Chapter 11
Eleven
She infuriates me. In less than twenty-four hours the little mafia princess has managed to get under my skin and make my blood boil. The gall of this woman. Touching my laptop and fiddling with my programs. Who the hell does she think she is?
Even if what she managed to do was brilliant.
Sitting opposite Gia and her newest savior, Vanya, I shift through the new data, pinpointing the parts of the video she managed to resurrect and inputting the algorithm needed to track Charity across the cameras.
“All right,” I huff as I stream the video onto Kenzo’s main television. “This is right before the reception” Clicking my mouse, I press play. The cameras follow Evaline’s mother from the ceremony up to the bridal suite, and then twenty minutes later she is storming from the room. This checks out with Evaline’s version of events.
Once outside the room, she takes a moment to calm herself, checks her phone, and then proceeds to the elevator. I manage to track her through several more cameras to the back entrance by the kitchens .
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself when I lose track of her. It takes me several seconds before I manage to find her again. She pops back up in the alley and gets into a yellow cab. Adrian picks up his tablet, using my backdoor software to punch a hole in the cab company’s database to track their pickups and drop-offs for the day.
“Took her to a seedy motel near the bus station.”
Fuck.
We managed to find Charity not long after we visited the jeweler shop at the mall. She’d been selling a sob story to one of the cashiers about needing cash to leave her abusive husband. She’d been ready to hop on a bus to God knows where using a fake I.D. with her dead daughter’s name on it.
Fucking scum.
The problem is that when we confronted her, it wasn’t us she was afraid of. It wasn’t us she was running from. I doubt the things we learned from Charity will help Evaline after all her mother put her through, but the witch had put her daughter first. For once.
Now we just need to find who actually ordered Evaline’s kidnapping. Someone wanted us to chase Charity LaMontagne knowing that she was a dead end. Literally.
“Why delete the footage,” I wonder. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe she wanted to give herself some time to not be traced?” Hiro, Kenzo’s second-in-command, speaks up from the other side of the room. Kenzo shakes his head, doubting that Charity would even think to do that. Or care to.
“The other video,” Gia murmurs, still curled in on herself, clutching Vanya’s hand like it is a life raft that will save her from me. “Whoever is in that deleted section is the one who didn’t want to get caught. I think the other one was amateur hour. It pieced together too easily and wasn’t corrupted because someone from inside the security room did it. The other one was done remotely, which is why it needed a new coding process to disentangle all the corrupted data.”
That is a scenario that makes more sense. Charity could have easily paid off a security guard to delete her exit footage. I’m betting that whoever remotely tried to erase the second video had no idea that Charity was using the wedding as a shroud to cover her running away. In a way, Evaline’s mother is the reason we even searched for deleted data in the first place. We might not have found the second corruption if it wasn’t for her amateur attempt to make herself disappear.
I pull up the second video and press play. It’s distorted, the footage a little too grainy, but with how much corruption had to be pieced back together, it is the best we are going to get.
“We had a deal,” the man in the video states, his voice sounding robotic from the audio distortion. His back is turned, so I don’t recognize him, but Kenzo does.
“Santiago,” he growls.
“We did,” a feminine voice confirms, but it is too hard to ascertain who it might be with the distortion. The female’s back is turned also, and with how short she appears to be, the only thing the camera is catching clearly is her dark hair which is being held together by some kind of pin. “But you failed three years ago and now the deal has changed.”
“What do you want me to do with her, then?” he asks.
“Use her however you see fit.” The woman laughs. “Let your men have every inch of her and then ship her back piece by piece to her husband. Just like I did with his father.”
The air in the room feels heavy, almost suffocating, as I shift my gaze to my best friend. Kenzo stands rigid, his eyes glued to the flickering screen, disbelief etched across his face. His jaw is set so tightly it looks like it might shatter. Memories are flooding back—memories of those harrowing days following his father’s murder. He is no doubt remembering the gut-wrenching sorrow that visited him relentlessly, as fragments of his father’s body appeared on his doorstep like haunting specters. Back then, he was so young, grappling with a world that had suddenly become unrecognizable.
We were so young then.
Boys who were barely men.
“If he ever finds out what we did” Santiago stammers.
“He never will,” the woman assures him. “The only thing he will ever know is what he is told. I’ve constructed a world around him that will never fall.”
Santiago nods his head.
“Just be sure your men don’t get caught,” the woman continues. “And make sure you cover your tracks. If he’s anything like his father, he will go to the ends of the earth to find the one he loves.”
Santiago tilts his head.
The woman waves her hand dismissively. “Let’s just say that Evaline will meet the same fate as the woman my late husband was supposed to marry.”
“Shit,” I growl as the video cuts out. “I’m sorry, brother. The footage is too damaged to get the rest of it.”
Kenzo doesn’t move. He’s still staring at the television screen, a blank expression pasted on his face. It unnerves me. Out of the three of us, he’s always been the calm one, but this—this should make him angry. Volatile. We never discovered who was behind the attack that killed his and Adrian’s father.
All of us were reeling when it happened. I’d been on my way to Italy to see my father when everything happened. In the span of a day, all three of us lost the men who built us. We also lost their empires. Kenzo and Adrian to the sharks who had been waiting to tear them apart and me—my uncle took everything away from me.
“Let me see if I can clear the audio up,” I tell him as I start typing away on the laptop again. “Maybe we can identify the woman by voice.”
