I nodded and grabbed my suit jacket from the arm of the couch.
"I understand. But even if I'm alone, I'm doing this."
Wait for me, Chloe.
Whether you're in heaven or on earth, wherever the hell Julian's hidden you, I'll find you.
And before I do, someone's going to pay for your pain.
Chapter Twenty-One
Enzo
I hadn't slept in forty-eight hours.
The face in the mirror was barely recognizable. Hollow eye sockets, bloodshot whites threaded with red, two days of stubble making my jaw look filthy. The shirt was the same one I'd put on three days ago, cuffs stained with dried blood. Couldn't tell if it was someone else's or from when I'd punched the floor.
I stared at myself for three seconds, then drove my fist into the mirror. The crack of shattering glass exploded through the bathroom. Shards buried themselves in my knuckles. Blood ran down my fingers.
Did it hurt? Hell yes. But compared to the image looping endlessly in my head, it was nothing.
That image: Chloe smiling at me over a baby catalog. Then the scene shifting to that dark red stain on the bedroom floor. Loop. Repeat. Couldn't stop it.
Luca stood in the bathroom doorway, watching me pick glass from my knuckles piece by piece. His expression hovered between worry and fear. He was scared of me. I could see it. After all these years, this was the first time he'd looked at me like this.
I didn't blame him. Because right now, Enzo Falcone wasn't the man he knew anymore. The old me calculated every move, kept escape routes for every play. But now there was no chessboard in my head. Just one name screaming on repeat.
Chloe. Chloe. Chloe.
Julian was the most likely suspect. I was dying to ask him about it, but ever since I'd shattered his leg twice, the coward avoided any chance of meeting me.
My men had been watching his safe house for two days. He hadn't stepped outside once. The bastard probably guessed I was looking for him, so he stayed holed up.
Fine. I'd force him out.
How? Use what he cared about most. The only thing that could give him the Don's seat.
Carmine Falcone.
Three a.m., North Shore of Long Island. Carmine's stone manor.
Luca tried talking me down three times in the car. He said this was suicide. Carmine had twelve armed guards, four of them elite shooters trained by Palermo himself—reaction time under point-three seconds, zero-error accuracy within fifty meters. If I got caught, I'd be Swiss cheese before I touched the study door.
"I know."
"Then why are you going in? At least let me bring backup."
"More people just means more exposure." I checked the gun at my waist, tightened the suppressor. "Besides, Luca, if I die in there tonight, that's fine. Better than living through this hell."
Luca's face changed. "What the fuck are you saying?"
"Joking."
I wasn't joking. But Luca didn't need to know that.
Truth was, ever since I'd knelt by that bloodstain, I stopped caring about my own life. I used to value it because it was worth something—the foundation of the Falcone empire. But now, that empire looked like scrap metal to me. An empire without Chloe was just an empty shell. Sit inside, and all you'd hear was echoes.
So tonight's solo mission—either I'd win and take Carmine down, or I'd lose and get shot dead. Either outcome, I could live with.
