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“Okay, boss. You want us to go now?”
“Yeah.” I looked over at Alessandro. “You stay here with the girls.” I looked at Gia, Imogen, and Elisabetta. “You guys are going to have to stay here until we have Callie back and everything has been situated. Okay?”
“What? I can’t stay here,” Imogen said. “My parents are going to—”
I stared at her, and she pressed her lips together.
“Fine.” She shrugged. “I’ll just be held here against my will as well.”
“I don’t really want to stay here, either,” Gia said. “I don’t want to be with him.”
“Look, Gia. I don’t know Tommasso Romano’s plan. Okay? I don’t know if he’s going to come for you. I don’t know if he’s going to come for Elisabetta. I don’t know if he’s going to come for Imogen. Right now, I need to concentrate on making sure Callie is okay, and I cannot do that if I’m worrying about the three of you as well. Alessandro will lock you in one of the rooms if he has to.”
“It’s fine. We’ll stay,” Gia said, glaring at me.
“We’re cool, big bro,” Elisabetta said, shaking her head.
“Good,” I said. “Now, Jimmy, let’s go. I’ll text you.” I nodded at Alessandro. “If you hear anything from Callie or about Callie, you get in contact with me immediately. Okay?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Good.”
I stared at Alessandro and ignored his comment calling me boss. I knew he was being facetious. I knew he didn’t like being left here with the women, but I needed Jimmy with me in the hotel in case Serena took anyone with her. Her people would recognize Alessandro immediately, but they wouldn’t necessarily recognize Jimmy, and that was what I was counting on.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I said. “Stay safe, everyone.”
Jimmy and I headed out the door and down toward the Range Rover.
“So, you’re not going to sleep with her, boss?” he asked me, his eyebrow raised. “I thought you were done with that ho.”
“I am done with her, but I’ll do whatever it takes,” I said.
“Including fucking her?” he asked me, eyebrow raised.
“Stop asking questions, Jimmy.”
I let out a deep sigh and grabbed his shoulder.
“I’m glad you’re okay, man.”
“Me too, boss. For a second there,” he shivered, “I thought they were going to, well, you know, they had a gun cocked to my head.”
I stopped and grabbed his shoulders. “We’re going to get them, Jimmy. You know that, right?”
“I know, boss.” He grinned. “And I can’t wait to see them go pow, pow, pow.”
I grabbed him and gave him a quick hug. “You’re a real one, Jimmy. Don’t forget that. I love you, bro.”
“Love you too, boss.”
31
Callie
All I could do was stare at my mother’s face in the photograph. She looked so familiar yet so different. She was trying to smile as she looked down at me, but something almost akin to sadness was in her expression. I held the photo up. I couldn’t take my eyes away from it. I turned it around to see if anything was written on the back, but there was nothing, just the name of the printer and the date.
I was about to turn the photo back to the front when, suddenly, I stopped. I looked at the date again. “This doesn’t make sense,” I mumbled under my breath. “What?” The date was wrong. The date was from five years after I was born. How could there have been a photograph of me as a baby taken five years after my year of birth? In fact, my mother wasn’t even alive when the photo was taken.
