Chapter 19 IZZY
IZZY
The world doesn’t make sense anymore.
Voices blur together around me. Teachers. Parents. A policeman asking questions.
But all I hear is the same sentence repeating over and over in my head.
A man picked him up.
A man picked up son. A stranger picked him up, and now he’s nowhere to be found.
The ground feels unstable under my feet, like the whole world tilted and no one bothered to tell my body how to stand on it anymore.
Beside me, Nico hasn’t moved.
He stands very still, but the stillness isn’t calm. It’s something sharper than that.
Danger, I think.
“Tell me what he looked like,” he demands from the girl at the front desk, Anya, a young redhead seconds away from bursting into guilty tears. His voice is low. Controlled.
I envy him for that. It’s taking everything I have not to break down right now, but Nico’s mafia mask has slipped back on seamlessly, like he’s used to this. Shifting back into Don Neri in times of crisis.
The kind of Don who takes no prisoners.
Anya swallows. “Tall. Dark coat. I thought— I thought he was family. He knew the boy’s name. I’m so, so sorr—”
“Accent?” Nico cuts her off.
“I… I think he was Russian or thereabouts. I’m not sure.”
Nico pulls out his phone without another word.
“Leone,” he says when the call connects. “Pull every man we have. Now. Schools, streets, cameras. I want every set of eyes we own looking for Noah.”
He ends the call and starts speaking to someone else immediately. I get why he has to—he’s thinking of Noah—but something inside me yearns for the man I woke up with today. The one who held me close and promised me we’d be a family forever.
I need that man now. Need him to tell me everything’s going to be okay, that we’ll find Noah. That we’ll be a family again.
That it’s not my fault he was taken.
But Nico is in Don Mode now. He’s grilling every single staff member, everyone who might have seen something, and I—
I can’t stay still. The air feels wrong. Too tight. Too heavy. Like breathing is something I have to remember how to do.
I step away from the crowd without thinking about it.
All I can see in my mind is Noah’s face. His backpack bouncing when he ran toward the school door. His voice in the car saying I love you.
My son.
My baby.
The parking lot behind the school is quieter than the front. Fewer people, fewer voices. I barely notice where I’m walking.
All I know is that I need to move. If I stop, I might collapse.
Then—
Pain explodes at the back of my head.
White, blinding.
The world spins violently. My knees buckle before I even understand what happened.
Voices echo somewhere above me.
Not English.
Russian.
“Ona koroleva?” one of them asks.
Another voice answers.
“Da.”
Darkness swallows everything.
The first thing I feel when I wake up is movement.
The second is pain.
My head throbs with every heartbeat, a deep pulsing ache right at the back of my skull. My mouth tastes like copper. When I try to move, something pulls at my wrists.
My hands are tied.
The realization comes slowly, like my brain is wading through mud.
Car.
I’m in a car.
The engine hums under my feet. The windows are dark. Two men sit across from me in the back seat.
They’re speaking Russian.
They don’t stop when my eyes open. They barely even glance at me. Like I’m not a person. Like I’m a package.
Memory slams back into place all at once.
School.
Teachers.
A man picked him up.
“Noah,” I whisper.
The word scrapes against my throat.
Both men look at me now.
“Where is my son?” I ask, my voice shaking. “Where is he?”
One of them leans forward slightly. His face is broad and hard, his eyes flat.
“You quiet,” he says in broken English.
I stare at him.
“You quiet, you keep pretty face.”
My stomach twists. I recognize the accent: it’s the creep who questioned me at the restaurant the other night.
“You scream—”
He makes a small motion with two fingers across his own cheek.
“You lose it.”
The other man chuckles.
I freeze.
Not because I’m scared. I mean, I am, but I’ve lived in the Bronx my whole life. I can handle an asshole or two with or without my trusty baseball bat.
But Noah is somewhere in their hands. I cannot give them a reason to hurt him.
With that thought in mind, I become still.
The car drives for a long time.
Or maybe it just feels long. Time stretches strangely when fear sits in your chest like a stone.
Eventually the car slows.
I hear gulls. The distant groan of metal.
Docks, I realize. We’re at the docks.
The doors open and rough hands drag me out.
Cold air hits my face.
The building in front of us is a warehouse. Rusted metal siding, broken windows. The kind of place that belongs in the worst B-Movie you’ve ever seen.
But this isn’t a shitty movie. This is my shitty life, and it’s about to get shittier.
They pull me forward. My head is still ringing from the blow, but adrenaline keeps me upright.
Then I hear it.
A small voice.
“Mom?”
My heart stops.
“Noah?”
His voice comes again, thin and frightened.
“Mom!”
I try to run toward the sound, but the men yank me back hard. My shoulder burns where one of them grabs it.
Through a half-open doorway I see him.
Sitting on the floor. Two men standing nearby with guns.
His cheeks are wet with tears.
The moment he sees me, his face crumples.
“Mom!”
That breaks something inside me.
I lunge forward.
“Let me go!” I scream, twisting against their grip. “That’s my son!”
I kick one of them hard enough to make him curse. I bite another hand that tries to grab my arm.
For one second, I almost break free.
Then, something slams across my face.
The world flashes white.
I taste blood immediately. My knees buckle again, but they haul me upright by the hair this time.
“Crazy bitch,” one of them mutters.
