Chapter 25 LUCA
LUCA
We are ten minutes out from the Bellini docks when the world comes apart.
I have one hand on the steering wheel of the SUV, watching the coastal road wind into salt-soaked darkness, running through the strike plan in my head.
We are supposed to burn Vincenzo's warehouse tonight.
Nora sits in the passenger seat beside me, quiet and watchful, her arms folded over her chest as the headlights carve up the asphalt.
My phone vibrates against the console, followed a heartbeat later by the scream of tires behind us.
In the rearview mirror, high beams flood the back window.
Adrian's black SUV skids around the curve, tires screaming as smoke rolls off the rubber.
The back end swings wide, slides across the road, and cuts straight toward my rear bumper before he stomps the brake, stopping two feet from my car and throwing up a spray of gravel.
Nora grabs the dash with both hands as I slam my foot on the brakes and bring the car to a halt. "What the hell is his problem?"
I throw the car into park and shove my door open into the cold night air.
Behind us, Adrian's SUV door flies open.
Adrian leaps out before the engine even dies, stumbling once on the loose gravel before sprinting toward me.
His face is completely drained of color, his weapon forgotten at his hip.
Behind him, Matteo and Enzo scramble out of the passenger doors, both of them yelling at once.
I step out into the gravel as Adrian reaches the hood of my car. "Talk." I keep my voice flat, but the hair on the back of my neck rises. Adrian does not panic. Adrian does not run like a dying animal. "Why the fuck are you braking across oncoming traffic?"
Adrian slams both trembling palms against the hot metal hood, gasping for breath. "It's Sofia. Her tracker cut out forty minutes ago on the coastal stretch. The transponder went black. The driver is not picking up. Nothing. Absolute dead silence."
Matteo sprints up behind him with Enzo right at his heels. "Did you try her second line? The burner in her cosmetics bag?"
"Straight to voicemail!" Adrian's voice cracks violently down the center. He drags both hands down his pale face, shaking like a wire under high voltage. "I tried four times. Five times. I blew through two red lights chasing your tail. Luca, her line is completely dead."
Matteo runs a shaking hand through his hair, pacing in a tight circle on the road. "She was going to see the physical therapist. Ankle thing from the fall last week. She does it everytime, she never takes an escort because it's ten minutes down the road and she hates being babysat."
I stare at the empty road on the screen. "She should have taken an escort."
"I know that!" Matteo snaps. He winces and drops his head, rubbing his temples like his skull is cracking open. "I'm sorry. I know that."
Enzo steps forward, his eyes dark with immediate violence. "Turn the cars around. We go back to the estate, pull every man off the dock run, and lock down the perimeter."
"We're not raiding the docks tonight," I state, the words like lead in my mouth. "Turn around. Now."
We kill the dock assault on the spot. Nora climbs into the back without asking questions, her face set in tight, sharp lines as we race back toward the estate at double the speed limit, Adrian's headlights pinned to our bumper the entire way.
By the time we skid into the mansion and hit the command center, the coastal road feeds are already burning on the main wall.
Adrian lunges at the main console, his fingers slipping across the keyboard with clumsy, terrified speed before he wrenches the coastal camera feed onto the main wall.
The screen flickers with grainy footage.
The road sits half swallowed by deep tree shadow.
Then a second car swerves across the center line at high speed, boxing Sofia's sedan against the ditch so hard the tires throw thick white smoke across the blacktop.
I step forward until my chest nearly hits the display. "Freeze it."
Matteo taps the screen with a trembling index finger. "Right there. Look at the angle of that bumper. That was deliberate."
Adrian slams his fist onto the spacebar, stopping the frame so hard the monitor rattles.
His breath comes out in ragged, ragged gasps, his chest shuddering as if someone just kicked him in the ribs.
Two masked men in dark jackets are already tearing Sofia's passenger door open.
The sight hits my gut like an iron bar, but Adrian looks entirely hollowed out, staring at the frozen pixels like a man watching a guillotine fall.
"Bellini," Matteo mutters, his fingers digging hard into the edge of the workstation desk.
"We don't have confirmation yet," I counter, though my gut tells me otherwise.
"You know it's him," Matteo presses, palms wiping hard over his damp face. "You've known it since we saw that second car."
