Chapter 2
CASSIAN
I’m going to murder someone.
I lean on the horn and swerve onto the shoulder, screaming at the cars to get the fuck out of my way. I refresh the screen trying to get Enzo’s location, but it just searches and searches and fucking searches.
Someone honks at me, and I curse as I swerve, narrowly avoiding crashing into the other car.
I flip him off as I press the gas pedal to get off at the next exit.
Behind me a lime green Porsche SUV comes into view, the SUV with the soldiers stuck farther back.
It’s Jet and when the lights of another vehicle shine on it, I see his face through the windshield.
I’m just getting ready to push the button to call Enzo yet again when my phone lights up just before it rings, an unfamiliar number on the screen, a name I don’t recognize. My heart drops to my stomach. I slide to answer.
“Cassian,” Enzo’s voice comes, sounding strained and out of breath.
“Enzo?”
“Yeah. Fuck. It’s me.”
“Where are you? I’ve been trying to get hold of you—”
“I’m sorry, I know. Shit.”
“Allegra. Is she with you?” I ask even though I know the answer. I know.
“My phone’s shot to shit. Fuck. Exit 42,” he manages.
I look up. I’m at exit 40 and traffic is bumper to fucking bumper. I swerve off to take the surface road. It’s got to be faster than this.
“Allegra?” I say again.
“She’s... Her brother—”
“Her brother?” I ask, the car pushing its maximum, Jet behind me, the SUV following him. “I don’t care about—”
“He’s dead, Cassian. He’s dead.”
“What?” I’m sure I heard wrong.
“I’m looking at his body. Exit 42. We’re on the surface road.”
“I’m on my way.”
I disconnect. Michael Moretti is dead?
It takes me almost twenty more minutes to exit the highway and get to where I see the flashing lights of emergency workers. I slow as I make out the burnt-out carcasses of what must be four SUVs that collided head on.
They were ambushed.
My heart is in my fucking stomach. Are they mine? Was one carrying Allegra?
No. It couldn’t be. Enzo would be in there with her. He’d be dead with her.
Fuck.
Jesus.
Fuck!
I grip the steering wheel so hard my knuckles are white. A policeman stands at the barricade holding out a hand to signal me to stop. I do and get out of the car.
“The road is closed. You’ll have to turn around.”
I look beyond him to see Enzo walking toward me, hand on his side, blood on his face. Nearby I hear the sirens of an approaching ambulance.
“Cassian,” Enzo starts and just as he does, Jet comes up beside me. He glances at Enzo, takes in his injuries, looks at the wreck of cars beyond the barricade, his forehead creased.
“Officer,” he starts, drawing the policeman’s attention so I’m able to slip under the police tape.
“You’re shot?” I look at the blood on his hand.
“No. I’m fine. Just knocked out.”
From the look of his injuries, he’ll still need stitching.
“Allegra?” I ask.
“They must have taken her. I looked for her when I came to.”
“She’s not here?”
He shakes his head, and I’m relieved. If she’s not here, it means she’s alive. She’s alive.
“What happened?”
“The men you’d sent with us, one pulled a gun on me. Then the SUVs.” He gestures around. “They were ready for us.” We walk toward the vehicle that was carrying Allegra. More flashing lights and sirens as more law enforcement show up at the scene where the smell of burnt flesh is pungent.
“Who?” I ask. We reach the SUV with the soldiers on the ground. One is lying face down. He’s in a suit, a bullet hole in his temple. I crouch down, turn him over.
“Sir step away. You can’t touch anything.”
Before anyone reaches me, I get a look at the dead man’s face, confirming what Enzo already told me.
Michael Moretti is dead.
I look at the other soldiers, recognizing one. I reach into Michael’s pocket and find his phone. Taking it, I stand just as the officer gets to us.
“Let’s go,” I tell Enzo.
The police officer is saying something about getting the scene under control as I slip beneath the barrier tape and hold it for Enzo to follow.
Jet comes up to us as the officer turns to another couple who pull up to the scene.
“What happened? Where’s Allegra?” he asks.
