Chapter Twenty

Renzo

We finally had a fucking lead.

Dav had just so happened to be in one of our local stores, picking up a drink, when someone came in saying they were there to pick up for the Lombardis.

Thankfully, I’d already spoken to him about how I was going to be the only bagman for a while, so it would be easier for us to find out who was trying to fuck me, and all of us, over.

He’d dragged the guy into the bathroom, then called me.

I grabbed Rico, then we were off, ready to finally get some goddamn answers.

Despite running this area, dragging an unwilling man out of a building, into a car, and then out onto the street again wasn’t exactly easy.

This area was full of tourists or non-locals who might not know who I was, who didn’t know enough to mind their own goddamn business.

It was risky as fuck to pull the zip-tied and duct taped man out of the backseat right there in the broad daylight.

And this particular fuck had a lot of fight in him, wrenching back and forth between Dav and Rico as I followed behind, all of us heading into the same room I’d used to beat the shit out off the guy who’d put his hands on Lore.

As if thinking her name manifested her, there she was.

As Dav and Rico wrestled the fuckhead in through the door of the building.

Had she seen them?

I couldn’t explain the sudden desire for her not to see this shit, this ugly part of my work, of my life.

Sure, objectively, being a mafia princess, she knew all about how ugly shit could get. Bloodshed and headshots.

There was nothing clean or pretty about organized crime.

But having her know that, and having her see me engage in this shit, were two different things.

I wanted, in a way I couldn’t wrap my head around, to protect her from this.

“Hey!” she said, getting closer, making me realize she was wearing my old leather jacket. A warm sensation moved through my chest at seeing that. “This is so funny,” she said, all smiles. “I was just thinking that I needed to talk to you about something.”

Fuck.

I hadn’t heard her voice in so long.

I almost forgot how honey-sweet it was.

The crash from inside the building had me shaking out of the steadily-growing fantasy of grabbing her, dragging her home, and getting lost in her for a few hours.

“Not now,” I said, hoping she didn’t know what was going on inside the building.

“It will just take a min—“ she started when there was more scuffling inside the building, this time followed by curses from Dav and Rico.

Shit was not going well in there.

I had to get in there to get control over the situation.

“I said not now,” I said, not realizing my tone was as sharp as it was until she flinched. She fucking flinched. And that megawatt smile that had been on her stupidly pretty face just fell away.

“Renzo!” Rico called, voice a pained hiss.

“Go home,” I said, turning and rushing into the building, locking the door behind me, in case she had any ideas of following.

Rico was bent over, holding his ribs, as Dav shuffled around the room, his arms holding onto the man who was fighting for his life.

“You’re just pissing me the fuck off,” Dav growled, yanking back viciously, the man arching at an unnatural angle. All the usual charm of his was gone, leaving the darker side of himself that he kept so well hidden on full display.

“You okay?” I asked, looking to Rico.

“Kicked me,” Rico said, shaking his head. “I’m fine. Just bruised, I think,” he told me, yanking up his shirt to press into his ribs.

“Alright. E-fucking-nough of this shit,” I said, stalking over toward Dav and the guy, reaching down to grab his legs.

Dav and I carried him, wiggling like a fucking worm, over to the metal chair in the corner, each of us taking turns holding him still as he was secured with chains instead of the easily-broken zip ties.

“Rico, why don’t you go rest in the car. Maybe with some loud music playing,” I said, getting a nod from him as I stared down at the guy with the duct tape over his mouth. Tape I would have to remove to try to get answers out of him. Risking him pitching a fit and being heard. Hence the music.

I waited until the steady thrum of the bass melted through the brick walls before exhaling hard.

“You’ll save yourself a lot of pain if you just tell me who you’re working for now,” I said, reaching out, and ripping the tape off his mouth.

He was younger than I’d realized. Just a kid, really. Eighteen, nineteen. All defiant eyes and a smattering of hormonal acne on his chin.

It made sense that, whoever was behind this, was recruiting kids still in, or fresh out of, of high school.

They were a fuckuva lot easier to talk into shit. Full of ambition and a bone-deep belief that they were invincible. And likely not truly understanding how organized crime worked. How at risk he was by trying to make a move against me.

“Go on then,” the kid said, angling his chin up like an invitation. “Believe me, I’ve had worse.”

“Who are you working for?”

To that, his lips curved up, his dark green eyes taking on a devilish light. “Myself.”

Cocky fucker.

