2. ~Emilio~
2
~Emilio~
It had taken close to a half hour to get all the way from the other side of the city to back near Charon Manor where Julian and Caterina had been riding and where the signal from Caterina’s panic button had been activated from. If it hadn’t been for Nico’s Ferrari and him driving like a man possessed, it would have even been a whole lot longer than that.
As it was, it had already been too long.
They were clearly in danger. I needed to be there instantly.
Not only had Caterina activated the panic button, but I’d also been calling them constantly since we’d gotten into the car and neither of them had picked up.
“Almost there,” Nico assured me, looking between me and the road as he finagled the dangerously winding back roads in the dead of night, just his headlights illuminating the way.
I knew we were. I was watching the map on my phone every second. But it helped to hear him utter that out loud, and he’d known that it would.
“Neither of them are helpless,” he reminded me. “Far from it, in fact. Keep that in mind with whatever we find here.”
Judging by the iron grip he had on the steering wheel and him grinding his jaw, he was trying to remind himself of that fact as much as me.
We were almost upon the designated location when his headlights caught on something in the brush.
“Pull over,” I told him.
“What are you—” he caught sight of what I had, chrome in amongst the heavy brush.
He came to a jarring stop; the tires screeching and burning rubber and giving both of us one hell of a jolt.
And then the both of us were rushing out of the car and heading toward the sight.
I barreled into the brush, removing torn branches here and there that had clearly been used to hide what was beneath. Whoever had been responsible hadn’t done a very thorough job, though, which was why I’d been able to catch sight of something.
As I threw more and more out of the way, Nico helping me, I was finally able to make out the twisted chrome monstrosity of what had once been a Harley.
“Julian’s,” Nico choked, recognizing it as I had, even in this state, with all the work Julian had had done on it to make it unique—just like my Sunshine.
The state of it… they’d had one hell of a crash.
“Goddammit,” I rasped, staring at it in horror.
Nico was gone from my side then, inspecting the immediate area and even rushing up the last few feet to the actual location where the panic button signal had come from.
As I was caught there frozen with my hands trembling at the awful implications, I zeroed in on the camera Julian had fitted onto the bike because he liked to record his stunts for posterity. Footage that automatically uploaded to the Cloud. Yes!
“Nico!” I called out. “The camera footage from the bike!”
I spun around just as he was already coming back to me.
My gut twisted when I saw him carrying two smashed phones in his hands, the cobalt-blue glittering case of Julian’s taking my attention.
His haunting gaze met mine as he reported, “There’s blood along the road. Scuff marks too.”
“They were dragged,” I ground out. “Somebody did this. Caused the crash, then took them.”
“Yes. The evidence is speaking for itself.”
“Who the fuck would do this? The Lone Gunners have gone to ground. The Benzinos made it clear they’re with us. And the Marchettis and Leones have no reason to do anything like this, seeing as though they believe you and Caterina are following their orders. I don’t… I don’t understand,” I said, shoving my hand through my hair.
I saw Nico’s sapphire eyes flicking back and forth, the sign that his mind was going a million miles a minute, trying to sort through the data available, to figure out all possibilities.
“Someone who has an unhinged hatred for both Julian and Caterina in equal measure,” he finally spoke. “Only one person comes to mind.”
Our gazes clashed.
“Angelo,” I breathed. “Do you really think he’d stoop to this and risk this? He’d be going against Santino to carry this out.”
“Would he? Santino wants Caterina punished.”
“Which he believes is already happening by her marrying you. You’re being paranoid because of what happened earlier with Carlo.”
“Perhaps. Either way, even if he’s acting alone, that makes this worse.”
“Because there are no boundaries or restrictions involved,” I realized.
“Exactly.”
“Goddammit.”
Nico had his lighter out, flicking it on and off wildly. “All right, this is what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna access Julian’s footage of the ride from the Cloud, confirm what we suspect, and see if there’s anything to go off from there. License plates, other players involved, anything. Meanwhile, you try to track Caterina’s panic button.”
“Yeah, okay,” I uttered, fighting to move from freaking out about their wellbeing to action-mode and doing something to remedy it, to bring them the fuck back to us.
As we rushed back to the car, I said to Nico, “If this was Angelo, if he did this—”
“He can’t survive it.”
“No, he fucking can’t,” I growled. “But how are we gonna put him to ground, given that he’s Santino’s second? That’s an act of war. Big time, Nico.”
“Let me worry about that,” he said, as he slid into the driver’s seat.
I joined him on the passenger side, watching that dangerously dark look take him over.
“Focus on finding them, then we’ll handle the rest.”
The fucking disturbing thing was that if it was Angelo like we suspected, he was a true psychopath, a sick motherfucker through and through.
The things he could subject Julian and Caterina to in the meantime… it had me sick to my stomach.
What if we didn’t get there fast enough, and he’d already… started in on them?
What if—
“Milo.”
I jolted from my thoughts to see Nico shaking his head at me as we sped toward the manor.
“Focus on the task at hand. Nothing beyond that will help or enable us to get to them faster.” He laid his hand on mine. “All right, brother?”
“Yeah,” I said, squeezing it back. “I hear you. They need us and we’ll come through.”
“There’s no question.”
“We’ll bring them back to us ASAP.”
“I have no doubt whatsoever.”
I smiled out at him. He was a steadfast and levelheaded leader—outside of the feral state thing, which only happened once in a while—and he knew how those close to him thought and operated, which he used to their advantage, wellbeing, and peace of mind. It was a great comfort, even in situations where finding comfort shouldn’t be possible.
It made him a step above the rest.
“You are Marco’s true successor, and you should never have been passed over. We’ll remedy that. We’ll remedy it all.”
That was what Carlo Benzino had told him earlier.
And as much as I didn’t trust the bastard yet and as much as I hated them for what they’d done to my parents, he’d been right on the money there.
Nico Marchetti was the leader that we’d all been denied, the leader we all needed more than ever.
He caught me staring out at him intensely and smiled. “I’ve got you, Milo.”
“I know. You always do.”
And I knew he always would.