32. Nico
NICO
I couldn’t sleep last night.
Even the feel of Valeria’s warm body against mine, my hand covering her belly, wasn’t enough to burn away the restlessness crawling under my skin.
I haven’t been this happy in a long time—and it scares me.
When powerful men like me get what they want, other men see that and want to destroy it.
That was fine when the only thing I had to lose was money or territory or reputation.
Those things can always be rebuilt. But now, I have two vulnerable, irreplaceable people to keep safe against the horrors of the world.
How does love not drive people insane?
I sip from my whiskey, leaning against the cool glass overlooking the fog curling through the city. It might rain today.
I miss the beach.
I sigh, finish my whiskey, and move toward my hotel door.
Valeria will be getting ready for the wedding with her friends and my sister. She won’t be happy to see me.
I pull on my boots. I’ll keep my visit short—just a glimpse to make sure she’s okay, and then I’ll leave.
I won’t lose myself to paranoia.
As I lace up my second boot, a soft, muted thud like a footstep comes from the other side of my door.
I reach for my gun.
A knock sounds.
I open the door. The moment I see the grim expression on Salvatore’s face, I know my entire world is about to crash and burn.
“Where is Valeria?” The room tilts underneath my feet.
Wrapped in a great black coat like a crow’s wings, Salvatore’s gaze ticks over me. “Missing. Come with me.”
He sweeps down the empty hotel hallway while I stand there, blood roaring in my ears.
Cold, sharp fear stabs down my spine.
Valeria.
The baby.
My brain kicks into motion. I swear in a long stream as I sprint after Salvatore.
He steps into the elevator, and I jump after him and tackle him, his head bouncing off the metal wall.
“Where the fuck is she?” I shout. My baby. They took my fucking baby.
I shake Salvatore by his coat like a rag doll until the barrel of his gun presses into my stomach, and I go still.
The elevator doors close behind us, and we slowly descend.
“I don’t know. She is missing,” he says, over-enunciating each word like he’s explaining this to a child. His gun digs into my stomach as I crush him against the wall. “You can let go, and I will check for an update.”
I hold him there for a moment, heaving like I’ve already been shot, my eyes flicking between his.
It hadn’t occurred to me that this could be a trap.
“Why are you helping me?” I ask.
A few strands of hair hang loose over his face. He’s remarkably calm while my world is falling apart. “There are few things I hold sacred. A man’s wife is one of those things.”
I exhale slowly.
I have never heard him speak ill of his wife.
I step away from him.
Salvatore pushes the hair back from his face and checks his phone. “Her cell phone was left in the hotel room, so we are unable to track her. My cyber team has checked the security footage, and an hour ago, one of the employees entered her room with a large push cart.”
The elevator doors open. Salvatore holds a finger to his lips and strides into the lobby.
The faces of my father’s soldiers and capos look out at me from the hotel armchairs and couches. A few men I recognize as Salvatore’s, but they’re outnumbered.
A man calls for Salvatore, and is ignored. A few of the more cunning capos watch us pass with subtle interest.
I suppress the blind, animalistic urge to fight them. To fight anyone who might be my enemy.
Whoever took her is a dead man.
We rush down the front steps to the black SUV waiting up front. Salvatore lets himself into the passenger seat, and I fly into the back row.
Dom the Butcher nods at me from the driver’s seat. As long as I’ve known the man, no matter what Salvatore orders him to do, no matter how violent or back-breaking, he’s got a wild grin on his face.
Today, he’s not smiling.
My gut churns.
“We tracked the employee to the parking lot,” Salvatore says as Dom steers onto the street, “where he still had the push cart. He was in a blind spot, but we are tracing his license plate now. It’s our only lead. We are driving toward his last-seen location now.”
“How did he get to her fucking room?” I ask, my mind already feeding me the answer. How many of my father’s soldiers did I pass to sneak into her room last night?
“Father’s men were guarding the hallway.”
I scramble for my phone. My fingers smash into the contact number.
Two rings.
“Nico,” Father answers.
“You fucking bastard,” I hiss into the receiver. Salvatore turns to watch me with gleaming eyes. “If there’s a single misplaced hair on her head, I’m going to bring both you and Giovanni to Salvatore’s basement and torture you until you go insane. I told you—”
“What’s going on?” Father asks in a relaxed tone.
“You took her,” I spit out. “Tell me where she is. Now.”
“I haven’t the slightest—”
I crush the phone against my mouth so he can hear every goddamn word. “If you thought I was destructive before, you haven’t seen the ruin I am capable of. Everything you love—everything you’ve worked so hard to build—I will tear it all down.”
