Chapter 16
Enzo
I waited until the car turned the corner before heading back into the townhouse.
With Valentina spending the night away, I had no idea what the hell I was meant to do with myself.
All the old stuff that I used to do—boxing, drinking, whoring—none of it was even remotely interesting to me. A life of crime held even less appeal.
The most useful thing I could think of was to work on tracking the hitman. So, I grabbed my laptop to start going through a list of places he could have procured the poison that almost killed us at the food tasting several weeks ago.
As I got bogged down in research, a notification came up on my computer. A new automated message from a GPS tracker app. But that didn’t make any damn sense. Valentina’s phone tracker was connected to her devices, not mine. That was when I remembered.
Way back when I first improved the security around here, I had asked her to put a tracker on her bike in case it got stolen. I hadn’t thought twice about the thing. Yet, this app was pinging a notification to let me know the bike’s location.
I opened up the notification, frowning when I noticed that her bike was currently moving through the streets of New York. That didn’t make sense. The bike had to be at the house. With the bike locked up inside, there was no way somebody could have stolen it. Unless...
Closing my eyes, I forced myself to think. To cut through the noise of my brain the way Valentina did when she came up with one of her cunning plans. That was when it hit me.
The bike was in the trunk of her car. That was why it was moving.
Which meant, I could see where the car was headed.
Where Valentina was at that moment. Shaking my head, I moved to close the app.
It was messed up to invade her privacy and monitor her movements.
As I got ready to close the app down, I realized that the car wasn’t going in the direction of the restaurant.
It was going in the complete opposite direction.
Valentina wasn’t driving the car. Her driver was. Had she instructed him to go somewhere else? Why?
Could she have gotten control of the car to go where she really wanted to go? No. Valentina wouldn’t lie to me.
My gut was telling me that something was up. If Valentina hadn’t lied, then she couldn’t have been the one driving the car. The driver was.
Holy fuck. Could the fucking driver have been the one coming after us this whole time? Feeling sick to my stomach, I got up and sprinted to my bedroom.
I could always call her phone. See how she was.
But if the driver had abducted her for whatever reason, there was a good chance that he’d force her to answer the phone and act like she was fine.
I thought back to the way she had made my father believe that he had been texting with me while I had been recovering in the hospital.
Phones could be deceiving. I had to see Valentina with my own eyes.
I went through my room, methodically grabbing onto holsters and weapons. As I holstered several guns onto me, I refused to think about the odds of Valentina already being dead. She wasn’t dead. My heart would fucking knowing it. She was alive and I had to save her.
But I couldn’t face this threat alone. If I went alone and wound up hurt or killed, I’d be fucking useless to her.
What I needed were reinforcements. Starting with a call to my father to get our men ready.
Followed by a call to Valentina’s mother to tell her that Valentina was in danger and to get the Romano men into position.
The poor woman was probably getting men ready since Valentina hadn’t shown for dinner.
As much as I had decided to forgive Valentina’s father, I didn’t trust him.
It was Valentina’s mother I trusted so I would go to Bridget.
After getting every mafia enforcer ready for battle, I’d call the FBI.
I doubted my chances of convincing law enforcement to help us.
But I’d do anything. If that meant raising an army that included my enemies, so be it.
I would do anything for Valentina. I would move heaven and earth.
I would tear the city apart brick by brick.
Because nothing and no one was going to stand between me and my wife.
~~*~~
I TORE THROUGH THE streets of New York, my foot on the gas the whole fucking way. As I drove, I made orders over the phone, telling Romano and De Luca enforcers to make their way east. The car hadn’t stopped but I could see it was headed for some old dockyard warehouses.
As I sped through the streets, I got a call from Valentina’s cousin Frankie.
“Talk to me, Frankie. What do we know about this guy?” I asked, referring to the driver.
“Well, he gave us a fake name when we hired him. That’s why his background check failed to bring up anything we’d red flag.
According to records, this Dave Byrne has been getting picked up for things like vagrancy, or drunken disorderly since he was a kid.
That’s the name of a man who has been homeless for about twenty years now.
The driver’s real name isn’t Byrne.” Frankie answered.
“What the fuck? So he stole somebody’s identity?” I asked.
