Tommy’s voice cuts through my thoughts.“She’ll kill you when she finds out you’ve been tracking her.”
“Good thing I have, wouldn’t you say?”
Nobody argues with that.
Ray’s silence stretches for a beat too long, straining my already scattered thoughts.When he speaks, his voice is grim.“There was an incident.About half an hour ago.Her car was ambushed near the South End.”
The blood in my veins turns to ice.
“What kind of ambush?”I growl.
“T-bone collision on Pembroke Street in the South End.Two SUVs boxed her in.Our team was monitoring via traffic cameras, but by the time they got there—” He breaks off.
“Ray.”My voice is steel wrapped in barely controlled fury.“What happened to my wife?”
“They took her, Shelby.Black SUVs, no plates.Professional job.Our guys arrived maybe ninety seconds after the grab, but they were already gone.We have drone footage of the vehicles heading toward the Mass Pike, then we lost them in the tunnel system.”
My hands are steady.They have to be even if I’m not.Even if my mind is running multiple hellish scenarios.Even if my heart is shattering so hard I can barely breathe.
“And Marcus?”I manage to ask, after swallowing hard a couple of times.
“He took a round to the shoulder, where the new vest doesn’t cover.The other three to his center mass didn’t leave a scratch.Maeve’s a fucking genius.”He’s talking about the nanotech fabric Tommy’s wife has developed.“The collision triggered the airbags and knocked him down.He never saw Serena being taken away.”Ray pauses.“My team extracted him.He’s with Doctor Martinez now.Stable, but he’s gonna be out of commission for a couple of days.”
Tommy holds my stare in the mirror as the engine idles and Boston traffic flows around us.Dave and Nikolai are watching me with expressions that range from concern to grim understanding.
“The text message,” I say slowly.“The one from Serena saying she was leaving me.It came in a few minutes ago, not long after the ambush.”
“Which means whoever took her has her phone,” Ray confirms.“They wanted you to think she left voluntarily.Buy themselves time.”
Giovanni Motherfucker DiLorenzo.
The name surfaces in my mind like a shark in dark water.The folder Nikolai put together, full of evidence linking Serena’s father to the trafficking operation.The confirmation that the man who helped found the Syndicate has been breaking our code for a decade.And now this.
“Giovanni knows we’re onto him.He knows Serena has been helping us gather evidence against him,” I mutter through gritted teeth.
“So, he took his own daughter.”Tommy’s rage rings in the tense air inside the car.
“Track everything, Ray,” I order.“Every traffic camera, every toll booth, every satellite image you can get your hands on.I want to know where those vehicles went.And I want it yesterday.”
“Already on it.”Ray’s voice is tight with the same fury burning in my gut.“I’ve got every resource we have pivoting to this.We’ll find her.I’ll brief you guys in thirty.”
I end the call and meet Dave’s eyes.My older brother has gone completely still, the way he does when he’s processing tactical information, when he’s shifting from concerned family member to Syndicate leader.
“How does Giovanni know about the investigations?”he asks.
“He’s many things, but not stupid.”Nikolai’s pale eyes are cold.“And he’s been operating in the shadows of the Syndicate, the Camorra, and God knows who else for too long.He certainly has connections everywhere, higher-ups backing him.It’s a short leap from that to learning about Serena’s involvement in our investigation.This is damage control.”
“This is a declaration of war,” Tommy corrects, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel.“He took a Boyle’s wife.He hurt one of our men, clearly intending to kill him.Whatever alliance the DiLorenzos had with this family is over.”
I hear them through the static of my fractured mind.My focus is somewhere else entirely.Back in a Russian warehouse, watching a bullet find a little girl before my hands could reach her.Back in Syria, feeling Abeera’s fingers slip from my grasp as the secondary explosion buried her.Back to every moment in my life when I failed to protect someone who mattered.
I knew this would happen.
The thought slithers through my consciousness like poison.Every fear I’ve carried since that Syrian building collapse, every nightmare that’s haunted me for ten years, every reason I built walls around my heart to begin with.They all come flooding back, tumbling down on top of one another like fucking debris dragged by the surge.
This is why I don’t let people in.This is why caring is a liability.
I told myself I was protecting Serena by keeping my distance.By maintaining the façade of a fake marriage.By refusing to let her see how much she was starting to mean to me.
