Chapter Nine
Hell Hath No Fury Like A Mafioso Scorned
Rafe
M y wife is gone. My sister is missing, my house invaded–twice over, once in Cyprus, once in Rhode Island—and my chef is bleeding out the damn hallway floor. And I have ruined Eduardo and Suzan’s honeymoon. This is not the auspicious start I required for the takeover of my father’s business.
“Go home, my Don. Look after your family.” Eduardo risks life and limb, quite literally, as he gives my shoulder a little push, Suzan at his side. “Go see what has become of your sister. Find Willow. I will look after your man.”
“ You are meant to be my man,” I snarl, raking a blood-stained hand through my hair.
He has stayed at my side since the moment I left the rooftop after the godforsaken hit that heralded an end to my time in Cyprus. A Don would think he could set his own schedule, but no.
Blood and gore sticks between my fingers, clinging to my black hair.
Fuck knows what I look like, nor do I care.
My other hand remains pressed to Luca’s abdomen, his pale face pasty and closed, his eyes sealed shut as we wait for the ambulance.
Shallow breaths allow his chest to rise but each stutters, and I wonder which will be his last and when I will pray for the sins he committed on my behalf.
Never in my life have I felt so goddam mortal, nor so close to meeting my maker.
Or have I ever not wanted to die, for the first time in my entire existence.
Before I couldn’t give a fuck if my last shoot out was the time a stray bullet stole my final breath.
If I died with Dom in a blaze of ridiculous drama and glory.
Now... With the responsibility of a family weighing on my shoulders, I pray for my sister and her unborn baby.
For the mercy of Konnor, who stole her from me, as he promised not so long ago when I didn’t take the enemy on my doorstep so seriously.
For the blessings my wife gave me every moment since I stole her from her home.
For the friendship the man beneath my hand gave to me.
The one at home, and the one at my side who offers no complaint or argument to any order I provide.
And the unknown enemy who walked into my house and took from me ... I ask my father for his grace, and his forgiveness as I place Eduardo’s hand on Luca’s stomach and do as I am bid.
Father, forgive me. I need our house in order and this is the only way I can see to do it. Forgive your son. I am only human.
I receive no answer from Armand, nor do I expect one.
But right now I cannot die. I do not have the luxury. There are lives to save, and penances to exact. One must come before the other, but it is a close thing. And I have many hours on a plane to work out who will pay that heaviest of tolls.
I stare into Eduardo’s face, my gaze cold and closed. “Do not let go, not even when the ambulance arrives. Do you understand me? If he dies, you will also.”
Eduardo’s mouth doesn’t move, nor his eyes flicker, though Suzan’s stifled gasp at my harsh words ripples through me. Willow might berate me, if she was here, but she is not. My calming tool. My peace.
She is gone.
And so I go to war.
****
I do not drink on the flight back, and we do not land at the regular airfield. Every paranoid trait I’ve held at bay for the past decade washes over me and I utilize every one of them to their maximum, making the phone call I promised myself I wouldn’t make.
Good intentions are only made to fail.
“You can’t stay away.” Dom’s gruff voice fills my ear as I unbuckle my seat belt. The private jet jolts as the wheels hit the tarmac, and I’m up out of my seat before the attendants are ready for me, horror written across more than one pretty face.
I leave a wad of cash on my table that will compensate for their fears later.
“I have problems.” I waste no time with the man who knows me best in the world—apart from the one, perhaps, who took something from me, but who?
Will you kneel?
Konnor’s words will haunt me until I join my father and beyond.
“No shit, you’ve got problems. And they’re spilling over into my fucking problems,” he grumbles.
“Welcome to the world of responsibility, my friend,” I grind my teeth and almost hear Dom’s wince through my phone.
“Stop that, you overgrown gorilla,” he snaps. “Control yourself.”
I would take orders from no one else, but he’s right. Nothing gets done if I have no calm over myself and my plan.
“Regina. Willow. Any news?” Anything? Give me something, my friend.
“Konnor has your sister.”
