Chapter 2
Matt
“But Don Matteo—”
The crack of my hand on Rico’s face echoes in the office. Cinder winces, Gia yawns, and Jules rolls his eyes.
“I don’t want excuses. I want Aron found and brought back here, now!”
Rico holds his hand to his cheek, which bleeds from a cut caused by one of my many rings.
“With all due respect, Don, I was just trying to say that you’ve exhausted your efforts with the new blood.
Every street-level hitman you sent out to find Aron came back in pieces.
Let your loyal associates have a try at it.
We’ll bring him home for half the cost that you were offering those convicts, and most of us will include Javier’s severed head for free. ”
Much as I hate to admit it, Rico’s got a point.
I’ve been trying to avoid losing veteran Syndicate officers and enforcers in the search for Aron, but I might be out of options.
The turncoats who left the Syndicate to join Javier’s new Empire are just as ruthless there as they were under my father’s rule, and to be frank, I grow weary of finding bits of my newest enforcers strewn about the front drive of the estate.
The rumors flying through the Syndicate mark Aron as a traitor, a turncoat who left voluntarily to join Javier.
I never said anything of the sort, but I also don’t try to dissuade those falsities.
Whatever works to motivate my men to bring him back, and though there’s a risk that one of them might harm him in the process, I trust them to be more afraid of killing him and denying me some measure of personal vengeance.
I turn to Gia. “Have the twins had any success in finding potential Empire holdings?”
She hands me a folder full of photos, spreadsheets, legal documents, and surveillance notes.
“They’ve narrowed it down to about twenty buildings around town, most of which are just as heavily guarded as this estate, some even more so.
High rise apartments, warehouses, and various business fronts, all purchased in the days following Don Tito’s death. ”
While that’s somewhat helpful, it still doesn’t tell me where Javier is holding Aron. Any one of those locations could be turned into a makeshift prison—or torture chamber.
Then I see something in one of the photos, something disturbing.
A young blonde woman carrying a baby in the front door of one of the high rises.
Impossible.
Page after page I flip, and the woman shows up in more than half of the surveillance photos of Javier’s new holdings.
I freeze, caught up in memories of that explosive night, of running into a burning building and checking the nonexistent pulse of a pregnant blonde who’d been burned to a crisp.
I remember running through the smoke and flames.
I remember prying the wedding ring off her burned finger.
I remember! How can this be?
“Boss? You okay?” Jules keeps his tone even, neutral, but I realize he must be concerned that I’m obsessing over these photos. I close the file and straighten my back, hoping my face doesn’t give away the sickening horror churning in my gut.
“Clear the room,” I say with quiet assertion.
“But—”
“Now.”
Rico, Jules, Gia, and Cinder vacate the office, and I wait until the door is shut behind them before sinking into my chair.
Emily’s alive, or at the very least Javier found a very convincing doppelganger. Since I doubt Aron could ever trust a fake, that likelihood is low. So, the question becomes: Who did I try to rescue that night?
Who died that night?
It wouldn’t be the first time an innocent person perished for the sake of making someone in our line of work appear dead, but it’s the first time, to my knowledge at least, that the substitute body was pregnant.
That doesn’t bode well for Aron. If Javier is willing to murder a woman and her unborn child for some elaborate farce, I dread the thought of what he might do to Aron to turn him.
I’ve got to find Aron. Get him out of there, free him from whatever sadistic torture Javier has planned.
For the next two hours I pour over the documents in the file, searching for some clue as to where Aron might be held. Electricity spikes, extra food deliveries, water usage, anything that might indicate the sudden presence of a new resident.
A new captive.
Then, a sickening thought hits me: What if Aron’s not a captive? What if he’s there of his own accord?
Leaning my elbows on the desk, I put my head in my hands. Aron may love me, but he also loved Emily, and his father is there as well. His child is there as well. What reason would Aron have to come back here? I can’t compete with a man’s wife and child, with his blood family.
A sudden pounding at the door jars me from my thoughts.
“What? What the fuck do you want?”
Rico cracks open the door and sticks his head in. “Sorry, Don Matteo, but we found one of Javier’s men creeping in the woods around the estate. What should we do with him?”
