29. Adriano
The meeting runs twenty minutes longer than it should.
By the time I step out of the conference room, my patience is already thin enough that Matteo takes one look at my face and wisely says nothing as we walk back toward my office.
Things between Casey and me still aren’t good and I’m finding I can’t sleep without her in my arms.
“Rossi still thinks the shipping issue came from Jersey,” Matteo says, snapping me from my thoughts.
“He’s wrong.” I continue walking, just wanting five minutes alone in my office before my brain splits open from the pounding headache.
Matteo smirks. “He enjoys it when you say that.”
I do not need my brother’s jokes right now, but if I don’t respond, he’ll just keep going. “He needs hobbies.”
Matteo grins faintly, pushing open my office door ahead of me.
I barely make it halfway inside before my phone rings.
St. Catherine’s Preschool flashes across the screen.
For a second, I think maybe Letty fell over on the playground or painted another child with glue again. But why are they calling me for that and not Casey?
I answer immediately. “Mancini.”
“Hi, this is Claire from St. Catherine’s.” There’s something slightly hesitant in her voice that makes me stop reaching for the files on my desk. “We just wanted to check if Miss Casey was still coming?”
My stomach tightens slightly, my body freezing mid-movement. “What do you mean?”
A pause. “She’s usually here by now for pickup.”
The world shifts almost imperceptibly.
Casey is never late.
She’s the most punctual person I know, and she’d never be late for Letty.
Something cold moves quietly through my chest as Matteo catches my eye. “I’ll handle it,” I say. “Someone will be there to collect Letty in twenty minutes.”
The second the call ends, I dial Casey immediately.
Straight to voicemail.
My pulse kicks harder.
I call again.
Nothing.
“Adi?” Matteo’s voice sharpens slightly, the instinct none of us talk about telling him something is wrong before I can voice it. The easy arrogance is gone.
I barely hear him.
Because suddenly I know, with a certainty that has no logic, that something is very wrong.
Somewhere deep in my bones, something turns violent.
Casey would never leave Letty waiting.
Never. Which means something has happened to her and when I find out who, they’re going to wish they were never born.
I’m already moving toward the door when I call Rossi. “Get security footage from every street between the brownstone and the school,” I say flatly.
Silence.
Rossi’s voice changes instantly. “What happened?”
I grip the phone harder. “Casey’s missing.”
I call Nico into my office and fill him in and he offers to get Isabella to collect Letty, knowing I’ll want him, Isabella, or Matteo, to do it in this moment.
I need the people I trust most around me right now.
Relief floods through me because at least I know my daughter will be safe.
Now I just need to find the woman I love and bring her home and never let her go.
“Matty.” I turn to my brother, not able to finish my sentence because if I lose her, I don’t know what I’ll do. I won’t survive it.
My brother steps up, placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing. “We’re gonna find her, Adi. I promise you.”
I nod, because anything else is unacceptable, then I pull myself together. She needs me and I won’t let her down.
“What’s the plan, Adi?”
“Get Rossi and his top men in here now.”
Casey’s phone rings once, twice, three times, each unanswered ring cutting through me in a way I can’t let anyone in see.
Straight to voicemail.
Again.
Again.
I turn my phone over in my hand because if I keep looking at her name on the screen and hearing that soft, recorded voice, something inside me is going to come apart in a way I won’t be able to put back together quickly enough.
“She’s not answering her phone,” I say, and the words feel like they scrape their way out of me.
Nico goes still.
Mattey returns with Rossi and stands beside Nic, but Rossi is already moving, voice low and clipped into his phone. “Pull every camera within six blocks of the school. Street traffic, private security, dashcams if you have to. I don’t care who you have to call.”
Casey is missing.
Casey, who went to the school angry with me.
Casey, who looked at me this morning like she still loved me but didn’t know what to do with it.
Casey, who I lied to because I thought protecting her was more important than respecting the one thing she asked from me.
Something cold moves through my ribs, slow and vicious.
This is my fault.
My phone rings.
Unknown number.
Every sound in the room seems to vanish at once.
Nico’s eyes snap to mine. Matteo steps closer. Rossi lowers his phone slowly.
I answer, putting it on speaker.
For a moment, there’s nothing but static and breathing.
Then Jasper says, “You seem to have lost something, Adriano.”
