Chapter 27 - MASSIMO #3
"Jenna?" I'm speechless. Not surprised. Not really. In my mind's eye, green eyes inside a bloodied face stare up at me, defiant, strong. She's leaning over a dead body, holding a spike in her hands, dripping blood. Her stance tells me she won't hesitate to attack me next.
"She handled it," Enzo's words cut through the fog of memory. I'd almost forgotten how strong she can be. How unbendable. "Better than most men I know."
That… doesn't help. It should. But what I need right now is something that will slot neatly into the version of Jenna I've been clinging to, the girl who ran, who hid, who chose someone else and built a life without me. The woman who kept my son from me and thought she could manage the fallout.
But this? This doesn't fit that story at all.
Or maybe it fits too well. This is the Jenna I remember.
The one who took a situation that should have broken her and ended her attacker.
The one who collapsed afterward, yes, but she was eighteen.
Bleeding. Alone. Still standing when she had no right to be.
Still breathing when men stronger than her would have folded.
That was ten years ago.
Ten years is a long time.
Long enough for empires to rot from the inside.
Long enough to rebuild them stronger. Long enough for a woman to sharpen herself into something unrecognizable.
Suddenly, I'm seeing her again, not as the mother of my son, not as the woman who lied to me, not as a complication I have to control, but as someone I may have fundamentally underestimated.
She walked into the Oven.
She didn't flinch.
She didn't beg someone else to do it for her.
She broke a man with words and will and the kind of quiet authority that can't be taught.
That changes things.
It makes me wonder how many times she's done that in the last decade. What else she's survived. What else she's hidden. What parts of herself she's buried so deep no one—including me—thought to look.
Ten years.
A lifetime in this world.
The balance shifts. I'm not just furious with her any longer.
I'm curious. Dangerously so. Because if Jenna Whitford has been carrying secrets of her own all this time—if she's been building herself into something this formidable—then I don't just want answers.
I need to know every skeleton in her closet.
Before one of them decides to come for my family.
"Send me everything," I command. "I'll be back in a few hours. Get a meeting organized. We'll plan from there."
"Understood."
He doesn't hang up. "Massimo," Enzo adds. "There's more."
I close my eyes for half a second. "What now?"
"I don't know if it's something or nothing." He's careful now; experience has taught me that heads are about to roll when he gets like that. "Jenna and Bello… they know each other. It was weird. And Bello's been acting off ever since."
My jaw tightens. "How off?"
"Like a man who just realized something he buried isn't dead."
I don't reply. The silence stretches, heavy with implications neither of us is ready to name.
"Any ideas?" Enzo asks, finally.
I do. The memory surfaces slowly, like something pulled up from deep water. Ten years ago. I was barely conscious. Days after the hit. With my bones shattered and skin stitched together without any consideration for the flesh, my pain was so constant it blurred thought.
My phone—the disposable counterpart to the one I shared with Jenna—is gone. Lost somewhere between asphalt and blood and impact.
I can't leave the room. Can't move. Can't even sit up.
But Bello is there. standing at my bedside, watching the door like he expects death to walk through it at any moment.
"Hang in there, Massimo. You need to survive and get back on your feet quickly.
This is your uncle and your cousins' doing.
They want you dead. Just like they did your father. "
He tells me to survive. He tells me my uncle ordered the hit.
And I believe him.
"If you die," he adds quietly, leaning closer so only I can hear, "everything rots from the inside out."
Panic cuts through the drugs when I think of her.
Jenna alone. Jenna thinking I'd vanished.
Jenna thinking I'd left her without a word.
I force my throat to work. Tell Bello to go to her.
Find her. Make sure she is safe. Make sure she knows I'm alive.
Make sure she doesn't think I disappeared.
He doesn't argue. Doesn't question the timing.
Doesn't remind me we were at war. He just nods. Solid. Loyal. Reassuring.
"I'll handle it," he promises.
And then he leaves the safest place in the city to walk straight into uncertainty because I asked him to.
I survived on that. Clawed my way back from death believing she would be there at the end of it. Believing that when I stood again, rebuilt and breathing, she'd know I hadn't abandoned her. I built my recovery on that promise. And he built my war on it.
I fill Enzo in. He grunts on the other end. Unconvinced. "That might be part of it, but there's more."
"I'll have Gabe look into it," I assure him and end the call.
When I turn back, Amauri is still asleep, curled into the couch, his breathing slow and steady.
