15. Leo
15
LEO
I t’s been five hours since Julia was taken. Five hours of lying in bed and crying myself dry with the lights out. I can’t get myself to climb out of bed. Breathing hurts. My eyes are almost swollen shut. My anxiety and guilt are a blackhole I can’t seem to find my way out of.
My sister is in this mess because of Rocco Vettore.
His fucking recklessness.
His greed.
His obsession with me.
Rocco reeled me in and held me right under his thumb. He made it so hard to see anything outside of him and how he made me feel. Got me to do things I’d never do if he didn’t trap me in his web.
That bastard bulldozed his way into my life and sent the whole thing crashing down. And I watched it happen. I let myself fall for him, despite knowing deep down he’d destroy me. I should have fought harder, taken my sisters and left town to start somewhere new. But I let him convince me I was giving them better. So fucking stupid of me. Naive.
And he knew that—took advantage of it.
My phone vibrates, and out of habit I grab it, but catch myself at the last minute before I check the screen. It’s probably another text from Rocco. He’s sent me regular updates throughout the day. So far they’re staking out three potential places Ronan may be holding Julia, but they can’t pin down an exact location yet. The soldiers are ready to roll as soon as they have more to go on.
I’ve left every single text on read. Rocco vowed to bring my sister home to us , but no matter how this ends, there can’t be an us. How can I look him in the eyes after this and not blame him for what happened.
Not hate him for endangering my whole family. For making me fall in love with him.
My phone pings again. I check this one, and see both messages are from an unknown number.
Unknown Number: Leo…guess who…
Unknown Number: It’s Ronan! Did you get the keepsake I sent you? So soft…shiny. I’ll have to ask your sister what her haircare routine is.
A strong wave of nausea rolls through me, and I sit up in bed. What. The. Fuck? How did he even get my phone number? What should I say? I sit there for a few minutes thinking of how I can respond. Eventually, I decide on being direct.
Me: Where is my sister? Please give her back, she’s innocent in all of this.
Unknown number: Yeah, but she was an easier target than you were. Her middle child syndrome made her weak. Perfect leverage.
If it’s leverage he wants, he can have me. I’ll do anything it takes to bring my sister home.
Me: Take me instead. Please, Rocco cares more about me.
Unknown Number: If you can bring me his laptop and encrypted hard drive, then sure.
Rocco’s security on the building is insane, but he doesn’t have a ton in his office. He keeps his laptop and hard drive in a drawer in his desk. It would be so easy to take it and get Julia back.
It’s not like they’re any closer to finding her. And I can’t bring myself to care more about him and his empire than her life. Not when he’s the reason she was kidnapped in the first place. I don’t care if he loses everything. He fucking deserves it for how he took away my choices. For what happened to my sister. For making me fall for him when I never wanted to.
Me: When and where?
Unknown number: There’s a red car a block over from the back of your building waiting for you. Don’t take too long. Or we’ll start chopping more interesting things off.
My heart thunders at the thought of what that could mean. Her fingers? Her hand? Or something worse… I can’t let him hurt her.
Bolting out of bed, I change into sweatpants, a tee shirt, and a plain black hoodie from my old apartment. I’m not stupid—I know Nueva Notte has informants and lookouts all over the city, and what I’m doing is technically treason. Hopefully street clothes will make me harder to recognize.
Rocco is with his family, so he isn’t an issue. The guards on the other side of the door, however, are. There’s no way they’ll let me leave the apartment with Ronan on the loose, especially if they know he’s the one I’m meeting.
I slip out of my bedroom, and frown when I see Gio outside. He may be a friendlier guard, but he’s too smart to fool, which will make leaving harder.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Costa?” he asks, his voice laced with concern.
“Not well. I’m just leaving to get my e-reader from Rocco’s office. Left it there earlier today.”
“Why don’t you lay down and let me get it for you?” Gio asks. He’s the most considerate of all the guards, and usually I enjoy that. But right now it’s really inconvenient.
“Um…no. I want to get it. Need to stretch my legs.”
