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My jaw tightens.

What happened? You can tell me what’s going on, tesoro.

Nothing happens at first. Then three dots bounce around before the reply appears.

Just let me go, Marco. I’m not ready to join a conniving, murderous, criminal family.

I go still.

Lucia might have reasons not to trust me, but she would never refer to the entire famiglia she’s met—including Sophia—as any of those names.

That’s how I recognize this for what it is. The cadence is wrong, missing Lucia’s sharp, precise voice and the undercurrent of warmth she can never quite hide. For months, I’ve read her texts between cases, quick notes, and clipped reminders. I know how she shortens sentences when she’s tired and adds bite when she’s annoyed.

This isn’t her. This is someone too emotional to keep their contempt for my family off the screen. Someone wants me to think she’s walked out so I’ll delay my search for her.

Someone took her.

I’m on the phone before I can draw another breath, somehow managing to keep my voice steady, even as my hands quake.

“Jenna. She’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?” Her voice sharpens.

“Taken. She texted me, but it’s not her. I mean, the messages are from her number, but it’s not how Lucia writes.”

After two beats, Jenna’s composure breaks.

“Oh, god. It’s Mason.” The words pour out. “He’s been calling her all week from a burner phone. She went to meet him today at the coffee shop because he said he had information about Matteo. She made me promise not to tell anyone. Marco, I should have told you.”

The realization hits like a sledgehammer to the skull. “I’ve got to go.”

I end the call, dial Nico, and rattle off what I know.

He waits for the end of my rant before responding with determined precision. “I’ll track him down right now.”

“I need to know his last known location, his contacts, his vehicle, every piece of data we can scrape together. Find out where he took her.” I speak in a controlled tone that I use when the mission is all that matters.

My hands continue to tremble.

“I need it now.”

The Benedetti soldiers mobilize quickly, and I have the machine Enzo has built roaring to life around me in record time. Men I’ve trained with for years navigate through the space with grim efficiency, pulling up maps, coordinating teams, and checking weapons.

Enzo directs the search with his typical calm authority. Izzy works satellite images, her fingers flying across keyboards. Nico has doubled down on his efforts to track Mason’s car and credit cards, and now we’ve got a snapshot of his whole life laid bare across a myriad of screens.

I hover in the center of this maelstrom, useless. I’m the best tracker they have, the most effective killer, and a man who’s found enemies in every corner of this city, but I can’t find her. I can only wait while other people work as time slips through my fingers like water.

“Got a location.” Nico’s voice cuts through the chaos, and every head swivels toward him. “Mason’s car pinged on a traffic camera on Interstate 9, northbound, then dropped off surveillance thirty minutes later near Rockland County. There’s an abandoned psychiatric complex up there…been derelict for over a decade. It’s isolated and surrounded by heavy woods with no residential neighbors for miles.”

My blood runs cold. “An abandoned medical facility. That would be a perfect organ trafficking hub.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.” Nico pulls up the location on the main screen and reveals satellite images of buildings flanked by a thick forest. “It’s one of the places we cleared when we were searching for Bruno and again when Jenna was taken. But I bet he would bank on us not checking a third time. It’s forty minutes from Washington Heights, defensible, hidden, and exactly where a man with medical infrastructure would set up shop.”

“They’ve been planning this.” My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else. “Bruno used Tomas to attack our wedding, knowing we’d survive but that the assault would shake us. He used the Volkovs to fund his operations and keep pressure on our compound. He used Mason to get close to Lucia, to isolate her, and to plant doubt in her. Every problem we’ve faced for months leads back to one man, and now that man has my wife.”

Enzo appears beside me, his face grim in the glow of the screens. “We have everything we need to get her back. We’re going in hot.”

“Then let’s go.” I’m already marching toward the door, toward my weapons, and toward the car that will take me to her.