She rattled off the address to Luca's house. "I'll call and let him know you're coming."
"Thank you," I whispered. "Thank you, Veda."
"Be careful. I'm coming home and I'll see you soon," she told me, and ended the call.
Ten minutes later, I pulled up to the gates. They were closed, two armed guards standing sentinel. But as soon as they saw me and Logan, they opened them and waved me through.
Parking the SUV, I left Logan in the car and ran up the couple of steps to the front door. It swung open right as I got to it and Enzo stepped back to let me in. I burst through the doorway, my voice shrill with panic. Luca entered the room from a hallway to the right. "Please! My brother needs help. He needs a doctor."
"Is he in the car?" Enzo asked.
I nodded, my throat constricting with emotion, rendering me unable to speak as I followed him back out of the house. The gravity of the situation crashed over me like a tidal wave now that we'd arrived at Luca's house. I couldn't stop shaking and my heart was racing. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as the overwhelming fear for my brother's life—and Tristan's—consumed me.
Luca followed us. "Where is Tristan?"
I didn't answer him as Enzo opened the passenger door and unhooked the seatbelt so he could get Logan out. I was afraid to.
Luca grabbed my arm hard enough to leave bruises and spun me around. "This is Tristan's SUV. Where the FUCK is he?"
I stared into his cold blue eyes. "He…he…"
"WHERE IS HE?" he roared.
"Gino!" I screamed back. "He traded himself for us. He's with Gino!"
Yanking me into his hard body, he sneered down into my face. "You allowed him to do that? And you left him there?"
"I had to!" I told him. "My brother needs help."
His voice was like ice when he said, "Fuckyour brother."
I stared up at him and slammed my mouth shut. I had no argument. He was right. I shouldn't have left him there. There was no excuse. I should've at least tried. "My brother is all I have," I whispered. "Please. Help him."
"Luca, let her go."
After a moment, he did. Glancing over at Enzo as he pulled Logan out of the vehicle, he gave me one last glare and then went over to help him. "The doctor is on his way," he told me. "We're going to get your brother in the house, and then you're going to tell meexactlywhere you left Tristan. And god help you if he's not alive when we get there."
Lightheaded with relief, I nodded. "Thank you."
With another chilling look, he went to help Enzo get Logan into the house, yelling for someone named Lisa.
A middle-aged woman with warm eyes and a worried frown rushed into the cavernous room from the back of the house. "I've got the bed set up," she told Luca. "Veda called me. Bring him in."
We went through a pair of glass-paned French doors into what looked like a sitting room or office area. But instead of a desk, there was a hospital bed set up in the center of the room. A couple of light blue chairs with round glass end tables were near the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Once they had Logan on the bed, Luca turned back to me. "Where exactly did you leave him?"
I told him everything without pausing, even when tears ran down my face and my nose got all stuffy and my voice broke.
When I was finished, he nodded once, and with a glance at Enzo, they turned and left.
Part of me wanted to run after them, and I felt like I was being torn in two.
"Don't worry, they'll bring Tristan home."
I'd almost forgotten the woman—Lisa—was there. She handed me a tissue, and I used it to clean up my face while taking a few seconds to pull myself together. "Thank you," I told her.
She smiled and opened her mouth to say something, but the doorbell rang. "That'll be the doctor. I'll be right back."