“Let’s try this again. Who told you to be a Lombardi bagman?”

“You know… seem to have some amnesia, man,” he said.

This asshole.

I almost wanted to respect him.

If he didn’t possess the information about the rat in my organization, I would.

“Alright then,” I said, sucking in a deep breath as I curled my fist, and struck.

His head whipped to the side as the crack of the punch filled the room.

“That all you got?” he asked, turning back to face me, a smirk tugging at his lips.

My gaze flicked up to Dav standing behind him, knowing him well enough to communicate shit without saying a word.

This guy wasn’t going to crack easily.

An hour later, I had blood on my hands, smattering my shoes. There was a tooth on the floor, and blood steadily trickling down the kids face. From a gash near his eye. From his lip and mouth. Bruises were already starting to form.

He didn’t scream.

Didn’t try to call for help.

Didn’t beg for mercy.

No.

This fucker kept taunting me.

Then Dav when I tagged him in.

Even bloodied and bruised, he kept angling his head back, inviting more abuse, his green eyes indifferent.

“Who—“ I started, then got distracted by my phone ringing.

I reached for it, seeing Elian’s name, then turning it to silent, before tucking it away again.

It vibrated once, then Dav had tagged me back in, his knuckles broken open already because that man never pulled a punch in his life. When he let himself uncage that other part of himself, he was ruthless as fuck.

It wasn’t until the door flew open, and Rico was standing there, that I realized something was wrong.

“What is it?” I asked, tensing.

“It’s Elian,” Rico said, his phone to his ear.

Elian.

Who’d called me first. Several times.

Elian didn’t call for no reason.

Not when he knew I was busy.

I moved across the floor, grabbing the phone from Rico, and putting it to my ear.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Lore isn’t home,” he said, making my stomach tense.

“I know,” I said, memory flashing back to her on the street with that big smile. Like she was fucking happy to see me. All excited to tell me something. Then fading when I’d used my work voice on her. “I saw her a while ago.”

“She was getting coffee for us. Said she’d be gone twenty minutes.” There was a barely controlled tension in his voice.

Lore had been holding coffees—two frozen ones with whipped cream and chocolate—when I’d seen her.

“How long ago was that?” I asked, having no sense of time while interrogating the stubborn-ass kid.

I moved outside, not wanting him to overhear this conversation, walking down the street toward the corner, glancing around.

“Almost two hours,” Elian said, making my heart stutter.

Not just because of the time lost, but because there was no way she would have just carelessly taken a walk or something with two steadily melting frozen coffees in her hands.

“I called her. Over and over,” he said, and it suddenly occurred to me that he had my wife’s phone number… and I still didn’t. “She’s not answering.”

My gaze scanned the streets again, trying not to panic.

But when I looked down, I saw the two frozen coffees, completely full, in the trash can.

“Fuck,” I hissed.

“What is it?” Rico asked.

“Lore is missing. These are the coffees she had when she came down the street to talk to me.”

“She was here?” Rico asked, glancing back toward the building where the kid and Dav were still situated.

“Yeah. She was probably just passing by and saw me. Wanted to talk to me about something, but you guys were struggling with that kid,” I said. “Did you see her when you came to the car?”

“No,” he said. “And I scanned the street.”

Fuck.

Fuck.

“You don’t think that…” Rico started.

“Think what?” I asked when he trailed off.

“Think that whoever is after your crown saw her and took her. Maybe to lure you out.”

I hadn’t been thinking that, no.

But, fuck, now I was.

And the way my gut twisted was nothing to the way my fucking heart did.

The idea of sweet, innocent, tiny Lore in the hands of the man who wanted to tear down my organization, who wanted to hurt me? No. Fuck. That was unbearable.

“What do you want to do here, boss?” Rico asked, bruised ribs forgotten, ready to spring into action.

“Elian, call in Cage to watch the apartment. I want you on the streets.”

“Got it,” he said, hanging up.

“Call Cinna,” I demanded, handing Rico his phone as I rushed back toward the building.

One look at me had Dav stiffening.

“Put him on ice,” I said, nodding toward the small back room. Made of concrete with a fucking industrial door that was impossible to open from the inside. We knew. We’d used it many times over the years. “Call in your most trusted soldier,” I told Dav after he dragged the chair into the room and locked the kid in. “I need you on the streets. Lore is missing.”

With that, we all sprang into action, trying to wipe most of the gore off of us before going to the local businesses, asking them if they’d seen Lore.