“Yep. We were able to get another name based on a credit card Byrne used just this week,” Frankie said. “That name belonged to somebody named Sarah Payton. Sarah Payton is deceased. Died last winter.”
“Okay. Give me the simplified version of this,” I ordered.
“Sarah Payton was married to a Daniel Payton. We think that’s the driver,” Frankie explained.
“What do we know about him?” I asked desperately, hoping somehow that this guy would turn out to be harmless. That this would just be some kind of misunderstanding.
“Daniel Payton, medical records indicate he was admitted to emergency for multiple gunshot wounds last year,” Frankie said, sounding like he was reading off something.
“So he’s one of us? In our business?” I asked. “Assuming he got shot in a hit job?”
“No, he isn’t one of us,” Frankie answered. “Daniel Payton’s an ordinary guy who was caught up in one of our skirmishes.”
My eyebrows went up as I accelerated toward the outskirts of town. “What the fuck?”
“We figure he was a bystander who accidentally got clipped,” Frankie explained. “After the emergency stay, he gets a bunch of surgeries, accrues a mountain of debt, house is foreclosed on. Wife dies. Real tragedy.”
“We ruined this guy’s life,” I said.
“Not on purpose, but it’s looking that way,” Frankie said with what sounded like a grimace.
“That’s why he’s been coming after us. This has to be the reason,” I said. “And he’s probably taking Valentina out to the middle of nowhere to hurt her.”
“Enzo, I should confess...I let this guy into the building across the church during your wedding,” Frankie said. “He said he had to take a leak just like a whole bunch of us did that day. I thought nothing of it. One of our staff using the facilities, you know? I thought our security was airtight.”
“You couldn’t have known some random driver was plotting revenge against us, Frankie,” I said.
“I should have known. It’s my job to know things. I fucked up,” Frankie said, regret in his voice.
There was no point arguing. Right now, we had to focus all our efforts on saving Valentina.
Up ahead, I could see the large shadow of an old warehouse. Probably one of the old ones that the Romanos owned yet rarely used nowadays.
“I’m almost there,” I said, spotting Valentina’s car underneath a dim outside light. “I see her car.”
“Alright, everyone’s getting into position,” Frankie said. “Three cars with nine men right behind you.”
I hung up, bringing the car to a stop in the shadows across the street from the warehouse.
Slipping my cell phone into my inner pocket, I got out of the car. Sure enough, three cars pulled up behind me, six of our enforcers and three Romano associates getting out stealthily.
“More on the way,” one of the enforcers said to me in hushed tones.
I gave a nod and gestured for the team to follow my lead. Drawing a gun, I hunched over and darted across the street. The men followed, six fanning out around the perimeter of the building while three were hot on my heels.
The front entrance was already opened, a broken lock and chain on the dusty ground. We slipped inside. Luckily, the dim lights were on and I followed them across the warehouse down to the lower levels.
That was when I heard shouts cut through the eerie silence. A male voice ranting. Then a woman’s voice, full of emotion on the brink of tears. Valentina. She was alive.
There was no time for me to be relieved. Until I got her away from Payton, she was in extreme danger. Terrible scenarios of what he might do to her kept me going. Much as I felt for the guy’s loss though, he was a real fucking coward kidnapping an unsuspecting woman.
While I knew Valentina could more than hold her own, I still thought he was gutless for taking her the way he had. He hadn’t faced anybody man-to-man. It was weak the way he had snatched her and driven off into the night.
I felt my phone go off then, the alarm volume as low as it could possibly go. That was how I knew it was Valentina’s phone calling. Quickly I answered, holding the phone to my ear. I didn’t say anything. If I spoke at anything above a whisper, he’d know I was in the building.
“Hello, Enzo,” a cheerful voice on the other end said to me. “I’m calling with some very unfortunate news about your wife. I have her.”
Not for long, motherfucker.
Hanging up and pocketing my phone, I gestured at the three men behind me. Then I got into position and rushed in. I lifted my pistol. Payton was armed and he jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair in the process.
As the falling chair grabbed his attention for several seconds, I took the opportunity to get in front of Valentina. I aimed for Payton’s chest. He aimed for mine. I fired, striking him in the arm.
Valentina was screaming, “Don’t hurt him!”