The rage that hits me is so sharp and immediate, I have to close my hand around the edge of my desk to keep from throwing the phone before I have what I need. “Where is she?”
He laughs softly, but there’s nothing stable in it. Nothing sane. “That’s the first thing you ask? Not how I am after what you did to me?”
“Put her on the phone.”
“You don’t give orders here, Mancini.”
I close my eyes for one fraction of a second. Not to calm down. Calm is too far away now. I do it because if I let myself picture his hands on her, his voice near her, his fear making him reckless around her, I’ll stop being useful.
“Jasper,” I say carefully, each syllable dragged through clenched teeth, “let me hear her voice.”
There’s movement on the line. A muffled sound. A sharp breath.
Then—
“Adriano?”
Her voice nearly drops me to my knees. “Baby,” I say, and the word comes out before I can stop it, raw enough that Nico looks away like he’s witnessed something private. “Are you hurt?”
A pause that feels like a lifetime before she answers has my hand tightening around the phone. “Casey?”
“I’m okay,” she says quickly.
She’s lying.
I know the shape of her lies now. I know the little breath she takes when she’s trying to make something sound easier than it is. I know her voice when she’s swallowing pain because she doesn’t want anyone else carrying it.
“Did he touch you?” I ask.
More silence.
And it breaks something in me before she even answers.
“Yes,” she whispers.
Matteo curses behind me, low and vicious.
I can’t look at any of them.
If I look away from the phone, if I let the room back in, I might realize how close I am to losing the woman I love.
“Listen to me,” I say, forcing my voice to stay steady when everything inside me is shaking.
“You stay alive for me. You hear me? Whatever he says, whatever he does, you stay alive, and you wait for me.”
Her breath catches. “Adriano—”
“I’m coming for you.”
The phone shifts again, and Jasper’s voice returns, too close and too pleased with himself. “You should hear what she sounds like when she cries.”
For a second, there’s nothing human in me.
Nico steps closer, his hand hovering near my arm, and I realize vaguely that my expression must have changed enough to worry him.
“You want money?” I ask.
Jasper laughs, brittle and cracked. “Money? That won’t buy me back my reputation. You made sure of that.”
“Then tell me what you want.”
“I want you to know what it feels like.” His voice breaks slightly on the last word, and somehow that makes him more dangerous. “I want you to stand there with all that power and understand you can’t stop me.”
The fear in my chest turns over.
Because there it is. He wants revenge and he feels like he has nothing left to lose and I did that.
A man with nothing left to negotiate for is a man with no reason to be careful. “You let her go,” I say quietly, “and I’ll help you disappear before the Feds close in. Passport. Money. Safe route out. You know I can do it.”
Nico’s head turns sharply toward me, but he says nothing. I know we don’t swim in that world anymore but just like he dove back in for Isabella, I’ll do the same for Casey.
Jasper is silent for a moment. Then, softly, “You’d do that?”
“Yes.”
And I mean it.
Not because I intend mercy. Not because he deserves air after this. But if Casey walks away alive, I’ll hand him anything he asks for in the moment and hunt him later when she’s safe.
“Liar,” Jasper says finally.
Then the line goes dead.
For one second, no one moves.
Then my phone leaves my hand and shatters against the far wall hard enough that people outside the glass walls of my office flinch.
Rossi’s phone rings almost immediately.
He answers, listens, and looks up at me with grim focus. “We have the car. Red Hook warehouse district. One of the traffic cameras caught the plate.”
The world narrows to a single point.
I reach inside my jacket.
Nico catches my wrist before I can pull the gun free.
“Adi.”
I look at him.
He sees everything. The fear. The fury. The part of me that’s already standing over Jasper’s body and deciding how much pain is enough.
His grip tightens. “We get her first.”
I swallow once, the motion rough. “I know.”
“You don’t do anything that risks her.”
That almost makes me laugh, because the idea that I could risk Casey is so abhorrent I can barely stand hearing the words. Yet I did when I set out on my vendetta to destroy her ex, thinking I was protecting her. “I know,” I repeat.
But when I free my wrist, Nico lets me.
Matteo is already moving toward the door. Rossi is giving coordinates into his phone. I think of Letty at home, safe and sound with Isabella, not knowing the woman she loves is somewhere frightened because of the mess I made.
I failed both of them.
That thought goes into the same dark place as everything else.
Later.
If there is a later.
For now, there’s only Casey.
And the man who took her.