Chapter 33
Giana's hands were still smeared with paint when she left the studio and headed back to the villa. It was getting dark, her stomach was rumbling, but her head was clearer than it had been in years.
For a few precious hours, the coiled tension in her chest had eased, replaced by the familiar, grounding rhythm of charcoal on paper, the tentative exploration of color on canvas.
She had been wrestling with the lines of Rodrigo's face, trying to capture the contradiction: the cold, calculating predator and the man whose eyes held a terrifying vulnerability when he looked at her.
Which one was real? Which one was she more afraid of losing?
The moment she stepped into the main corridor, the peaceful feeling shattered. Gone was the usual low hum of conversation, the distant clatter from the kitchens. Instead, tense energy crackled through the grand hallway.
Something was wrong.
At the main entrance, Athena checked the load on a compact submachine gun, her face a mask of icy concentration. Kon stood beside her, his posture relaxed but his black eyes scanning the room like a hawk.
Dario was barking orders into a comm unit, his usually jovial face uncharacteristically grim.
Frederica leaned against a marble pillar, idly playing with a dagger, her hazel eyes constantly flicking to the large monitor screens where Leo and Iz were working at portable workstations near the grand staircase.
Silas paced nearby, his gaze periodically sweeping the room, lingering on the entrances.
"What's happened?" Giana asked, her voice cutting through the low murmur of tense voices and clicking keyboards. She aimed the question at the room, but her eyes locked onto Leo. He didn't look up, his focus on a scrolling feed of encrypted traffic.
It was Athena who answered, her voice flat, devoid of its usual dry sarcasm. "Rodrigo's gone dark."
"Gone dark?" Giana echoed, the cold dread solidifying into a block of ice in her chest. "What do you mean, gone dark?"
"He went to get Lupo," Leo said, finally swiveling his chair to face her.
His eyes were shadowed, the lines around them deeper than usual.
"He left for Siena, made it, and was on the road back when the GPS on his phone and car both disappeared.
Last ping was near the turnoff near an old quarry road, about seventy minutes ago. "
Seventy minutes was an eternity in their world. Giana's mind raced, conjuring images of Rodrigo dead somewhere. The fear she thought she had conquered surged back, thick and choking.
He left the compound during a lockdown he ordered. The sheer, reckless stupidity of it ignited a furious spark amidst the terror.
"Is he insane? What was he thinking, leaving the villa after pissing off every boss in Sicily this morning?" She stalked toward Leo's workstation to look over his monitors. "Can you see anything? Traffic cams? Satellite?"
Leo shook his head, a muscle ticking in his jaw. "We're trying. Iz is scrubbing local municipal feeds, but the quarry road area is spotty. Dante's got eyes on satellite thermal of their last location, but there's interference that could be dust, maybe smoke."
His voice was steady, but Giana heard an undercurrent of fear. Leo, who could hack God's own firewall, couldn't find his brother.
Dario slammed his fist down on the table, making the monitor jump. "He shouldn't have gone alone. I should have stopped him, tried to make him see sense."
Frederica pushed off the pillar, her dagger disappearing into her thigh sheath. "Telling Rodrigo Colleoni what to do would be like telling a hurricane to change course, Dario," she drawled, but the usual sardonic edge was blunted by tension.
"Shut it, Alesci," Dario snapped, whirling on her. "This isn't a shitty bodyguard job like Rome. This is my brother."
Frederica's eyes narrowed, something dangerous in their depths. "Maybe instead of holding that one incident against me forever, you could ask the people who hired me why they actually wanted him dead that day."
The air crackled between them, the old rivalry flaring hot and bright against the backdrop of too much tension.
Silas stepped between them, a wall of muscle and quiet authority.
"Enough. Both of you," he rumbled. "Save it for the Sicilians. Iz, any change?"
"Still silent. Thermal bloom is dissipating, but there are no clear signatures. Could be a vehicle fire," she said, her brows in a tight frown.
A vehicle fire. The fear in Giana's chest spread, freezing her limbs, locking her breath in her throat. Images assaulted her of twisted metal, flames licking at dark paint, smoke coiling into a clear sky.
Rodrigo trapped inside. Rodrigo bleeding. Rodrigo… gone.
He's okay. He's Rodrigo for fuck's sake.
She leaned heavily against Leo's workstation, the polished wood cool beneath her paint-stained fingers. She tried to breathe, push down the panic tightening her lungs.
Giana had lost everything once. She had rebuilt herself from the ashes of that loss, piece by painful piece. She had survived. She had even, in this strange, violent place, begun to feel safe again.
Rodrigo made her feel seen. Wanted.
The thought of him not being there… It was the loss of the axis around which her chaotic world had started to make a terrifying kind of sense.