I’m still fighting when the room suddenly goes quiet.
The kind of quiet that happens when someone important walks in.
The men holding me straighten slightly. A figure steps out of the shadows.
The man is older than the others. Better dressed, too. His suit doesn’t look like it was stolen or pieced together from department store sales, but like money. Real money. The kind of suit worth more than all my organs combined.
Which means he’s the boss.
“Finally,” I spit out with more bravado than I feel. “About time management showed up.”
His mouth ticks upwards. He studies me with cool interest, like I’m something he’s deciding whether to keep or discard.
His English, when he speaks, is perfect.
“Isabella Hartwell,” he says.
My stomach drops.
“You know my name.”
“I know many things.” He smiles faintly. “My name is Vladimir Pavlov. Pleased to finally make your acquaintance.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever heard of you.”
“Then your man has done you wrong,” he says. “He knows I’ve been circling. The least he could have done was give you a head’s up.”
Except that he did. I think back to Nico’s caginess, the way he insisted we’d be safer under his roof. That his enemies had found us. This Vladimir, whoever he is, must be one of them.
“I’m not a kept woman,” I tell him, voice wavering. “You’ve got the wrong person, sir.”
“I don’t think so. And I don’t appreciate lies, Ms. Hartwell. They force me to apply,” he stopped and narrows his eyes. “What’s the word? Aha! Pressure. They force me to apply pressure. To whatever they hold most precious.”
My eyes flick toward the doorway where Noah is still sitting on the floor. Terror seizes me.
Vladimir notices.
“Your son is safe,” he says calmly. “For now.”
My hands clench against the ropes around my wrists. “What do you want?”
He takes another step closer.
“A conversation.”
“That desperate for a date, are you?”
“Not with you, ptichka.” His pale eyes meet mine. “Niccolò Neri.”
The name hangs in the air between us.
“What makes you think I can get him for you?” I say, again, with more bravery than I feel. “I’m just his waitress. He won’t come for someone like me.”
“Oh, he will.” Vladimir smiles—a snake’s smile. “You’re much more than his waitress, Ms. Hartwell. You do not give yourself enough credit. Or,” he adds, and his voice dips dangerously here, “you take me for a fool. Which would be a mistake.”
His eyes flick to Noah.
My bravado seeps out of me.
I can’t keep defying this man. It won’t be just me paying the price. It’ll be my son. And I love him too much to put him in any more danger than I already have.
But betraying Nico… I don’t know if I can do that, either. Not after everything we’ve been through. He’s my son’s father, and he’s—
The man I love.
It’s an impossible choice.
I don’t want to make it.
“And if he does not come?” I ask, swallowing hard, trying to buy as much time as I can.
Vladimir’s expression doesn’t change. “Then I will send you back to him in pieces.”
“No!” Noah screams from the other room. “Don’t hurt my mom!”
The sound goes through me like a blade.
“Quiet,” one of the men snaps, but Noah keeps crying.
My chest feels like it’s breaking open. I want to run to him. I want to hold him and tell him it’s going to be okay.
Instead I stand there with my hands tied behind my back, powerless.
Vladimir sighs faintly and gestures to one of his men.
“Call him.”
The man pulls out a phone and dials. My heart starts pounding so hard I feel dizzy.
The line rings once. Twice.
Then a voice comes through the speaker.
“Neri.”
Even through the tiny phone speaker, I know that voice instantly.
Nico.
But I hear the tension in it.
Vladimir smiles.
“Niccolò,” he says smoothly. “I believe we have something that belongs to you.”
A pause.
Nico’s voice comes back, colder now.
“If you touched them—”
“Ah,” Vladimir interrupts lightly. “So, we are in agreement. They matter.”
My stomach twists.
“Put her on,” Nico says.
The words are sharp. Not a request.
One of the men grabs my hair and jerks my head forward. The phone is shoved close to my mouth.
“Nico,” I say, my voice shaking.
For a second there’s silence. Then his voice changes. “Izzy.”
Just hearing my name in his voice almost breaks me.
“Are you hurt?”
“My head—” I swallow. “No. I’m okay. Noah’s here too.”
“Listen to me,” he says. “I’m going to get you both out.”
“It’s a trap,” I whisper quickly. “Don’t—”
The phone is yanked away from me.
Vladimir lifts it again. “You see?” he says calmly. “Your queen worries about you.”
“Name the place,” Nico says.
“Warehouse seventeen. South docks.”
Silence hangs for a second.
“You come alone,” Vladimir continues. “If I see anyone else, she loses something. If you bring your army, I send her back to you in boxes.” He smiles. “And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men… You know how the rest goes.”
My whole body goes cold.
Nico will come for me. For us. He will try to save his family.
And he will die because of it.
“Don’t!” I shout toward the phone before I can think it through. “Nico, don’t come—”
“Enough,” Vladimir says, cutting me off.
Then Nico speaks. “I’ll be there.”
My heart drops into my stomach.
Vladimir smiles faintly and ends the call.
“Prepare the stage,” he orders his men. “We have a king to bring down.”
He leaves after yelling out the instructions
Across the warehouse, Noah is still crying. I feel like crying too, but I hold myself back, because my son needs me to be brave. For him.
And for his father.
I close my eyes.
Because Nico is coming.
And Vladimir Pavlov just got exactly what he wanted.