Some of my anger turns to vengeance when Clover shakes his head. “The fluid was almost dry to touch. This shit ain’t on me. Rimi has you played.”
The confidence in his tone should lower my agitation.
It doesn’t.
I’m seconds from ending his life as he had tried to do mine years earlier.
Arabian oil tycoons weren’t happy when they didn’t get what they paid for from my father. I’ve been making it up to them ever since.
Don’t feel sorry for me. They’re the reasonallmy bank accounts are in the eight-figure range. Whores, crack, guns, and unlimited entertainment are readily available in Bahrain, but you don’t enjoy it as much with your family breathing down your neck.
Rich dignitaries from the twenty-two Arab nations are invited into my home to discuss oil exchanges, money laundering, and weaponry distribution all ‘families’ are associated with. The above-mentioned is the icing on the cake, and the only reason I’m not fish food.
Only a fool would turn down a proposal worth eighty-three million dollars a year.
Clover isn’t one of them.
With that in mind, I suck in a big breath before lowering my gun. Killing Clover won’t get my wife and daughter back. If anything, it will delay their return.
“What was on the USB drive?” Rimi’s men wouldn’t have given this to Clover for no reason. His family’s legacy is as bad as my mine, but instead of rising it above the ashes, he’s tainting it with more controversy.
My lips purse when Clover mutters, “Sick, twisted shit.” He has an ironclad stomach, nothing ruffles him, so for him to say the video is fucked up, it most certainly is. “I wouldn’t recommend watching—”
I cut off his words with a slice of my hand. My relationship with Audrey isn’t close to traditional. She fell pregnant within weeks of us hooking up, we got married to ensure she could stay in the country to birth my child, and we have more things out of common than agreed upon, but she’s my wife and the mother of my child.
Our daughter makes her my family, and family comes first of all.
My heart thumps against my ribs when I crack open my laptop. Details of the ransom drop are still displayed on the screen. A team of cyber specialists have been working on it since it was received. They’ve yet to find a single snip of evidence to identify where it was sent from. For all we know, Audrey may not even be in the country.
“Cazzo…” I push out with a growl when the video commences playing on a woman being held down on the stained mattress. I can only see the lower half of her body, but her strength is undeniable. Even with four goons pinning her to the filthy bedding, she thrashes and kicks, her will to live seen without a single word being spoken.
Her stomach is gleaming from how far it’s extended, but its redness tapers when a scalpel is dragged across a section of skin usually hidden by a panty line. Although the video has no sound, I can imagine how blood-curdling her screams are. They’re removing her child from her stomach without anesthetics, acting like ruthless barbarians with callous rules.
My skyrocketing blood pressure gets a boost when one of the goons moves to the right of the frame, exposing the tiniest birthmark on the lower left side of the victim's stomach. It’s the shape of a mulberry leaf and unearths the victim’s identity in an instant.
“It’s Audrey,” I mutter out while dragging a hand over my almost black hair. “It’s my fucking wife.”
While Clover commences putting actions into place to respond to Rimi’s break of the rules, I continue watching the video. The footage is horrifying, but I have no choice but to watch every sickening second. The simplest thing in the background could be theonlyclue to Audrey’s whereabouts. I can’t miss seeing it because my stomach is twisted up in knots.
On instinct, my thumb caresses the screen of my laptop when a bloody and white film-coated baby is pulled from Audrey’s stomach. Aware I’m most likely watching, a man concealing his face with a balaclava holds my daughter by her feet like he’s showcasing a prize-winning catch before he shifts to face the camera.
I freeze the image when the cuff of his sleeve rises half an inch. His tattoo is the typical flame design most bottom-dwellers have. I stare at it until it's burned into my retina before hitting the play button. He just signed his death certificate, and I’m the Grim Reaper coming to collect his soul.
When the body of my child is dangled an inch from the camera, my eyes whizz over every inch of her upside-down face and grubby body, seeking any signs that she’s breathing. Her chest is as flat as mine, her nostrils un-flaring. She’s as still as a statue, her legs as frozen as her mother’s in the background.
“Come on, Fien,” I beg under my breath after taking in an identical mulberry leaf birthmark on her stomach. “Fight like your mother did when choosing your name.” I didn’t hate the name Audrey had picked, but I wasn’t a fan of it either. I wanted our daughter to have a traditional Italian name. Fien is of Dutch heritage, just like her mother. It’s short for Jozefien which is Audrey’s mother’s name. Fien’s grandmother.
My eyes shoot to the left of the screen when a pair of tiny hands enter the frame. This person’s wrists are slimmer than the man’s clutching my daughter’s feet and nowhere near as hairy, making me confident she’s female.
Just as the unseen woman removes Fien from the goon’s clutch, a white sheet is draped over Aubrey’s lifeless form, then the video ends. As I struggle to keep a rational head, I wring the screen of my laptop as if it’s Rimi Castro’s neck. I would wholly destroy it if the USB stick would come out of the carnage unharmed.
That horrifying video is the only proof I have that I have a daughter. No one knew she existed. No oneknowsshe exists, but if I have it my way, those who now know will die to ensure my revenge lives.
Famiglia prima di tutto.
Vengeance is a very close second.
Chapter One
