Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
TONY
Thirty Minutes Earlier
Paolo was waiting at the curb in a black SUV with dark-tinted windows.
Alessandro took the front passenger seat while Hunter took the very back row.
Dante and I took the middle seat. We rode in tense silence.
I was chafing at every second spent in rush hour traffic.
Finally, to distract myself, I turned to Dante and asked, “How’s your arm? ”
“Better,” he replied with a slight grimace. “But not great. My physical therapist says it’ll be a month and a half to two months before I’m back to where I was before.”
“That’s rough,” I said.
“It sucks. And I’m bored. Thanks for calling me into this, by the way. I get to feel useful again.”
I was about to spout a useless platitude, but I kept my mouth shut.
I understood where he was coming from. Marco had explained it to me often enough.
Men who had what it took to become Navy SEALs had a drive that most people couldn’t match.
Instead, I said, “I’ll do what I can to get you more interesting jobs. ”
“Thanks, boss.”
Silence once again descended on our group. As we got closer to our destination, Dante leaned over and said quietly, “Use the time to get focused. Think about the mission, not about how angry or scared you are.”
I nodded. He was right. Greg needed me to have my head on straight. I couldn’t rush in there half-cocked just because I wanted to tear Paul Langer’s head off.
Paolo pulled over next to a small, gated park two blocks away from the apartment building. Alessandro got out first and motioned for us to hurry it along. “Move quickly. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” I snorted. Four large men climbing out of a big black SUV was pretty conspicuous.
We casually walked down the sidewalk, talking quietly.
Hunter took the lead and said, “Dante and I are going to go ahead and ID the entryway. Gio said there’s an enclosed garden next to the building with a gate that will be easy to open.
The door that we’ll use is on that side.
Give us five minutes, then follow us in. ”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to get in?” I asked.
Dante raised his left arm. “This might not be working so great right now, but I can still pick locks.”
I smirked. “All right. Get going.”
Alessandro and I headed toward a corner bodega while Hunter and Dante continued down the street. Now that we were so close, I was getting twitchy again. I tried to think only one minute at a time. I tried not to think about what Langer might be doing to Greg. That way lay madness.
Just before we went inside the small store, I turned to Alessandro and asked, “Do you think having three ex-special forces members is overkill against one man?”
He held my gaze for a long time before he spoke. “Do you think they would have let you go alone?”
I didn’t have to think about my answer. “No.”
“And if Marco were here, how many would be on this mission?”
I chuckled. “All of them.”
Alessandro nodded in approval. “Your people are loyal because they are family. Not all by blood, but family just the same.” He wasn’t wrong.
As we entered the bodega, I did wonder why Alessandro was here. I hadn’t thought he cared much about my branch of the family. But I wasn’t about to question the assistance.
We were standing in front of a magazine display pretending to look at the offerings when Alessandro began speaking to me in Italian.
“Anthony, I know you are worried about finding Greg in time. I know much about stalkers. They want their victims to suffer, to be terrified. They need that power. We will find Greg, and you will need to be strong for him. You may need to kill for him.”
A frisson of shock ran through me. For as much as I expressed the desire to kill Paul Langer, Alessandro’s matter-of-fact statement brought me up short.
In my ten years as a police officer, I’d discharged my firearm only a handful of times.
None of those had resulted in fatalities.
Would I truly be able to kill a man? I thought about my sweet, gentle man, terrified and hurt.
The rage was still there, but now it was a burning ball of lava in the core of my being. Yeah, I could kill for him if I had to.
Alessandro checked his watch. “It is time.”
We meandered out of the store and down the street toward the apartment building.
Just before we got to the building itself, the garden appeared beside us, walled off by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence.
The gate that opened into the garden appeared to be padlocked.
But I could see that the padlock wasn’t latched.
Bless Dante and his lock-picking skills.
We hurried through the gate, carefully replacing the padlock. Dante was standing by the door that led into the back of the apartment building. He gestured for us to hurry. The expression on his face was one I couldn’t read.
“What is it? What did you find?” I asked.
“Come inside, and you’ll understand.”
Mystified, I entered the building and stopped dead in my tracks. “Motherfucker,” I whispered through clenched teeth.
“Is that…music? Is someone playing the piano?” Alessandro asked.
“Yeah,” I growled. “And it’s coming from this floor.”
Hunter pulled his gun from his shoulder harness. “Ready?”
We all nodded and followed suit. Even though the building was unoccupied, the lights in the main hallway were lit. We stopped in front of a door in the middle of the hallway. The music was definitely coming from inside that apartment.