He doesn’t speak for a moment. Then, “I am not your enemy, mio figlio.”
My son.
“I am not your son.”
I hang up the phone and meet Salvatore’s gaze—his expression is immensely, disgustingly satisfied. Nothing like seeing your half-brother scream at your hated father while his life goes up in flames.
It takes every ounce of willpower not to bash his face in.
“You knew this would happen,” I snarl. He knows everything—he watches everyone. He let this happen.
My body compresses under an enormous pressure, like a giant is grinding me underfoot.
I knew this would happen.
Salvatore frowns lightly. “You did this to yourself. The one bargaining chip you had to keep Valeria—a woman with no power or reputation except that of a traitor—was compliance. And how did you prove to Father that you would obey?”
I grit my teeth.
I shot his right-hand man.
And even though Father knew—he had to have known—that pitting Giovanni against me for years, decades, has stoked a hatred so powerful and enduring that I would’ve snuffed out his life given the smallest opportunity, Father has always expected that my hatred would give way to a reluctant obedience.
He’s always seen Giovanni as an extension of himself.
So when I made that shot, he realized nothing was holding me back—not fear, love, respect, or obedience—from shooting my own father if he stood between me and the woman I love.
“You scared him,” Salvatore says quietly. “How does Ottavio Matassa respond to fear?”
He removes it at the source. He culls it from his life like rot.
My hands are clenched into tight fists on my knees. By shooting Giovanni for daring to threaten Valeria, I pointed Father to the source of his family’s rot.
“I thought I’d have more time,” I say, more to myself than to Salvatore. I was building our defenses. Given a couple more years, I would’ve had an empire to protect us.
“You still might. He needs someone else to direct your fury, does he not?” Salvatore glances at his phone. “We are tracking the license plate now—ah.”
He holds the phone out to me.
For a moment, I don’t know what I’m looking at. Then I realize—the photo is of a car in front of the Golden Apple Hotel.
Someone took her to the Russians.
A car next to us bleats as Dom hooks a sharp right turn.
Salvatore’s phone rings with a number I don’t recognize. He presses the phone to his ear and answers in a clipped tone.
The person on the other side doesn’t take long.
He hangs up and announces to Dom and me, “Stefano’s been caught at the airport. He was trying to buy a plane ticket out of the States.”
That fucking bastard. He sold out his sister to save his own hide.
Salvatore texts nonchalantly on his phone as Dom weaves us in and out of traffic.
“I’m having men meet us now,” Salvatore says. “We will arrive in ten minutes.”
I clutch my knees and stare out the front windshield like I can force the car to go faster through sheer force of will.
A stream of angry honks follows us as Dom races through every red light and cuts off every jackass driving slower than us, but it’s still not fast enough.
Ten minutes.
My offering to the pakhan was not enough to smudge out decades of alliance. The pakhan answers to Father—to the New York don, not to his son.
If Valeria is there alone, then the best I can hope for is that he’s tortur—
I swallow a throatful of bile.
He won’t hurt her.
He can’t.
The minutes unfold into infinity as I recite every prayer I remember and plead to every saint I know. I make promises to any god that will listen to keep Valeria and our baby are safe.
The hotel’s parking lot is nearly empty when we arrive, except for another black SUV at the front of the building. Dom screeches to a stop directly in front of the other car, and all three of us burst out of the vehicle.
As I lunge for the front doors, Dom comes up behind me and lifts me into the air.
“Let me go!” I shout, reaching back to gouge out his eyes.
“Hold on, you fucking idiot! You need a vest.” He tosses me roughly in the direction of the other car where one of Salvatore’s men—the one with the scarred face, Camillo—holds out a bulletproof vest and an assault rifle.
A rifle, yes. I need a rifle.
The hotel foyer behind the glass doors is dark—strange for a weekday. Camillo walks up to it with a crash axe, readies himself for a swing, and looks back to Salvatore for his cue.
“Apparently, there’s been a gas leak,” Salvatore says from my side. He’s adjusting the straps on his bulletproof vest. “They evacuated the building.”
“You’re coming too?” I ask. He’s always seemed the type to hang back while his underlings do the dirty work for him.
“Your wife is in danger,” he says, like that’s all the explanation that’s needed.
He holds my gaze for a moment longer—and I finally realize his game—he’s buying my lifelong loyalty.
I nod to him. After today, it’s his.
Salvatore gives the signal to Camillo, and in a few short hits, the glass doors shatter open.
I take the lead.