Chapter 3 #3
Nico parked beside him.
Before anyone could stop me, I opened the door and stepped into the cold.
Damian met me halfway across the wet concrete.
“I told you to stay at the tower.”
“You also told me you would find him.”
“I am finding him.”
“And I am here.”
The rain had stopped, but water still fell in a slow rhythm from the fire escape above us. Damian’s expression was controlled in the way I was beginning to recognize as dangerous. His anger did not rise. It condensed.
“This is not a place for an argument,” he said.
“Then stop making every place one.”
His gaze cut toward Marcus, who suddenly found something urgent to inspect near the car.
“We have reason to believe Vittorio D’Angelo is inside,” Damian said quietly. “He does not care who gets hurt.”
“Neither does your family, apparently.”
The words landed harder than I intended. Damian’s face did not change, but something in his eyes did.
“You are right to be angry,” he said. “But do not mistake me bringing you into a secure vehicle for agreement that you belong inside a warehouse with men who might shoot at us.”
I wanted to say that no one had brought me anywhere.
The truth was more complicated. I had stepped into Nico’s car because my father was missing and because some part of me trusted that Damian would not let his people harm me.
I hated that trust. It felt like an early payment for a debt I had not agreed to owe.
“So what do I do?” I asked.
“Stay in the car with Marcus.”
“That is not why I came.”
“It is what I can allow.”
“I did not ask for your allowance.”
Damian closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, he lowered his voice.
“Then ask for the thing that will keep you alive.”
The sentence should have made me angrier. Instead it cut through me because it sounded almost frightened.
A gunshot cracked somewhere inside the warehouse.
Everyone moved at once. Marcus put a hand at the center of my back and guided me behind the SUV. Damian had a weapon in his hand before I saw where it came from. Nico was already speaking into his radio.
The sound echoed across the empty district, then vanished.
My breath came shallow. I hated that my body betrayed me first. I hated even more that Damian saw it.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did.
His face was close, rain caught at the dark edge of his hair. “You are going to stay with Marcus. You are going to keep your phone on. If anyone says your father is inside, you wait for my voice before you move. Understand?”
“Only if you answer a question.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Now?”
“Now.”
Nico swore under his breath nearby. Damian stared at me.
“Ask.”
“Why did you come yourself?”
For the first time since I had known him, he looked caught off balance.
“You know why.”
“No. I know you have men. I know you have a family with guns and lawyers and a building that seems to know when I receive calls. You could have sent anyone.”
The warehouse loomed behind him, black windows like missing teeth. He glanced toward it, then back at me.
“Because your father is involved in something that touches my family,” he said. “And because you were going to come whether I wanted you to or not.”
“That is not all.”
“No.”
His silence stretched between us.
“I do not like not knowing where you are,” he said at last.
It was an odd thing to say. Not a confession. Not a promise. But it did not sound like a line he had prepared.
Marcus cleared his throat. “Movement on the east side.”
Damian stepped back.
“Car,” he said. “Now.”
I did not move fast enough. That was my mistake. Not because I wanted to defy him. Because the side door of the warehouse opened at the same moment, and my father stumbled into the light.
“Papa!”
He was alive. His coat was torn. One side of his face was swelling. Two men held him by the arms, but he was walking. The relief was so immediate it was almost violent.
Then I saw the gun at his ribs.
Vittorio D’Angelo stood behind him with an umbrella over his head, as if he had come to inspect a property. I knew him from news photographs: handsome in a colder, sharper way than Damian, with a smile that never reached the rest of his face.
“Mr. Voss,” he called across the lot. “You brought the daughter. I told your father he had expensive instincts.”
Damian’s hand shifted near his weapon. “Let Matteo walk away.”
Vittorio smiled. “I did not know you had a sentimental streak.”
“I do not.”
“Then this must be business.” He looked directly at me. “Miss Marchetti, I am sorry you are seeing your father at a bad moment. He has a habit of remembering things only after people raise their voices.”
My father shook his head once, barely. Do not speak.
“Whatever you want, you can say it to me,” I said.
Damian turned sharply. “Elena.”
Vittorio’s smile widened. “There she is. That is why he wants you, I suppose. You are not as decorative as the stories.”
“Do not talk about her,” Damian said.
The change in his voice was slight. It altered the entire lot.
Vittorio noticed. His expression brightened with a kind of private satisfaction.
“I am beginning to understand the offer,” he said.
“No,” I said before Damian could answer. “You are beginning to misunderstand it.”
Both men looked at me.
My heart was beating too fast. I could feel it in my throat. But I had spent years calming brides who believed a single disaster could destroy a day. There was always something to do. Find the missing person. Move the flowers. Change the music. Give everyone one clear instruction at a time.
I looked at my father.
“You told him something,” I said. “Something he thinks you have. Is that why he took you?”
Matteo’s eyes closed for a second.
Vittorio’s fingers tightened on the umbrella handle.
That was answer enough.
Damian saw it too.
“You are looking for an archive,” he said.
Vittorio’s smile disappeared.
The next seconds happened too quickly for thought.
A truck roared from behind the far shed, headlights flooding the lot.
Nico shoved me down behind the SUV as Marcus returned fire at the roofline.
Someone pulled my father sideways. Damian moved through the chaos with a violence so contained it was almost silent.
I heard him shout my name once. I heard my father answer. Then a flash grenade exploded inside the warehouse, throwing white light across the wet concrete.
When my vision returned, Vittorio was gone.
My father was on his knees beside Marcus’s car, coughing hard, blood on his collar but alive. Damian stood twenty feet away with his coat torn at the shoulder. Nico had one hand pressed against a cut above his brow and the other wrapped around a radio.
I ran to my father.
He reached for me with shaking hands. “Elena.”
“You do not get to apologize yet,” I said, and then I was crying into his coat, furious at him for making me cry where Damian could see.
His arms came around me carefully.
“I am sorry,” he whispered anyway.
Across the lot, Damian gave orders into his phone. He did not come closer. He did not touch me. He watched the shadows beyond the warehouse as though he could force them to give back every answer they had taken.
When I looked up, he met my eyes.
There was blood darkening the fabric at his shoulder.
For one reckless heartbeat, I forgot he was the man asking for my future.
I saw only the man who had come himself.
The warehouse location had been found.
The Voss men began moving around me, speaking into earpieces, opening maps, checking weapons. Damian looked at me once, and I saw the choice form in his face before he made it.
He wanted to leave me behind.
I stepped closer.
"I am coming," I said.
His eyes narrowed. "No."
"That is not an answer."
For the first time, he looked almost helpless.
"Elena."
"You said I had a choice. I am choosing."
He stared at me for a long second. Then he looked away, jaw tight.
"You will stay in the vehicle," he said.
"I will negotiate that part when we get there."
Nico laughed openly this time.
Damian did not. But when he turned back to me, something in his face had changed. Not surrender. Recognition.