Or am I still held prisoner in the wooden coffin of a room? Maybe this is just another dream inside a nightmare.
Somewhere far off, a door slams. The sound echoes around me, through me.
A woman’s voice murmuring, urgent and low, floats through the air. A man’s laugh, jagged and rough, rips through it, erasing the sound.
There’s a warmth next to my arm, soft wordsdon’t fight, rest, relaxin my ear. The warmth spreads through my body and quiets my mind, extinguishing my thoughts like candles one by one. The dark red fades into black, and darkness, soft and kind,wraps around me. I sink back into, allow myself to be consumed by it. For now, it feels like rest, like comfort. Like escape.
8
Tommy
Another video.
My phone shakes as I press play, though I try to keep my hand steady. I’m training myself to handle these videos without letting sickness and rage take over. I need to watch each one in case there is any shred of evidence that will help me find Giovanna. Wherever she is, I know I’ll find Antonio, too, since my hackers have been able to dig up nothing on him.
This time the camera is angled low, just a man’s cock pumping into Giovanna and the top of his thighs, nothing else. Her face is hidden again, like it has been for the past nine videos. Why are they hiding her face from me? What have they done to her?
Is she even alive?
I don’t breathe until it’s over. Then I sit there, blank, giving myself permission to allow the rage to crest like I always do soI can excise it and focus on what needs to be done. But the rage doesn’t come. Not today. Today, there is nothing but a numb ache gnawing at the inside of my ribs.
I’ve gotten one video every day for the last three weeks. I can’t sleep, can’t eat. I just wait for the next clip to hit my phone and pray I don’t lose my mind before I can track her down.
I want to be out canvasing for her, throwing people into walls until I find her, but I’m trapped on the Demonio estate and have been for weeks. Locked down with Aurelio, he’s been obsessing over what happened to Mikey.
I stay only because I know he’s the one behind this. He has her. I’m waiting for him to slip, give me something useful. But he hasn’t even said her name.
I pocket the phone and push into Aurelio’s study. He’s already pacing, drink in hand, jaw clenched tight enough to crack.
“Franco’s still missing,” he snaps, his accent slurred, before I even speak. “Weeks, and not a whisper. No man vanishes like that unless he means to.”
I keep my tone calm. “Why would he run?”
“Betrayal,” Aurelio growls. He throws back the whiskey and slams the glass down. “After everything I gave him, he turns?”
I let the silence stretch, then offer, “He wouldn’t risk that unless he thinks he has leverage.”
Aurelio’s eyes cut to me, suspicious. For a moment, he says nothing, his lip twitching, trying to read me. My expression is blank, though. It has been for weeks now.
Finally, Aurelio exhales hard and pours more whiskey into his glass. “Franco knew my plans. Every detail. The blueprints, the codes, the men I paid off. All of it.”
“So?” Plans. Codes. Blueprints. He’s spilling more than he means to, but I keep my expression flat as if I know what he’stalking about. “No matter what you think Franco has, it can’t be bigger than his alliance with the family.”
“He’s a Bellamorte,” Aurelio sneers, as if that should say it all. The Demonio and Bellamorte families used to work together, until Aurelio decided to take over before I was born, killing not only the Bellamorte family leadership but his own father and grandfather to secure his position. “And this job is worth billions. Not millions—billions! It was supposed to secure my position in this little war that your brother is cooking up. But if Franco does the job first, takes the money—”
It hits me like a concrete slab. He’s talking about Luminous & Co., Giovanna’s father’s company. The only asset we have that Aurelio could tap for an instant multi-billion dollar payout would be robbing Luminous & Co. of all its cash and, more importantly, its jewels.
Working to keep my face devoid of expression, I pour myself a finger of whiskey and sit down heavily. “Luminous & Co.,” I say slowly. “But if you rob Luminous now, you burn our best money laundering business and our only international import/ export business that is safe from prying eyes.”
Aurelio laughs, bitter. “You think I wanted to rob that little jewel box? No. I had no choice. Lorenzo cut me off—cutusoff—the moment you started crawling back into his daughter’s bed. He blames me for letting you touch her. Said the deal was broken.”
Hearing him mention Giovanna, every muscle in my body goes stiff, but I don’t move. Don’t breathe.
“He promised to launder Demonio’s money if I kept you away from her,” Aurelio says, leaning heavily against the wall for support. “If I kept her with Antonio. That was the arrangement. And then you two ruined it. So he stopped. Months of money frozen. Do you know what that does to an empire? Especially when your brother is threatening to take me to war?”
I shake my head, slow, like I’m only half-following. Inside, I’m burning.
Is that why he kidnapped Giovanna? She’s been gone for a month now. Did he hope to back Lorenzo into a corner, force him to start laundering money again? If so, it was a bad gamble. Lorenzo cares about no one but himself.
