Chapter Marcello #2
"Call me," I bark when it goes to voicemail. Sophia is the only member of my family left that means anything to me. Whoever took her is going to pay for this. What they did to those corpses? It'll look like child's play once I'm done with them.
"Does Carlos know?" I demand.
"Mallard sent all this directly to me just now," Luciano fills me in. Oliver Mallard is one of the cops loyal to us.
With a deep sigh, I dial my father's number next.
"Marcello? You're out, I heard." He picks up after five rings. Five! Stupid bastard. I've been out for a fucking week.
"Where is Sophia?" I demand, not bothering with false pleasantries. They were never part of our relationship.
"You heard?"
Fuck the old bastard. Just once, I wish he would answer a question instead of asking one himself. I grunt in reply because I don't have time for his bullshit. Otherwise, I would either hang up or play the silent game for however long it took for him to break the silence.
"Bad business with Roberto," my father mumbles.
"Bad business? Roberto? Where the fuck is my sister?" I explode.
"Look, I'm kind of busy right now, trying to stay out of jail and all." He tries to sound like a rational human being, but the attempt falls flat. "Why don't you take the lead on this?"
I hang up without bothering to reply. There's no useful information to be gleaned from that asshole.
Mallard's number is saved under Cop Eight; no reason to put in names. The call will go straight to the burner phone he keeps with him.
"Marcello. There is no trace of her." Mallard greets. Getting straight to the heart of the matter.
For a cop, he has a pretty good head on his shoulders.
He's also one of the rare men who hasn't been bribed to work for us.
He's married to my cousin Lucy. He's got access to family money, doesn't need to work an actual job, but he likes what he does.
Makes him think like he's doing something good, I suppose.
Which makes him a nutjob in my book, but hey.
Everybody's moral compass is wired differently.
He keeps his eyes closed when it comes to our family shit and goes heavy on the competition. He also makes Lucy happy.
"What the fuck happened?"
"As far as we've put it together, Roberto was taken three days ago, and he was kept alive and tortured for at least two days. His body was dumped in front of my police station yesterday morning."
"Yesterday morning?" I explode. "Why am I just now hearing about this?"
"Because we had to run DNA, and that takes time. I expedited it, of course. Plus, we had no idea that Sophia was missing."
"You didn't know…" I break off, run my hand through my hair, while Luciano watches with the same disgust mirrored on his face that I feel. "It didn't occur to you to call her?"
"I wasn't about to call your sister until we were sure it was Roberto's body," Mallard protests, proving that deep down he's nothing but an idiotic cop like the others, no matter what I thought before.
Luciano moves his hand in a keep him talking way. He's right. This is not the time to explode on Mallard, no matter how much I want to put a bullet through his useless brain.
"What happened next?" I press out in a clipped tone.
"We identified the body, and I attempted to call Sophia, so did Lucy, but she didn't answer.
I was already on my way to her house, so…
" he drifts off, gathers himself, and I realize this is personal for him too.
I'm not a man who gives many breaks, but I might have to concede that Mallard isn't at his best right now either.
But he'd better get his head into the game now; otherwise, I'll remove it.
Nobody fucks with my family, and nobody fucks up while my family is in danger.
"So you went into the house and found that massacre site? Was that where Roberto was killed?"
"We haven't found any evidence of that yet.
I'm expediting all DNA analysis, but we haven't found any blood belonging to him or Sophia yet.
At least not as much as would indicate a crime.
" His words should give me some relief, but they don't. Roberto was in the hands of some psychopath for days, the same amount of time said psychopath has been holding my sister.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I demand.
"Marcello, there's no easy way for me to say this…"
"Just spit it the fuck out," I say, bracing myself.
"We found traces of her blood in the master bed and bathroom. Plenty of it, but not enough to indicate she was killed or tortured, at least not like the others. Most of the blood is older… some is weeks old, some months, and some years."
Someone, most likely Roberto, has been abusing my Sophia, my sister! For years! I clench my jaw, taking a deep breath, which does nothing to tame my anger. If that fucker Roberto wasn't already dead, I would cut him to pieces for daring to lay a hand on her.
"We also found some stuff… I'm keeping this quiet," Mallard says.
