36. Silas
How is it possible for someone to disappear without leaving a single trace? How is it possible to leave no digital footprint? How? For months, Andreas has been trying to find Amalia, and every time, nothing.
When he mentioned the possibility that she could be dead, I lost it.
It was the first time I hit him outside of the ring, but the image he put in my mind, her on a floor, bleeding, just like Dean did, was enough to pull a black veil over my judgement.
She is not dead.
She is lost, and I need to find her. Even if it takes me months. Years.
I will find you, Amalia.
I went to the high school professor, Gustav Ortez, only for him to look at me like I was a walking nightmare. Maybe I shouldn’t have threatened to break his neck if he didn’t tell me everything he knew about her.
He stayed quiet, telling me that since that godforsaken day, his calls had gone unanswered. Just like mine.
Until her cellphone was completely deactivated.
My phone rings, and when I see Alessio’s name, the Cosa Nostra don, I know something has happened.
“Silas, we have a problem,” he says in a tone I know how to read, and fuck, he’s angry.
“I’m listening.”
A pause follows, and my unease doubles because Alessio is not the kind of man who hesitates when he has something to communicate.
“Silvio has taken your girlfriend and brought her to an abandoned house near Newport.”
I listen, but my synapses aren’t connecting. My girlfriend? Silvio? And then a pair of hazel eyes with exactly sixty-five percent green in them appears in my mind — eyes I’ve been dreaming about every night for the past three months.
How did Silvio find her? Where the hell are they? If that bastard has moved so much as a single strand of Amalia’s hair out of place, I will personally make sure he loses the fingerprints off every finger.
“When?” is all I ask because a moment of panic will not help me get her out.
“My men informed me five minutes ago. I have someone who’s been following him for several months, and he found it suspicious when he saw him carrying an unconscious woman by the name of Amalia Jiménez, formerly Sanchez, into a car.”
There’s no point asking how he knows about my connection to Amalia, because at this point, I’m certain Alessio Conti has invented some formula for avoiding sleep so he can be awake twenty-four hours a day.
“If you have people following him, then you already know why he wants my attention,” I tell him as I move to the bedroom and throw my passport and whatever else I need into a backpack.
After Silvio’s last visit to the apartment, I informed the head of the Italian mafia about his soldier’s little maneuvers, but it’s clear Silvio wasn’t punished harshly enough if he’s allowing himself to pull something like this.
He exhales into the phone.
“He lost the money from an important shipment,” he answers. “A great deal of money. I already have men on their way, Silas. Silvio won’t be leaving that place alive, but I wanted to inform you because I value your work.”
Alessio is about my age, and when he took over the Italian mafia out of New York, he had to literally walk over bodies to get where he is. Both his parents were assassinated, and he and his sister barely escaped a fire that was deliberately set.
I have respect for this man, and even though he isn’t the type you dictate terms to, I still hear myself saying, “I need a private plane in Ciudad de México.”
“It’s already waiting on the runway,” is all I get back, and in my head I’m already calculating how many miles stand between me and Newport, and how in the world I can compress time and space to get to her faster.