Chapter 24
LORENZO
The bike is on its side in the gravel. Nico’s Ducati. The one I told him to keep locked in the garage. Keys in the ignition because Nico treats a sixty-thousand-dollar machine like a bicycle outside a bodega.
I crouch. The skid mark runs forty feet before the rear tire blew. Rubber peeled back to the rim. The gravel is torn up where she went down, long gouges in the dirt that end at the cracked helmet sitting six feet from the bike. Blood on the gravel. Not much. Enough.
I pick up the helmet. The visor is shattered. A scrape along the left side where it hit the road, deep enough to expose the foam underneath. She was wearing this. She hit the ground hard enough to crack the shell.
My chest does something I don’t let it do. I crush it flat.
Tire tracks. Two vehicles, parked in a V-formation. They boxed her in. Planned it. Knew which road she’d take, knew she’d be alone, knew she’d be moving fast on a bike she’d never ridden before.
I stand. The helmet in my hand. The gravel crunching under my boots. Nico is three feet behind me. Dante to his left. Marco hangs back near the SUV, arms crossed, staring at the skid marks like they’re his fault.
I turn. Hit Nico. Open palm across the jaw, hard enough to snap his head sideways.
He takes it. Doesn’t raise a hand. His tongue finds the split in his lip and he nods once. Like he’s been waiting for it.
“I told you about the bikes.” My voice is flat. Dead. “Keys in the ignition. Every time.”
“I know.”
I step forward. Nico doesn’t move.
Dante’s hand closes on my shoulder. Not gentle. The grip of a man who’s broken up worse between us.
“Enough.” Low. The Don’s voice, but the eyes are my brother’s. “This isn’t on him and you know it.”
My hands close into fists. He’s right. I don’t care.
“I said enough, Renzo.”
I shrug his hand off. Drop the helmet at Nico’s feet. Walk back to the SUV.
Behind me, Nico picks it up.
Two hours later, my phone rings.
The war room is chaos controlled. Marco at three monitors, cycling through camera feeds.
Nico working his contacts, phone pressed to his ear, speaking low Italian to people whose names I’ll never ask.
Dante coordinating everything, holding the operation together the way he always does.
And me. Pacing. Running scenarios that all end the same way. Too late.
My phone buzzes against my thigh. I pull it out. Unknown number.
I answer.
“Looking for someone, Santoro?” Smooth. Cultured. A voice that orders expensive wine and death warrants in the same breath. I’ve never heard it before, but I know exactly who it belongs to.
Flavio Benedetti.
“Where is she.”
“Straight to business. I appreciate that.” He sounds pleased. Amused. Like this is entertainment. “She’s with me. Safe, for now. We’re having a lovely conversation.”
My hand tightens on the phone. The plastic creaks.
“If you touch her.”
“You’ll what?” He cuts me off, still entertained. “Kill me? You were always going to kill me, Lorenzo. This just makes it more interesting.”
“What do you want?”
“What do I want?” He savors the question.
“I want you to suffer. I want you to know she’s here, with me, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Not yet.” A pause. “She and I are going to have a conversation. About everything she knows about your family. Your security. Your weaknesses. She’s been quite thorough in her research. ”
“She won’t tell you anything.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But that’s between her and me, isn’t it? You’re not part of this conversation, Lorenzo. You’re just listening.”
The line goes dead.
I lower the phone. Stare at the screen. Call ended.
She’s with Flavio. Flavio Benedetti. The man whose operation has moved thousands of women through ports and warehouses and places that exist so people can disappear.
Flavio has Isabella.
I grab the table edge.
“I recorded the call.” Marco. Already typing. “Working on the trace.”
Isabella. With them. Right now.
“Renzo, sit down.” Nico.
I don’t look at him. I’m gripping the table so hard the wood groans. A glass of water by Marco’s station. I knock it sideways. Don’t notice until it shatters on the floor and Nico jerks at the sound.
“Renzo.” Dante’s voice. Far away. Then closer, sharper. “Renzo.”
I can’t look at him. I’m already moving. Gun from the holster, checking the clip. Full. I cross the room in three strides before Dante steps into my path.
“Move.”
“And go where?” His hand hits my chest. Not gentle. “You don’t have a location. You walk out that door, you’re running blind into Benedetti territory, and they’ll kill you before you get within a mile of her.”
He’s right. That doesn’t stop the shaking.
“Marco.” My voice comes out wrong. Scraped raw. “Tell me you have something.”