Javier sent a sacrifice? This may be just what I need.
“Where is he now?”
“Jules has him in the basement. So far he’s not talking, but we haven’t really started trying in earnest.”
I stand and take off my suit coat, folding it neatly and laying it over the back of my chair, followed immediately by my tie. “Leave him to me,” I say as I roll my sleeves up with slow precision. “He’ll talk.”
“S-sir? Jules and I can handle it, we just—”
“Leave him to me.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
I keep my steps even and my expression neutral as I stride through the mansion to the basement. I can’t let myself appear too eager or too anxious, can’t let any emotion show. When it comes to interrogations, a calm, quiet demeanor is often more terrifying than visibly violent intent.
The basement, which seems to have originally been an underground garage for the previous owner’s expensive car collection, is vast, with harsh fluorescent lighting illuminating every corner and thick concrete pillars holding up the expansive ceiling.
Jules has the intruder stripped and tied to a small plastic folding chair in the center, which looks rather uncomfortable.
The flathead screwdriver Jules is digging into the man’s nailbed doesn’t look terribly comfortable, either.
Screams echo in the basement, and I stifle a yawn. Torture like this always bored me.
“Jules! I thought I gave the order for this man to be left for me.”
Jules straightens, and the man’s screams fade to sobs. “I was just warming him up for you, boss.”
The prisoner appears to be new to this life. He’s too pretty, too devoid of scars and tattoos, to have been with Javier for long. Not one of the turncoats that abandoned the Syndicate then. Aron’s father must be sending his new recruits to spy on us just like I sent mine to him.
This pretty boy is about to learn a lesson.
I snap my fingers and gesture to my men, and they all exit, leaving me alone with the spy.
Sweat plasters his shaggy blonde hair to his forehead, and a small red mark mars the porcelain skin of his sharp jaw.
One of my men must have punched him at some point.
His lip also has a tiny cut, a painful reminder to me of the cut Aron sustained in Javier’s attacks.
Unlike Aron’s injury, though, this one won’t leave a scar.
He’d have to survive for that.
Walking around the man in a slow circle, I silently assess him. Slim but fit, leanly muscled, nice ass, not a bad dick, but overall, he pales in comparison to Aron. If he was sent as a distraction, Javier failed.
“What’s your name?”
“B-bobby.”
“Hm. Tell me, Robert, why do you think you’re here?”
Bobby blinks for a few seconds, then swallows hard. “J-javier said to get inside. He said I’d know what to do when I got here.”
“I didn’t ask why Javier said you were here. I asked why you thought you were here.”
A confused frown mars Bobby’s pretty face, and the prevalence of those wrinkles when he relaxes tells me that he’s accustomed to that state of mind. Skating through life on his good looks, most likely. Probably not the brightest bulb.
“Well, Javier said—I mean, word is you like, um … guys like me. The general thinking is you’d like someone to keep you company. Like, privately.”
A bashful idiot, then. Can’t even outright admit that he’s gay, let alone that he was sent here as … what? A replacement? A sacrifice? “Robert, son, I mean no offense, but there’s only one person I want to keep me company. Privately. You’re not him.”
Rather than be deterred by my statement, Bobby leans forward as far as his bonds will allow.
“But Emily’s back. She’s got Maria; she takes the baby to see him every day.
You don’t seriously think he’s going to come back here when he’s got his real family with Javier, do you?
The least you could do is consider Javier’s offer. ”
“What offer?”
He sits up straighter and makes a sad attempt to puff out his slender chest. “Me.”
Damn. I don’t know if I’m more insulted for myself or on Aron’s behalf. Does Javier really think this wisp of a boy can compete with his son?
“You’ll go back to Javier tomorrow, Robert, and you’ll tell him I’m not interested.”
“Why tomorrow?”
“Because tonight you caught me in a bad mood, and you’re about to learn what it means to be in our world.”
I don’t spare his face, though I avoid hitting him in the mouth. I don’t spare his chest, arms, back, or legs. I do, however, leave his dick and ass completely untouched.
Javier is going to find out that I can’t be swayed by a pretty boy.