Chapter 4
Chapter Four
ENZO
"Who are they?" Silas asks me the moment I step out of my car near Dom's Catskills residence.
It's set back from the road, and we're near the final curve of the property's winding drive.
The car doors quietly close, and the soft click and slide of weapons reach my ears.
"My father's men."
I really don't need to take in either friend's expression at that.
Personally, I'd prefer getting my own people, but time is short, and I want this done. Besides, as much as I hate it, I already owe my father big time for this fuck-up in losing Lyndall, so it's not like the IOUs aren't already stacking up.
He wants his men here. And they know they can't fail.
Not if they want to live.
I look around. The foliage-rich property works both ways with an ambush.
Dom won't see us coming until it's too late, and we run the risk of being hit with a surprise assault.
"Here." Cade hands me the maps and blueprints they've hacked on his phone. He's layered them, and I can easily see where the alarms are. "We've disarmed them remotely."
Silas shakes his head. "Amateur hour. Can we trust them?"
"With our secrets? Not a fucking chance. With this? Yes. It's Lyndall."
Cade nods. "And I've got feelers out for Lola, but she doesn't have her phone. I'm betting she gave it away."
"How do you know?" I ask.
Silas and Cade exchange a look. "The deep tracker? It's on the move in Manhattan."
I look up from Cade's phone and hand it back. "I mean, how do you know she doesn't have it?"
"Because it doesn't track. She hasn't gone to her apartment—"
"She might think I'm waiting."
But Silas is waiting like the annoying part of a double act. "She's too smart for that, and you fucking know it. Otherwise, your panties wouldn't be twisting over her. You'd have either kept it in your pants or done her and moved on. But no...you're—"
"Enough." Cade slides back into the conversation.
"She's smart, and the phone doesn't track with the movements she had before, but they're tracking like clockwork.
She gave it away and got herself a burner.
I've got my computer, so when this is done, I can cross-reference footage from CCTV in an ever-widening area. "
I want to snap because that would take days, but this is Cade, and he's got this covered. He has software and hacks that are smart.
If she's poking her nose in public, then...we'll find her.
"No, stay here and do that, and keep watch for Dom's backup. If he calls it."
With that, Silas and I lead the way.
One of Dad's men, Carlos, motions to the gates, but Silas holds up his phone, nodding.
He and Cade have taken down the alarms, and I'm betting any CCTV.
I nod back.
The schematics are in my head, and while Silas and Dad's men take the battle to Dom's men, gunfire raining down, I slide around the side through the back.
There's a bedroom tucked away and a place to park, say, a getaway vehicle.
The room is off storage and the kitchen, and it's the perfect storm of windowless and near a place of household traffic.
The working men will drop by for coffee or a soda. The door is perfect for getting deliveries and for coming and going if you want to do it on the down low.
A room like that, if you've got the skills to pick locks, is going to be hard to miss.
As I turn the corner, I come face to face with a panicked Dom. Big, with too many muscles, and the kind of ugly behind the surface that comes from a man who's always getting his way.
I slam him in the face with my gun, and he punches me so hard in the guts that pain explodes inside, and I can't breathe.
I reel, my feet unsteady, but I'm already gathering my strength as I come at him.
A punch to the throat, and I step on his foot to hold him as I catch him by the hair to slam my skull into his.
“Motherfucker,” I snarl, reaching for my gun.
A cry comes from the side. "Enzo?"
"Lyndall? You all right?"
That momentary slip of attention is all he needs to punch me in the face and take off.
I'm torn.
I want, desperately, to go after him and drag him down, drive a knife into his belly, and beat his skull on the ground before shooting him dead. Or worse, let him live and suffer under my cyber brand of torture. I could make him wish for death.
My first instinct is to wipe him out for taking my sister, for attempting to take Lola.
I skid to a stop in front of the door where she's been held.
She shouts my name again, and there is a key in the lock like he was...what?
Planning to take her?
To let her go?
Yeah, he'd let her go.
Not even Dom Rebecci wants to take on my family. At least, not if he wants a chance to live.
"Enzo, get me out of this place!" Her voice shakes with bravado.
She sounds scared, but I don't think he hurt her.
I try the lock, and the key rattles and sticks.
I stop and notice my hands. They are shaking.
Taking a deep breath, I will them to stop and get steady enough for me to perform the simple act of unlocking the fucking door.
"Working on it, kid."
Yeah, Rebecci had to have worked out who he had, the trouble he was in. Not hurting her would have been smart, right beneath the wisdom of not touching my sister at all.
"Did he hurt you?"
"No."
Leaving her unharmed is allowing him future breaths.
I twist the lock and pull open the door, and Lyndall comes tumbling out, a mix of frightened, angry, and wild-eyed mobster girl.
She's bruised, but no handprints or marks left by a fist that I can see.
I turn her in my hands, making sure she's in one piece, but Lyndall slaps my hands away and throws her arms around my neck, flinging herself against me, sobs hitting her.
"It's okay, it's okay. Come on, let's get out of here."
There are shouts and gunshots that rise up in the near distance as I drag her through the house, gun in hand, to where Cade is.
I put her in his arms. "Watch her."
"Always." Cade helps her into the car, checking her over.
I take off in the direction of shouts and shots because if Silas and Dad's men have the prick, I want words with him. Preferably with him on the ground and my boot on his face.
But the gunfire has stopped when I reach Silas.
Dad's men are checking over the few bodies littered about.
Silas scoffs. "The asshole's men. Asshole as in Rebecci, not asshole as in your father."
One of Dad's men looks up, black-faced, though he had to have heard the exchange. "Dom Rebecci got away, Mr. Marino. We'll call in a cleanup crew."