But aside from the coffee shop, it didn’t seem like she’d stopped anywhere else.

Panic, a tightening sensation in my gut and around my throat, grew with each passing moment as I pictured Lore being hit, punched, kicked… worse. And crying out for me.

“Fuck,” I growled, turning and slamming my fist into the wall, making Dav’s brows raise.

“That’s constructive,” he remarked as I just barely managed to keep myself from hitting it again, the pain helping me think past the increasingly dark, horrific visions in my head.

“Boss!” Cinna’s voice called, making me turn to find her striding across the street toward me. “I got him to let me look at his cameras,” she said, waving toward a sleazy-ass looking guy, leaning against his storefront, rubbing his stomach as he wiggled a toothpick between his lips.

“Yeah? How’d you do that?” Dav asked, smirking despite the seriousness of the situation.

“Luckily, all you men are the same,” Cinna said. “Come on,” she said to me. “He has a camera right on the corner.”

With that, unstable hope rising in my chest at a possible lead, I ran across the street with her.

We moved through the crowded aisles of pawn shop shit covered in a fucking inch of dust, heading toward the back room, a claustrophobic space not even big enough for two people, let alone the owner who tried to stay inside even after bringing up the feed on the cameras for me.

“Give us a minute, handsome?” Cinna asked, voice purring.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard Cinna adopt a flirtatious attitude to get her way. But it never failed to shock me how well she pulled it off when I knew she was mentally imagining castrating someone.

“Sure, honey, sure. Be right out front when you’re ready for me,” he said, rubbing his stomach some more, his tongue flicking out to press against the toothpick, then moving out into the front of the building.

Cinna slammed the door closed. “Gross,” she grumbled, coming back behind the desk with me, both of us standing shoulder-to-shoulder. “What time was this?” she asked, reaching for the mouse.

“Two hours. No, closer to three or three and a half now,” I said.

Cinna jumped back the footage, and we watched everyone moving around, living their lives, both of us scanning the faces for Lore.

“She was wearing my leather jacket,” I reminded Cinna. “Holding two frozen coffees.”

Cinna made a noise in the back of her throat, but said nothing as she kept jumping the footage back, trying to catch sight of her.

“There,” she said, stabbing her finger on the pause key as we saw Lore walking up toward the corner.

Her gait was stiff, like each step was an effort.

This had to be directly after I’d talked to her. And she’d been walking fine then.

Strange.

The pawnshop might have been a hellhole, but the owner had clearly invested in some good cameras, because Cinna was actually able to zoom in without losing clarity.

And there she was, staring out at the street for a second, before her gaze moved toward the pawn shop, looking at something in the distance.

The apartment building, maybe.

Her gaze flicked up, and I saw it when it broke across her face.

Just… devastation.

“I’m gonna talk to you like an old friend, not your capo right now,” Cinna said, voice tight. “What the fuck did you say to that girl?”

“I… I told her I couldn’t talk to her right then and to go home,” I said. But the memory was sharper now. How she went from beaming at me, all sizzling excitement at seeing me, at whatever she was going to say to me, to looking like I’d struck her.

“You told her? Or you barked at her?” Cinna asked, knowing me too well.

“Probably the latter,” I admitted. “Rico was hurt. Dav was struggling to hold onto the guy. I… I needed to get in there.”

We both watched as Lore’s haunted eyes stared off for another moment before looking down at the coffees in her hands. Before tossing them.

And rushing off in the direction away from the cameras. Her pace just short of an actual run.

“Where is she going?” I said, thinking aloud.

“To the subway,” Cinna said, looking over at me. “Congratulations,” she went on, making my gaze lift to find fire flicking in her eyes. “You finally did it. You finally broke her. Honestly, I’m surprised it took this fucking long,” she said, suddenly wrenching away from me, like being too close to me sickened her.

“Hey,” I growled, rushing through the store, following her, both of us ignoring the owner asking about his ‘payment.’ “Hold the fuck up,” I snapped, grabbing Cinna’s arm, yanking her back.

Only to have her whip around, arm raised, slapping me so hard across the face that I jerked back.

“The fuck?”

“That was for Lore,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“How are you this fucking blind?” she raged, not caring that she was drawing attention from people passing by.

“Blind to what?”

“To, I don’t know, everything involving your goddamn wife,” she seethed. “How is it that Elian can see it? And I can see it? But you are so fucking clueless?”

