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I looked at the picture and saw it was the fake one we’d taken of Luca and Aleks.
And if Dante had the picture, that meant he’d probably seen the posts we’d made up about Luca “owning” Aleks now.
“It’s not real!” Luca snapped. “It was all a set-up!”
Most of the men with Dante had formed a circle around us, but there was one who’d stayed by the door. I could tell he was the leader of their little group because he had an air of authority about him.
“We know that, Mr. Covello,” the man said as he stepped in front of Dante for a brief moment so he could see my brother as he spoke. He seemed unconcerned with the gun that he’d stepped into the line of fire of for that short moment. “I think we should wait for your brothers before we chat some more.”
I stiffened at that because I knew we were royally fucked if he knew about King and Con waiting outside.
“Yeah, why don’t we?” Luca bit out. “We’ll see who’s got more firepower then.”
A couple of the men around us actually chuckled. The man watching my brother merely smiled. “Your brothers put up a good fight, Mr. Covello, but they were at a disadvantage,” he said patiently. “You see, my men also know how to do their homework. And while your brother, King, has an impressive list of men on his employee roster, there is one thing that makes them different from my men.”
Luca didn’t respond to the comment and I knew it was probably because he was still struggling to accept what the man had said about our brothers putting up a good fight.
“They’re not family,” the man said softly, his voice holding a bit of an edge to it. “You stole something precious from that family, Luca.” The man’s gaze shifted to me. “Your intentions toward keeping Aleks safe were honorable, Vaughn. But you and your brothers should know better than anyone what it feels like to not know what’s happening to someone who’s so much a part of who you all are.”
He couldn’t be talking about Gio.
There was just no way he knew about him.
Before Luca or I could respond, the door opened and King and Con were escorted inside. I was relieved that they both looked unharmed. There were several men surrounding them and a couple of those men had bruises, but clearly King and Con had been caught unawares.
“My men will tear this place apart, Luca,” King muttered.
“Mav,” the man who’d been talking to Luca called. A man with long black hair stepped forward and held out a small device.
“Know what this is?” the man called Mav said. He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a nifty little device that jams all radio and video signals within a twenty-five-foot radius. That’s why you” – he looked pointedly at Con and King – “didn’t know your brothers were in trouble. Cole is carrying one. As are most of the men who surprised you in your car. But see, we figured that wasn’t enough, so we had the lovely young woman who also works for Ronan here” – he pointed at the man who’d been talking to me and Luca – “intercept the signal your brother’s camera was transmitting. She recorded a few seconds of the video of him sitting at the party and then muffled the sound with static so you would think it was just a problem with the sound. It was enough time to distract you both while you tried to figure out if it was a technical glitch or not.” Mav smirked at King and Con. “Seems to have worked, huh?”
“Fuck you,” King bit out.
The man called Ronan looked at me. “Daisy, that’s the young woman Mav was talking about, is monitoring the police frequencies. So even if one of your brother’s men gets wise and calls the cops, we’ll know.”
The asshole really did have us beat. I glanced at Aleks and saw how heartbroken he looked. His eyes met mine and I smiled at him. Then I looked pointedly at Dante and said, “I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. There’s only one thing I’d change, and it has nothing the fuck to do with you. The only one I owe an apology to is Aleks for something that happened when I first took him.”
I looked at Aleks again and he nodded.
Yeah, he knew what I was talking about.
That moment I’d chosen to leave him bound rather than take the time to tell him the truth after I’d gotten him out of that van. “I’m sorry, baby,” I said, not caring that we were surrounded by Dante and all the other men. “If I could relive that moment, I’d do it differently. I’d have told you everything then and there, no matter what the risk.”