I glare toward the blinking tracking logs. "We don't act on assumptions. Assumptions get people killed before we even pick up our weapons."
Enzo paces like a caged dog behind the console. "Assumptions keep people alive when the other side doesn't play by rules."
He's right, and I hate that he's right, and I hate more that saying it out loud makes it real in a way the footage hasn't quite managed.
I run the timestamp again. Forty-one minutes.
In forty-one minutes a car can go anywhere.
A boat can leave a dock. A phone can be dropped in a storm drain three towns over.
"Pull every camera on the coast road going both directions," I tell Adrian. "I want the second car's plate, model, anything."
Adrian's fingers shake so hard he misses three keys in a row before swearing and stabbing at the board.
Sweat glints on his hairline. "Already running the filters.
I should have put two cars on her. I knew the clinic run was predictable.
I let her talk me out of the escort because she smiled and told me I was smothering her.
God damn it, I let her walk straight into a trap! "
"We don't have time for a fucking autopsy on your schedule," I snap, cutting him off.
Adrian's spine goes rigid as a steel rod. "It's exactly the time. I flagged her file as low priority because she asked me not to hover. I let her ask me that."
Matteo frantically hammers keys on his keypad. "She asked all of us. She threatened to dump pasta sauce in my shoes if I tracked her to the clinic."
"That was not an excuse for me to drop protocol," Adrian bites out, refusing to blink.
Matteo looks up from the monitor, surprised enough by the tone that he actually stops typing. "Adrian."
"What."
"You okay?"
Adrian whirls on us, his chest heaving against his dark shirt. He drives both heels of his hands hard into his temples, his breath tearing out ragged, shuddering like a man on the edge of a cliff. "I'm not fine! None of this is fucking fine!"
A dead hush slams down across the entire command center. Matteo freezes mid-keystroke, staring with his mouth slightly parted. Enzo halts on the hardwood, his eyes widening in pure shock. Even Nora, standing in the shadow of the doorway, goes completely rigid.
Adrian has run our security head for twenty years.
I have watched him pull shrapnel out of his shoulder without blinking.
I have seen him stare down a hit team at twenty yards and report their weapon counts into his radio without his pulse jumping a single beat.
He does not yell. He does not shake. Seeing him come unglued over my little sister sends a cold shock straight through my chest, and every second he fractures threatens to pull the whole room down with him.
The screen changes. A different angle, a gas station camera two miles up the coast, and there it is, the second car pulling in fast, a plate that's almost certainly cloned but worth running anyway.
Two men get out, and this time the frame is clear enough to see faces.
Neither of them is anyone I recognize personally, but the tattoo on the taller one's wrist, three dots in a curved line, I've seen that mark before, on a body we fished out of the harbor eight months ago wearing a Bellini courier badge.
"That confirms it." My knuckles turn white against the wooden desk. "Run facial recognition on both of those bastards. I want names by morning."
Enzo steps directly into the glare of the screens. "We don't have until morning. Vincenzo doesn't grab a girl to hold a press conference. He grabs her because he wants blood, and he'll call within the hour to demand it."
Matteo throws his hands up. "He's going to ask for the port authority keys. Or the northern rail line. Or my firstborn child, which he can gladly take because I don't have one."
I watch the map coordinates redraw. "Shut up, Matteo."
"I know how the old bastard operates," I mutter, my teeth grinding.
Matteo glances between us, confused, and decides wisely to redirect. "What do we tell Nonna?"
"Keep her out of it for now," I direct, head shaking. "She doesn't need this panic yet."
"She's going to know something's wrong the second she sees all of us standing around like this."
"Then we move our operations to the back room where she won't see us," I command. Matteo lets out one short, ugly bark of a laugh that has no humor left in it, just raw pressure venting out.
"Great plan. Real tactical genius. Hide in the pantry."
"Matteo."
Matteo drags both hands through his hair until it sticks up in messy spikes. "I'm scared. I'm allowed to be scared. She's the baby. She's the one who used to sneak into my room during storms because she didn't like the thunder. I'm allowed."
"Nobody said you weren't," Adrian murmurs, his voice softening by a fraction without his gaze leaving the road map.
I grab him by the shoulder to steady him. "You're allowed. Just channel that fucking anger into finding her."
He nods, wipes his face with the back of his hand, and goes back to the terminal like he's been given permission to hold it together, which maybe he has.