I move through the hall before he can respond, and I can feel his steady gaze on me as I slip into Rocco’s office. We were in such a hurry, he didn’t even put his laptop away. I slip it into the waistband of my sweats, and use my gigantic hoodie to cover it up.
Thankfully his drawer is unlocked, making it easy to take his hard drive and put it in my pocket. Now I have to figure out how I can leave. Walking out the front door of the penthouse isn’t going to work. Rocco will definitely have someone stationed there. I can’t use either of the balconies, because we’re thirty plus floors up. Even if we were only a few floors up, I’m afraid of heights.
I come up with more ideas, but all of them are useless. For all intents and purposes, I’m trapped in a gilded cage. Something insane would have to happen for me to get out of this apartment.
My stomach grumbles, alerting me as to how I haven’t eaten anything since lunch. I’ll grab a snack, go back to my room, and figure out how to get out of here. On my way back, Gio stops me.
“Mr. Costa, where’s your e-reader?” Oh fuck, I didn’t think of that. It does look weird that I don’t have it.
“It’s not in his office.” I try to look sad, which isn’t a stretch. I’m an emotional trainwreck right now as it is.
Gio’s brows dip as he rubs his goatee in thought. I almost feel bad for lying to him. “I know how much you love to read, and I’m sure you need the distraction right now. Can you think of anywhere else it may be?”
“Um, either the kitchen, or Rocco’s bedroom I guess?”
“Okay, you check his bedroom, and I’ll check the kitchen. Don’t worry. We’ll find it.”
He lumbers off to the kitchen, and my mouth drops at my dumb fucking luck. All I need to do is get past the front door, and I’m good to leave.
I speed walk as quietly as I can to the front door, and see another guard there, who’s name I unfortunately can’t remember. He’s as big as Rocco, and at least thirty pounds heavier.
“Mr. Costa, you can’t leave the penthouse. Mr. Vettore’s orders,” he firmly tells me.
How the fuck am I going to move a man Rocco’s size out of the way? I hate myself for it, but there’s only one way I can think of.
“What did you say, I can’t hear you?” I lie.
He takes a couple steps toward me. “Mr. Costa, Mr. Vettore said you’re not to leave the penthouse,” he repeats himself.
“Oh my god a spider!” I shriek, pointing to the wall across from us.
He swivels his gaze to the wall, standing in place. But at least now he’s a few steps away from the door and distracted. I knee him in the balls. He falls to the floor, howling in pain so loudly that I jump over him, leave the penthouse, and book it down the emergency stairwell before the other guards can catch up to me.
They may be bigger than me, but I have speed on my side. Once I’m a few floors down, I hop on the regular elevator. As soon as the doors close behind me, I hit the lock button and take a deep breath and assess my next move.
If I go to the lobby, the plainclothes guards will block me. Rocco doesn’t know I know they’re there, but I heard him mention them in a conversation with Giuseppe a couple days ago.
“Mr. Costa, open the doors immediately. You need to come back to the penthouse!” Gio shouts as he bangs on the doors.
Fuck! How did they track me here? Rocco probably has the whole fucking place decked out with cameras. I look at the bank of buttons on the wall, and notice that one says Pool and Spa.
Of course Rocco would live in a fancy as fuck building with all the bougie bells and whistles.
And thank fuck he does, because if there’s a pool, there’s probably a back entrance the maintenance crew uses for the chemicals. There’s no way they’d use the one all these ritzy fuckers take daily, because chlorine smells awful. I hit the button, and once I reach the pool/spa floor, I scan my surroundings, looking for anything remotely resembling a staff door.
There’s a man I’ve never seen before with a Vettore Enterprises polo on. He holds his walkie-talkie to his mouth as he says, “Wait, blond hair? He’s right here on the pool floor!”
Great, even the staff are looking for me. I run in the opposite direction, and slip into the men’s locker room.
Fuck, how am I supposed to get out of here? I have no weapons, and everyone in the building is probably looking for me.
The guy runs in after me, and I think fast, picking up a hair dryer off the counter. What kind of locker room has hair dryers for people just sitting on the counter?
