Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Bruno
The door to Pietro's office slams open.
Liam strides in, phone pressed to his ear, face tight with controlled urgency. He ends the call and looks directly at me.
"We have it."
My hands grip the armrests so hard the leather groans.
"Where?"
"Industrial complex on the south side. Abandoned meatpacking plant." Liam pulls up something on his tablet, sliding it across Pietro's desk. "My contact inside the Castellano organization just confirmed. They've been using it as a staging ground for the past seventy-two hours."
Nico leans over the desk, studying the screen. "That's fifteen miles from where we found her phone signal."
"Decoy." Liam's jaw tightens. "They dumped her phone in the warehouse district to throw us off. Bought themselves time while we searched the wrong buildings."
Twelve hours I've been searching the wrong fucking place.
I force the thought down. Rage won't help her. Rage will get her killed.
"How many men?" Pietro asks.
"Eight confirmed inside the building. But the complex has multiple entry points, and they've got surveillance on the perimeter." Liam swipes to another screen. "We need at least twenty to breach without giving them time to react."
"We have twenty," Valentino says from his position by the window. "I can have Dante's crew here in forty minutes."
"Do it."
Liam hesitates.
I know that hesitation. I've seen it on his face exactly three times in the fifteen years he's worked for this family. Each time, it meant something I didn't want to hear.
"What else?"
Liam meets my eyes. "The man running the operation inside. My contact identified him. Marco Castellano's personal enforcer. Goes by Scar."
"The one from the security footage."
"Yes." Liam's voice drops. "He's been tasked with eliminating the hostage if the breach goes wrong."
The room goes silent.
I can hear my own heartbeat. Can feel it pounding against my ribs like it's trying to break free.
"And?"
"He kills for pleasure." Liam doesn't look away from me. "My contact says he's been waiting for an excuse. Any excuse. He wants her dead, Bruno. He's hoping we give him a reason."
Something cracks inside my chest.
Like ice on a frozen lake, splintering outward from a single point of impact.
Antonella.
A man who kills for pleasure is standing between me and her.
I look at the tablet screen. At the building layout. At the entry points and surveillance positions and the room where they're most likely holding her.
This needs to happen the right way.
Not fast. Not reckless. Not the way I would have done it two years ago, charging in with guns blazing and no regard for whether I lived or died.
The right way.
The way a Don would do it.
I grip the armrests of my wheelchair.
And I stand.
"Bruno—" Valentino's voice cuts across the room. "Don't even think about it."
"Watch me."
I straighten my spine. I lock my knees. I force my weight onto legs that haven't held me upright in front of my brothers in two years.
The room goes completely still.
Nico's face drains of color. His mouth opens, closes, opens again.
"When the hell did that happen?"
Valentino sighs. The sound is heavy, exhausted, like a man who's been carrying a secret for too long.
"Months. He’s had real progress in the last weeks though."
Pietro stares at me. His expression is unreadable, but I can see the shock beneath the surface. The disbelief. The hope he's trying not to feel.
"Bruno..."
"This is the moment."
My voice comes out steady. Stronger than I feel. Stronger than I have any right to feel with my legs trembling and my muscles burning and my body screaming at me to sit back down.
"This is the moment I need to walk."
I take a step.
Another step.
I don't stop.
Another step.
Valentino moves toward me, hands outstretched like he's ready to catch me when I fall.
I won't fall.
Another step.
I'm at Pietro's desk now. Close enough to see the moisture in his eyes that he's trying to hide. Close enough to see Nico's hands shaking at his sides.
Another step.
I reach the edge of the desk and grip it with both hands. I'm standing. And I will be standing until I get her back.
"Twenty men," I say. My voice doesn't waver. "Forty minutes. We breach from three entry points simultaneously. Valentino takes the north entrance with Dante's crew. Nico takes the east with our soldiers. Pietro coordinates from the command vehicle."
I look at each of them in turn.
My brothers. My family. The men who watched me break and never stopped believing I could put myself back together.
"I take the south entrance. The one closest to where they're holding her."
"Bruno—" Pietro starts.
"I'm going to walk into that building." I cut him off. "I'm going to find the man who took my wife. And I'm going to kill him with my own hands."
Silence.
Then Valentino nods.
"Forty minutes," he says, pulling out his phone. "I'll have Dante's crew here in thirty."
