Chapter 2
Two
This isn’t how it was supposed to go. This girl, whoever the hell she is, is not the one I came for. Frustration and anger roll through me. It took weeks of searching just to find this hell-hole of an address after searching fruitlessly through several others, and it has yielded the same results.
Elio Agostini isn’t fucking here.
In his place is a waif of a girl who appears as if a gentle wind could blow her over. Even with the waning light of the sun hidden behind the clouds, I don’t miss the hollowness of her cheeks and the dark circles beneath her lashes. It amazes me, peering down at her now, that she managed to put up such a fight. Who is she to Elio and why is she here in this godforsaken part of Montana?
“Boss.” My gaze shifts from the unconscious girl lying on the cold ground at my feet to Dario, my second in command, who is currently trudging toward me through a thick layer of snow.
“Did you find anything?”
Dario shakes his head. Disappointment washes through me. Elio Agostini is a dead man walking, and he knows it. His failed assassination attempt put a target on his back. It’s why he’s running, hiding in the shadows of the underground no doubt. He would know that once I discovered his name I would pursue him with everything I have. You don’t try to murder the Don of the American Mafia and expect to live long if you fail.
“Nothing about where Elio could be hiding.” He blows out a long breath, the temperature cold enough that I can see it. His gaze wanders to the girl before settling back on me. “She might know where he is, though.”
A sneer of disgust paints my lips as I stare at the girl askance. If she was important to Elio, he wouldn’t have left her here to starve.
“I doubt his little girlfriend here knows anything.” I shake my head. “She is clearly strung out and barely able to function.”
“Not his girlfriend,” Dario rebuts, handing me a small stack of papers. It is some kind of blood test results from a genealogy lab in Italy.
“This can’t be accurate,” I hiss as I thumb through several of the reports, all of them testing his DNA against a small group of people. Some of the names I recognize. Especially the last one where it shows a fraternal match of ninety-nine percent.
“It is,” my sottocapo confirms. “Elio Agostini is the eldest son of Faro Nardoni.” His eyes dart back to the unconscious girl. “And that is Faro’s only daughter, Gia.”
This information should be a golden ticket to find Elio, but it unsettles me more than anything else. Not only is Faro Nardoni sottocapo to my traitorous uncle in Italy, but it also means that he is the one behind the target on my back and the girl is most likely the reason Elio was willing to take a shot at one of the most powerful men in the country .
“That fucking testa di cazzo ,” I snarl, shoving the papers into Dario’s chest before bending down to pick up the girl. Her lips are beginning to turn blue, her fair skin pebbled in goosebumps as shivers rack her body. I don’t need this right now. My plan had been to leave her out here to die in the cold, but that was before I knew how valuable she could be. I’ll force her to get clean from whatever drug she is on, have my staff nurse her back to health, and then she’ll tell me everything I need to know about Faro and Elio, or I’ll make sure her death will be far more painful than simple hypothermia.
“Call ahead to the airstrip and let them know we are coming.”
Taking his phone out of his pocket, Dario asks, “For home?”
Fuck. Another thing I hadn’t thought of. I can’t just take her home at the moment. I need to get to New Orleans. It’s bad enough I missed Kenzo’s wedding for this. I don’t want to miss out on the meeting as well. We aren’t often able to all be together in one place. When we formed the brotherhood after the death of our fathers, we made a rule that we wouldn’t become a target like they had.
“No,” I tell him, holding the shivering girl close to my chest, sharing what little body heat I possess with her. She’s a tiny thing, barely pushing five feet, but there is a fire in her eyes that intrigues me. From the state of everything, it doesn’t appear as if she’s been surviving out here on her own all that well. “We’ll go to New Orleans as planned. Have Kenzo’s doctor and an addiction specialist on standby for when we arrive.”
“I don’t think she’s on drugs, boss,” Dario pipes up as we make our way toward the SUV .
“Sure as hell looks like it to me,” I snort. “I’ve seen hookers in better condition.”
Dario shakes his head as he pulls open the back door to the Escalade we arrived in, waiting for me to set the girl down on the back seat before continuing. “The power to the cabin was cut. It didn’t just go out because the bill didn’t get paid.”
“Why would someone cut the power and just leave her?” Taking off my jacket, I lay it over her shivering form. It isn’t much, but once we get the warm air circulating, it should help her warm back up.
“Because they knew Elio most likely wasn’t coming back?” Dario shrugged. “I mean, she’s out here in the middle of nowhere without any way to get to the nearest town in this snow. There isn’t a neighbor for miles. I’m also guessing that whoever cut the power also arranged for the food delivery to never come. The pantries are bare and from the looks of her, they’ve been that way for a while.”
This girl was targeted. “Whoever did all that wanted her death to appear natural. Like she died out here surviving.”
Dario nods in agreement as we drag ourselves out of the cold and into the front seats. “Faro Nardoni has never claimed a male heir,” he points out. Turning the key, the engine starts up easily, and I quickly adjust the temperature for the backseat. “Hell, I barely remember him having a daughter.”
