30. ~Emilio~
30
~Emilio~
Tonight had gone exactly to plan.
Everything had run smoothly without a single hitch.
It was unheard of.
There was always some aspect that went off the rails when you were dealing with so many people and different moving parts. Especially in our world.
But in this case, it had gone swimmingly.
We’d accomplished what we’d set out to do.
All the product and the weaponry had been moved to secure storage facilities off Nico’s territory, Julian had worked his charms and devious business skills along with Caterina’s blackmail to severe over a dozen of the most influential people from Santino, our distraction of commandeering the coke shipments of Gio’s had succeeded in stopping the attacks on Benzino businesses and leading them into an ambush where Carlo and his soldiers had been waiting, the raids had taken down all Leone and Marchetti gambling dens and strip clubs in one shot.
Now there was just seeing if we could salvage some of Gio’s soldiers as our own and turn them in our favor.
I swung my leg over my Harley in the lot beside the two Ferraris of Nico and Carlo, having come to the abandoned apartment building, now that I’d completed my own part of the mission, to give Nico a hand.
He didn’t want to go feral in front of Carlo, so I was there to bring the intimidation factor.
My phone started ringing when I was halfway to the building. I pulled it out and looked to see Julian calling.
I stopped and swiped it open. “Still at Luster?” I asked.
“Yes. Listen, I can’t get a hold of Cat. There’s an issue at the club. A minor one that I can fix, but I don’t want to make a decision for her. I need her go-ahead.”
“What do you mean that you can’t get a hold of her? She’s running base ops tonight, as Nico calls it.”
“Well, have you managed to connect with her?”
“Not for a little while. I’ve been on my Harley for the last twenty minutes, and before that I was finishing up—”
“Whatever. I don’t need a play-by-play,” he snapped, very unlike him.
He was worried. Really fucking worried.
And now, so was I.
“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll connect into the Manor security system. Give me a few seconds.”
“Okay. Hurry.”
Hurry. Of course I fucking would.
I pulled up the app and went to connect.
But nothing happened.
“That’s not—what’s going on?”
“What? What is it?” Julian pushed. “Milo?”
“The system’s down. I can’t access it at all.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“When did you last try to contact her?”
“Four minutes ago. How about Nico? Aren’t you with him now?”
“I’m outside the apartment building. I was about to approach when you called.”
“Well, maybe there’s a simple explanation, because he’d be freaking out if he couldn’t get a hold of her, anyway.”
“He’s radio silent right now while he’s in there working Gio and his soldiers. It requires full focus and for him to slip into a certain mindset of—”
“I don’t want your torturer tips, thanks.”
“Right, fuck, sorry.” I grimaced as the reason burned into me. “I’m just… I’m worried about Caterina.”
“Me too. It’s okay, forget it. Shit, Milo. Should I head back to the house?”
“No. If security is down, outside of a power outage, it’s very likely been compromised. It might not be safe.”
“What about the soldiers that Nico had watching the place? What the fuck were they even there for? I mean, I even called all four of them and they didn’t pick up either.”
“I’m gonna track her ring.”
“Yeah, good. Good. Despite the whole revealed fake marriage thing, she’s still wearing it because it’s from all three of us.”
I smiled as I remembered her saying that. “She wanted a piece of us with her at all times.”
“She did.”
I accessed the tracker, but a chill rolled down my spine when I found it offline, too.
“I can’t track her with the ring,” I told him, hating the words as I spoke them.
“Why?”
“It’s offline.”
“So somebody turned it off? Took it from her? They know?”
I swallowed hard. “It seems that way.”
“Milo.”
“Stay where you are right next to Nico’s soldiers until you hear from me.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Connect with Nico and I’ll call you back. Just stay where you are. Promise me. No crazy shit. Please. I can’t… not again with you too, okay?”
“I promise. I’ll stay here. But call me as soon as you can.”
“I will.”
I hung up, then rushed toward the rundown apartment building.
There were two of Carlo’s soldiers guarding the door, but they each gave me a chin lift and stepped aside when they saw me.
I pushed on through the door and into the foyer.
Piercing screams gave away where Nico was, and I followed the sounds down the ground floor corridor and around the corner to a room at the back.
I shoved open the door and took in some sort of storage room, musty boxes and a couple of old appliances in disrepair filling the space.
Most notably, though, were the fifty-odd soldiers spread throughout the room.
Some were on their sides sprawled across the floor, their ankles and wrists zip-tied. Others were tied to beams. Some bound to metal chairs. And then there were a dozen standing in the corner near where I’d entered, not bound and looking unharmed.
Nico was looming over Gio who was tied to a chair, his face a map of swelling, cuts, and deep bruising. A couple of his knuckles were shattered as well.
Nico had shed his leather jacket, and he stood there with the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, blood staining the formerly unblemished sleek white material.
“Suck my dick,” Gio grunted at him.
Nico sneered.
“You really aren’t helping yourself,” Carlo commented, his arms folded across his chest as he looked on to the side of them.
Nico pulled a knife from the holster at the back of his pants and spun it around in his hand in a casually threatening way.
This was actually nothing for him. I could see by the limited damage that had been done to the guys and the way he was handling Giovanni, that he was holding back majorly.
He didn’t want to unleash that feral side of him.
I’d thought it was because he didn’t want Carlo to see it, so that it didn’t inspire any sort of distrust in their newly formed alliance—and what seemed to be a burgeoning friendship too, apparently. But the struggle I could see from him, how much he was actually holding back, suggested that it was more than that. Besides, thinking about it now, I recalled that Carlo had actually witnessed Nico unleashing like that a couple of times before, anyway.
Was it actually about the baby, like I’d suspected before?
Or maybe something to do with him taking power? Did he want to bury that part of himself so he could lead without having that unstable side of him coming along for the ride?
Goddammit, my mind was wandering.
It got like this when I was panicking.
And when that panic had intense emotional roots.
Just like when Julian had been missing.
“Milo?”
I blinked and looked out to see Nico had registered my presence. He strode from Gio and up to me. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” he asked.
It had to be all over me.
I pulled him off to the side.
“It’s Caterina. We can’t get a hold of her. The security system at Charon Manor is offline. As is her ring. Physical security is unreachable as well.”
I’d barely gotten the last few words out when he pulled his phone out and dialed right away.
“Rocco, head up to Charon Manor now. Take a team with you. Milo and I will meet you there. There may have been a breach. Report back immediately.”
He spun then and rushed back to Carlo, telling him, “I have a situation. I need to leave right now.”
“What’s happened?”
“Caterina is missing.”
“Home invasion?”
“It’s looking like it.”
Gio snickered. “Thought you had it in the bag. Thought it would be this easy.”
Nico growled and wrapped his hand around Gio’s throat. “Nothing has been easy since motherfuckers like you rose to positions of power in the families. It’s destroyed everything. Now you’ll all fall. Even if I have to rip your lives away to make it so.”
Gio went to bite back, but Nico released his throat, then drove his knife through his carotid artery, shocking us all from the sudden brutality of it.
Nico snarled and thrust his boot into the chair, Gio tumbling back and crashing to the ground on the chair on his back, spluttering and choking on his own blood as he rapidly slipped away.
With that, Nico snatched up his jacket then bolted out of the room, with me following in his wake.
Everything had gone so smoothly and to plan tonight.
And now all hell was about to break loose.