Giana's heart squeezed at the thought of him lying broken and still on some lonely roadside. She didn't just need him alive for strategy, for protection, for the fragile sense of safety his presence afforded. She needed him.
The ruthless bastard who watched her obsessively. The man who built her a sanctuary. The lover whose touch could make her forget everything but the heat between them.
The thought of a world without his intensity, his control, his maddening, terrifying presence was unbearable. Unthinkable.
Oh, God. I love the bastard. The silent admission reverberated through her soul, shaking her to her core.
The fear clawing at her insides wasn't just for her own survival. It was a primal, gut-wrenching terror of losing him.
Pull yourself together and focus. He found you when you were taken, and now you need to find him.
"I need eyes," she heard herself say, her voice sounding strangely calm despite the storm raging inside. She pushed back from the workstation, forcing her legs to hold her weight.
"Leo, give me a feed. Anything. Satellite, traffic, drone… whatever you've got."
Leo nodded, his fingers tapping rapidly.
A window opened on one of his secondary monitors, showing a grainy, shifting thermal imagery overlaid on a map.
A cluster of bright orange and red near a winding road, fading now to cooler yellows and greens.
Indistinct shapes. Impossible to tell if they were human, vehicular, or just the landscape cooling.
Giana stared at the shifting colors, willing them to resolve into something recognizable, something hopeful. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the suffocating silence of the room.
Where are you?
Dario muttered curses under his breath, his gaze fixed on the main entrance doors as if he could will them to open.
Iz's head snapped up. "Movement! Vehicle approaching the outer perimeter gate. Fast!"
The collective breath of the room hitched. Every eye snapped to the large security monitor displaying the main gate camera feed.
A dark shape resolved into a battered, dust-covered van, speeding down the long driveway.
"Is it him? Is it Rodrigo?" Dario demanded, surging toward the screen, shoving Leo aside.
"Registration isn't one of ours. We won't know if it's him until we get eyes on the driver."
Giana didn't wait. She turned and bolted, heading for the grand entrance hall.
"Giana, wait!" Silas's voice boomed behind her, followed by the sound of multiple pairs of boots giving chase.
She burst through the double doors into the courtyard just as the heavy main gates were being hauled open by two of Dario's men. In the fading afternoon light, the battered van skidded to a halt in front of the villa.
Frederica and Dario were suddenly beside her. He pulled her back a step as Frederica stepped in front, her hand resting near her handgun.
"Hold position," Dario ordered. He raised a rifle and looked through the scope. "Driver… It's Lupo!"
Relief warred with sharper fear. If Lupo was driving, where the fuck was Rodrigo?
The driver's door opened, and Father Lupo Sartori climbed out. He was covered in dust and grime, a dark, dried streak of blood marring his temple and silver hair. He ignored the weapons trained on him as he walked around to the back of the van and yanked the door open.
Rodrigo half-fell, half-staggered out of the van.
He was a mess. Dust and soot coated his fine clothes, now torn and bloodied.
A dark stain spread across the sleeve of his shirt near the bicep.
Soot smeared his face, accentuating the stark lines of exhaustion and pain around his eyes and mouth.
He looked like he'd crawled through hell, but he was alive.
"Bodies and prisoners!" His voice was a harsh rasp cutting through the stunned silence. "Two in the back! Secure them. Get me some fucking medical for Lupo!"
His gaze swept past the armed men, past Dario and Frederica, and locked onto Giana. The ferocity in his eyes intensified, but beneath the fury, Giana saw a flash of relief. Then it vanished, shuttered behind the mask.
"Get her out of here!" he barked, gesturing sharply toward Giana. "Now!"
Athena and Frederica moved instantly, stepping in front of Giana, their bodies forming a protective barrier.
"Come on, Giana," Athena said, her voice low but firm, taking Giana's elbow. "Let them handle this."
Giana resisted for a heartbeat, her eyes fixed on Rodrigo as he swayed slightly. Blood dripped from his injured arm onto the dusty cobblestones.
Lupo moved to support him, but Rodrigo waved him off with a sharp gesture, his attention already shifting to the men dragging two bound, groaning figures from the back of the van. One was unconscious, head lolling; the other limped badly, a dark stain on his thigh.
The sight of the prisoners, the blood covering Rodrigo, was the brutal reality of their world. The world he was still trying to shield her from.
Athena and Frederica gently steered her back toward the relative safety of the entrance hall, and Giana didn't fight them about it.
Rodrigo was alive. She could yell at him about his stupidity later. Staring at his battered form was like her world had righted itself.
I love him, she thought in a daze. How the fuck did this happen?
The terrifying, exhilarating truth of it no longer felt like a weakness. It felt like the only thing that could make all the violence of their world worthwhile.