Hunter put his hand on the doorknob and silently counted with his fingers: three, two, one. Just as he got the door open, the music stopped, and we all froze.
“Not good enough. Play it again,” a voice I assumed was Paul’s demanded.
We crept through the open door with Hunter in the lead and me right behind him. The living room was empty, as was the tiny galley kitchen.
“Fuck you,” Greg spat. “You don’t deserve my music.”
I was vibrating with the need to get to Greg before the argument escalated to violence. We moved quietly down the hallway toward the sound, stopping at the door to the first bedroom.
“I deserve it all!” Paul shouted.
“You deserve nothing!” my man yelled back.
There was the sound of something solid hitting the floor or a wall. A roar of rage turned my blood to ice. “If you won’t play for me, you won’t play for anyone!”
“No!” Greg cried out. “Please, no!”
I shoved past Hunter and into the room, no longer giving a fuck about stealth or teamwork.
What I saw only fueled my fury. Paul Langer had the man I loved strapped to a chair with a leather harness and seated in front of a keyboard.
The bastard had one hand clamped down on Greg’s wrist, pressing it into the keys.
In his other, he held a knife that looked like it was aimed at Greg’s hand.
Paul’s eyes widened when he saw me enter, but I didn’t give him a chance to react. I didn’t think. I didn’t speak. I stood straight and still, aimed my gun, and fired. His body flew backward, the spray from the exit wound in his skull thankfully not touching Greg.
Even before the man’s body hit the floor, I had my gun holstered and was kneeling by Greg’s side with my arms around him. “I’ve got you.”
He froze, staring at me wide-eyed before turning his face into my neck and heaving a great gasping sob, clinging to me as much as the restrictive harness would allow.
“Well, that didn’t exactly go to plan,” Hunter commented.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Dante countered.
I turned my head to look up at the two men. “Could one of you figure out how to unlatch this harness?”
“I’ve got it,” Dante said. He knelt behind the chair to see what he was working with.
I noticed my cousin’s bodyguard was missing. “Where’s Alessandro?”
Hunter shrugged. “As soon as you dropped the stalker, Alessandro took out his phone and called someone. He said he’d be right back.”
Without looking away from the puzzle in front of him, Dante asked, “Hunter, can I get some light here?”
“Sure.” Hunter turned on his phone’s flashlight and aimed it at the back of the chair.
Greg lifted his head. His eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. “Please get me out of this.”
I pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. “Dante’s working on it. He’s good with locks.”
He tucked his head back into my neck. “Okay.”
“Got it!” Dante crowed in triumph. “It’s just a bunch of clips strung together.” His fingers moved quickly, removing the clips one by one until the harness was free of the back of the chair.
I made quick work of the buckles on the back straps, finally pulling the leather device off Greg and throwing it on top of Paul’s body.
Greg wrapped his arms around me. “You came. You saved me.”
“Yeah, baby, I’ll always come for you.” My gaze fell on Paul’s cooling corpse lying in a puddle of blood and the cold, hard truth hit me. I had killed a man. I would have to turn myself in. I was probably going to go to prison. The irony made me want to weep.
“Anthony,” Alessandro said from behind me, “I need to speak to you.”
The tone of his voice told me it was important. I looked at Greg. “Will you be okay for a few minutes?”
He nodded and kissed my cheek. “I’ll be fine. Dante and Hunter will keep me safe.”
I followed Alessandro out into the hallway. He led me into the second bedroom and closed the door. Holding out his phone, he said, “Mr. Vitale wants to speak to you.”
I took his phone, wondering what my cousin could possibly want at this particular moment. “Sal?”
“Anthony, I want you to listen carefully. In about ten minutes, a work van is going to pull up to the front entrance of the apartment building. Four men will get out carrying tools and building supplies. You will let them into the building. Then you, Greg, and your team will leave the way you came in. Paolo will be waiting for you at the place he dropped you off. Have I made myself clear?”
My throat constricted and my eyes filled with tears. “Salvatore, are you sure?”
“Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes. Thank you, Salvatore.”
“We’re family. Family helps each other.”
I handed the phone back to Alessandro. “That’s why you came, isn’t it?”
He tilted his head in acknowledgment. “As Mr. Vitale said, we’re family.”
Greg was standing near the doorway to the bedroom when I got back. When he saw me, he threw his arms around me. “You killed him,” he whispered. “What’s going to happen now?”
“Everything’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”