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“You listen to me.” Harry’s voice is in my ear, low and vicious. “I found someone else. Someone with deeper pockets. And this time, you’re going to do exactly what you’re told. You’re going to earn back every fucking cent your husband stole from me.”

The highway stretches ahead of us, gray and endless. My vision is narrowing, darkness creeping in from the edges, and the last thing I see before the world goes black is Dad’s profile—haggard, desperate, and utterly, completely gone.

28

Domenico

The first gunshot cracks through the parish hall, and I know what it is before the sound has finished echoing off the walls. My head snaps toward the side door.

Kira.

The coffee cup slips from my hand and shatters against the floor as I shove past the woman I’ve been talking to. She cries out, but I’m already moving through the packed room, forcing people out of my way as every fucking instinct I have screams that something is wrong.

Gio is moving with me almost immediately, and across the hall, Paolo turns toward the door. He’s closer than I am, but there are too many people between us and the exit, too many bodies that don’t understand quickly enough why they need to fucking move.

Then the second gunshot goes off outside, turning my blood to ice. “Move!” I roar, and this time people scatter.

Paolo reaches the door first and yanks it open, with Gio and me only seconds behind him. Cold air rushes into the hall as we spill outside.

The churchyard is empty except for Vinny. He’s sprawled on the frosted grass, completely still. Blood has soaked through his suit and spread into the grass beneath him, dark against the white frost.

For one fucking second, I think he’s dead.

“Vinny.” I’m beside him in three strides, dropping to one knee. “Vinny!” I shake him when he doesn’t immediately react.

Slowly, he peels his eyes open. “H-Harry.” Pain skitters across his features as he coughs and clears his throat. “T-took her. S-sedan. Brown, m-maybe dark g-green. Headed east on…” His breath hitches. A fresh pulse of blood wells between his fingers, and his jaw clenches hard enough that I can hear his teeth grinding. “… east. J-just left.”

Behind me, Gio’s already on the phone. His voice is low and clipped, calling contacts to get a hold of every traffic camera within five miles of Saint Benedict’s. Paolo stands over us, his face tight, his eyes doing that thing where they’re trying to be cold and failing.

“Get him to the hospital,” I tell two of the men who’ve followed us outside. “Now. Don’t wait for an ambulance.”

They move without question. One strips off his jacket, presses it against the worst of the bleeding, while the other helps him to his feet. Vinny sways, his knees buckling, and the taller one catches him under the arms.

“F-find her,” Vinny says, and then the pain takes him. His eyes roll back, his body goes slack, and they half-carry, half-drag him toward the cars parked along the side of the church.

I stand up. The cold air feels like nothing against my skin. My hands are steady. My breathing is even. Anyone looking at me would see a man in control of the situation, and they’d be wrong.

Inside, something is coming apart. Not panic—panic is useless, and I don’t do useless. This is colder. Sharper.

Harry has my wife.

The man who sold his daughter once already, who signed papers that put his wife in experimental trials and watched her die a slow and gruesome death while cashing the checks.

Harry, who has nothing left to lose, because I made sure of it. Fuck, I know exactly what that makes him capable of, and I don’t like it. Not one fucking bit. I’ll fucking level Boston if that’s what it takes to find him and get my wife back.

“I want that sedan found in the next thirty minutes, or heads start rolling,” I bark.

“Already on it.” Gio’s phone is pressed to his ear, his other hand typing on a tablet one of the men handed him. “Sedan left Saint Benedict’s eastbound on Main, took the on-ramp to the expressway. Cameras at the interchange caught it heading north. Plate’s partially obscured, but we’re running what we’ve got.”

As my eyes drift to Gio’s phone again, I pull my own out and open the app to track Kira. But even as I do so, I know it’ll be useless. I saw her bag inside. She never brought the goddamn thing outside, and I didn’t push for it.

Motherfucker!

Paolo steps forward. “I’m coming with you.”

“No.”

“Screw you,” my son seethes, and the vitriol in his words takes me aback. “I talked with her just before anything happened. Maybe I distracted Vinny, or… I don’t fucking know. But I’m not goddamn staying.”