I drop physically to one knee as a single tear trails my cheek. “And the child?”
“She’s still pregnant and healthy as far as I know. My men have seen her through the windows in his house. Unrestrained. Unscarred. She’s fine, Rafe,” his voice softens, knowing what the evidence means to me.
For today, that’ll do .
“Thank Christ.” I ignore the combined flight attendant’s whispers.
“Indeed,” Dom murmurs. His voice strains at the edges. “Rafe—”
My rage, never that far behind, erupts through the thin membrane of my control. “Which means I left my wife somewhere in fucking Europe.” I slam my fist against the aircraft’s plush interior as the attendant lets me out and backs away, her face drawn and tight.
“Come to the Hernandez residence, please.” Dom’s quiet manner gives me pause.
So much that I halt halfway down the jet’s stairs before my feet can touch the tarmac that will take me to the waiting car.
“What?”
“Come to the house. Now, Rafe.”
“Never, not once, have you given me an order,” I murmur. “This is a new game, Dom.”
“It’s survival,” he says, softly. “I’ll be waiting.”
He ends the call before I can. And for the first time in my life, I head out on the orders of my best friend with no fucking idea of what’s waiting for me ... and knowing it has something to do with my wife.
It’s the only reason I’m not planning a way to dismember Konnor Henney Willow-style right now.
The memory of what Luca did to help her, of the way he reverently held her, made her kiss his blades hurts too fucking much. A second tear joins the first. One each for the most special women in my life I’ve failed to protect.
It’s not a state I’m used to, and it won’t last long.
That’s my new vow as the car pulls up in front of the Hernandez residence where I pulled Willow from over a year back, an unwilling wife.
Where I bought her, both of us blindsided by my father’s gift of our marriage.
Orphaned, her uncle happy to be rid of her, but we already had our first night’s tryst back in Cyprus.
That place held— holds —such a memory for both of us.
As does this house.
Here she has hurt for me, run from me. Screamed for me and cried for me.
Here I have bled for her and kneeled for her.
Konnor’s words whisper again through my mind, a mere echo of before. What does the man who has my sister know about the man who has my wife? And when did I become so certain that it is a man who has stolen from me?
Because a woman—especially the women in my life—don’t hide such things. They come straight out into the open and parade their winnings in my face.
This is a hidden act, one of cowardice.
Yes, it is a man’s act, hiding my wife away. There is no winning.
I stare up at the foreboding doors, their black facade etched into my mind.
The horrors of this house are burned into my mind.
And hers, and her brother’s. And Dom’s. But we, all of us, have done things to set them right.
Earn the forgiveness of these walls and those remaining within.
The blood and souls shed here at our behest.
And now we will again, banding together to unite the families that someone once tried to tear apart.
Greed. Wealth.
But what’s in play now is about something far more. An evil we’ve hunted for a longer time. I feel it the moment I step through the shadows of the Hernandez residence, I feel Roman, Willow’s younger brother and Don of this house clap my shoulder, greeting me silently as is his custom.
I’ve learned to be silent with him, raising my eyes to meet Dom’s.
“I’m here. Tell me.”
But it’s not Dom who answers my unspoken question.
It’s the tiny shadow who slips out from behind him.
My once healer, dressed in a blue silk slip that’s belted at her waist, approaches me.
Thalia allows Dom’s hand to touch her lower back, their discreet intimacy obvious to my eye.
Her hair is tied back in its customary loose knot, her lips are glossed, but that’s the only decoration on the face that’s healed since the day we pulled her out of a shipping container filled with dead women and her the only survivor.
When she says the name I don’t want to hear, the name that brought Thalia to me in the first place, my veins fill with dread. I know I’ve lost the one woman in my life who kept me sane. Because no matter how we hunted, we never found him. Now he’s found us, and he has her.
I won’t get her back.
Thalia looks at me, rage and horrors and scars reflected in her beautiful eyes as her lips form the name of the trafficker who made her as mute as Roman when we found her.
“Singleton.”