Chapter 37 Nico
Adi’s voice comes through the line raw. “She’s gone.”
The words hit like a fist. I stop dead in the corridor outside the operating room, the sounds of the hospital, machines, voices, the distant wail of someone else’s grief, going muffled around the edges. “What do you mean, gone?” My own voice doesn’t sound like mine. It’s too even. Too thin.
“Domenico was here,” he says. “At the penthouse.”
For a heartbeat, my heart forgets its job. “Is she…”
“I don’t know,” he cuts in. “I came back and the guards in the hall were down. Not dead, thank God, but out cold. No sign of forced entry. Inside… there’s blood, but not much, not like before. Cameras are offline. She’s not here. Neither is he.”
I press my palm to the wall because the floor does a slow, dangerous tilt. “When?” I ask.
“Fifteen minutes, maybe less,” he says. “I was only gone an hour. Marta called about her mother being sick, so I had to go to Letty.”
I can hear the guilt coursing through my brother’s voice. “Domenico used her to get you away. What about Matteo?”
“He was called away by a sighting of Domenico at Club Ruin. Fuck, Nico, I’m so sorry.”
“No, he set us up, and like idiots we walked right into it,” I say, sick understanding slotting into place. “Of course he did. He knows our weaknesses.”
Adi swears under his breath, the sound closer to a wound than a word. “This is my fault. I left her. I should never have…”
“No,” I say sharply. “This is his fault. His and whoever opened the door. We’re not doing this to ourselves. Not now.”
Silence. Then a breath. “Matteo’s on his way to you,” he says. “We thought if Rossi woke up…”
“He did,” I say. “And he confirmed what we already knew. Domenico’s in bed with Orlov and he’s making moves in our name. He left a note on Rossi.”
“Of course he did,” Adi says tightly. “Grand gestures. He always loved those.”
“If he’d had five more minutes,” I say, “Rossi would have told me exactly what he knew. Instead, he coded on the table. They’re trying to get him back now.”
“You think this is connected?” Adi asks.
“I think Domenico doesn’t do anything that isn’t connected,” I answer. “He shows his face here, taunts Rossi, then goes for you through Marta, fakes a sighting at a club we know to get Matteo running, then takes Isabella. He’s pushing every button.”
“So we push back,” Adi says quietly. “Come home, Nico.”
I end the call with a promise I don’t say out loud, that I’ll bring our uncle’s head back with me if I can.
Matteo strides down the corridor a minute later, face grim. “Rossi?” he asks.
“Back in surgery,” I say. “He saw Domenico. Confirmed what Oleg told us.” I hand him the card. “He left this.”
He reads it, lips twisting. “Dramatic prick.”
“Adi says Domenico hit the penthouse,” I say. “Isabella’s gone.”
For a second, Matteo’s expression shutters completely, like someone turned off the lights behind his eyes. “Gone how?” he says slowly.
“Men down, cameras cut, no forced entry,” I say. “Marta called, asked to leave because her mother was sick.”
“Her mother’s heart,” he finishes, eyes narrowing. “She told me the same thing a few weeks back. Do you think she’s in on it?”
I shrug. “Who knows, but we’ll find out.”
“Motherfucker, I sent flowers. Son of a bitch.”
“He used her more than likely or blackmailed her,” I say. “Pinned it all on an emergency. Adi bolted, the guards were hit, the door opened, and our uncle walked in like he was coming home for dinner.”
Matteo’s jaw ticks. “I bet Adi’s tearing himself apart right now.”
“I know he is,” I say. The sound of my brother’s voice when he said she’s gone is going to sit in my chest for a long time. “He shouldn’t, but he will.”
“And you?” Matteo asks. “How much are you going to take on?”
“All of it,” I say. “Every choice. Every blind spot. Every time I told myself we had more time before this escalated. Every time I thought we could negotiate with the ghost of the old house instead of burning it down.”
He studies me. “And what are you going to do with that weight, big brother?”
“Use it,” I say. “We’re done dancing around this. No more waiting. No more letting him pick the time and place.”
“Good,” he says simply. “Then let’s go home.”
We take the fastest route back, lights and sirens courtesy of a friend in the department we still have from the old days. The city blurs by, washed out through the windshield, my reflection a dark smear overlaid on skyscrapers.
When the doors open on our floor, the smell hits first. Not blood, thank God, but sharp and medicinal, whatever was in the sedative Domenico’s men used to drop our guards.
What puzzles me is why he didn’t kill them.
Men like my uncle have no remorse over killing, so why let them live?
It has me looking at every one of my men with a glint of suspicion that wasn’t there before, and maybe that’s the reason why he let them live. To leave me feeling isolated.
One of them is propped against the wall outside the penthouse, groggy but conscious, an ice pack pressed to the back of his head. The other is on a stretcher, Dr Russell checking his vitals.
“What happened?” I ask.
The conscious one struggles to his feet, swaying slightly. “I’m sorry, sir. There was a call. Mr. Adriano left in a hurry. We adjusted the pattern, and then…” He grimaces. “There was a smell. Sweet. I woke up on the floor ten minutes ago. No sign of Miss Romano. Cameras are down.”
“Take care of them, Doc,” Matteo says, voice flat and dangerous. “This isn’t their failure.”
We step inside.
