Chapter 20 Giovanni
GIOVANNI
There’s no time for what ifs and maybes.
Meggie trusted her best friend, and I didn’t question her judgement. My gut let me down. I should’ve recognized the signs when I visited Nikki in LA, but instead, I was focused on proving my love for Meggie.
I let love get in the way, and I’m going to pay the price one way or another.
I know how long the flight to Vermont will take. Too fucking long. But I learned at a very young age to disregard events that are beyond my control.
The flight time is fixed. We might catch a tailwind and gain some minutes, but I’m in the air, and Meggie is in Stowe, and I’ll get there when I get there. My energy will be wasted on trying to speed up a private jet using mind over matter.
Instead, I run through in my head the instructions I gave Ric.
The information regarding The Fish that I gleaned from Don Calderone pointed to a man who worked alone. A serpent loitering in the shadows. Unnoticed. Untraceable. Unremarkable. Harder to catch than a gangster with an entourage of indestructible vehicles and an arsenal of weapons.
He got close enough to Meggie in Central Park to leave the note in her purse. A warning. It meant I can take you whenever I want, and don’t forget it.
“I need you to call in a few more favors,” I say to Bruno.
I don’t need to elaborate. While he works on his handheld device, I call in a favor of my own. It’s a last resort. One that I shouldn’t need to fall back on because Ric will relocate Meggie and Amber to the bunker when the time is right.
I knock back a brandy shot.
I feel as though we’re flying through the calm before the storm, but it’s the silent rage pulsing through my veins that’s keeping the adrenaline flowing.
It’s easy to remain detached from what I do when there are no emotions involved.
But this… The stakes are too high. The Fish has threatened the people I care most about in the world, and it won’t be over until I have personally scratched out his dead eyes with a blunt fucking knife, liquidized them, and fed them to him through a straw.
My fist closes around the brandy glass until I fear I’m going to smash it.
Meggie needs me to stay calm. She needs me thinking with clarity because it’s the only way I can keep her safe. If I lose control now, I lose everything.
I refill my glass, swallow a mouthful of brandy, and go back to the CCTV footage from the cabin.
Meggie is in the kitchen loading up a pizza crust with toppings. I can tell by the angle of her head and the pursed lips that she’s angry.
Amber and Nikki are nowhere to be seen.
Meggie raises her head, narrows her eyes; her lips barely move when she speaks. Is Nikki somewhere in the room? Is she coming clean?
My heart aches for Meggie. I’ve only known her for a short while, but we’ve talked a lot about trivial stuff, everyday life, routines, favorite movies, food we dislike, vacations, school, work.
And Nikki is the only friend that Meggie talks about.
Reading between the lines, Nikki knows everything there is to know about her best friend, and vice versa, and Meggie has been too wary to let anyone else in because her past is too painful to talk about.
Now, from the way she appears to be folding in on herself on the screen, she’s experiencing the crushing disappointment of betrayal, and I can do nothing to protect her from that.
She slams the knife she’s holding onto the chopping board.
I wish I could reach through the camera, pull her into my arms, and make her feel safe again.
But even as the thought materializes, I’m bowled over by the reminder of Lucia’s visit.
The last time Meggie and I were together, the knowledge of my engagement to another woman was fresh in her mind, so I know exactly how Meggie is feeling right now.
Lonely.
She must feel as if everyone she knows has let her down, and she is in this alone, despite the team of bodyguards surrounding her.
She doesn’t know my men. She wouldn’t run to them for advice or ask them to keep an eye on Amber while she has a shower or even get them to carry her bags while she runs some errands.
She wouldn’t get this angry if one of my bodyguards let her down because there’s no emotional attachment between them.
But Nikki is a whole different story.
Nikki knows all there is to know about Meggie and Amber’s history, and she still made the wrong choice.
I can’t hear what’s being said, but I can read Meggie’s responses from her facial expressions.
It’s painful to watch. But part of me is grateful that Ric hasn’t yet relocated them to the bunker.
Meggie will be panicking enough if she has to go underground, without a fight persisting between her and her friend.
