Chapter 7
The Itch
Alex
There was an itch inside my brain. It was powerful and there wasn’t anything that could soften it. The itch grew stronger with every passing day.
The itch was Jade Moretti.
The young woman who worked with her father to prosecute us. The woman who actively contributed to our possible demise.
In fact, our business was facing new and unforeseen challenges every day, and she may have been responsible for them. One of our crew was arrested the day after we took her—that was a huge blow. Andrei and I were now certain we had an informant on our team, maybe two.
And Sebastian Moretti was incessantly issuing threats on local news stations. He threw around big words, promising the most severe retribution for his daughter’s kidnapping.
Instead of focusing on that, all I could hear were Jade’s words.
What do you think it means, Alex?
He didn’t beat me to a pulp or anything. She said it so casually, like the thought of him hitting her had settled in her head and she was grateful that he didn’t pummel her, just that there were incidents.
He tried to rape me and I escaped. Barely.
The idea crawled into my head during lunch with Jade and it was now exploding inside me. Andrei would disapprove, but fuck it because the decision was always mine in the end.
I had my security guys tailing Knox since I said goodbye to Jade and I was simply waiting for the right time to put a bullet through his skull.
In the meantime, the itch was unbearable. It had been three days since I closed the front door of that beach house and I picked up a very toxic habit—I checked the camera in the house once or twice a day. Maybe three times. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I reached for the phone again, but caught myself right in time and picked up my car keys instead. No, I wasn't going to see her, I wasn’t going to drive by again.
I headed to Andrei’s.
He opened the front door of his mansion and invited me in, the TV blasting Moretti once more. Olga stood at the kitchen island, extremely pregnant, eating yogurt straight from the container.
We all stood together in their massive sitting room, watching another press conference.
"You boys both know you're not cut out for this,” Olga piped up, shaking her head. “Just stick to what you do best. Make your money, move on.” She sighed, but we all knew that it was too late for that.
“Olechka, sit down, baby.” Andrei addressed her in half-Russian, half-English, pulling out a chair for her.
I always admired their union. They were truly and madly in love since high school.
Olga knew everything about our business, and Andrei never kept her in the dark.
He was fully honest, and she chose to stay with him through thick and thin.
"We couldn't anymore. He was getting too close. It was bound to happen at some point, we just hoped it wouldn't be so fast," I explained quietly for no other reason than to fill the silence.
But the silence was also broken by a call. Gianna’s number showed up on my phone screen for the hundredth time, and I was ready to throw my phone in the garbage.
I stepped into another room, ready to launch into her for the final time, but her sniffles paused whatever I had planned to say. We’d been through a good number of breakups and some were rough, but crying? Gianna didn’t really cry.
"B-baby," she pleaded quietly. "I'm s-sorry. I'm so sorry for what I said. Please. Please just don't walk out of my life like this."
I didn't have the emotional bandwidth for Gianna.
This was a lose-lose situation. If I comforted her, we would be back to the exact same spot as always—a limbo of back-and-forth dates and passionless nights and empty conversations.
And if I didn't, I'd be the asshole, and she would double down on this behavior.
The phone calls. The pleading. The manipulation.
"Gianna, I—" I didn't know what to say. I had absolutely zero words left for her. “I cannot do this anymore. We broke up a year ago, Gianna. Let's just both move on, please—"
"Alex! Baby!” Her crying intensified. “We’re meant for each other, you know that! We're just going through a rough patch right now, baby, but we can move past it! Please, please just come see me."
I wouldn't. I couldn't.
"I can't, Gianna. Please. Move on. If you need money or anything else, I’ll give you anything you want, but you need to give me this. Leave me alone."
There was dead silence on the phone for a few seconds until—
"There's someone else, isn't there?"
This…this was too much. Again, I had no idea what to say. Another woman or not, the truth was that Gianna wasn’t for me and she refused to accept it.
"Gianna, it's really not about tha—"
"Who the fuck is this bitch?" Like magic, her sniffles were gone, her voice turning cold and menacing. "I will fucking kill her, you hear me, Alex? I will murder her."
Dear Jesus Christ, this was nearing a point of no return. I wondered if maybe she needed emergency psychological help because this was out of control even for her.
"Gianna? I’m not going to block your number because we both know you’ll call from another one but listen to me.
” I held myself back from screaming the words out of frustration.
