Dario was barking orders into a comm unit, his usually jovial face uncharacteristically grim.
Frederica leaned against a marble pillar, idly playing with a dagger, her hazel eyes constantly flicking to the large monitor screens where Leo and Iz were working at portable workstations near the grand staircase. Silas paced nearby, his gaze periodically sweeping the room, lingering on the entrances.
"What's happened?" Giana asked, her voice cutting through the low murmur of tense voices and clicking keyboards. She aimed the question at the room, but her eyes locked onto Leo. He didn't look up, his focus on a scrolling feed of encrypted traffic.
It was Athena who answered, her voice flat, devoid of its usual dry sarcasm. "Rodrigo's gone dark."
"Gone dark?" Giana echoed, the cold dread solidifying into a block of ice in her chest. "What do you mean, gone dark?"
"He went to get Lupo," Leo said, finally swiveling his chair to face her. His eyes were shadowed, the lines around them deeper than usual. "He left for Siena, made it, and was on the road back when the GPS on his phone and car both disappeared. Last ping was near the turnoff near an old quarry road, about seventy minutes ago."
Seventy minutes was an eternity in their world. Giana's mind raced, conjuring images of Rodrigo dead somewhere. The fear she thought she had conquered surged back, thick and choking.
He left the compound during a lockdown he ordered.The sheer, reckless stupidity of it ignited a furious spark amidst the terror.
"Is he insane? What was he thinking, leaving the villa after pissing off every boss in Sicily this morning?" She stalkedtoward Leo's workstation to look over his monitors. "Can you see anything? Traffic cams? Satellite?"
Leo shook his head, a muscle ticking in his jaw. "We're trying. Iz is scrubbing local municipal feeds, but the quarry road area is spotty. Dante's got eyes on satellite thermal of their last location, but there's interference that could be dust, maybe smoke."
His voice was steady, but Giana heard an undercurrent of fear. Leo, who could hack God's own firewall, couldn't find his brother.
Dario slammed his fist down on the table, making the monitor jump. "He shouldn't have gone alone. I should have stopped him, tried to make him see sense."
Frederica pushed off the pillar, her dagger disappearing into her thigh sheath. "Telling Rodrigo Colleoni what to do would be like telling a hurricane to change course, Dario," she drawled, but the usual sardonic edge was blunted by tension.
"Shut it, Alesci," Dario snapped, whirling on her. "This isn't a shitty bodyguard job like Rome. This is mybrother."
Frederica's eyes narrowed, something dangerous in their depths. "Maybe instead of holding that one incident against me forever, you could ask the people who hired me why theyactuallywanted him dead that day."
The air crackled between them, the old rivalry flaring hot and bright against the backdrop of too much tension.
Silas stepped between them, a wall of muscle and quiet authority.
"Enough. Both of you," he rumbled. "Save it for the Sicilians. Iz, any change?"
"Still silent. Thermal bloom is dissipating, but there are no clear signatures. Could be a vehicle fire," she said, her brows in a tight frown.
A vehicle fire. The fear in Giana's chest spread, freezing her limbs, locking her breath in her throat. Images assaulted her of twisted metal, flames licking at dark paint, smoke coiling into a clear sky.
Rodrigo trapped inside. Rodrigo bleeding. Rodrigo… gone.
He's okay. He's Rodrigo for fuck's sake.
She leaned heavily against Leo's workstation, the polished wood cool beneath her paint-stained fingers. She tried to breathe, push down the panic tightening her lungs.
Giana had lost everything once. She had rebuilt herself from the ashes of that loss, piece by painful piece. She had survived. She had even, in this strange, violent place, begun to feel safe again.
Rodrigo made her feel seen.Wanted.
The thought of him not being there… It was the loss of the axis around which her chaotic world had started to make a terrifying kind of sense.
Giana's heart squeezed at the thought of him lying broken and still on some lonely roadside. She didn't just need him alive for strategy, for protection, for the fragile sense of safety his presence afforded. She neededhim.
The ruthless bastard who watched her obsessively. The man who built her a sanctuary. The lover whose touch could make her forget everything but the heat between them.
The thought of a world without his intensity, his control, his maddening, terrifying presence was unbearable. Unthinkable.
Oh, God.I love the bastard.The silent admission reverberated through her soul, shaking her to her core.