Antonella
I wake to darkness.
Not the complete darkness of unconsciousness, but the dim grey of a room with no windows. My head throbs where the water bottle connected with my temple, a dull ache that pulses with every heartbeat.
I'm lying down.
The realization hits me like ice water. I'm lying down on something soft. A mattress.
Panic claws up my throat.
My hands fly to my body, searching for pain, for damage, for evidence of what they might have done while I was unconscious. My dress is still on. Dirty, torn at the hem, but still covering me. My legs are free of the zip ties. My wrists too.
I don't feel anything else. No new pain. No soreness. Nothing except the throbbing in my head and the raw ache where they cut off my ring.
But that doesn't mean—
"You're awake."
I jerk upright so fast my vision swims. The room tilts sideways, and I have to press my palms against the thin mattress to keep from falling over.
The scar-faced man sits in a metal chair three feet away. Watching me. His legs are crossed at the ankle, his posture relaxed, like he's been waiting for me to wake up for hours.
Maybe he has.
"What did you do to me?"
My voice comes out hoarse. Cracked. I don't recognize it.
He tilts his head. The scar that runs from his eyebrow to his jaw catches the dim light, twisting his face into something inhuman.
"Nothing." He sounds almost disappointed. "Yet."
I press my hand against my stomach. Against the baby growing inside me. The baby Bruno doesn't even know is in danger.
"What do you want?"
"What the Sartoris owe us." He uncrosses his legs, leaning forward in the chair. "Something very important. Something your husband's family took from mine."
"They'll give you what you want." I keep my voice steady. "Bruno will give you whatever you want. Just let me go."
He laughs.
The sound is wrong. Too high. Too sharp. Like glass breaking against concrete.
"Let you go." He shakes his head slowly. "No. I don't think so."
"But if you what you want—"
"I'll get it." He cuts me off. "Your husband will do whatever I ask to get you back."
He stands.
The chair scrapes against the concrete floor, and I flinch at the sound. He's tall. Taller than I remembered. His shadow falls across the mattress, across me, blocking out what little light exists in this room.
"But here's the thing." He takes a step closer. "I made a promise."
My heart pounds against my ribs.
"What promise?"
He smiles.
It's the worst thing I've ever seen. Worse than the scar. Worse than the emptiness in his eyes. That smile tells me everything I need to know about what kind of man he is.
"You won't end up alive."
The words hang in the air between us.
I can't breathe.
"Bruno will come for you." He takes another step. "He'll bring the ledgers. He'll do everything I ask. And then he'll take you home."
Another step.
"But you won't be breathing when he does."
My hands are shaking. I press them harder against the mattress, trying to stop the trembling, trying to think through the panic that's flooding my brain.
I need a way out.
I need to buy time. I need to find something, anything, that will keep me alive long enough for Bruno to find me.
"If this is about money—"
"It's not about money."
"But it could be." I force the words out. "The Sartoris have more money than you can imagine. Whatever the Castellanos are paying you, Bruno will double it. Triple it. He'll give you anything you want."
He stops.
For one second, I think it worked. I think I've found the crack in his armor, the weakness I can exploit.
Then he laughs again.
"You think this is about payment?" He shakes his head. "You think I'm doing this for money?"
He moves closer. Too close. Close enough that I can smell him—sweat and cigarettes and something metallic that might be blood.
"I'm doing this because I want to."
His hand reaches out.
I try to pull back, but there's nowhere to go. The wall is behind me. The mattress is beneath me. And he's in front of me, his fingers brushing against my cheek like he has every right to touch me.
"Such a pretty face." His thumb traces along my cheekbone. "Such a waste."
My stomach heaves.
I turn my head and gag, bile rising in my throat. His touch feels like poison on my skin. Like something rotting. Like death itself has reached out and marked me.
"Don't touch me."
I stumble sideways, away from him, away from his hand. My knees hit the concrete floor and I retch, but nothing comes up. I haven't eaten in hours.
He watches me.
He doesn't move to help. Doesn't move to hurt me either. Just watches with that empty expression, that dead smile, like I'm an insect he's studying before he crushes it beneath his boot.
"Your husband has some more hours." He steps back toward the door. "Enjoy them. They're the last you'll ever have."
The door slams shut behind him.
I stay on the floor, shaking, my hand pressed against my stomach.
Bruno will come.
He has to come.