“Cinna, for fuck’s sake, say something that makes sense.”

“That girl is, and I can’t understand for the life of me why,” she said. “But she is in love with you. And you treat her like she doesn’t even matter. Like she’s nothing. Just, what, fuck her when you feel like it, and forget about her all the other time?”

No.

No, that wasn’t right.

I thought about her fucking constantly. It was frustrating, actually, how I could never seem to fully concentrate on anything anymore without thoughts of her invading my mind.

But more than that… no.

Lore wasn’t in love with me.

“Did you ever even ask her why she married you?” Cinna asked.

“She had to,” I said, dread starting to unfurl in my gut, having a feeling I was wrong. That I was wrong about… everything.

“You really think that overprotective family of hers would sacrifice their youngest, sweetest girl to the devil himself?” she asked, rolling her eyes at me. “She agreed to marry you. She wanted to marry you. Against her family’s wishes.”

“What?” I asked, feeling like she’d knocked the air out of me. “Why? Why would she do that?”

She was so young.

So… not the kind of girl meant for this life.

Not the kind of woman meant to be with a man like me.

“Because, once upon a time, you saved a sweet little teenaged girl who just wanted to go book shopping on her own, from three grown-ass men who were harassing her,” Cinna said. “And she, apparently, had a crush on you ever since.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. Not because I thought she was lying. But because I didn’t want to believe that.

“Yes, actually. Yes. And then she married you, all stars in her eyes because she was seeing her little girlhood fantasy come to life. Then you, what, took her virginity? Showed her orgasms and maybe some sweetness, hooking, and reeling her even more…”

That… that was true.

I couldn’t deny any of that.

I’d seen parts of myself with Lore that I didn’t even know existed. A more patient, kinder side. One who wanted to hold her, who wanted to stay in bed with her just to be close.

“And with this marriage, her world got smaller until all there was for her was you. Making her fall all the more. Even as you ignored her to the point of abusing her. Can you fucking blame her for finally having enough of you? Of the hope and the disappointment that immediately followed? I’m glad she finally took a stand and left your ass.”

With that, she stormed off, disappearing down a side street.

“Whoa. What was that?” Rico asked, moving toward me, his steps slow, letting me know his ribs were worse than he was letting on. But there was no time for that shit right now.

“She’s pissed at me,” I said.

“Saw that. Over what?”

“Lore.”

“Did you find her?” he asked, hope spilling into his voice.

“She wasn’t taken, as far as I can tell. She… left.”

Fuck, even just repeating that was a knife to the chest.

“She left? Left… you?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Shit,” Rico said, letting out a small laugh, then wincing and pressing a hand to his ribs. “Knew you must be difficult to live with, but damn. Ran off your wife in what? A month? Six weeks? Can’t even keep it straight. Can’t be much longer than that, though. That’s gotta be a record.”

“Thanks for your support, man,” I said, exhaling hard as I reached for my phone, shooting off a text to Elian and Dav, so they didn’t keep running themselves ragged.

“What are you gonna do?” Rico asked after several long silent moments.

“He’s gonna go after her,” Elian said, coming out of his car, making me realize I’d been too distracted by my thoughts to even notice him pull up and climb out.

“Right. Right. Can’t have the family knowing your alliance isn’t working out,” Rico said, nodding. “Not with all this shit going on.”

“It’s not about what anyone thinks,” I snapped. “I’d eat a bowl of water with a fucking fork before I gave a single fuck what they think of me and my marriage.”

Rico’s brows shot up.

“Then what’s it about?”

“It’s his wife, moron,” Elian said, rolling his eyes.

“On paper, right? Right?” he asked, brows scrunching like he’d missed out on something that Elian and Cinna were clearly in on. “Oh, shit,” Rico said to my silence. “You went and caught feelings for your wife?” he asked, shaking his head at me. “Fuck, man. Good luck with that,” he said, clamping a hand on my shoulder. “I’m gonna go ice my ribs.”

With that, he was gone, leaving me standing there with Elian’s sour mood coming off of him in waves.

“You don’t gotta say it. Cinna already chewed me out.”

To that, he nodded.

“What are you gonna do then?” he asked.

“Get her back.”

To that, he nodded.

“Do you know where she went?”

A memory popped up, Lore talking about not telling her family about her getting mugged, especially her older brother. There’d been a softness in her eyes, and a sadness in her voice.

Nico.

She would go to Nico.

“Drive me to Manhattan.”