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Nothing.
Absolutely fucking nothing.
I just sat around waiting for her to walk through those fucking doors.
Pride clouded my judgment. It was fogging my senses, forcing stupid, hurt-driven decisions out of my thick head. I wasn’t about to make that mistake again.
Springing off the bed, I ran straight to my phone and called Liam. While it rang, I twisted the note in my hand and saw it. The geometrical symbol on the back of the card had my stomach dropping to my feet and my heart leaping from my chest right when Liam picked up.
“Are you calling me to say you’ve kissed and made up?”
“Fuck, fuck, FUUUUUUUCK!” I yelled into the phone.
“Matt, what’s wrong?”
“Bring the cavalry. Francesca’s been taken by the Yakuza.”
Chapter 17
Matt
I had almost paced a hole into the floor by the time Liam arrived, Jamie trailing behind him. After what had happened, he hadn’t let her out of his sight, and I couldn’t blame him for it.
Five minutes later, Mike and Jimmy were walking through the door with Max and James close behind.
“Tell us what happened,” Liam demanded.
“This happened,” I said, sliding the note onto the island’s counter with the engraved symbol side up.
“That’s…” Jimmy’s voice trailed off. He’d been with us long enough to know what it meant.
“Seriously? No one waits for me?” Alison protested as soon as the elevator doors opened, walking into my apartment as if she owned the place.
“I don’t remember asking you to come.”
“I was on the phone with Jamie when you called Liam. It sounded like an emergency. Of course I’d come.”
“Mafia business isn’t for you, Principessa. Keep out of it,” I grunted, knowing that whatever I said had little to no effect on my little sister.
“If Francesca is in trouble and I can help, I’m keeping in it.” She replied, just as I thought she would. “Oh, that’s the Naoki emblem. What are you doing with that?”
“Francesca had this note in her room.” I let everyone read the other side of it before resuming. “The Naoki family was the Yakuza parcel that ruled over New York not so long ago. The feud with the Battaglias practically decimated their whole family, destroying their roots in the city. With this, they lost their main trafficking route through the bay and up the Hudson.”
“What connection does Francesca have with them?” Max asked.
For Liam, Jimmy and Mike, it was self-explanatory. They were here when everything happened, but James and Max only started working for us after my grandfather had given the order to end their reign. Meaning I had to go down a rabbit hole I’d prefer to avoid, given the chance.
“That’s something I don’t know yet. What has me worried the most is that they have every reason to want payback, and there’s never a way to say in what form that might come. Human trafficking and drug smuggling are their main source of income. Hiro Naoki wouldn’t think twice to kidnap my wife and sell her off as a sex slave. An expensive one, too. There are specific rings for high profile women, and Francesca is a Mafia princess by birth and marriage.”
For all I knew, she could already be in a wooden crate, ready to be shipped off. That was the kind of shit Hiro Naoki was known for. Where the real profit was.
The mere thought made me sick to my stomach, and thinking my Francesca could be weaved in that fucked up web made me want to destroy the Naokis to the fucking ground. Wipe them off the face of this earth once and for all.
Max picked up the piece of paper and twirled it in his hand, searching for fuck knows what.
“The yacht we destroyed two months ago?” He asked, recognizing the same symbol that had been engraved on the bricks of cocaine stashed in the boat.
Liam looked at me with a questioning expression. There was hardly any ordeal he didn’t know about when it came to our business, but this was one of them.
