Her phone sits untouched on her nightstand, the screen showcasing the time and nothing more.
I don’t have to be a detective to know they’re gone. But I check her bathroom anyway—for any sign of where they’ve gone.
I’m already dialing before I’ve made it back to the first floor. Miko answers on the first ring.
“They’re gone,” I say, voice low but hard enough to break glass. “The door was open, and there’s signs of a struggle. But they’re gone. I’m going after them.”
“Gio—”
“Don’t tell me to wait,” I snarl.
“Can you even be sure where they’ve gone? We’re two minutes out. Let’s just discuss this before you take action,” Miko says.
When he became the reasonable one, I don’t know. But I have the overwhelming desire to burn this city to the ground looking for Stephanie and Jackson.
Or at least the Tanaka compound, which is where I’m almost certain I’ll find them.
“Gio!” Miko says more harshly when I don’t answer him.
“Fine. You have two minutes. Then I’m gone.” I hang up before he can say anything else.
My chest feels tight, like my ribs are trying to close in on themselves. I can’t picture Stephanie in someone else’s hands without my vision going red.
And Jackson—Jesus, Jackson is only seven years old.
He’s probably terrified out of his mind right now.
They'd just better be alive—and unharmed. If I find out Kenji’s hurt a single hair on either of their heads, I will burn every Tanaka man alive and dance on their ashes.
Pacing in the front entry impatiently, I note that my brothers make it with several seconds to spare as headlights sweep across the living room when they pull up, tires screeching to a stop against the curb.
A second later, they’re in the doorway—Raf, Sandro, and Miko all moving like a unit.
“Where were they taken from?” Sandro asks, scanning the space.
He’s the best at tracking, so I trust him to find anything I might have missed.
I gesture upstairs. “Her room’s a mess. She clearly put up a fight.”
Sandro doesn’t waste time talking. He crouches near the front step, a flashlight beam sweeping over the grass and driveway, then the front door. “The lock was picked,” he observes, then moves back outside.
I follow him out, a bitter chill settling under my skin as his flashlight finds more destruction of her flower beds.
But he doesn’t linger, his light and eyes scanning with impressive speed.
“There.” He points to a faint impression in the lawn, then another. “Two sets of prints—one heavy, one lighter. One of them was carrying someone—Stephanie would be my guess, by how deep the prints are.”
My stomach plummets as I picture Stephanie enduring the same horrible kidnapping as she did when my father had her taken—someone bludgeoning her over the head, and this time, Jackson there to see it.
I haven’t seen any sign of blood, which is almost encouraging.
But then, why would she need to be carried? Was she unconscious when they took her or too hurt to walk?
The prints lead out to the curb, several muddy ones from where they tromped through the garden. “Still damp,” Sandro says, dropping to a crouch to run his hands over the mud. “That means they were taken recently, and that shoe print there is probably Jackson’s—which means he was awake and walking when they took him.”
I swallow thickly, gratitude surging through me to know he was still alive.
“Looks like their abductors got them into a vehicle of some sort, but there’s not much to go on from here,” Sandro says, straightening so he can peer both ways down the street.
