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My heart pounds like a frickin’freight train. I text Darryl to meet me outside with the car and then get on the phone with Matteo, and he puts it on speaker for Renzo. “I’m texting you a picture right now. I need you to find her, only she doesn’t look like this anymore. She’s wearing a big blonde wig. I want every available soldier at the airport, rental car places, and any other fucking way out of this city possible.”
The De Rosas would love nothing better than to get Izzy out to their warehouse and torture her as slow as they can just to spite my face. “Capiche?” I say so loud that a middle-aged couple walking past looks at me in shock. But I couldn’t give two fucks about that.
I race out the door of The Larussio and get into the back seat. “Airport and put your foot on the fucking floor,” I growl.
She has to be heading there. Izzy could be taking any number of methods to get out of the city, but my bet is that she’s heading far, far away. Maybe even back to the old country where her story first began, or maybe somewhere entirely different. What I do know for certain is that this can’t happen again.
The lipstick holder in my hand glints in the sun. She could have easily taken it with her, told some more stories, sold them for a great price. How a Sicilian God dines, or any other numbers of captions that would sell the mag. But she left it for me, as though she didn’t want my pictures, as though our time together no longer mattered.
My jaw sets tight thinking about the details of what the ladies could have said, the things that may have been giggled about over the drinks they shared, and the hurt it probably caused Isabella. Especially after what she told me about her dad.
My jaw locks tighter and tighter. “Drive faster,” I growl, connecting with Matteo. “Any sign of her yet?” I ask, seeing the airport come into sight.
“We just got here, but we’ve got every exit covered and men spread out in every direction. We’re working as hard as we can to find her, boss,” he says before disconnecting.
Darryl lets me out at the entrance, and I race inside. If she’s here, she’s smart enough to know that once she gets through security, we can’t touch her. She’s home free. I look around the crowd milling about, walking shoulder to shoulder in some halls. Fuck this. I get Matteo back on the line. “Who do we have on the payroll here?”
“Tommy and Leon, out in the security room. I’ve already got them scanning the camera footage coming in the door.”
I breathe a sigh of relief that he’s thinking when clearly, I am not. “Good thinking, Matteo,” I tell him, but I’m not about to leave something so critical to anyone but me. “We’ve got the head of security on our dime. Get him out here now and have him escort me back. I’ll be by the main entrance waiting for him.”
“Will do, boss,” he says, hanging up as I continuously scan the women walking by, looking for a blonde woman who sure as shit isn’t walking around the airport in that slinky red dress. My chest pounds in frustration, knowing that she could be right next to me in the sea of people walking this way and I may not even recognize her or see her ever again.
I watch the eyes of the women coming this way, scanning them all, certain that even if she’s changed her hair color again, I would know it when those bright blue eyes connected with mine. That magnetic attraction isn’t going to be gone.
It can’t be.
A broad man with a reddish beard and mustache walks my way in his airport uniform. “Don’t shake my hand, just follow me,” he says, lifting a rope before walking me through security while a couple of uniforms watch. “Regulatory inspection,” he says to the men as we pass them and walk through a steel door into a large room full of people and monitors.
“Facial recognition has come a long way, my friend. We put the image Matteo sent me into the system. We haven’t gotten any hits yet, though. She either hasn’t checked in, or the image he gave me may have been too fragmented. Sometimes the phone cameras don’t sync up the way we would like. Evolving technology,” he says, gesturing to an open black leather chair as he takes the seat next to it.
He hits a couple keys and scrolls through the monitors, one by one, going through each terminal.
My eyes scan the crowd, searching and searching for a connection. After another forty-five minutes I’m about to give up when the camera pans through the gates again. Something about the curve of a woman’s ass draws my attention, but the bag in her hand gives her dead away.
“It’s her, right there, going through that door,” I tell him. “How do I get there?” I growl, standing from my chair.
He looks at the gate number and shakes his head. “That was the last call. She waited until the last possible moment to move. You’re not going to reach her in time. She’s headed to Chicago. I’m sorry, Lorenzo.”
I connect with Matteo, flying out of the security room. “She’s on the plane to Chicago. It will come in on the south side of the terminal. Get a flight plan submitted and clearance. I want the jet up in the air in less than thirty fucking minutes!” It’s not bad enough to have the De Rosa fucks after her, but now she’s planning to waltz into Bernatellis’ territory, and those fucks would love nothing more than to take Izzy just to get back at me too.
Fuming, I storm through the airport, walking all the way back out to where Darryl is waiting in the car. “Circle around to the private strip,” I tell him, sliding into the back seat and texting Matteo to get my passport and meet me at the plane.
Our standby crew drives up in one of our SUVs. “Wheels up in fifteen minutes,” our captain says, heading up the ramp as two flight attendants follow behind. Matteo peels into the lot in Sergio’s new Maserati with Sergio in the passenger seat, parking it in the short-term area and walking back to where I stand.
My brows knit. “What are you doing?” I ask the two of them, looking at the bags in their hands.
Sergio grins, still more than a little intoxicated. “We’re coming with you. Renzo and the rest of the crews have Salvatore and Dominic covered. Besides, it’s three and a half hours each way. Hopefully we’ll be back before the rest of the world wakes up tomorrow.”
I look from him to Matteo who doesn’t look convinced, always worried about ensuring the family is well protected. “Do Renzo and the others have enough soldiers to protect the resort?”
He nods. “They’ll be okay, Lorenzo. You can’t go alone.”
I start to protest, but he puts up a hand. “They’ll be okay tonight. Come tomorrow, that’s a whole different story. Then we aren’t adhering to distance out of respect for Emelia. Don’t get me wrong, Emelia’s proven herself to our family and to me, time and time again, but her father doesn’t deserve any less than he’s going to get.”
Matteo watches me. Always quiet with very little to say but when he does speak, everyone stops to listen. A born strategist with a heart of vengeance after what happened to Alena. He too knows there is a time and a place for optimal effectiveness. The animal instinct is in his blood. “Thanks for coming,” I tell them in all honesty, happy to have my cousins and a couple guns at my side after what’s happened between the Larussio and Bernatelli family.
I sit back in my seat as the captain prepares for takeoff, and my cousins settle into the leather recliners of the main cabin. If someone would have told me even a couple weeks ago that instead of enjoying a different woman every night, I would be jumping on a jet to chase after a woman I’ve barely know, I would have laughed right in their face.