He doesn’t remember, but I do. It was so long ago that it might as well have been another lifetime. Back when my father was alive. The memory is hazy, but I do remember Faro’s wife holding Gia in her arms when she was no more than two or three. A scared little toddler with pigtails and too many frills. It was the year I turned thirteen. Our parents were planning an engagement between us. An idea that disgusted me then as much as it does now. She was nothing more than a baby and I was just a kid.
Not that it mattered what plans were made. Four short years later, he betrayed my father, stabbing him in the back like Brutus did to Caesar. My Uncle Salvatore’s betrayal changed everything for me—and the men I call brothers. A cascade of events left the three of us without our fathers, their empires crumbling beneath the weight of their deaths.
Together, we built something new. Something better.
The Sovereign Brotherhood.
Three branches of the most powerful crime syndicates working together, creating an even greater empire than our predecessors. We run everything from Nevada down to my home base in Florida. We all have our own ventures, running our branches independently, but the bulk of our empire is shared.
Adrian, who is head of the Volkov Bratva in Las Vegas, runs our casinos, starts new business ventures, and operates the legality of our businesses. Kenzo, who runs the Yakuza in New Orleans, likes to get his hands dirty. He takes care of our illegal brothels and escort services as well as our guns and drugs. Most of his meetings involve shady individuals and he thrives on it.
Meanwhile, I take care of the money laundering portion of our businesses, running the money through our legit businesses that offer high cash flow. I’ve always been better with numbers than people.
No one dares fuck with us. Which is why it takes me by surprise that Elio took a job no one would have dared. Even the most infamous hitmen won’t take a contract for one of us. What makes the girl in the back seat so special that Elio would risk losing his life for her? She’s a sister he never knew he had.
I spend the next hour musing over it as we make our way through the snowy streets to the small private airstrip. The pilot and stewardess are waiting for us on the tarmac, along with the rest of my men. Diego parks the car, not bothering to shut the engine off since one of the local men will be taking it with him. Carefully, attempting not to wake her, I lift the girl into my arms, making sure to keep my jacket bundled around her small frame.
“Boss,” Hugo, on my capo’s greets me, a smirk tilting his lips. “Everything is ready to go. Hiro would like you to call him as soon as you can. Some shit went down at Kenzo’s wedding and he needs to pull some old data from a phone.”
“Have my equipment pulled out from the luggage rack,” I tell him as I walk past him. Hugo eyes the girl curiously but doesn’t comment. My men know better than to question things that have nothing to do with them. They trust me to fill them in if it is important and right now, contacting Hiro is more important than bringing him up to date with what we found. Dario can do that if he feels the need to.
Easing the girl into one of the plane’s seats, I turn toward Dario, who is already next to me with the provisions I need. A pair of handcuffs and several blankets. Within moments, I have her hands cuffed in front of her and the blankets tucked around her tightly. I cinch her seatbelt over the blankets to keep them from falling off during the flight and then take my seat across the aisle from her.
Hugo hands me the laptop and drive I requested. We all settle in as the plane taxis down the runway. I busy myself with setting up my equipment and about the time we level off, I am ready to help Hiro in any way I can .
“Sir.” Hiro comes on the line before the first ring barely finishes.
“Fill me in.” There is no point in wasting time with pleasantries. I need to know what happened at Kenzo’s wedding.
“Small ragtag group attempted to kidnap the boss’s wife right after the ceremony,” he tells me. “Nearly got away with her.”
“How is everyone?” There is a short list of things that cause my heart to race. This is one of them. The three men who I call brothers are the most important people in my life. There are very few people outside of our circle that I would die for that isn’t them.
“Evaline is shaken up.” That is understandable. Kenzo’s new wife wouldn’t be used to such violence, not the way we are. Like me, Adrian and Kenzo grew up with violence in their veins. Even Vanya, Adrian’s wife, who grew up in the Greek Mafia, is accustomed to violence. But Evaline? Her parents weren’t part of the mafia. They are rich, for sure, but Evaline and Kenzo’s arranged marriage came from a dark part of Kenzo’s father’s past. “Kenzo is ready to kill some people.”
No surprise there. He is always one for violence.
“What do you need from me?”
There is silence on the other line and then what sounds like the shuffling of papers.
“I need access to some deleted messages on Charity LaMontagne’s phone,” Hiro says. “She’s deleted everything, and I’m not sure how to retrieve it.”
Charity LaMontagne? That’s interesting.
“Isn’t that Evaline’s mother?” I ask him curiously.
“Yes,” Hiro confirms. “We think she is behind the attempted kidnapping. She miraculously disappeared right after the entire incident happened. Left behind her car and phone.”
A clear sign that she is running from something. Or someone. Lucky for Hiro, even if someone deletes their messages and call logs completely from their phone, if they didn’t do a factory reset, the data is still saved in the phone’s internal memory.
For the next half an hour, I walk Hiro through how to pull up the information he is searching for and help him sift through the data.
“When do you think you’ll get here?” he asks when we finish going through everything. I glance down at my watch.
“Sometime after midnight.”
Stirring from the seat across the aisle pulls my attention from Hiro and I miss what he says. Telling him I’ll be there soon, I hang up the call and stow my gear back in its bag before handing it off to Hugo. The rest of the trip is going to be very interesting.
Movement has me peering over at the small woman curled up in the seat.
My piccola cerva is waking up.