39. Silas
The private plane sent by Alessio touches down near Newport, and when I step off, I see an SUV waiting.
There are four of us here, with four more waiting at the location.
When the head of the Italian mafia says you’re finished, you’re finished.
And what Silvio did was go behind his back, believing Alessio would never find out, or that he wouldn’t care about the consequences.
“Priority number one is Amalia. After that, you can do whatever you want with Silvio.”
While I was on the plane, the idiot sent me a photo of Amalia tied to a chair. Every cell in my body is screaming at me to move faster. Every atom I have is calculating the shortest path to her.
How was he able to find her when I spent months and came up with nothing?
When the GPS shows three hundred yards to the address, we get out of the SUV. A gun is handed to me, one more on top of the one I already have, and we move on foot.
I can see the cabin where he’s keeping her, and I can also see the ten men he has positioned outside. He knew there was a risk I wouldn’t come alone. At least his brain managed that much.
In the next moment, the shooting starts. Alessio’s soldiers spread out, working to keep Silvio’s men occupied.
I see a door a few yards away, and without thinking about what’s waiting on the other side, I push it open.
A man lunges at me from the left, and my ribs take the impact.
I think one of them has cracked from how hard it is to breathe, but I hear her voice, and I know she’s only a few yards away.
So without thinking, I raise the gun and shoot the man in the abdomen.
His mouth fills with blood immediately, and before he gets any on me, I push him off.
Gun still raised, I clear each room along the hallway, one by one, until I reach a living room.
In the middle of it is the woman who emptied my mind for the very first time.
“Silas.” My name on her lips makes me forget, for one second, the pain I’m in.
“Let her go, and I’ll mention to Alessio that, at the last moment, your neurons decided to start working,” I tell Silvio, who is positioned behind Amalia.
In the next second he reaches behind his waistband and draws his own weapon, leveling it at her.
A knot lodges in my throat because all I can see is the scene in which Dean died, except with Amalia in his place. I feel his warm blood between my fingers, watch his gaze lose focus, feel his skin going cold.
I try to shake the memory loose, but my body is paralyzed by the thought that I might not get to her in time and could lose her in the next few seconds.
Fifteen feet between us, but when I try to take another step, I hear the click of the gun at the base of her throat.
“You’re going to do what you should have done months ago, and use that brain of yours to move some money for me. Are we understood?”
I watch as Amalia tries to keep her head up, chin raised, but I don’t miss the way her lower lip has taken on a faint tremor.
“Okay.”
That’s all I say, and Silvio looks surprised by how easily I agree. I could shoot him, but there’s a risk, a probability far too high that his hand would reflex on the trigger before he hit the ground, a probability I will not factor in with her life at stake.
“Two million dollars. From this account into this one. And I don’t want any problems,” he tells me, tossing a piece of paper onto the carpet.
When I bend to pick it up, I steal twenty more inches, and I catch the scent of lilac and hot chocolate. After ninety-three days without it, I feel my lungs are unable to fill fast enough with that smell.
I look at Amalia, and she gives a small shake of her head, telling me not to do it, but she doesn’t understand that I would give that money out of my own pocket just to get her back safely.
But I know what account he wants me to pull from. This is Alessio’s personal account, and this is how he thinks he’s getting revenge on his don, the man who “wronged” him by cutting off the gambling money.
“This is the don’s account. You know the transfer will never be approved.”
“No, but you have a friend who knows a few tricks with computers.”
“This is punishable by death, Silvio. Nobody steals from Alessio. Nobody.”
“It’s been a pleasure, bastardo,” he tells me with a laugh, but in that instant, Amalia throws herself backward with everything she has, and she and the chair crash down on top of Silvio.
His hand still has the gun, and without stopping to consider that Sebastian will grow up without me, that I’ll leave Karina alone, that I’ll be breaking my promise to Dean, I drop to my knees between Amalia and Silvio, one second before his weapon discharges.
The bastard catches my left shoulder, and even though it burns like hell, I raise my arm and put a bullet between his eyes before he can cause any more problems.
Amalia hasn’t said a word, hasn’t moved at my back. I turn to her and cup her face in my hands. She has tears on her cheeks and her lower lip is trembling, making me realize it’s been ninety-three days and seven minutes since I last kissed her.
“God, Amalia, I’ve missed you,” I tell her before I close the distance between us.
Her eyes are still shut, and she’s trembling in my hands.
“Baby, open your eyes.”
She squeezes them tighter, somehow making herself even more fucking adorable.