The living room looks almost normal at first glance. The tree glows. The couch is in place. The kitchen is tidy.
Then you notice the little things.
A chair tipped half an inch off true. A mug shattered near the sink. A dark scuff on the floor where a shoe dragged. The faint, metallic tang that doesn’t quite qualify as a smell but lingers at the back of the throat anyway.
“She fought,” Matteo says quietly.
“Of course she did,” I reply.
We sweep the apartment room by room. No bodies. No obvious blood trails. Her bag is here. Her coat is here. But one of my spare hoodies is missing, so she must be wearing it. They took her alive.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
We end up back in my office, the place that used to feel like control and now feels like a cage. The monitors are dead. Black screens stare back at us, accusing.
Matteo paces once, twice, then stops at the desk where Isabella’s notebook lies open. She must have been working when he came.
He flips through it, eyes skimming the lines, the way she’s turned our problem into lists and arrows and question marks. “She’s good at this,” he says, almost to himself.
“She’s better than we deserve,” I answer, tugging at my hair as I pace the room.
He pauses on a page and taps it. “Here.”
A margin note, half-scribbled, probably something she meant to come back to later.
East side dock. Old warehouse near the river. Check with Adi re: historic leases. Possible legacy site.
Matteo squints. “This one.”
“That’s one of the old properties,” I say slowly. “From before Papà went legit. He sold most of them off, but there was one he kept. Said it was sentimental. We haven’t used it in years.”
“Maybe you haven’t,” Matteo says. “He might have.” He looks up at me, something like grim satisfaction in his eyes. “Remember when we were kids and Domenico used to take us fishing there? Said it was ‘our little secret’.”
I do remember. Rotting wood, rusted hooks, his big hand on my shoulder a little too heavy. “You think he’d drag her to a place we know?” I ask. “He’s arrogant but he’s not stupid.”
“He likes symbolism,” Matteo says. “He left a note on Rossi. He strutted into your home instead of sending a proxy. Making this personal is part of the point. And if he thinks he’s the rightful heir, he’d want to stage his little coup somewhere that means something.
A place our father started the old business from. A place he thinks he can reclaim.”
My phone buzzes in my hand.
Unknown number, again.
My stomach turns.
I answer. “Domenico.”
“Ah,” he says, pleased. “Still quick, ragazzo.”
“Where is she?” I ask, skipping past the games.
“With me,” he replies lightly. “Safe. For now. You can rest easy. I’m a gracious host.”
“If you’ve touched her, I’ll rip out your guts through your teeth.”
“Relax,” he says. “I’m not Orlov. I don’t waste assets. Yet.”
Matteo steps closer, eyes narrowed, trying to catch whatever he can in the one-sided conversation.
“You’re a dead man,” I tell our uncle. “You know that, right? Whatever’s left of our blood tie snapped the second you stepped into this building.”
He chuckles. “Dramatic. I thought you’d outgrown that.”
“You tried to kill my woman, and you almost killed my oldest friend,” I say. “You brought war into my home. There’s no path back from that.”
“Well,” he says, “you might want to reconsider that stance if you ever want to see her again.”
Silence stretches, taut. “What do you want?” I ask.
“A meeting,” he says. “Just us. Well, you and your brothers. Myself and a few associates. We should talk about the future of our family. About legacy. About what you owe me.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“Don’t be childish,” he chides. “Enzo owed me, which means you do too. But let’s be practical.
Your girlfriend is a lovely bargaining chip.
So, here’s the offer, ragazzi. You come to the docks, the old place on the east side, no outside guards, no police, no clever snipers, and we negotiate.
You don’t come, or you come with extra baggage, and I send you what’s left of her. ”
Matteo’s hand curls into a fist at his side.
“You hurt her,” I say, my voice dropping to something low and lethal, “and there’ll be no negotiation. There’ll be no talk. There’ll just be me, and a very slow end for you.”
“Always so sentimental,” Domenico sighs. “You sounded just like your father before he got boring. Think about it, Nico. You have, what, eight hours until the night tide makes that warehouse very inconvenient? Don’t be late.”
He hangs up.
The office feels smaller.
“He wants the old dock,” Matteo says. “Of course he does.”
“He expects us to walk in blind,” I say. “Just the three of us. No backup.”
“So we don’t walk in blind,” he replies. “We walk in smart.”
“We’re not losing her,” I say.
He looks me dead in the eye. “We’re not. But we go in together. All three of us. No lone heroics. Adi will be here in ten. We’ll plan. We’ll take him apart piece by piece.”
The part of me that wants to go alone, to put a gun to Domenico’s head and pull the trigger before he finishes his first monologue, snarls against that.
But I see Isabella’s notebook on the desk, her handwriting tracing the patterns we’ve been too slow to read, and I hear her voice in the bathroom asking me to be smart, not just hard.
“We plan,” I say, forcing it out. “But first, I call her mother.”
Matteo winces. “You sure?”
“I promised her I’d keep Isabella safe,” I say. “I failed. She needs to hear it from me, not from the news.”
“And what will you tell her?”
“That I’m going to get her back,” I say. “Or die trying.”
The words are not a figure of speech.
They’re a decision.
Matteo nods once, understanding. “Then let’s get to work, fratello,” he says.
Because Domenico wanted us to step up.
He just forgot that when Mancinis step up, we don’t always do it on the side we started on.