"How's your thigh doing?"
"Fine," I tell him with a huff. The gunshot wound in my thigh is not nearly as bad except for the nerve damage, and so I've been attending to that myself. There's only so much a man can take when he's in pain and pissed off at the world. And having Jax so close to my junk every day was beginning to grate on my goddamn nerves.
After Jax is done cleaning and bandaging my shoulder, he discards his used supplies and heads to the bathroom to put everything away. "So…any news?" he asks as he walks back into the room and sinks down into a leather chair. He looks positively exhausted, but I'm not even going to venture to ask him why. I can easily guess. Besides, I've already seen the video proof of his restless nights with Katya, unfortunately.
"Nothing," I tell him, and I don't even try to hide the despondent tone of my voice. I'm at my wit's end and on the verge of desperation. A big part of me wants to go to America to try to find her, but Adeline is one tiny needle in a huge fucking haystack. And I can accomplish more here with my makeshift command center with my computers tracking every piece of information I have and everything my hired men send in.
But as days go by, I grow more and more anxious and depressed and doubt that I'll ever hold her in my arms again.
Growling in frustration, I throw the folder with all of my gathered intel, which amounted to a big pile of nothing, against the wall. The folder explodes, papers scattering and floating to the floor.
I rake in the mess with my eyes, and it puts me even more on edge. My hands ball into fists, and my body trembles with anxiety. "I don't know what else to do, Jax," I tell him, desperation lacing my voice. "I don't know how much longer I can go on without knowing what happened to her, where she is and if she's all right."
"The watch is still a dead end?" he asks.
I nod solemnly. I've tried everything to get every ounce of data out of that damn thing, and all it shows is Adeline returning to New York. And then nothing. She either took it off…or it was taken from her.
Either way, without body heat, the goddamn thing won't continue to run. And I curse myself for designing it that way and for not installing some kind of emergency battery. It was a simple oversight on my part.
And it might have cost me the love of my life.
CHAPTER 32
GIOVANNI
THE VALENTI EMPIRE is slowly crumbling, and I am one of the last remaining survivors still standing. However, I haven't been surviving well, let me tell you. I've been cashing in on every favor I've ever been owed just to keep my head above water.
I'm slowly drowning.
Just like that stupid fuck I killed.
And even though The Wolf is dead, I still lost her.
Adeline.
Her name rolls around in my mind like an annoying, little pebble, and I grow angrier by the second.
I lost everything because of her. She disappeared, and my chances at gaining control of the Valenti empire once again are slowly slipping away. I needed to take immediate action after her father ended up behind bars. And every minute she's not by my side is another minute that the mafia family's confidence in me that I have enough power to take over and rule this goddamn city dwindles.
The feds got their hands on damning evidence that came out of the blue, and even Sal's hotshot millionaire lawyers couldn't bail his fat fuckin' ass out of the charges. I'm sure his sentence will be reduced, but Sal's looking at, at the very minimum, ten to fifteen years.
Fuck, he'll probably be dead before he sees the light of day again.
And I refuse to suffer the same fate.
Sal went down and tried to take me and everyone else with him, but I fled, hiding in the dark, dank recesses of NYC to escape any repercussions of my actions.
I lost my condo, my cars…all my fuckin' money.
Seething, I stare out the window, peering through the slats of a dirty mini blind. I'm looking for anybody suspicious, undercover cars…really anything out of the ordinary at this point.
I'm tired of looking over my fuckin' shoulder. I'm tired of feeling like I'm being followed. And I'm so goddamn tired of hiding.
I know that The Wolf is somehow behind all of this. Hell, maybe he had a plan in place in case he died. Insurance, if you will, that if something happened to him, he would burn my whole world down around me.
Vengeance…beyond the grave.
"Ah-ha!" a voice exclaims, causing me to turn my attention from the window and the world outside it to the short, balding, old man sitting at a desk that looks like it's seen better days…in the seventies.
