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I try to call the number, but it goes directly to voicemail. I try again, same thing, so I send a text.
Me: Where the fuck are you, coward?
Nothing.
No reply.
The checkmark telling me the message is sent pops up on the screen, but the second one to tell me it’s been delivered never does. He must have switched off his phone.
Do you love your wife?
My throat goes dry.
I dial Cristina’s cell phone, but it just rings and rings. Does she even have it?
I try Joseph. He answers on the first ring.
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs in her room.”
“You sure?”
“I just checked on her myself. She’s asleep.”
I exhale. “All right. Thank you, Joseph.” I need to calm down. But how the fuck can I calm down when I’m sitting in a back office of one of my warehouses watching my fucking world burn to the fucking ground.
I had no idea you were so sentimental.
Could Lucas know where she is?
“They’re here,” Tobias says, moving to open the door.
I look up from the monitors to watch Adam Valentina being dragged into the office, his suit jacket askew and torn in places, shirt dirty, one eye turning black before my eyes.
“There,” I say, pointing at a chair and rolling up my sleeves.
Valentina looks at me and I wonder how much he’s drunk today. “What do you know about this?” I gesture to the screen.
“I know you overshot your position.”
Tobias smacks the side of his head with the butt of his gun.
“No, he’s right. I underestimated my enemies.”
Valentina grins.
“I have at least three of your men in my custody,” I tell him.
“They know the risk when they accept. It’s why I pay them what I do.”
“Yeah but you can’t pay them anything. I know my brother bankrolled this operation. Him and the Clementi family.”
“They’re not your only enemies, Damian. You seem to make them at every turn.”
“Don’t I know it. Where is he? Where’s my fucking brother?”
“How should I know? I’m not his fucking keeper.”
I gesture to Tobias who grips a handful of Valentina’s hair and forces his head down knocking his forehead into the edge of the desk before pulling it back. One of the soldiers rights the chair that fell over.
Valentina’s eyes spin as he’s seated again. He’s got a good, red gash across his forehead.
“That jar your memory?” I ask.
It takes him a minute to focus his eyes on me.
“You were with him and my wife.”
His expression changes a little when I mention Cristina.
“What did he want with her?” I ask.
“Just wanted to fuck with you. Where is she? I hope you have her somewhere safe.”
“Do you care? What if I told you she was on one of those ships?”
“She wouldn’t be. And yeah, I do care. I take offense that you ask.”
“Because if she’s out of the way, the foundation becomes yours. Free and clear.”
“And you think I’d hurt my niece for that?”
“Wouldn’t you? You’ve used her for money before. Pretty easily if I recall.”
He’s quiet.
“Tell me what he wanted with her.”
When he doesn’t speak, Tobias grips his hair again, tugging him out of his seat. That same spot on his forehead slams against the desk louder this time.
“Again,” I say to Tobias.
“Wait!” Valentina screams as blood runs down into his eyes.
I step closer, then lean down so I’m in his face. “I’m not a very patient man. Tell me what the fuck he wanted in your next breath, or I’ll break your fucking face.”
“Leverage!”
“What kind of leverage?”
“Get him off me,” he says.
“Right after you answer my questions. What kind of leverage?”
“He won’t hurt her. He gave me his word.”
A pit forms in my gut.
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I helped him because he said he’d get her away from you. He promised not to hurt her.”
“Away from me how?”
“Get your goon off me.”
“If you won’t answer me, you’re no use to me. Start with his face and work your way down,” I say to Tobias, picking up my coat to walk away. “Go slow.”
“Wait!”
I turn back and look at him.
He’s on his feet, two men holding him by either arm. “He wanted to be able to track her. In case he needed access to her.”
That pit in my stomach turns into a cement block.
“What do you mean, track her? Track her how?”
My brain races to her arm. To how it felt like there was something hard under the skin. She’d said she thought it was a bite.
“He told her about your scheme to get her pregnant, use the baby to steal the foundation out from under her.”
Hearing it like this, spoken out loud, it makes me sound exactly like the monster I warned her about.
I wouldn’t have gone through with it, though. I couldn’t do that to her. I decided that soon after coming up with the idea.
“He took her to a doctor to give her a birth control shot so it wouldn’t work.”
