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Dante catches the phone and starts toward his sleek gunmetal gray Porsche, pausing to look me in the eye. “Where are we going, fratello?” he calls out, hovering by his car.
For a moment, I hesitate, and our gazes lock. The weight of my next words feels like a boulder in my chest. Acknowledging it makes it too real, too immediate.
“Sophie’s. I want you to lag behind a bit. If he’s got her, it’s better if he thinks I’m alone.”
Climbing into my car, I fire up the engine, the roar a sharp contrast to the pounding in my chest. With a heavy foot on the gas, I peel away, Dante a shadow in my rearview mirror. I race through the city and hope like hell I’m not too late.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nico
There’s a black SUV in her driveway, parked behind her Camaro.
I force myself to drive up the street at a crawl’s pace, surveying the surroundings, looking for other vehicles parked close by or men lurking in the shadows. When I see no sign of anything out of the ordinary, I pull into an empty spot against the curb, four houses down from Sophie’s.
My heart’s pounding, and my hands clench the steering wheel so tight my knuckles are white. If Romano has hurt her, he’s going to die the slowest, most painful death possible. I imagine cutting the man apart piece by piece, starting with the least vital pieces… toes and fingers, ears and eyelids. Then I’ll work my way inward, keeping him alive and conscious the whole time with shots of epinephrine.
He’ll beg me for death long before I’ve finished with him.
I get out of my car as Dante pulls in behind me. A chuckle escapes me, the irony not lost even in the gravity of the moment. What about ‘give me a head start’ doesn’t the guy get? I’m too weary to pick bones with him, though.
He gets out of his Porsche and follows me as I creep closer. Neither of us speaks; we’re both keeping to the shadows, listening for the muffled sounds of Sophie’s screams.
The knot in my chest tightens, a storm of emotions threatening to burst. It’s taking all my restraint to keep from running blindly into her house, consequences be damned.
The faint squeak of a door hits me like a thunderclap; it’s Sophie’s door. I’ve heard it often enough now to recognize it, to pick it out from the chirrup of crickets and the whir of distant traffic.
I pause behind an old oak tree and peer around it, gun in hand. I imagine Romano dragging her from her house, hands bound, black bag over her head. I’ll fucking destroy him.
But it isn’t Romano who steps out onto Sophie’s front porch, not one of Romano’s men at all.
It’s Cade.
My insides begin to sigh in relief, and I can feel Dante taking the cue and following suit, the stiff set of his shoulders loosening until Sophie and two others follow Cade out her front door.
Maria and Victoria.
“What the fuck?” I whisper under my breath because for one blissful second, my mind is blank. It can’t compute what it’s seeing.
And then that second passes and everything I’ve come to believe about the woman I love goes up in smoke.
“She betrayed me,” the words escape me, a whisper of disbelief and hurt. The rush here, fueled by fear and the need to protect, now feels like a fool’s errand. She’s stabbed me in the back.
“Nico,” Dante objects, shaking his head. “You don’t know that.”
It’s the Urban Elixir all over again, and I’m sitting across from Leo, discovering that my best friend is a traitor. But this is worse because I knew better, and I still let her in.
“I let my guard down,” I seethe, even angrier with myself than with her.
Dante shakes his head, though his eyes are wary. “You shouldn’t—”
“Stay here,” I cut him off, not wanting to hear any excuses. Then I creep closer.
My heart races as I observe the scene, piecing together the bitter truth. There is only one reason for Sophie to be passing Maria and her daughter off to Cade Quinn: she’s been working with the feds all along to get Maria into witness protection.
I trusted Sophie with Maria’s location while she never gave up any information she had about Maria. And now Leo’s wife has been retrieved from my protection and offered a deal by the FBI.
I wait for the flood of anger, for the potent need for retribution to crash over me, for the urge to make her pay for what she’s done, to block out everything else. But it doesn’t come. Instead, a strange mix of hurt and relief courses through me—relief that she’s safe from Romano. I move behind a tall mass of bushes, close enough to hear the exchange going on, clinging to a vain hope that I’ve misunderstood the situation.
