“So, the cost, Mr. Lucca,” the agent said, but my attention was focused on the small snippet of my wife that I could see past the window. “Mr. Lucca?”
“What?” I grumbled, turning back to the agent and narrowing my eyes until my face was uncomfortable.
“The cost?”
Sicily was fine, right outside, except it did not feelfine.I looked again, the edge of her checkered skirt below the unnecessary cluster of window advertisements still only just visible, but there. She was there. She just required air.
“Milan,” Francesco said sternly, placing a hand on my forearm. “She’s fine, she?—”
I blinked at the window. I blinked until my eyes blurred, until they could confirm that the window was empty.
She was…gone.
The edge of her skirt was missing, replaced by the sight of the concrete pavement and something dark on the street.
I shot up from my seat. The chair toppled over and I did not pick it up. My fingers found the gun in my waistband, and I ran. I ran past Francesco, past waitstaff and diners, past the door, and only stopped where my wife should have been standing but was not.
“Where the fuck is she?” Francesco panted as he followed, checking corners and alleyways as though she was simply hiding. “Sicily!”
Perhaps once she would have hidden from me, but not now.
A scream clogged in my throat with all of the unsaid words between me and my wife, between her and the rest of the world.
I crouched where the dark splotches were, dipping my fingertip into the droplets to confirm that they were what I did not want them to be.
Blood. A droplet still formed, so unbroken it was still warm.
Someone had taken my wife and made her bleed.
My body did not function without her. It refused. It desired to crawl along this street until I found her, but this time,Irefused, and I did what I had not been capable of before.
Ifelt.
I permitted the sacrificial love of Adriano and Francesco into my heart.
I allowed the anger of my three brothers to replace my blood with ice.
I powered my brain with Sicily’s intelligence, and I felt it all.
This time, I did not stop or lose my mind. I did not wring my hands or forget what I was doing, but I detached, thinking only of her, not caring that I had touched blood because it was hers.
“Where did the building come from?” I demanded, my pupils tracking the pavement as if a piece of her still resided there.
“I-I don’t really know.” Francesco shuddered, running a hand through his hair. “She said that woman reached out to her and said it was available.”
My body spun to face him. “When?”
“It was the day after that night you saw me and Adrian. I didn’t go to that event you all went to, that’s why I could sneak into the house. She talked to me about it the next day.”
The gala.
The night Brenno had threatened her. The night she had spoken to Cesare’s wife.
My sharp inhale was full of anything but air. It tasted like blood; the blood Brenno had promised to shed if I did not amend the contract.
Hehad done this; he had hired that estate agent to gain my sweet wife’s trust, and then he had taken her.
I dashed back inside the restaurant, Francesco at my heels, and sprinted past the dishevelment of flipped chairs, not caring for the gasps and murmurs. I tried to focus on our empty table, on anything, but the dark walls and dim lights seemed to make everything blur together. My thumbs found my eyes, pressing and pushing as if doing so could wake me up.
