Glancing over at Dante, I don’t think there was a time that I’d ever seen him in such a state. We’d done so many jobs together that I’d lost count and every time Dante somehow maintained this aura of weightlessness that he’d been blessed with. He didn’t get caught up in the darkness in the same way that I did. Until now. I wasn’t sure what to say to him and let the silence stretch between us.
When I pulled up outside his place, neither of us moved.
“I should have known he’d fuck it up. I should have known he’d screw us over,” Dante said eventually.
“None of us could have known,” I replied.
“I should have!” He slammed his hands on the dashboard, staining it with small streaks of blood. We’d need to get the entire thing professionally cleaned or, better yet, get rid of it. “I should have. I should have put my foot down and said no and then we wouldn’t have been in this position.”
“Well, unless you’ve mastered time travel, this is what we’ve got.” I didn’t have time for him to lose it now. In my mind there was a list of things that we needed to check off, and Dante having a breakdown hadn’t made it on there. “We grab everything he has and crack the rest of this ourselves.”
We left the car without further argument and collected Angelo’s phone and laptop from the house. As I started the drive back to our place, Dante flipped open the laptop to see it was password protected. “Any idea?” I asked him, looking over to it.
“Isa’s birthday,” he said shortly. There was a stab of guilt as he typed in the numbers, but the screen wobbled, denying him access. “No.”
“I’ve got no fucking clue. Let’s call Gui and get him to look at it, Luc. It’ll be quicker than waiting for Carmen to come up here or sending it down to her.”
He made a good argument. “Fine,” I said in agreement.
He slammed the lid down again and looked at Angelo’s phone, which was also locked. “We should have taken his finger,” Dante mused, turning it over in his hand. That would have been one way to speed up the process.
Our paths didn’t cross with Gui often, but his help would be valued. He was more skilled in this field and wouldn’t stumble along the way we would, if we tried this ourselves. The worry of discretion could be remedied with cash, I was sure. Every man had a price.
As we rolled up to the house, I saw it straight away — the missing car. “I told him to stay with her,” I said, slamming on the brakes and killing the engine. I didn’t hear what Dante said as I got out of the car. For the first time since we’d moved, I reached for my gun before walking into my home. “Mia!” Link’s cries sounded clearly down the stairs.
“Go,” Dante said, coming in behind me. “I’ll check down here.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I took off up the stairs, eyes scanning the halls as I walked into the bedroom to see my son, red in the face from screaming. And I knew. I knew Mia wasn’t home because she wouldn’t have left him like this. Mia wouldn’t leave Link in any kind of distress. The smallest whine and she shot to his side because that was the type of mother she was. Self-soothing was an option she turned her nose up at. Momma bear protective of her cub.
I swapped the gun for my son, pulling him out of the basket and into my arms. From a quick inspection I was relieved to see he wasn’t injured. Whatever had happened, Link had been left out of it. Pressing him to my chest, I left the room to go back downstairs. A mixture of anger and dread was clawing its way up my throat, tempered only by Link’s presence.
“Luc!” Dante’s voice boomed from downstairs.
In a desperate attempt, I called Mia’s number as I made my way down the stairs, trying to calm Link down. It rang through to her voicemail and I gripped the phone so tight that my knuckles lost their blood supply.
“What do you mean?” Dante had snapped out of whatever funk Angelo had put him in and was sharp as I walked into the kitchen where he was.
My insides twisted at the sight before me. The kitchen was a crime scene. Glass glittered on the table, and floor and wine stained the tiles. Mia’s phone was on the floor, screen cracked from the landing. For a fraction of a second, holding Link to me, I saw the grim prospect of my future. Just the two of us. Forever incomplete. I gritted my teeth and shook the thoughts from my head.
“Send me it! Send me the information now,” Dante yelled down the phone before he hung up. “She’s not here,” he confirmed. “Tori.” Dante shook his phone. “She heard Gabe on the phone to Xavier. They’re going to meet him. She’s sending the information.”
“We need to go.”
God had tossed the chips and closed His eyes, too scared to watch them land and left His devout sinners to play for the win. There were so many variables, so much that could go wrong but I remained steady in the fact that Mia would be back with us if we moved quickly enough. The ego I’d fostered throughout my life refused to believe that I’d be without her. And when we got out of this together and alive, Mia was getting baptised because the devil had taken a liking to her and nothing else had deterred him. I was tired of the relentless tango they found themselves in.
“We can’t take Link,” Dante pointed out and I clutched my son a little closer. “We’ll stop at Lydia’s.” He looked down as his phone lit up. “Tori just sent an address. We need to get moving if we’re going to meet them there.”
We didn’t say another word, leaving the house and getting back into the car, roles reversed as Dante took the driving seat. Link had inherited the love for speed, finally calming down as Dante whipped through the streets towards Lydia’s home. An irrational part of me didn’t want me to let go of my son, worried about being separated from him but Lydia had raised me and doted on Link. She took him without question, and we hit the road once more.
Dante drove recklessly as I made calls with the address given to every single man under my orders. I wouldn’t be caught off guard, outnumbered and outwitted by Xavier. When I searched the address, it returned an old house with a vast expanse of land and stables that had been put up for sale a few weeks ago. Far away enough that Xavier would be away from the family, close enough that he could get the job done quickly. Franco had been a puppet waiting for the opportune moment. It all started to slot into place, and I kicked myself for not realising it sooner. We were cocooned in a false sense of security, tentatively placing trust in people because that was what they wanted. How fucking stupid had I been?
Xavier had taken Mia at the first opportunity. He wouldn’t let Franco do the job, not when we were all twisted enough to take a sick sense of joy in watching the kill. It was confirmation that we were at top of the food chain. Untouchable. And a reminder to the ones we disposed of that they should never have toed the line where we were concerned.
There was no doubt in my mind that Xavier would want to make me pay, but Mia was the top of his list. A woman with no grounding in our world, who found a secret that was never hers, had turned the tables, and reached for power. Not only reached for it, but she had a firm grasp on it and was ready to dethrone him. Xavier wouldn’t be able to let that go easily. She would be the first target before he came for the rest of us.
“We’ll find her,” Dante said firmly. Not ‘she’ll be okay’. Not ‘we’ll find her alive’. He couldn’t guarantee any of those.
Without Link as a driving force to stay calm, every vein in my body pulsed with burning hot rage. People stepped over the threshold of my wife’s home on her good nature, more than my own, and betrayed her. I would go to my grave knowing that every fucker I knew would happily try to cross me if they thought they had even half a chance of getting away with it, but I would never be okay with someone taking aim at Mia.
