Chapter 19 Atlas
Atlas
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
It was Gianni.
Like the universe had a fucking sense of humor.
I stared at the shattered vase, at the blood, at the ruined garden outside the little house.
I could ignore the call. I could handle this alone. I could do what I always did: move fast, brutal, efficient, and leave nothing alive behind me.
But I’d promised.
And the worst part?
A promise to Gianni wasn’t like a promise to anyone else.
It stuck.
I answered on the first ring.
“Cuz?” His voice was bright, distracted, full of a life I didn’t have. “Hey, I’m just walking into the clinic. Mikayla’s threatening to bite a nurse if they don’t hurry. You good?”
I looked at the blood again.
No. I wasn’t good.
My voice came out flat. Controlled. “Stay with Mikayla then come straight back.”
There was a beat of silence. His tone shifted instantly. “Where are you?”
I gave him the address.
He didn’t ask why. He just exhaled once, like he’d already accepted the day was about to turn ugly.
“I’m on my way.”
“And Gianni,” I added, staring at the zip-tie in the dust.
“Yeah?”
“We’ll need men.”
Another pause. Then: “Okay.”
I hung up.
The house felt colder the second the call ended.
I stepped back out onto the porch, scanning the street. It was too quiet, too still. Like the neighborhood had collectively agreed not to see anything.
And that told me something else.
This wasn’t a sloppy snatch. This was practiced. Calculated. The kind of operation that had been done before.
I walked down the path and stopped by her crushed plants, staring at the snapped stems.
Neve Trimboli had survived death more times than she should have.
Like a cat with nine lives.
Always slipping away when the world tried to finish her.
But someone had caught her this time.
And the thought of what that meant—what hands were on her, what eyes were on her, what they planned to do—lit something in me so savage I had to force myself to breathe through it.
I didn’t know where they’d taken her yet. But I would. And when I found them, there wouldn’t be negotiations. There wouldn’t be mercy. Because if anyone thought they could steal from me—stock, money, pride—they’d already learned how that ended.
But taking her? That was worse.That was personal.
And as I stood there, looking at the ruin left behind, one truth settled into my bones like a vow: I was going to find her. And I was going to bring hell with me.
A muscle in my jaw ticked.
The old Volvo sat crooked against the curb, engine still ticking as it cooled. I stood in the middle of the street, staring at Neve’s house, at the broken plants, the cracked pot, the small gate sitting half-open like it was too afraid to close.
A slow, relentless fury crawled up my spine, setting every nerve alight as I stood there staring at the wreck of her life.
Someone had taken her. Someone had put their hands on her like she was something they could claim.
She wasn’t mine. I knew that. I didn’t own her, didn’t know her, didn’t even want her in the way men were supposed to want women—but the thought of anyone else touching her, breaking her, ending her, made something inside me twist into something ugly and possessive.
I hadn’t spared her life all those years ago just so someone else could erase her now.
I hadn’t watched her survive. Hadn’t watched her turn into something fierce and dangerous and unkillable… only to let her be extinguished by men who thought they could take whatever they wanted.
The idea of her dying like that—unseen, unmarked, swallowed by someone else’s cruelty—was unbearable.
Not because she was innocent. But because she wasn’t.
Because she was fire. And fire wasn’t meant to be snuffed out quietly.
And the more I stood there, the more that truth settled in my bones with a terrifying clarity: if Neve Trimboli was going to die, it would not be like this.
And it would not be by anyone else’s hand.
I dragged a hand down my face and forced myself to breathe. I needed clarity before I tore the entire city apart looking for her.
Across the street, a woman stood on her front porch holding a shopping bag, staring at me like she’d been waiting for me to look her way.
I walked toward her.
She hesitated at first, then set the bag down. When I stopped behind her gate, she leaned closer.
“You’re looking for the girl?” she asked.
I nodded once. “Did you see anything?”
She glanced around nervously, lowering her voice. “Three men. Big. They covered her face.”
My stomach dropped into something dark and violent.
“Do you know who they were?” My voice was too calm.
She swallowed. “No. But it was fast, not amateurs.”
I gripped the railing hard enough it creaked. “What did they look like?”
“Not Italian.” She shook her head. “Blond. Pale. Maybe… Eastern European? I don’t know.
” She pointed to the end of the street. “They shoved her into a dark van that had no plates. Headed that way.” She pointed in the direction they’d driven off, even though it was useless. By now, they could be anywhere.
My entire body went cold.
A van. Three men. Eastern European.
Which meant this wasn’t random. It wasn’t a mugging gone wrong. It sounded like a retrieval.
“Did anyone call the police?” I asked.
She nodded, eyes softening. “They don’t come here. Many times we’ve called about vandalism and stolen cars. They don’t prioritise this side of town.”
Something ugly twisted inside me.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
She nodded, sensing something dangerous in my tone, and stepped back inside without another word.
“What have you gotten yourself into this time?” Gianni asked as he came up beside me an hour later, his eyes already scanning the street like he expected it to bite.
“Everything okay with Mikayla?” I asked without looking at him. “The scans good?”
“She’s fine. Angry, hormonal, and threatening to emotionally destroy me, but medically? Perfect.”
I nodded once. It was the only acknowledgment I gave him before I spoke again.
“I need to find a girl.”
The words came out flat. Hard. Final.
Gianni didn’t answer right away. He followed my line of sight instead—taking in the small, worn house, the peeling paint, the narrow porch, the crushed garden beds where something had been trampled into the dirt.
Then he looked down the too-quiet street, reading the wrongness in the air the same way I had.
I could see the question building behind his eyes.
What the hell was the Don doing in a place like this?
And more importantly…what had happened here?
“That’s all you need to know,” I added before he could open his mouth to ask.
My tone left no room for curiosity. No room for arguments or anything except the order I’d already given.
He exhaled loudly. “You know Marcello’s going to take this apart piece by piece when he hears—”
“He won’t hear,” I snapped. “Not from you.”
Silence. Then he added, “You have my word.”
I closed my eyes, jaw tight.
“Good. Because whoever took her needs to be traced, located, and destroyed.”
Gianni whistled under his breath. “So it’s going to be one of those nights.”
“It’s going to be worse than that.”
His jaw tightened when we stepped inside the house.
“What the hell happened here?” he muttered.