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“Penny for your thoughts?” Rian asked.
I shook my head. “She deserves better than us.”
His blue eyes shot to mine. “Nobody deserves what she’s going through. That has nothing to do with the magnificent woman that is Ginevra Russo, and everything to do with Yuri and Alexi being piece-of-shit human beings.” He clasped my hand in his, running his calloused thumb over my knuckles, before moving over to prop his hip on the edge of my desk, letting his knees knock into mine.
I pulled my hand away, frustrated and guilt-ridden.
“Don’t,” he said.
I looked up, my lips curving into a crooked smile. “Pretty sure you don’t give the orders in the bedroom, Rian.”
He cupped my jaw with one hand, his face serious as he searched my gaze. “God, Cormac, love isn’t about being deserving enough. It’s sliding into each other’s jagged cracks and edges and tangling ourselves up in each other, somehow more whole together than apart. I found you, and I held you tight. Liam came back into our lives, and we snatched him up, too. And we’re not going to let Ginevra go either. Because she’s fuckingperfect.”
He waited for me to nod before releasing my jaw and hopping off my desk.
“Good talk,” I shouted over my shoulder as he walked out of my office.
“Love you too, Cormac,” he responded, and the ache in my chest subsided for a moment as he walked out the door.
Rian,Liam, and I had returned to our house to get some sleep after my program had spit out three potential locations for Ginevra—a warehouse, a storefront, and a casino. Lorenzo and Declan were already checking them out.
Antonio placed his trust in us to find his daughter, our fucking wife, while he desperately tried to hold his business together after the devastating fires of the previous day. He was fucked financially, and with twenty-five percent ownership and our cash reserves diminished by the ten million we’d paid for Ginevra, we weren’t in great shape either.
Lebedev traced his finger over the map on the monitor, where we’d marked the locations. “The casino doesn’t make a lot of sense. Even on a Sunday night, when it’s closed to the public, we’re accepting liquor deliveries, cleaning, and packaging drugs.”
He’d identified three of the men helping Yuri—all low-level soldiers with everything to gain and very little to lose—but the Russians had lost track of over a dozen. Their house was a fucking mess, and I was pissed that Ginevra was paying the price for Nikolai’s negligence.
“The storefront, however, is abandoned. I’m not familiar with the inside, but it’s been empty for at least a year.”
His lips twisted thoughtfully. “I’d use the warehouse if I were him. It’s in a busy district, but security on the building itself is minimal.”
Rian’s answering gaze was sharp. “What do you store in the warehouse?”
Lebedev hesitated. Rian slammed his hands on the desk. “He’s got my fucking wife, Dmitri. The only reason you’re not downstairs in one of our interrogation rooms is because Nikolai is acting in good faith. Start fucking around, and you’ll find out how I earned my reputation.”
The Russian’s smile was wintry. He leaned forward and met Rian’s gaze unflinchingly. “Arms. The warehouse has a full shipment of small arms—Kalashnikov assault rifles, handguns, and fucking ammunition.”
I whistled. “Damn.”
Lebedev shrugged. “They would have been well armed, anyway. Nobody takes on two gangs and expects to live without taking precautions.”
“Three gangs,” Rian corrected.
Lebedev shook his head. “The Russos are irrelevant at this point. They’re never going to recover.”
He was right. The other four Italian families were no doubt salivating over the decline of the Russos, a decline Antonio had hoped to halt by marrying off one of his daughters. Too fucking bad.
Declan: Storefront is abandoned.
He sent a couple of photos, showing an empty shell, storerooms trashed and covered in graffiti, and no fucking Ginevra.
Lorenzo: They’re at the fucking warehouse.
33
GINEVRA
As night fell, and the thin light in the warehouse faded to black, my anxiety ratcheted back up. The large man who’d fed and watered me earlier approached me with caution. He dragged the sleeves of my dress up over my shoulders, offering me the illusion of modesty before dropping a hood over my face and leading me to the toilet once again. I repeated the humiliating exercise of pissing in front of him with my arms duct taped behind my back. Instead of bringing me back to a chair, he led me through a series of twists and turns, then removed my hood.
