Page 46 of The Mafioso’s Bride

Cold air bites the skin above my collar. All three men follow me down the drive. Two guards remain at the gate, and one calls for a car. They obey Luca’s order. They also keep their hands away from me.

I pass through the gate and reach the larger street before a black sedan turns out of the drive. A taxi approaches through the falling snow. I raise my arm, and it stops beside the curb.

The nearest guard reaches me as I close the taxi door. His palm strikes the glass once. I give the driver cash and ask him to keep moving until I choose where to stop.

Luca’s men have the taxi’s number. They do not have me. The phone that could lead Luca straight to me remains beside the bed, close enough for him to reach in four steps after he opens the door.

Luca

Giada’s phone rests on the bedside table beside the black credit card. Her suitcase is gone.

The bed remains made. The clothes I bought for her remain in the closet and drawers. The blue tardigrade shirt is gone. I pull open the desk drawer, and the notebook with my financial records lies inside it.

I take the phone and press the side button. The screen wakes beneath my thumb and shows no message, note, or destination in the maps application. The location record ends in this room.

“Where is she?”

The guard in the hall stands rigid. “She took a taxi from the main road. Three men followed, but they lost it near Madison.”

“Get me the driver. Pull the traffic cameras.”

I stop.

Giada left the phone here after remembering what I told her about its location system. She left the card; every purchase would create a record. Both systems could lead me to her, so she removed them. She planned this while I beat her father for hurting her.

The phone strikes the bedside table. I loosen my fingers before the glass breaks.

“Where did she tell the driver to take her?”

“He says she didn’t give an address. She paid cash and told him to keep driving until she chose.”

“Which direction?” I ask.

“East.”

That answer gives me half of Chicago and no wife. I put her phone in my pocket. “Get the route. Send men to the stations, hotels, hospitals, and her family’s properties.”

I look at the empty place beside the bed. Four steps carried me from the door to her phone. I had counted them in the hall while I gave her the privacy she requested. Four steps, and I arrived after she was gone.

My wife has little cash, no phone, and no winter clothes beyond the coat she wore out the door. Giuseppe remains free. Any man loyal to her father would deliver her to Giuseppe for money or favor. I call Mattia as I take the stairs.

“Any contact from Giuseppe’s people?”

“Nothing,” Mattia says.

“Assume they have her until we prove otherwise.”

I pass the stuffed tardigrade beside my keyboard. Giada’s gray coat is gone from the kitchen row. I take my coat and walk into the snow.

I enter the waiting car. “East on Madison.”

Snow strikes the windshield as the cab company and traffic cameras give us a broken trail: Giada circles through the city, leaves the taxi at a drugstore, slips out the second door, and boards a bus that crosses Chicago. Men deploy to stations, hotels, shelters, churches, museums, and libraries.

None of those places belongs to Giada. I close the map.

“Stop sending teams,” I say.

Mattia goes silent. “What?”