“Do not call me again. Do not come see me, do not think about me. Leave. Me. Alone.” She stayed silent, listening to my message.
“We’re done. There’s no one else. There’s no other woman. It’s just over between us.”
I hung up the phone as quickly as I could and bolted out of Andrei’s house, just to clear my fucking head.
Because my head was in some kind of disarray. Because for the first time ever, I had no fucking clue what I was doing. What the fuck were we doing with Jade?
The plan seemed so clear before: kidnap her, leave her in the house, wait for Moretti to lose his shit. Once that was accomplished, we’d approach him and let him know to drop the investigation. If he said no, we’d double down and send him someone’s pinky finger.
The plan was to take the pinky off a fresh corpse. But now…now it all seemed ridiculous.
I slumped down in my bed at some point past midnight, unable to take a full breath in. The itch wouldn't go away. The itch was stronger than ever. It was under my skin, in my brain, in my eyes, in every breath I took.
It was on my hands.
And my hand moved lower beneath the sheets, self-loathing filling me up. I closed my eyes and floated in memories of Jade. Of her defiant gaze and her smile. And I forbade myself from ever admitting what I was doing.
Days passed.
Jade’s voice grew louder in my head.
Xavier was abusive.
It was very difficult to leave.
There were incidents.
I managed to escape. Barely.
It had been a week since I’d seen Jade. It was also almost ten in the evening, and I sat on my Ducati Panigale across the street from the restaurant where Knox was having dinner.
I’d had enough time to cool down, but the thought of taking him out intensified inside me with every passing day and night.
I’d made multiple arguments to support my plan. Sebastian Moretti wasn’t backing down—he was holding a press conference every day, insisting that he didn’t negotiate with terrorists and that once his daughter was found, those responsible would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
There was mostly anger on his face, no fear.
So taking Xavier out might change his tune.
First, his daughter goes missing, and then the daughter’s ex-boyfriend is shot in the head?
His brain splattering the inside of the car like an abstract painting?
His filthy and disgusting life ended at the ripe age of twenty-five or thirty or however fucking old he was?
The golden trust-fund-baby-turned-rapist found executed on the streets of Miami?
All great headlines.
Just as I tried to remember what the other great argument was, I caught sight of a tall man leaving the restaurant doors.
His brown hair was styled back, and he wore an oversized black T-shirt, the tattoos on his forearms blending with his vicious, dark soul.
He was typing something on his phone as he approached a car, and oh—the fucker had a chauffeur too.
He looked a little tense for a man who assaulted innocent and delicate women. I couldn’t understand it. How does anybody date Jade Moretti and also have the balls to fucking hurt her? Not only did he beat her, at some point he had also manipulated her into thinking he was a nice guy.
Knox’s car set off and I made a U-turn, accelerating and swerving around traffic to get closer to his SUV.
The image of his blasted skull kicked my adrenaline into action, but then I had a moment of doubt. Did he really deserve a fast death? A bullet was too nice.
At the same time, I didn’t have the immediate resources at my disposal to drag him to a warehouse and cut his balls off slowly. That would entail involving Andrei and I had no fucking energy for his low risk-tolerance right now.
Just as I was one car away from Knox, my phone rang. Apprehensive that it was Gianna coming back with another round of crocodile tears, I thought to ignore it, but I heard the name on the caller ID—Maksim, head of my security. Jade’s security.
“It’s not much of a problem, more like a safety issue,” he began speaking before I could even utter a greeting. “She’s on the roof. She’s refusing to climb down.”
Xavier’s car made a right turn, and the light was about to turn red so I sped up, going over Maksim’s words in my head.
“What? Who’s on the roof? What’re you talking about?”
“Jade. She’s been up there for two hours. Smoking weed. She won’t climb down.”
Of course, that sounded very much like Jade. I heard my own pulse in my helmet, knowing that I shouldn’t go over there. I absolutely should stay away. I stayed away for a whole week and I could certainly continue exercising my willpower.
“So just take care of it. What do you need me for?”
Maksim sighed loudly, the resignation in his voice sprouting hope inside me. Tell me. Tell me I’m the only one who can solve it.
“I’ve tried. I’ve tried many times. She’s refusing. She’s high, and it’s dark, and there’s a risk she’ll tumble down and break a leg or something.”
Xavier’s car was inching further and further away from me, and then it turned left, leaving me behind at another red light.
I revved the engine loudly and made my choice.