That's the thing about running a family like this.
Sometimes the kindest order you can give someone is a task, because a task is a place to stand when the ground won't hold still.
The phone on the desk rings before anyone can speak. Not my cell phone. The old landline, the hardwired unit we keep strictly because it cannot be traced through cellular towers, the line that only ever rings when an enemy wants to prove a point.
Everyone in the room goes still.
I step directly in front of the audio receiver. "Speaker."
Adrian punches the button. The line crackles, then settles into that particular kind of silence a man makes when he wants you to know he's enjoying the wait.
"Luca." Vincenzo Bellini's voice is smooth and unhurried, the voice of a man reading a menu, not a man holding my sister somewhere I can't see. "I hope I haven't interrupted anything important."
"Where the fuck is she?" I bypass any polite pleasantries. I don't ask questions I expect him to lie about, but I need him to hear the ice in my voice.
Vincenzo lets out a raspy, dry chuckle over the receiver. "Safe. For now. Whether that continues depends entirely on how reasonable you decide to be over the next twenty four hours."
I keep my tone deadly level. "If there is a single scratch on her skin, you won't live long enough to negotiate anything."
"Empty threats sound so undignified on you, Luca," Vincenzo responds with a dry hum.
Enzo lets out a low curse through clenched teeth, punching the drywall beside the door. Matteo's fingers grip the wooden trim of the desk until the joints show stark white. Adrian stands frozen in the center of the floor, staring straight ahead with locked eyes.
"You want the shipping routes," I cut in, refusing to play his sick game. "Stop talking out of your ass and name your price."
"I want a great many things," Vincenzo purrs, the faint rustle of paper coming through the speaker. "Your sister is a lovely opening offer. I look forward to discussing terms once you've had time to consider what a bad trade would cost you."
The line goes dead before I can answer, and the silence that follows is worse than the call itself.
"He'll call back," Enzo grates out, his boots grinding on the hardwood. "He always calls back. He likes watching people squirm before he gives up terms."
"Then he's going to be very disappointed by how little crawling we do," Matteo mutters, knuckles cracking with sudden nervous energy.
I slam my fist onto the desk. "We aren't bowing down to that piece of shit."
Adrian grabs my bicep with a grip so desperate and tight his fingers dig straight through the cloth. His eyes are wide, glassy with unshed panic. "Luca, look at me. Give me the sweep order. Don't leave me sitting behind a desk while they touch her. Put me in the lead car right now."
"You're chief of security for this house. I need you here."
Adrian yells as he steps directly into my chest, pupils dilated with sheer terror. "I have to be out there! She will be terrified. She won't speak to anyone else. If Vincenzo puts hands on her, if they hurt her...Luca, please. I cannot sit in this room."
Matteo looks between the two of us. "You'll blow your cover if you rush in blind."
Adrian steps straight into my personal space. "I don't care about cover."
I hold his gaze. I see the raw panic in his eyes, but tonight is not the time to question it.
I gesture toward the armory locker on the far wall. "You'll run point on the ground team. Not alone. Enzo goes with you."
Matteo shakes his head. "Enzo's going to want to burn the whole valley down. You know how he gets."
"Then let him burn what needs burning," I reply without hesitation.
Adrian nods. Something in his shoulders loosens, just barely, like the concession bought him enough air to breathe again. "Understood."
I point across the glowing grid. "Matteo, get me every asset we have on the coast road within the hour. Cameras, informants, anyone who owes us a debt."
The monitors hum against the dark. Every camera feed on the coast road shows nothing but empty blacktop. Sofia is out there in a car with Bellini's men, and Vincenzo is waiting for his next call to tear us down.
I tap the glass screen where the map centers. "Get me everything on his known holdings within thirty miles of that gas station. Warehouses, safe houses, anything with a roof and a lock."
Matteo clicks furiously through windows. "I'm already pulling property tax records from the municipal database. Turns out criminals are shockingly bad at paying commercial zoning fees under fake shell companies."
Adrian moves toward the door without another word. Matteo dials frantically on the mobile phone, barking out orders to our forward units. Enzo grabs an automatic rifle from the wall mount, his jaw locked in cold fury.
The landline sits silent on the desk, waiting for Vincenzo to decide it's time to enjoy himself again.