dante and Luca wrap me in their arms. I let the feel of their warm bodies center me. And a moment later I feel another figure embrace me. I don’t even have to look to know it’s Sebastian. I can feel it.
The four of us stand there for what feels like hours, all while each of them take turns peppering the top of my head with soft kisses. Eventually, though, one of them breaks our embrace and the others follow.
I look around at their heartbroken faces, and I wish more than anything I could take away their pain, just as I know they would mine.
But until we have him, until we have our missing piece back where he belongs, the pain we’re feeling will be ever-present.
Like when you’re drowning and the pain in your chest is so deep and you know that one simple breath will save you from the pain, but no matter how hard you try you can’t take it.
You just sink deeper and deeper until everything goes black.
Until the pain is the only thing you feel.
But despite the pain, we have to keep fighting. We have to keep fighting for breath. Because if Enzo can’t count on us to fight for him, then all of this, everything I have done up until this very moment, will have been for nothing.
I am nothing without them.
They are now a part of me.
And a part of me has now been ripped away.
I will never stop fighting until I get it back.
“Anything?” I ask.
Luca pulls a gun out of the waistband of his pants. “Found his gun in the tunnel along with his earpiece.”
“Where did the tunnel even go?”
Dante scrubs his hand over his face. “About two blocks away. We came out of the back room of a bakery.”
“What was it called?” Sebastian asks them eagerly.
“Pavlova Pastries, I think,” Dante replies before Sebastian practically sprints back to his computer.
Luca looks at me in concern. “This is the first time he’s even looked away from the screen since we got here.”
“I figured as much,” Luca replies with an exhausted sigh.
The three of us head toward the table, but I stop in my tracks when I see a familiar box sitting on it. “Wh—where did that come from?”
“Oh,” Mac says, tapping the top of it. Harper brings a pot of coffee out to the table, along with a handful of mugs. Mac kisses her on the cheek. “Thank you, Mo Grá.” Refocusing his attention on me, he adds, “I found this in a room upstairs. All the letters inside are addressed to you.”
Sebastian, Dante, and Luca look over at me before Luca asks, “Are those—”
“Yeah,” I answer softly.
“What are they?” Harper asks.
“They’re letters my dad has written me since he went to prison. I’ve never opened a single one. They broke into my house and took them. I have no idea why.”
“Must have been the room your dad was staying in since he got out,” Ronan adds.
I don’t say a word as I walk over to the box and remove the lid.
“Love, you don’t have to do this right now.”
My eyes don’t leave the box. “Yes, I do.”
Slowly, I grab the first letter at the top. And just like they’ve done since he started sending me these damn things, the moment my fingertips touch the paper, I can feel my breathing grow shallow and the edges of my vision darken.
“Josephine…” Luca says, running his hand down my back.
His voice saying my name causes me to pause. And then I remember how I felt when he had me in that car. How I felt when I sat across the table from him in that interrogation room.
I’m not afraid of him.
I’m afraid of the memories.
I’m afraid of the pain he once caused me.
But he can’t hurt me anymore.
They won’t let him.
I won’t let him.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath before opening the envelope and pulling the letter from it.
My eyes quickly scan it before opening another. And another. And another.
And by the time I’ve made it through a dozen letters, the anger that was burning within me before is nothing compared to the raging inferno I feel now.
This motherfucker.
Grabbing Enzo’s gun that Luca sat on the table with one hand and this box of bullshit with the other, I head toward the stairwell.