Chapter 42
COSIMO
The breakfast service at the hotel was almost finished.
I’d been sitting at the same corner table for the better part of two hours.
My coffee had gone cold beside me, and my laptop was open to a contract I’d read three times without absorbing a single fucking word of it.
The lawyer had said he needed a response this morning. I couldn’t make myself care.
I checked the time again. It was twenty-five minutes past ten.
I shut the laptop, raked my fingers through my hair, and blew out a breath.
Fabiana tossed and turned for about an hour last night before falling asleep. I stayed up for a while after that, staring at the ceiling, replaying our fight inside my head.
Eventually, I’d cooled down. Eventually, my thinking had become more clear and led me to one conclusion.
I hadn’t handled last night well. Not at all.
Yes, I needed to get Fabiana to safety. Yes, I should’ve been more cautious about this entire trip. But none of that justified the way I’d spoken to her. A single word should not have sent me off the rails.
I was a man who prided himself on self-control. On restraint. On seeing things through the lens of logic instead of emotion.
Apparently, I’d been lying to myself, because if I were really that man, I would’ve recognized immediately that Fabiana was nothing like Vita. Of course she wasn’t. Letting any comparison between them take root, even in my own head, was insane.
Fabiana had gone far beyond the terms of our deal to help me. She was behaving like a partner, and instead of showing her my appreciation, I’d taken that stupid deal and thrown it in her face.
I’d made her feel like she wasn’t good enough, when nothing could be further from the truth.
I needed to fix this. And I would. But I also knew that no apology was going to make her happy about what came next.
If I was right about the Santoros and this town—and every instinct I had told me I was—then things were about to get dangerous. I wasn’t letting Fabiana be here for that.
The plane was already waiting to take her home. I just hoped that once I apologized, she wouldn’t fight me too hard. Hoped she wouldn’t look at me with that betrayed expression that had gutted me the night before.
She needed to go home, but I didn’t want to rush her out this morning. Which was why I was sitting here waiting for her to come down when she was ready.
I glanced at my watch again. Ten thirty.
We had to get going. I had to get her on that plane. Once she arrived back in New York, the jet would refuel and fly straight back here with Rom and four of our guys. There was no time to waste.
I closed my laptop, slid it under my arm, and went upstairs.
The bedroom was empty. Fabiana must be in the bathroom.
I went out onto the balcony and waited a couple of minutes before coming back inside and knocking on the bathroom door.
“Fabiana. We have to go.”
Silence.
“The silent treatment? Come on, Nettle.”
Nothing.
“Look, I could have handled last night better. A lot better.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Absolutely no response.
“Baby, come out and let me apologize to you. What are you doing in there?”
It was too silent. A suspicion occurred to me, and I grabbed the iron door handle and pulled. The door swung open easily.
The bathroom was as empty as the bedroom.
Fuck.
Another glance around the room, and my fear was confirmed. I’d been so agitated when I came in that I hadn’t noticed the missing purse and jacket.
She was gone.
I shoved my gun behind my belt and took the stairs back down to reception at a run. The receptionist looked up with a pleasant smile that turned cautious when she saw my expression.
“My wife. Have you seen her?”
She nodded. “Yes, sir. She left about an hour ago.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“No, she didn’t. I’m sorry.”
I ran out the door. I had a feeling I knew exactly where she’d gone. Goddamn it, Nettle.
I got into the rental car and drove like a madman toward the ceramics quarter.
On my way, I called Fabiana three times, but she didn’t pick up.
The last workshop we visited yesterday was on a street that wasn’t accessible by car, so I parked nearby and sprinted the rest of the way. Its blue-painted door came into view.
The sign said closed. The shutters were pulled down. The door was locked.
I slammed my fist against it anyway, once, twice, hard enough that the sound echoed down the street. From somewhere above me, a window flew open, and an elderly woman leaned out, letting loose a stream of Italian while shaking her fist at me.
I stepped back and looked up at her. “Where did they go?”
Mercifully, she spoke slower, and I pieced together enough of it. They were closed for the day. Not coming back.
“A woman,” I said and then reached for the little Italian I’d picked up during our family visits here. “Capelli ricci. Did you see her come here?”
The woman stared at me for a long moment, then she barked something out that I was fairly sure meant go screw yourself.
The window slammed shut.
I stood in the street and felt my surroundings press in around me. Nettle had to have come here. I was certain of it. But where the hell was she now?
I dialed Rosa as I jogged back to the car. She picked up after four rings, her voice thick with sleep.
“Cosimo? It’s the middle of the night. What’s going on?”
“I need you to contact your hacker. He needs to trace Fabiana’s phone.”
Something clattered loudly on her end. “What happened?”
“We’re in fucking Italy, and she’s gone missing. I need to find her.”
“Oh shit.” Rosa’s voice sharpened, the sleep gone. “Okay, I can do that. Give me some time.”
“Quickly,” I said. “You get this done, and I’ll give you your raise.”
“You got it, boss.”
Over the next half hour, I worked my way through the shops we’d visited yesterday. She wasn’t in any of them, and no one had seen her.
Frustration and worry raged inside my chest as I paced down the streets. What the hell had she been thinking? Hadn’t I made it clear that while we were here, she needed to stay close to me?
Yeah, and then you decided to send her away.
She hated me making decisions for her.
Last night came back to me in a vivid flash. If I hadn’t pushed her away, she wouldn’t have gone out alone.
And why had I pushed her away? Because I’d refused to confront what was happening between us head-on.
Because I’d been fucking terrified to say the thing I’d been dancing around, the thing I’d buried under other words—obsession, want, attraction—as if stacking enough of them together might keep me from seeing the truth.
It didn’t.
There was only one word for what she was to me. One word for why the thought of something happening to her made my chest feel like it was being ripped open from the inside.
Love.
I loved her.
I stopped pacing. God fucking damn it.
The phone rang. It was Rosa.
“We got her. I’m sending you the coordinates now.”
I waited for the address to come through and then pulled it up on a map.
My stomach dropped. Ice flooded my veins.
She wasn’t in town. The GPS said she was about thirty minutes away from here.
Until that moment, some optimistic part of me had still been hoping she’d just wandered off somewhere and was ignoring my calls because she was furious with me. But that wasn’t what this was. She didn’t have a car. She had no way to get all the way out there on her own.
Someone had taken her.
“Fuck.”
I sprinted back to the car, threw myself inside, and tore out of the parking space fast enough to make the tires squeal. The world narrowed to the road ahead and the thirty minutes standing between me and Fabiana.
If anyone had frightened her, touched her, or so much as harmed a hair on her head, I was going to carve them up and paint this entire fucking town red.
I was going to find her.
And when I did, I was done being a coward. I was going to tell her the truth.
She was mine.
And I wasn’t going to let her go.