“Leo, you have to go back home,” he says as he slowly approaches me.
“You need to back the fuck up,” I shout.
“Mr. Vettore is the boss, and if he says you need to stay home, that’s how it goes,” he enunciates each word to me as he keeps coming closer. The counter is behind me, and I can feel myself getting trapped in by the second.
He’s close enough that he can grab me now. I turn the hair dryer on as high as it will go, aiming it right for his face.
“FUCKING SHIT!” he screams as hot air assaults his face.
I don’t stick around to see the damage, running out of the locker room and right into a door with a Staff Only sign on it.
Bingo! There’s a freight elevator, and I take it right out the loading dock in the back of the building. Fate obviously wants me to do stupid shit, because she’s on my side tonight.
After a block of running, I see the car Ronan mentioned in our text. It’s a red sports car idling in a parking spot. As I approach it, the driver’s side window rolls down.
Ronan smiles at me in all his smug glory. “Jump in cutie. We have a trade to make.”
Even though it’s a stupid idea and every part of me is screaming to turn around and run, I open the door, bend down, and get into his passenger seat.
Ronan seemed so handsome when I first saw him in the restaurant, like a male model fresh off a fashion photoshoot. But as I look at his profile while he drives away from the curb, I realize it does nothing to hide the evil lurking inside him. Shady doesn’t even begin to describe the vibe he gives off. He and Rocco may both be criminals, but Rocco gives off a classy businessman with an edge vibe. This asshole gives off used car salesman vibes.
Like the kind of prick who’d try to sell you a beat car without an engine.
His perfect white teeth curl into a smug grin, and my gut twists with regret. I shouldn’t have gotten into his car. But it’s too late now.
He locks the doors, and turns to me.
“Leo, before you make me out to be the bad guy, there’s a lot you don’t know about your partner…”
“He’s not my partner anymore,” I blurt out without meaning to. Was he even my partner in the first place? “Can we save the evil villain speech and get this trade over with?”
“No. I think you need to know what you can gain. Rocco may have told you the Brass Bruisers are a small fry gang, but that’s not true anymore. There’s a growing sentiment against the Italians. They’ve ruled the roost for too long, and going against them gained me allies who could open doors for me, Leo.”
Is this what his letter meant when it said, ‘when the few band together, we become one of many’?
“Okay?” I prompt him, having no clue where he’s going with this.
“And what better way to bring the all mighty, untouchable Rocco Vettore down than to not only take his partner’s bratty little sister—but the beloved partner himself! And you were stupid enough to walk right into the trap.”
Bile rises in my mouth. Panic sets in at his words, but I have to keep my cool. I can’t afford to freak out right now.
“Rocco doesn’t love me.” As angry as I am at him, the words feel like a lie as I say them. “He’s a psychopath incapable of loving anyone. Why do you think it’s taken so long for him to find Julia. He’s not really looking.”
More lies. He’s been texting me incessantly with updates on how he and his men are working around the clock to find her.
“Hmmm, you’re lying to me, Leo. I know he’s searching for her because he has men stationed outside all my warehouses and known haunts. I forgive you though, because you’re going to help me.”
“No, I’ll give you the laptop and hard drive, you’ll give me my sister—that was the deal,” I remind him.
He stops the car at a red light, and backhands me right across the mouth. It’s fucking painful. His eyes are manic, filled with chaos and victory. They scare the shit out of me.
“Oh Leo, I don’t give a fuck about those useless things. Nueva Notte’s shit is locked down tight because Maximo is a tech genius. The plan was to use you as a lure. I’ll bet money your phone is tracked if you yourself aren’t. You’ll bring him right to me, and I’ll kill him.”
All I wanted to do was get my sister back, get Lucy and run away. Destroying Rocco in the process was an added bonus. Now that it’s becoming a reality, I don’t want it to happen.
I try to unlock the door, but before I can open it, I feel a sharp prick in my neck.
“Leo, you stupid fool…” I hear him say before darkness overtakes me.