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ISABELLA
It’s not as easy as I thought to tell Mia and Carter the entire story, start to finish, and most, if not all, of the disgusting details in between.
I thought recounting it would give me a little bit of clarity, or maybe some detail would stand out to me. Something I missed in the grand scheme of things that will have someone else jumping up out of their seat with a screeched Eureka!
The answer to all our prayers is in X, or Y, or even Z.
None of those things happened.
Mia remained seated like someone bolted her to the chair, Carter standing behind her stoic and intimidating.
The only part I try to skip over is the very public sex between me and Ricardo. Try being the operative word because Ricardo squeezes my leg and gestures for me to tell it all. As though the intimate moment between us is somehow of great importance.
I hitch over my words. Mia’s eyes narrow and Carter grumbles out a string of curses beneath his breath as I speed through the act, voice catching multiple times. Stuttering.
“He’s not going to stop until he takes us down entirely. Show them, Ricardo. You have my phone, right?” Because I sure as shit don’t have it, and it’s better if Mia sees the text chain in its entirety.
Besides the surge of anger at hearing about my public escapades now caught on camera, she’s given me no emotional slippage to work with. I have no idea how she really feels about anything or if she hears something we can use.
She has to. Because there's got to be a way out of this without retaliating in the same extreme measures. Or maybe that’s exactly what we need to do, but unless I hear it from her, I’m at a loss.
Mia is simply staring at me, something going on behind her large brown eyes I can’t pick out. Whether it is disappointment or rage, sadness or guilt, or a mixture of all of those things and more, there’s no way for me to know.
There’s a story there she’s not ready to share with me, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to hear.
“Here.” Ricardo holds the phone over to her and turns his face away, chin lifted into the air.
My shaking starts the moment Mia opens the screen and starts reading the messages from start to finish. Or maybe the shaking never ended at all. Maybe I’ve been trembling like a leaf in a hurricane this entire time, and I’m only aware of it now. That’s the funny thing about anxiety. It spikes through you and damages everything in its wake, but you can’t know the full extent of it until you start to come down.
I know the cause, I know the techniques to ground myself, and in the middle of the attack, I’m helpless.
Mia scans the text thread with Carter reading at her side. When she finishes, she hands the phone back to me and the silence grows heavy. This is far worse than being screamed at. Worse than being attacked. No one says anything for the longest time, and underneath the table, where no one sees, Ricardo’s leg starts to bob.
“The easiest way out of this,” Mia says at last, “is to kill him. We go in quickly to isolate the target and neutralize.”
Carter’s features shift into pure pride before he asks, “Why haven’t we already killed him?”
That’s a good question.
“Because it’s called tact. We cannot go around blithely murdering anyone who might pose a threat. There has to be a certain amount of competition in order to grow our own business, and with the hole left by the decline of the Accardi syndicate, it was only natural for another competitor to step up. This man wasn’t a problem until he became one, although we’ve had our eye on him,” Mia replies.
“He targeted Isabella. He is more than a threat at this point. I thought I’d be able to deal with him the same way we do everyone else, but he’s not playing by the rules.” Ricardo drums his fingers on the countertop and looks all too ready for a stiff drink.
“I thought you said he was playing by the rules. When did it change?” I want to know.
“On certain things, yes. On this? No. Instead of meeting with Edward to discuss any of this, he went straight for carnage. No tact and no finesse. Which is fine if that’s the message he wants to send, but at this point, he’s left us no maneuvering room. There is only kill.”
It wasn’t the way we did business. Competition might be stiff but from what I’ve seen on the outside, my father, even the Vittorios and the Accardis, comported themselves with manners and an outward display of control and, yes, respect.
Old-world action.
Even if they wouldn’t hesitate to murder anyone they saw as a threat.
“They made the first move against us, and so it is well within our right to take them down.” Mia turns her attention to me. “You’ve been to his house. As early as this morning. You planted bugs in his office.”
“Yes.” I bob my head. “I have the address if you want. I can show you how to get there.”
“No. The odds are good they’ve moved house. Which will make tracking them even more difficult. We have no idea where they would have gone.” Mia lifts gracefully out of the chair to pace the length of the kitchen.