I don’t miss the way Gia and Vanya share a knowing glance. Neither does Kenzo.
“What?” he snaps at them. “What do you know that you aren’t sharing?”
There he is. The monster simmering just beneath the cooling surface. A monster that thirsts for vengeance. And he will get it. I’ll make sure he does.
“Easy, brother,” Adrian growls at him, stepping between Kenzo and his wife. “Don’t speak to my wife like that.”
Kenzo takes a step back, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace.
“If you know something,” he says gently, “please share.”
Gia’s throat bobs and peers at me hesitantly, but she uncurls from herself and shifts her gaze to Kenzo. “The comb, in the woman’s hair.” She turns back to Vanya, who nods her head in encouragement. “We’ve seen it before.”
“Where?” Kenzo asks, his tone even softer than before. I know what he is doing. He is treating her like a frightened kitten, one who is ready to bolt. And damn if it doesn’t punch me in the gut to see her that way. It shouldn’t, but it does .
“In Evaline’s hair,” she whispers. “She was wearing it when she left to meet your mother.”
The three of us exchange glances.
“It isn’t Evaline in the video,” Kenzo points out. “She must have the same comb as someone else.”
Gia shakes her head, determination shining in her eyes.
“No, that comb is called a Medusa comb,” she explains, rolling her shoulders back as if she needs to sit straighter to give herself some confidence. “They’re uniquely designed. No two are alike in color or stones.”
Medusa.
What had Charity tried to tell us right before she was shot and killed? Her last two syllables had been Me ? —
“Where did she get the comb from?” Adrian pipes in, his brow creased as he takes in everything Gia just told us.
My little mafia princess bites her lower lip, her gaze dipping to the floor, all signs of her earlier confidence gone.
“Gia,” I warn her.
She lets out a small breath and stares Kenzo square in the eye.
“Your mother.”
Fuck it all to hell, she’s right. It all makes too much sense.
“Why though?” Kenzo finally asks the question that has been sitting on his mind since Gia dropped her small bomb of information on us. The three of us are currently gearing up in the armory one floor down from Kenzo’s penthouse for the storm to come.
Someone took Evaline and we need to find her. Several of Kenzo’s men reported that her driver’s transponder went offline not long after she left the penthouse. It hasn’t been caught because whoever is working with Megumi, Kenzo’s mother, managed to create a loop so the car appeared to be sitting outside his mother’s place.
“Why else,” I shrug, placing a few extra magazines on my belt. “Power. Resistance to change. Vengeance for a murdered child. All three of those things are strong motivators for your mother to want your father dead.”
Kenzo nods his head knowingly, agreeing with my assessment. I don’t have to be a mind reader to know that he is scouring every incident since his father’s death and connecting the dots back to his mother.
“How are we going to find her?” Hiro asks, adorning his own gear. “We’ve tracked her to the border of the National Park, but after that, the chip in her ring goes dead. That park is thousands of square miles. There is no way we’ll be able to find her in there.”
Kenzo curses, banging his fist against the weapons cage at his second’s words. He knows Hiro is just speaking out loud what we are all thinking, but the guy is lucky it isn’t his face that got punched.
“I can help with that,” a small voice speaks up from the doorway.
What the fuck?
“How the hell did you get down here?” A low growl rumbles in my chest at seeing Gia standing in the doorway—with my laptop—again.
Her upper teeth dig into her plump lower lip as she glances up at me through her thick eyelashes. The laptop is shaking in her arms, the weight still too much for her. Sighing, I stalk toward her. She takes a small step back, her eyes rounding at the no-doubt murderous expression on my face, but she doesn’t fully back down .
“Here.” I take the laptop from her and guide her over to the table where our weapons are laid. Clearing a spot, I set the laptop down and motion for her to take a seat on the stool. “Fucking sit before you fall over and break my shit.”
Kenzo and Adrian share an amused smile that irks me. I’m not being nice. If she doesn’t sit down, then I’ll end up having to replace my laptop because she’ll drop it.
“Shove off,” I hiss at them when they notice me glaring at them. They’re chuckling, the assholes.
“How do you think you can help?” Adrian asks, securing his gun.
“The comb,” Gia starts. “It doesn’t have the range that her wedding ring chip has, but that won’t matter since we know the area they took her. Once we get within range, I should be able to track the comb to her precise location.”
“Should?” Kenzo raises a skeptical brow. “We’re going off your what? Intuition?”
Gia shrugs. “I’ve never tracked a Medusa comb before,” is her snarky response. “Have you?”
Adrian laughs, quickly covering it with a cough.
Kenzo shakes his head and blows out a breath, turning to me.
“She’s your captive,” he says.
Gia sulks at the reminder, her shoulders drooping slightly. If she is thinking that this will earn her freedom, she is mistaken.
“Grab her a vest and some glasses,” I instruct Hiro. “We’ll take her with us.”
The little princess perks up at my words, her eyes shining as Hiro helps her into a tactical vest and fits her with a pair of safety glasses. She is going to be sorely disappointed when we return and nothing has changed. But for now, I’ll let her believe she is gaining something .
It will be fun to watch the smile fall from her face when she realizes I’m not letting her go. Because if this is going to end how I think it is, Gia Nardoni just became the pawn I need to regain what is rightfully mine.
And she isn’t going to like it one bit.