Sicily could not begone.I needed her; I needed her more than I needed air.
“Where did that woman go, the one sitting here?” I demanded to no-one in particular, perhaps the entire restaurant.
Silence answered me.
It was a silence that was not silence at all; there was jazz music playing softly over the speakers, the quiet clatter of cutlery against plates, and the sound of my breath beginning to pant. The world was still turning, still functioning, when mine was not.
A loud crack tore through the restaurant, and it was only when pieces of plaster snowed between us that I realized Francesco had shot one round into the ceiling. I was grateful for it; I would have slaughtered them all mindlessly otherwise.
Francesco’s voice boomed as he began, “Where thefuckdid she?—”
“The back door,” a waiter dressed in black answered from across the tables. Her finger pointed toward an open fire door at the back of the small space, one that was propped open with a chair.
Francesco and I shared one brief glance before we barreled through it, finding ourselves in a small brick alleyway. It was dark, the walls blocking the sun, the breeze carrying the sickly sour sweetness of rows of overflowing trashcans. It was somewhere you did not want to spend too much time in, somewhere you would run to if you were escaping.
The long, narrow alley echoed with the sounds of discarded paper and plastic wrappers scraping along the paved floor, but it also captured the sound of frantic heels clipping along the stone.
“There you are.” Francesco seethed as we began to run, picking up speed against the wind tunnel that the small street had become. It whipped our faces with the putrid scent of decay and damp, but there was little I cared for other than getting my wife back.
The agent remained out of sight until we reached a chain-link fence, and we found her trying to break the rusted lock on the gate, her breath heaving as she tugged and pulled on it.
She did not notice us, not until I lunged for her, grabbing and yanking her by the hair, using it as a leash. The agent yelped like a puppy as she stumbled backward into my panting chest, trembling as I pressed my gun to her temple. “Where is my wife?”
Her tears were aggravating, the sounds of her upset time-wasting.
My thumb cocked the gun, slowly exaggerating every mechanical click against her skeleton. “You will tell me, or your brains will be splattered along this pavement, and whatever Brenno is using you for will never happen again. Do you understand me?”
She seemed to steel her spine at this as though the thought of never seeing Brenno again caused her significant reevaluation. “I don’t know where she is.”
My fist tightened on her hair, and she winced as I ripped strands away from her scalp.
“Stop! Stop,” she sobbed. “I—I don’t know anything about Brenno Fera, but his brother didn’t tell me anything, only that he needed me to sell her the building and drug her enough to get her outside so he could take her.”
“Give me a name,” I growled.
“Cesare!”
That could not be correct. Cesare was kind, he had always been the softest of us all. He would not have harmed my wife. I unlocked my phone, finding a photograph of my brother and his wife, Bella, at their recent wedding that I had located online. “This man?”
“I know her,” Francesco said surprisingly, pointing at the bride. “She was in the Outfit. Went missing a few months back. Nice girl, conservative parents though.”
The agent nodded slowly, but it did not answer the questions swarming my mind.
Why had the kindest, sweetest boy become my wife’s tormentor?
20
SICILY
My head throbbedas my dry eyes tried to flutter open.
I was nestled against something hard, something that had a tang of leather.
There was only emptiness in my muscles and bones, nothing to power me to open my eyes, to move my legs or arms, to yell. I was trapped within my own body, only conscious inside of my mind.
I jolted every few seconds, each jostle bubbling the bile and nausea in my stomach and sour throat.It was obvious that I was in a car, and that meant that I was being driven away from Milan and Francesco.Away from home.
That sent a spark of electricity to my brain, and I twitched my fingers, flopped my head to the side, and finally whimpered something of a sound that unclogged my fuzzy ears.