His fingers fly over the keyboard. Minutes pass. His frown deepens.
“Shit.”
“What.”
“He routed through at least twenty different servers. Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, back through South America. By the time I untangle this, he could have called from anywhere.” Marco shakes his head. “Flavio’s been evading law enforcement for a year. He knows how to stay hidden.”
My fist hits the table. The monitors jump.
“Cazzo.“ The word grinds out of me. ”So we have nothing.“
“From the call? Nothing usable. I’m sorry, Renzo.”
Nothing. She’s out there. And I have nothing.
I slam the flat of my hand against the wall. The plaster dents. The sting shoots up my wrist. Good. That I understand.
Nico steps toward me. “Renzo. Hey. Look at me.”
I can’t. My breath is coming wrong, shallow and fast. Years of nothing. And now all of it. All at once. Her face when I pushed her through the door. The trust. And then the betrayal.
“We’ll find her.” Marco. Quiet. Not looking up from his screens.
I shove the gun back into its holster. Pull out the cleaning kit from the drawer beneath Marco’s station and start breaking down my backup piece. Field strip. Wipe. Oil. Reassemble. My fingers run the motions faster than prayer. The tremor in my fingers steadies when they have work.
The last time I shook like this, I was nineteen. Standing in the hallway outside Mama’s room. I couldn’t walk toward it. Couldn’t make my legs carry me to the place where she was dying.
I ran then.
I’m not running now.
“Nico. Pull everything we have on Benedetti safe houses east of the canal. Every warehouse, every shell company address, every property their shell LLCs have touched in the last five years.”
“Already pulling it.”
“I want a list. Twenty minutes.”
“You’ll have it in ten.”
I lay out the pieces of the Beretta on the table and wipe down the barrel. The oil smells like Sunday mornings with Papa, before everything, when gun maintenance was a ritual and not a preparation for war.
“Wait.” Marco’s voice cuts through. Sharper. Urgent. “Wait, wait, wait.”
I look up. His fingers are moving again, faster now.
“Isabella’s phone. When she escaped, she took it with her. We tracked it until the signal died at the edge of Benedetti territory.”
“You said the signal cut out.”
“It did. But that doesn’t mean the phone is destroyed.
” Marco pulls up a new screen. “If she still has it, if she hid it somewhere on her body, or they took it but didn’t destroy it, I might be able to ping it.
The battery would need to be intact, and she’d have to be somewhere with minimal signal interference. ”
“Can you find her?”
“I can try.” He’s already typing, pulling up triangulation software, cell tower maps. “If the phone is still active, even in low-power mode, it’ll respond to a carrier ping. Give me a few minutes.”
A few minutes. I’ll take it.
I force myself to breathe. Slide the barrel back into the frame. Click. The familiar weight settles in my hand.
“Nico. Everyone you can reach. I want people ready to move the second we have a location.”
“Already on it.”
“Dante.” My brother meets my gaze. The Don. The one who makes the final calls.
“Whatever it takes,” he says.
“Whatever it takes.”
We wait. Marco types. Nico’s phone buzzes with incoming confirmations.
I finish the reassembly, holster the backup, and spread Nico’s safe house list across the table.
Seven addresses. I eliminate three based on satellite footage.
Too exposed, too residential, too far from the port routes Flavio uses. Four left.
Isabella is in one of them. Or she’s not, and we start again from nothing.
“Got something.” Marco leans forward, eyes locked on the screen. “Faint signal. Keeps dropping every few seconds, but it’s pinging the same two towers.”
“Where?”
“Still triangulating. The partial pings give me a radius, not a pinpoint. Every time I get a third tower lock, the signal dies.” He types faster. Pauses. Types again. Shakes his head. “East side. Industrial district. Half-mile grid, best I can do. That’s consistent with Benedetti territory.”
I look at the safe house list. Cross-reference. Two of my four remaining addresses sit in that grid.
“How long to get exact coordinates?”
“I don’t know. The signal keeps cutting in and out. Could be interference, could be the phone’s damaged, could be they’re moving her.” Marco’s jaw is tight. “I’m doing everything I can.”
I fold the list. Slide it into my jacket pocket.
“Dante. I need a team at staging point Charlie in forty minutes. Full tactical.”
My brother nods. Picks up his phone.
I stand at the center of the war room and stare at the two addresses circled on the map.
One of them holds her. I check the clip. Full.