"Like what?" I put my free hand on my face and close my eyes.
"Whips, cuffs with her blood on them, dog collars… do you want me to continue?"
"I get the picture," I grind out. "Find her." The phone flies through the air, hitting the wall, where it breaks into a hundred little pieces. "That fucking bastard."
Luciano's phone rings. "Mallard," he says, holding it out to me.
I nod at him to put it on speaker. I don't trust myself with anything fragile in my hands right now.
"One more thing I think you should know," Mallard says.
"Raffael DeSantis was at your hospital the same day Sophia came and visited you.
I pulled CCR footage from the security cameras.
It might be just a coincidence, but I don't like the way Raffael is staring at Sophia and Roberto in the footage. I'll send it to you."
Luciano and I exchange a surprised look. Raffael DeSantis is one of Stephano Conti's underbosses. "Why was he at the hospital?"
"He needed stitches on a cut on his arm," Mallard replies.
My eyes lock with Luciano, stunned. None of us would go to the hospital to have our arm stitched. That kind of shit is done by Doc Brown—our family doctor, or we do it ourselves. "I want all the footage, from the moment Sophia, Roberto, and Raffael entered the fucking hospital."
"You got it," Mallard agrees.
"DeSantis?" Luciano asks as soon as he disconnects the call.
"This makes no fucking sense," I curse, digging a new phone from my drawer and looking for Stephano's number.
"Hold on," Luciano cautions before I can press dial. "Let's check the footage first, before you go apeshit on a Conti."
He's right. But fuck, we're talking about my sister here.
Stephano Conti's another Cosa Nostra prince, gearing up to take over his father's empire. We were barely on each other's radar before, but that changed fast. Now we're aligned—for one reason: taking down Edoardo.
Well, two reasons. The Kingsley mess lit a fire none of us saw coming.
A few weeks back, Enrico called me out of nowhere, asking for a favor in Sicily.
It wasn't hard to deliver it since I still have enough connections in the old country.
In return, he handed me Senator Preston Kingsley trussed up like a gift. That alone would've been enough.
But it wasn't just Kingsley.
It was a fucking storm.
A ghost-level assassin showed up—Ledyanoy Prizrak—the Icy Ghost, aka Alaric Bastian.
Aka Igor Pavlov. Whatever name he used, he was a ghost. And he worked for a very real organization—Omertà Infernale.
Hellbound Silence. It sounds theatrical, but it's not.
We checked. They exist. And their mission is to enforce the sacred code of Omertà—silence, especially when it comes to La Famiglia.
And they don't just silence people. They erase them.
They wipe scandals clean. Delete entire social media histories. Scrub court records. Pay off therapists. Make whistleblowers vanish. They don't just bury the mess—they burn the whole building down and salt the earth after. And the one who made the mess?
They disappear too. We still don't know who is behind it, but Stephano is on it. He's obsessive like that. Has been ever since his brother vanished a few years ago. He's good. Scary good.
Too many hands are moving in the shadows. Which is why the four of us—me, Enrico, Stephano, and Toni—are closer now than we've ever been.
Because something's coming.
And we're not waiting around to find out what it is.
Which brings me back to Stephano. Why the fuck would he or one of his underbosses be involved in Sophia's kidnapping?
I'm not going to jump to conclusions. Whoever they are, they infiltrated my guards in order to assassinate me.
They could have gotten to Raffael too. The question is, why? And how he is involved.
Luciano's phone vibrates, and he checks a text. With an uncharacteristic grin, he types a reply.
"Who's that?" I finally ask.
He looks up, guilt written all over his face.
"Vi," he finally says.
"Vi? As in my Violet? My nurse?"
He swallows and nods. "Yes, boss."
"You two are texting?"
He nods again.
So, she's texting him, but not me?
No, I'm not going to let her distract me again.
First, I need to find my sister. Second, "Get a detail on Helen Gordon.
I want to know what else Edoardo might be up to.
" I order, pretending Luciano never mentioned Violet's name.
Which is fine—totally fine—because I don't need to think about little nurses and their kisses.
I don't need to think about a woman who doesn't want me in her life.
And third, "I want Fabio!"