I nod.
Dad's men, Dad's problem.
And I ignore the small voice that he just might try and also make it mine by way of forcing me into payback with service to the family.
"Fuck," I mutter as Silas speaks quietly to Dad's man.
I'm more than aware that, though we got my sister back, I fucked up what might have been my only chance to take out Dom. Now he's going to lay low, plot his revenge. Not on me. By now he knows who I am. And not on Dad. Or even on Lyndall.
No, his revenge is going to be on the one I ultimately blame for this shitshow, too.
Lola.
"Everything's under control," Silas says.
I shoot him a dark look. "Is it? Lola's running around out there, and now I've let Rebecci get away."
He shakes his head. "In that case, so did I. So did all your father's men."
"Don't fucking patronize me. This might have been our only chance of taking out Rebecci."
Silas slaps my back. "You did what you could, and you got your sister back. Take the win for now. We'll get him eventually."
"So you say."
He grabs my arm, pulling me to a stop. "Enzo. This was the right call. Going after your sister and not Lola."
"That—"
"And getting Lyndall free over chasing Dom was also the right call." He pauses, and the guilt swamps me even as I know he's right. "Is she good?"
"You're the doctor."
"No, I'm not. I just play at one in my fake life when I need to."
"You went to medical school."
"I dropped out. I'm not Doogie."
I glare at him. "Who?"
He shakes his head. "Hopeless. Hopeless."
I don't know when we reach the hospital. It's a private one we sometimes use, and Silas knows people there.
He gets us in and arranges for someone to check on a pissed-off Lyndall.
Of course, she dozed off as we headed from the Catskills to Manhattan, but now she's awake and sitting in a wheelchair, moments away from being strapped in.
"I don't need X-rays and MRIs and scans."
Silas shakes his head. "How else are we to know if you're really Lyndall and not an alien?"
"I was twelve when I told you about my alien theory. A baby. And I don't need—"
Cade steps closer to me, ready to stop me from bringing the hospital down in a fit of rage.
Silas is still focused on my sister. "You hit your arm pretty bad when he tossed you in that trunk. If you want to be a star fiddle player, you need to get used to being poked and prodded and wrapped in bubble wrap."
She opens her mouth but snaps it shut. "Violinist."
"Just a few tests, nothing drastic." Then Silas leans in as the young doctor and a nurse hover near the door of the private room. "And it's all on your dad's dime."
She flops back dramatically in the wheelchair. "All the tests, A to Z, please."
And the nurse wheels her off.
Silas trails after the pretty doctor and nurse, and I lean against the bed.
Cade follows them with his eyes. "You know she doesn't need to be here, right?"
"Yeah, but I don't have to like it."
"You're in a good mood. Can't fucking imagine why Lola ran off. Can you?"
"I could destroy your marriage," I snarl.
And he just laughs. "You can try."
I look up at the ceiling and the fluorescent lights.
Even in this private room with a soft lamp near the plushest hospital bed around, they've got the ability to turn it into bright surgical lighting.
"Fuck, I would, but I like you."
"And Vi wouldn't listen to you."
That earns a snort of laughter from me. "Truth, man. Truth."
Cade steps out to the hall to call his wife, and I'm left alone with the heavy thoughts attached to the kind of emotions that rock the balance and make my stomach heavy with stone.
Because how the fuck did I let things get this far?
But I'm aware that whatever I did wrong in Lola's eyes doesn't make her taking my sister and throwing her into the arms of fucking danger okay.
In my eyes, that's a dire offense.
In my father's...
"She's in one piece." Silas drags me free from where I'm heading.
He wheels the chair into the room and goes to help her up.
She smacks him away. "I'll put up with the wheelchair crapola, but I can stand." She looks at me. "I'm good. Let's go."
The doctor appears. "Considering she's VIP, we'll keep her in overnight for observation. Fluids, that kind of thing."
The nurse pulls back the sheet.
Lyndall stands by the bed, arms crossed. "I had an adventure that took up a few hours, max. So—"
"This or Dad," I say.
Lyndall gets into bed as Silas ushers the doctor and nurse out.
She studies me. "I'm rescued. You're getting your way. Why the foul mood?"
"I'm fine."
"Uh huh."
I glower at her.
"Is it because of Lola?"
I laugh bitterly. "Of course, it's fucking Lola."
"Don't be mad. She didn't leave me. I came at him, and she tried to stop him—"
"Don't try to stick up for her. You got kidnapped, and she just left like she didn't have a care in the world."
"That's not what happened."
"Lola doesn't care about either of us. Now get some sleep."
I start to turn when she stops me. "Don't be so dumb, Enzo. You can't blame her. She was scared and ran because you had all those pictures and files."
I bristle. "So? I wanted to protect her. Like I want to protect you."
She blows out a breath. "I didn't have to go with her, but I thought I could keep an eye on her or bring her back. I didn't know how far you'd gone."
For a moment, I can't move.
Did she think she was helping me?
But she continues, and I could slap myself. "Digging so deep into her life, controlling so much."
"Yes—"
"Enzo. She was scared of you because, to a normal person, your actions sometimes come across a little bit psychotic."
My jaw twitches. "Are you done?"
"I think so."
"Good. Get some sleep."
I leave the room, quietly closing the door behind me, and accept the coffee from Cade as we sit outside the room in the hall for the night.
As Cade and Silas talk to each other, I know what I have to do.
It doesn't matter that Lola wants nothing to do with me. It doesn't matter that we will never have a future together.
As long as she has a future.
And for that, I need to find her.
Before Dom does.