“Amalia. I need to see your eyes.”
And just like that, I watch her open first one then the other, and exhale.
Her fingers move gently toward my shoulder, and no matter how hard I try not to, a grimace of pain crosses my face when she makes contact near the wound.
“Ayy Diosito, for the love of Thales, you’re hurt, and you’re bleeding, and it obviously hurts, I’m sorry, we need to get you help right now, we need to disinfect the wound, are you in shock? You look like you might be in shock?—”
“Amalia. Breathe. I’m okay. Stop your mind for one second?—”
My hand moves across her cheek, and for the first time in three months, I finally feel like I’m breathing normally, because she’s beside me.
Outside there’s complete silence, which means Alessio’s men have finished their work, and when I refocus my eyes, I see a shadow behind Amalia.
My mind is slow for five seconds, but when I see Maksim Rastovski standing in front of me, my brain doesn’t wait for any further signals. I’ve seen him in photographs next to that bastard Aleksandr, and all I need to know is that they share the same blood.
I raise the gun and manage to say, “This is for Dean, you son of a bitch.”
Amalia screams as Maksim Rastovski, cousin to the monster who killed my brother, dodges the bullet that was meant for him at the last millisecond. My hand has a slight tremor from the shoulder wound, and I curse myself for not anticipating that before I pulled the trigger.
I don’t know what the hell he’s doing here, but I know he’s part of the same family as the man who let my brother bleed out for nothing more than spare change in their world.
He’s not the man I wanted to shoot, but he’s close to that piece of human shit, and that’s enough for me.
“Silas, what is wrong with you?!” Amalia’s voice cuts through, and the alarm in her tone is what makes me stop.
“Amalia, your friend has exactly three seconds to explain to me why I shouldn’t bury him in the first cemetery I can find,” Rastovski’s voice grinds out, and I don’t miss the familiarity in it.
What is his connection to Amalia? Why is he here?
“Maksim, this is Silas Vaughn, my mathematics professor from the university in Ciudad de México,” she tells him, and the formality of that introduction irritates the hell out of me.
“I’m Silas Vaughn, Amalia’s boyfriend, and the brother of the man Aleksandr Rastovski decided to put a bullet through rather than pay a few thousand dollars for the work done.”
The silence that falls after that lands differently when I turn toward the woman I felt I was losing my mind over when she disappeared.
Months of searching. Months of functioning only on the certainty that I would inevitably find my way back to her.
“Aleksandr is dead, Silas.” Maksim’s voice is flat, and I know I can’t hide my shock.
Dead? No, that can’t be. I saw him a few months ago when he got away.
“When?” I ask, a knot forming in my throat.
I would have wanted the honor of looking into his eyes in his final moments, to make sure that nightmare was truly over. So Sebastian would know I’d gotten justice for him and for what remained of our family.
“Three months ago.”
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t trust a word from a Rastovski. But I don’t miss the tone in Maksim’s voice. There’s no guilt in it, no accusation, just release. That’s why I exhale and simply stay still for a few moments.
“Did it hurt?” I ask.
“Yes. Until the very last second. We have footage if you want confirmation,” he answers, and in that moment something lifts off my chest.
I have so many questions. So many things that still aren’t clear. For three months I’ve simply been existing without direction, only trying to find Amalia and Aleksandr, and now my mind has gone empty.
“I think we all need to have a conversation. Amalia, go ahead with Silas. I’ll make sure this place is cleaned up and follow behind you.
Sergey is outside; he’ll take you to the private plane.
I’ll send the Italian crew home after I have a brief word with them.
Oh, and call Julia. We don’t want that weapon of hers going off on the wrong person out of stress. ”
The questions haven’t left my mind, but when I look at Amalia, how exhausted she is, how drained her eyes look, I decide to drop my head and follow.
When I step outside, I look at the sky. For a few moments, I feel Dean close by. The weight that has pressed down on my shoulders and chest for nearly ten years begins to lift. It lifts when the information that the monster who killed him is dead registers fully in my mind.
I’ll want to see that footage. But the adrenaline is starting to drain, and all I want is to hold the woman beside me close. To breathe in the scent of lilac and feel her heartbeat. Because there was a moment when I believed I would never hear it again.
And I try to tell myself that she’ll listen. That she’ll understand.
Right now, I find myself wanting to pray to those mathematicians she always has on the tip of her tongue, to ask for their help. But I don’t think the whole council of them together could make this mission possible if she doesn’t want it herself.