Then something happens, and Nikki comes into the footage. She sits at the table as Meggie joins her with the medical kit and starts cleaning her hand. It’s obvious, watching the black and white recording, that the tension between them has evaporated.
I don’t know what passes between them, but one moment they’re sitting at the table, and the next, Nikki is on the floor with her head between her legs.
Meggie yanks open drawers until she finds what she’s looking for, and the two of them sit together directly facing the camera.
She holds something over Nikki’s face like a gas mask.
When she finally lowers it, my Meggie is back. The caring, gentle, beautiful soul that I fell in love with. She pulls Nikki’s head against her like a child and speaks directly at the camera.
Watching her, it’s as though all the emotions I’ve suppressed over the years since my parents and Elisabetta died have resurfaced like skeletons clawing their way through the soil.
Meggie loves me. Of that I’m certain, because never in the history of time has anyone’s eyes ever reflected love the way Meggie’s eyes do. My pulse races, and my love for her swells in my chest like a balloon.
I have so much gratitude. After Elisabetta, I convinced myself that I didn’t deserve to love or be loved.Now it has reinforced my determination to do what is right for Meggie and Amber.
But gradually seeping through these emotions is the sickly sense of dread that this is goodbye. She knows that I’m watching. She’s letting me know how she feels in case she doesn’t get to tell me herself.
I check the time on my wristwatch.
The reaction isn’t lost on Bruno. “My friend will be waiting to meet us at the airport.”
Why hasn’t Ric moved them into the bunker? If they’d taken down the target, I’d have heard from him by now, but his silence is doing nothing to disperse the cold layer of sludge forming in my gut.
But before I get a chance to call Ric, a video call from Bianca fires through on my device. I answer without hesitation.
It takes several beats for me to understand what I’m looking at.
The misshapen face is barely recognizable as my sister.
One eye is purple-black, the surrounding flesh so pulpy the eye is little more than a slit.
Her mouth is swollen; blood trickles down her chin from the corner of her lips and more blood is smeared across her forehead.
Bianca is unconscious, bound to a seat by ropes around her chest, and head tilted backwards for the benefit of the fucking animal recording the grisly scene.
As I watch the footage, two men step in front of the camera. One slices through the ropes around her chest, while the other catches my sister as she slumps forward. He hoists her onto his shoulder like a sack of grain and carries her towards a heavy metal door.
I don’t recognize the room. From the artificial light and grubby walls, I’d guess that it’s a basement, or underground room of some kind. There are no discerning features on the walls. No windows. No furniture other than the seat in the middle of the room.
The man carrying my sister keeps his face hidden, but I hear the grunt of a released breath as he shoulders her dead weight. They’re both wearing dark suits that stretch across their broad shoulders and thickset frames.
The second guy lingers in front of the camera. Deliberately. This is a game to him.
But while he’s making me wait for the big reveal, I hear a familiar voice, making my gut twist. I don’t catch what’s being said, but I don’t need to.
Mario is behind this fucking charade, proving that I shouldn’t have stopped at busting up his hands.
As thug-number-two turns around to face the camera, he raises his hand and slides something sinister over his knuckles. I get a glimpse of metal. It explains why my sister’s face is mashed.
But like a horror movie approaching the gore-fest finale, the worst is yet to come.
With his face still concealed, he raises his right hand and snaps off a latex glove to reveal stubby fingers covered in heavy gold rings.
The camera pans upward as he licks his index finger suggestively, his fat tongue scraping upwards from palm to fingertip.
When he has finished, he starts on the second finger, then the third, grouping them together to ram the point home.
I drag my attention away from the provocative gesture and focus on the parts of his face that I can see.
The thick black hair with the prominent widow’s peak, the bushy brows behind which dark sunken eyes shelter, the flat nose that must’ve been broken so many times it no longer heals correctly.
But it’s the tattoo on the guy’s cheek that reveals his identity.
The hammer and sickle with a snake curling upwards.
He’s bratva.
The bastardo has sold my sister out to the bratva.
A tic starts above my left eye while the camera keeps recording, and I tap out a code to Bruno on the tabletop between us. Beating up my sister is only part of the statement he wants to make; there’s more to come, and I inhale every last drop of it, storing it up for payback time.