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“I will never forget about that,” I told her. As long as I lived, I wouldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to her and carrying the guilt for not being there.
“He was there.”
He was there.The words rang through my ears, and I somehow knew what they meant before she elaborated. A heady feeling of exhilaration rushed through me as I considered what I could do to this man when I got my hands on him.
“I was working, and Virgil—he came onto me again, and—”
“Again?” I spat, straightening. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘again?’”
She didn’t react to my outburst. She didn’t even acknowledge it as she continued. “…And the man who did this came in. He…he…” Her voice broke, and I came around the counter, gathering her in my arms and allowing the first tears to fall from her eyes. She gripped my shirt and held me as she allowed herself to fall apart. Through her cries came a broken voice. “He didn’t see me, but it was him. I’d recognize him anywhere, and he had a meeting with Virgil.”
“Tesora, baby, did he do this to you, or did Virgil?” I asked.
“Virgil,” she admitted.
I spent a few minutes holding her and letting her tears fall freely. I stroked the back of her hair to comfort her and remind myself that she’d made it out relatively safely. As she told me broken fragments of what had happened, my anger only grew. The image of her dangling over a balcony railing at the hands of the Luccheses soured my stomach, and I knew this problem would need to be taken care of immediately.
When she finally stopped sobbing long enough to be coherent, I dropped to one knee in front of her, wiping away the tears and putting my face an inch from hers. “You will never keep something like this from me again. Virgil came onto you in that house, and you didn’t tell me. If you would have said something—”
“Nothing would’ve changed,” she cemented.
“Everythingwould’ve changed. I would’ve never sent you back there.” She opened her mouth to protest, but I shook my head. “Do you not understand how much you mean to me? We took a calculated risk by sending you there, but it’s over. You’re done.”
“He—he has a meeting tomorrow I need to overhear. It’s—”
“I don’t fucking care!” I shouted, and she flinched back, staring wide-eyed at me as I allowed my cool to slip. “I don’t give a fuck how much we can learn by sending you back there. He left a fucking bruise on you, Sierra. Do you know how much further this could have gone? He could have killed you, and I wouldn’t have been there.” She flinched, but I didn’t stop. “You’re not going back, and you’re not going to convince me otherwise, so don’t bother trying. We’re going to go and tell Frankie what you saw, and we’re going to figure out a plan from here that doesn’t involve you getting yourself killed.”
I didn’t realize I’d been shouting until I went silent, and she gaped at me. The room around us felt encompassed in silence, and I clenched my mouth shut, taking a deep breath as I worked through all the words I’d just spoken to her. Every single one of them had been harsh realities that she likely hadn’t faced yet, but they needed to be said, and she needed to hear them.
“I don’t want him to get to you guys,” she whispered, another tear falling from her eyes as she stood and straightened her shoulders. “I need to do whatever I can to make sure you’re all safe.”
“Not at your own expense.”
“What is all the commotion down here?” Bella asked, hovering at the top of the stairs until she saw Sierra’s tear-streaked face. Her expression dropped, and she gridded her teeth as she rushed downstairs. “What did you do to her?” Bella asked. I’d never heard her sound so menacing as she did at that moment, and I wondered if this was the woman Frankie had fallen for.
We moved toward the office, and I found Louis and Tommy already hovering around the doorway and waiting for us to enter. Frankie sat stiffer in his chair, leaning forward. “What the fuck happened?” he asked, looking between us. Bella followed us into the room, and he paused, staring at her.
“I was wondering the same thing,” she said as she approached Frankie and sat on the edge of the desk as if she belonged there.
Frankie, for the first time ever, didn’t seem to know what to do as he looked between all of us. Sierra cleared her throat and took a trembling breath, and I knew she wouldn’t say anything with Bella in here. We all knew better than to involve her in anything without Frankie’s permission.
“Babe, go in the other room for a minute,” Frankie demanded, but Bella didn’t move. She only opened her mouth into a wide O and looked down at him.
“You can’t just send me away. I’mconcerned,” she said, shaking her head. “Sierra is my friend.”
Louis stepped forward and looped an arm around her waist, pulling her away. She tried turning back toward Frankie, but Louis didn’t give in. She stood no chance as Tommy came to her other side and helped escort her out, and it surprised me when Frankie didn’t protest. He only looked at Sierra intensely, and as soon as the door closed, she recounted a summarized version of what happened, leaving out the man who had kidnapped her altogether. It was her story to tell, and if she didn’t want anyone else to know about it, she didn’t need to tell him. We were aware of the dealings Virgil did behind closed doors, and learning that Sierra had fallen victim to them had nothing to do with any of this.
“The plan’s off,” Frankie said immediately. “We don’t use our allies as sacrificial lambs to get information.”
“But—”
“There is no ‘but,’” he said, cutting off her words. “He’s onto you, and he hurt you. I can’t do anything without more information, and you won’t be the one to gather it. We have the listening device, and if anything’s uploaded to the computer, we’ll see it. Your job here is done.”
“I can get you more information. I know I can,” she argued.
“You’ve wanted out of this since you started helping us,” I told her. “Nothing changed.”
“I know how close the threat is now, and if you don’t figure out who the threat is—”