I look at Enzo, doubting having sent him. But he’d told me what had happened earlier. He’d told me how he’d followed Allegra, how the two soldiers I’d sent with her took the bribe from Jet to let him get close to her.
I push a hand into my hair, pull a handful of it. “How are you here and she’s not?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m not dead. Why they didn’t kill me. I don’t fucking know.”
Enzo staggers.
“He’s going to pass out. Get him in my car,” Jet says.
I wrap an arm around Enzo’s middle, and he sets his over my shoulder.
I walk him to the passenger side of the Porsche.
I remember when Jet showed up with the lime green monstrosity.
I’d dared him. He’d done it. How we’d laughed. Was that this lifetime?
I settle Enzo in the car. My hand comes away bloody when I pull it free. Bruises darken his face and there’s dried blood on the back of his head.
“I’m sorry, Cassian. I’m sorry. If I could have stopped them, you know I would have.”
Malek Lombardi did this. He killed Michael and took Allegra.
“Was she hurt?” I ask.
“Not before we crashed.”
Shit. Shit.
“I’ll get him to a hospital,” Jet says as I turn a circle, my hands on my head, fingers pulling at hair.
Why did I let her go? Why did I fucking send her away?
I was angry. Fuck. I was fucking furious.
“I’ll meet you at the house, okay?” Jet says to me.
“Hey.” He takes my arms and gives me a shake, making me look at him.
“Get it together. I’ll meet you at the house. Got it?”
I see his bruises, those I put there, and remember his betrayal. “Did you have anything to do with this?” I bark at him, shoving him backward.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks, shoving me and we’re at it again. Just like we were while my enemy was kidnapping Allegra. Like we always are.
“Fuck!” I spin away, dig my phone out of my pocket and call Angelo, walking to my car as I do.
“Cassian? What is it?” he asks, and I remember he was with my dad. What a shit show tonight’s been. What a fucking shit show.
“Allegra’s gone.”
“What?”
“Michael Moretti is dead.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“They took Allegra. Malek. It would have to be Malek. Malek and Severin Blackstone. All the fucking Blackstones maybe, who the fuck knows? I’m surrounded by traitors. All of them.”
“Calm down, Cassian. I’m with your father. Let me step out.”
“I can’t fucking calm down! They took Allegra,” I say, scrubbing my face, not recognizing my own voice. I press my forehead into the steering wheel. Fuck. I was so fucking angry. What did I do? What the fuck did I do?
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m fucking sure! Shit!”
“Stop and think. Why would he kill Michael? And why take her? He’d know you’d go after him. Hell Michael owed you what? Eight million? Malek isn’t stupid.”
“It’s paid.”
“What?”
“I got the notification and verified it. The debt’s been paid.”
I force myself to take a breath, to calm down. I clear my throat and start the engine. I tell myself to get my shit together. Jet’s car is already back on the road. I watch his taillights disappear.
“If it’s paid, then you have no claim on her.”
Silence.
“What happened to Michael Moretti is not your concern,” he continues.
“He took her.”
“Cassian. Think. If Malek did this, then he’s got backing with deep pockets. Moore family, maybe? Could be anyone. You said yourself he was willing to make a deal with you. He could have arranged another deal. You go after him for taking back what belonged to him—”
“She doesn’t belong to him!”
A beat passes. “You know what I mean. She belongs to the family. She’s Alaric Moretti’s only daughter. Put two and two together.”
“I’ve already put it together.” I start the engine.
“He’ll use her to take over the family, the territory, all of it.” There’s a pause before he adds. “He has more right than you and you know it.”
“No.”
“Cassian—"
“She’s mine.” Silence crackles. I can almost see Angelo biting his tongue to keep from telling me what I won’t hear.
That she isn’t mine. That she never was mine.
“I want her back. I’m going to get her back,” I say more slowly, letting fury fill me.
Letting rage banish the terror of thinking that I’m too late.
That she’ll be gone too. That he’ll kill her like he did her brother.
He can’t. Not yet. He needs her.
“Are you ready to start a war?” Angelo asks.
“You advise. You do not dictate,” I remind him.
Silence followed by a sigh. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need men. Get them to the house. I want a fucking army. Arrange it.”