Payton staggered back, blood spreading across shirt as he dropped his gun. There was a look of pure shock on his face. Followed very quickly by rage. He lunged at me, grabbing hold of my gun before he gave me an uppercut to the nose and wrestled the gun from me.
Pain split through my skull. My nose was undoubtedly broken, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.
As I recovered, I moved to slam my elbow down on his wounded arm, forcing him to release the gun. Next thing I knew, Payton was shoving me out of the way and moving toward Valentina.
Without me blocking her, there was no way the other men could take a shot at Payton to defend her. They could shoot her accidentally. I regained my balance, fighting to get hold of another weapon.
But I was too fucking slow. Payton rushed Valentina, who was cuffed in a chair, making her vulnerable.
In that moment, I thought he was going to get his hands around her throat or something, but the most insane thing happened. Bracing herself on the chair, Valentina flung up her leg and kicked out at him, her spike heel jamming him right in the eye.
Payton screamed at the top of his lungs, loud enough to shake the foundations of the place.
Holy shit.
That was all it took for me and the rest of the team to move in on Payton and tackle him to the ground.
“Let go of me, you bastards!” Payton shrieked.
But it was no use. There were three men holding him down while I stood back to pull another gun on him.
“You’re done, Payton,” I said. “It’s over.”
As soon as I said those words, at least a dozen armed men rushed into the room.
Fuck.
They weren’t our men.
Then I spotted a familiar face.
As the newly arrived armed men jumped on Payton, I moved to help Valentina get to her feet. “We’re going to get you out of these cuffs.”
“You’re alive,” she said in disbelief. “I thought he was going to kill you.”
“We’re safe, Valentina,” I said.
“No, we’re not,” she said, her eyes glistening with tears as one of my men quickly removed her cuffs for me. “He’s rigged the place with explosives.”
“Agent Jasinski!” I shouted at the familiar face. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
The moment I informed the FBI agent, half of the armed agents hustled us the hell out of there. They closed off the area with agent Jasinski driving me and Valentina away from danger.
I held onto my wife as she wiped the blood coming out of my nose with a tissue in the backseat of agent Jasinski’s car. “I thought he was going to win.”
“No. Not against us,” I said, kissing the top of her head, my heart exploding in my chest with a mix of relief and rage at someone ever hurting her.
“How did you find me so quickly?” she asked.
“The tracker on your bike,” I explained while she patched me up. “The bike was in the trunk of the car and I got a notification.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” She kissed me gently on the lips. There was so much love and gratitude in that kiss, I thought I’d never let her go.
Up front, Jasinski cleared his throat. “I’m taking you to the nearest hospital.”
“Not the nearest police station?” Valentina asked, sounding shocked we weren’t going to be tossed in jail.
“No, your husband needs medical attention. Anyway, you handed over the bank bomber,” Jasinski said. “There’s no crime in that.”
“We’re getting our deal?” she asked in shock.
“It’s looking like it,” Jasinski said. “The bomb squad is headed to the site as we speak. Pretty sure the explosives they find will match what was used in the bank bombing. We’ve caught our guy.”
“Agent Jasinski, I think he killed someone,” Valentina said softly.
“We found a body on the premises,” the agent confirmed with a nod. “Really unfortunate.”
“What? He killed someone?” I asked her.
“He wanted to fake his own death,” she explained. “He killed someone to make it look like he would end up dead in the explosion.”
That hurt like hell. We had come too late to save them. I’d regret that for the rest of my life.
When she got the bleeding to stop, I held onto Valentina even tighter, grateful that she was still alive. Grateful that I hadn’t come too late for her.
“Thank you for coming to help, Agent Jasinski,” I said.
The agent gave a wordless nod.
I felt her hand on my chest, right over my heart.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” she said. “He was going to use me as bait to get you to the warehouse. He wanted to blow it up. I didn’t know what to do. All I did was talk. I just tried to keep him talking as if that would help.”
“It did help,” I said, taking her chin gently so that I could get her to look into my eyes. “You bought me time. You saved me.”
“And you saved me. I love you.” She leaned against me, her eyes fluttering closed as sleep took her.
It must have been the shock that put her to sleep. But I didn’t sleep that night. Not when I was getting a chance. The chance to live the rest of my life with the woman who held my heart. We’d delayed our honeymoon for long enough.