“She hasn’t been here. No one has in the six hours we’ve been outside her door.”
What the actual fuck is going on? “Bust the door open and check.”
I grab fistfuls of my hair as I pace the floor, trying and failing not to panic. A loud crash filters through the line, followed by stomping feet.
“She’s not here, sir. We’ve checked every room.”
“Call me if she shows up,” I say and hang up.
“Fuck.” I swipe all the bottles of sparkling water on the desk to the floor in a fit of rage.
Caleb ends his call and comes to me. He grips my shoulder. “What is it?”
“Gia is missing, but her cellphones and her tracker shows she’s at home. What the fuck are we missing, Caleb? What the fuck is going on, and how am I going to find her?”
“Calm down.” He squeezes my shoulder. “You’re no use to Gia like this. Lock down your emotions. Shut them off, and gointo professional mode. We’ll find her. It’s got to be Liam. We’ll start there.”
The door opens, and Massimo and Ben burst into the room. They glance at the shattered glass and wet carpet before turning to look at us.
“Gia is missing,” Caleb tells them.
“I dropped her off hours ago, but she never made it to the apartment. She hasn’t activated the recording device, and her tracker and cell phones show her location as the apartment,” I explain, working hard to do as Caleb suggests because it’s good advice.
“Fuck.” Massimo covers his mouth.
“They found a way to mess with the trackers,” Ben says, reaching the same conclusion as me.
“That’s why they removed them from the dead bodies. They reverse engineered our chips,” I say. “That’s how their men are hiding in plain sight. They are fixing their locations as they move freely around, doing who the hell knows what, and we’re none the wiser.”
“This has Liam’s fingerprints all over it. He must have gotten intel she’s one of us,” Cristian says, listening out in the hallway with Fiero.
“Or he’s discovered she’s your woman,” Massimo says.
“We need to find her, but how?”
“Let’s go back inside and brainstorm. There has to be another way we can trace her location.”
The mood is heavy as we head back into the conference room. We’ve all just claimed our seats when my cell rings with a call from the surveillance team. I put it on speaker phone. “Do you have news?”
“The recording device has been activated,” the man says, his voice spiking with clear terror. “She used the codeword, boss. She’s in serious trouble, and she needs our help.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Gia
“Wakey, wakey, whore.” A stinging pain rips across one cheek and then the other as I slowly come to. Stabbing pain pounds in my skull, and my arms ache. I yelp as ice-cold water is thrown over my head, drops clinging to my lashes as I open my eyes. All the blood drains from my face when I stare into a pair of familiar cold blue eyes.
I am royally screwed, so I figure I have nothing to lose by faking confusion.
Glancing down, I see I’m strapped to a chair with my ankles bound to the legs and my wrists tied behind the back. I can’t even activate my earrings or reach my watch to press the panic button. “Baby, what’s going on?”
My eyes dart left and right, scanning the large derelict warehouse. A few crates are stacked high against the far wall, and a bunch of fold-up chairs are propped against an old laminate-covered table that’s seen better days. Piles of old newspapers and empty bottles and beer cans roll along the debris-strewn ground. Overhead lights provide scant illumination, but I see enough to know I’m in serious danger.
I might not make it out of this alive.
Shoving those thoughts aside because they won’t help me survive, I focus on keeping calm and alert.
Another slap to the face whips my head around. “What’s going on is you lied to me, Emma. Or should I call youGianow? You lying, treacherous cunt!” His eyes flare with anger as he grabs my crotch through my leggings and squeezes tight. Behind him, a few chuckles ring out, and I stare straight ahead, noticing the same group of men from the basement that night with three others I recognize from the bar.