Safe. For now. Behind him, Whitford stares at nothing, finally quiet.
Somewhere between the two of them—between what I lost and what I just got back—I feel it.
A shift. Jenna wasn't supposed to be part of this world.
But the world didn't give a shit about what she was supposed to be.
I look down at my son again, commit the sight to memory. Then I straighten. Because whatever game is unfolding—whatever ghosts are stepping out of the dark—it's no longer just about territory. It's about family, which makes it lethal.
I find Gabe a few rows down, half-turned in his seat, phone low in his hand. His jaw is locked tight, attention split between the plane and whatever obsession currently owns him. He looks up when I stop beside him.
"She mean a lot to you?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
I sit. He doesn't bother hiding the screen. A pretty brunette is stretched out on a couch, legs tucked beneath her, watching television. Comfortable. Safe. Another man's arm is draped around her shoulders, familiar in the way only long practice allows. Domestic.
"She's happy," Gabe sounds wistful, closing the image with his thumb. A rare, unguarded softness crosses his mouth. "I can't take that from her."
I study him. "You could."
His gaze snaps to mine, sharp, flaring. Dangerous. "I know I could. I can do a lot of things." He pauses. Then adds, a note colder, "But I'm not a bastard who destroys other people's lives for sport."
Not yet, hangs unspoken between us. Gabe has always drawn his lines carefully.
That's what makes him lethal. He doesn't cross them by accident; he steps over them when he decides the cost is worth it.
I glance back at the dark screen in his hand.
The woman. The man beside her. The life he's pretending not to want.
"Careful," I tell him. "Men like us don't stay spectators forever."
His mouth curves. Not a smile. A promise. "I know."
Gabe is a complicated man. The problem is that complications in our world always collect interest.
"We got the name," I change the subject. "Of the Mexican cartel that's orchestrated the abduction. Joaquín Beltrán. La Orden del Norte."
His eyes sharpen. "Ambitious bastard."
I nod, then lower my voice. "Enzo feels Bello is acting strange. I need you to dig. Quietly. Dig into everything. Past, money, loyalties, lies. I want to know what he eats for breakfast and who taught him to lie."
Gabe nods once. No questions. No hesitation. That's how it's always been between us.
Bello has been with us since the beginning.
Before the casinos. Before the polish. Before Vegas was mine instead of something I was going to conquer with blood and patience.
He bled for this family. He built routes, buried bodies, and closed doors that needed closing.
I trusted him with men, with money, with my back.
Trust like that isn't given lightly. And it's not revoked gently. Gabe understands that, too. Just like he understands that Enzo wouldn't put word out like that lightly.
I rake a hand through my hair, jaw tight. If Bello is compromised in any way, then this isn't just betrayal. It's treason. It means he looked me in the eye, every day, and chose to lie. That kind of betrayal doesn't just hurt. It costs.
"I'll find it," Gabe says quietly. "One way or another. It'll stay between you, me, and Enzo."
We both understand what's at stake. If this is nothing, it stays nothing. If it's something…
I don't want to believe Bello is dirty. Men like him don't turn easily.
He has as much to lose as anyone else, if not more: status, protection, legacy.
But Enzo has never been wrong. Not once.
When his instincts flare, it's because something underneath is already rotting.
If Bello is rotting, I won't hesitate. History doesn't buy mercy. It just makes the punishment personal.
Finally, I pour myself a bourbon and find a spot alone, at the rear of the plane. The Stagg's burn steadies me. I sit, watching Amauri sleep a few feet away, curled into a blanket like he's always belonged there. Like the world hasn't already tried to break him.
My son.
That word still feels dangerous.
Uninvited, another memory surfaces.
Jenna—years ago—washing blood off her hands.
"Will this come back to me?" She isn't crying. She isn't shaking. Her voice is steady in the way people get when they've already accepted that fear won't save them.
I kneel beside Coach's body, awkward, young, furious at the world but not yet powerful enough to bend it. "Not if we do this right."
"Tell me what to do." She looks at me. It's not trust in her eyes. It's not desperation, but that's there too. She looks like she's ready to negotiate with me.
She always had guts. I saw it then. I just didn't understand its value yet. Back then, I was a twenty-year-old idiot with a beautiful girl in my arms, trying to impress her with control I didn't yet have.
Now?
Now I'm a man who understands exactly what kind of strength it takes to endure and adapt. I don't feel rage when I think of her anymore. I feel something far more dangerous. Respect.
And now, curiosity.