A cold knot forms in my stomach.
“Bitch, did he say dead?” Stephanie whispers.
I nod, fingers trembling over my screen to call Benny.
The call doesn’t go through.
We pull on the door handles. They don’t budge. Thick smoke comes through the vents. I cough at the burn in my lungs, too light-headed to fight.
My eyes flutter before everything fades to black.
Chapter 40
Taken
Salvatore
“Where is she?!” I roar.
“Salvatore, calm down. We’ll find her.” Luiggi knows to keep his distance. I’ll shoot, stab, or strangle anyone who isn’t my wife.
Aldo is dead.
Andrea isn’t answering his calls.
My wife is missing.
The tightness in my chest suffocates my breath. I clench my fists on my desk through shallow gasps of air. My body shakes as my mind races through hope and fear.
“Breathe, son,” a calm voice says lowly next to my ear. “Breathe.”
Firm arms wrap around me and squeeze.
“I can’t lose her too,” I choke out.
“You won’t, niputi.” Ziu holds me against his chest. “Breathe for me, son.”
The first breath burns my lungs. I take another, but stumble under the weight of my knees buckling.
My wife is gone.
“Give us the room,” Ziu says to Luiggi.
I blacked out when my enforcer told me Bianca and Stephanie were taken. Trouble was already twenty minutes late before I got the call. I drove myself to the Catania property by muscle memory, where I’ve been failing to piece together what happened.
Ziu sits me in my office chair.
“I need you to hear me, Salvatore. Agostino Messina is dead. Police found his body with his son inside a car in an alley.”
“Tino?”
He shakes his head. “Nino. Each shot in the back of the head. No casings.”
“To make it look like I killed them.” I say the quiet part out loud. “Where’s Tino?”
Ziu stands to sit across from my desk. “No one has seen him since you left on your honeymoon.”
“He better be dead.” I punch the code to my weapons closet.
