My fist slams into the wall, and I go to town on it. My friends hold Dano back, knowing I need this. I’m yelling and cursing as I pummel the wall, breaking through the drywall, the jagged ends shredding my knuckles, making them bleed, but I barely feel the pain. Inner turmoil charges through my veins as I continuously beat my fists into the wall, berating myself for all my failings. What the fuck have I done?
“Save some of that for the rat.” Joshua places his hand on my arm, pulling me back. “You’re no use to anyone with a broken hand.”
“I swore I’d protect Sloane, and I failed her.” Tears stab my eyes as I let my friend pull me back. “What kind of monster convicts the woman he loves without letting her explain?”
“You were under a lot of stress,” Caleb says. “It’s a natural reaction. We all would’ve done the same.”
“No.” I wrench free of my friends, grateful to find Dano and John Angelo gone and the door closed. Gia’s pale face looks haunted as she stares silently at me with her back pressed to the door. “No.” I shake my head as crippling pain destroys me. “Neither of you would’ve tossed your loves out on the street like trash.” I yank on my hair. “I held a fucking gun to her head, for fuck’s sake! I almost killed her!” I slump against the nearest wall, struggling to draw enough air into my lungs. “I sent her away when she was hurt. She took a bullet defending my son, and I refused to see what was right in front of me.” Scrubbing my eyes, I let loose another roar, hating myself for instantly thinking the worst of her. What have I done? What have I done? I didn’t even give her a chance to fully explain, deciding I’d heard enough. I hang my head. “I’m so ashamed of my actions. I was so cruel. So cold.”
“What happened with Aliya clouded your judgment,” Joshua says. “I know my past clouded mine when I was with Gia at first.”
“It’s no excuse. Elisa is right.” I eyeball Caleb. “Everything she said is right. I was too hurt, too angry, to see it last week, but she’s right. Sloane is a victim, and I know—” I slap a hand to my chest, “—deep down, I know she would never have hurt Elio or me.” A bitter laugh tumbles from my chest. “She was a terrible actress. Her blatant attempt to seduce me was so transparent. God, hindsight is a bitch.” Air blows out of my mouth as I drag my fingers through my hair. “She stopped faking it.” It seems so obvious now, and I’m a fool. “I pushed her away because I thought it wasn’t real, but I was wrong, I was so fucking wrong.” It all comes back to me in full technicolor, and I see it for what it is. I wasn’t in it alone. She loves me as I love her.
Pressure builds behind my heavy eyes as my gaze bounces between my two best friends. “I never even told her I loved her. Now she thinks I hate her. She has nothing and no one, and the cartel is after her. Oh God.” I straighten up and pull myself together. I’ve got to become the man she needs me to be and pray it’s not too late. “I’ve got to find her before they do. I can’t let them hurt her any more than they already have.”
“Tell me the plan starts with ripping that backstabbing motherfucker to pieces?” Caleb asks.
Clamping a hand on his shoulder, I flash him a savage grin. “Great minds think alike, my friend. Let’s grab the rat and introduce him to our fists.”
Vincenzo spills his guts with little motivation. Turns out, his stepmother is a distant cousin of Carmine’s, and Carmine used blackmail to force Vincenzo to spy for him. It seems Carmine threatened the first woman I offered the nanny job to, and she lied when she told me she’d accepted another offer. Until Carmine’s death, Vincenzo had no direct contact with the cartel. His phone records unearthed messages sent after the shooting, demanding he silence Sloane or hand her over to them. His family was threatened when he failed to comply, so he readily accepted their new offer to work for them, and he planted the cell on their instructions.
Caleb and I took turns torturing him for hours, but we chose not to kill him. We can use him to beat the cartel at their own game. Killing Fuentes will be at the top of my priority list after I find Sloane. Rescuing Cruz’s offspring and their mothers is also on the agenda, as well as finding any other kids before the cartel does. The latest developments mean The Commission has changed its tune and given us approval to accelerate the investigation as a matter of urgency.
Gia is now heading up an official task force to find these children and their mothers and take them into protective custody. It’s most likely going to be an ongoing investigation, spanning years. It’s not an easy task, but at least the appropriate focus is being applied now.
The following morning, I meet with John Angelo at my office in the DiPietro Freight Management & Logistics building to find out if he knows anything about Sloane’s plans. He was the last person to interact with her, and I’m hoping he might have some clue as to where she went.
Guilt threatens to smother me when he eyeballs me with zero regret and tells me what he did. He helped her when I pushed her away like she meant nothing to me. Right now, I don’t feel worthy of the legacy passed down to me. I have never been more disgusted with myself.
“I understand if you need to punish me, boss, but I stand by what I did.”
“There will be no punishment.” I level John Angelo with a solemn expression. “I’m glad she had help. I’m ashamed of how quickly I judged her. You knew she was true, didn’t you?”
“When you’ve been around as long as I have, you learn to recognize the good’uns from the bad’uns. Sloane loves with her whole heart, and I don’t doubt what she felt for you and Master Elio was true. That girl couldn’t hurt a fly. Anything that happened wasn’t intentional. I’ll go to my grave believing that.”
“I made the wrong call, and I need to fix it fast because she’s in danger. If anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself. Call your brother and get me the details. I need to retrace her steps and see if I can find her.”
After he leaves, I call Dano and request he promote the man. He has more than earned it. Then I call the bank and transfer a large deposit into Sloane’s bank account—the one the cartel doesn’t have access to. Rage resurfaced when I learned the second bank account we thought was being used to pay off debtors was actually being funneled to an offshore account owned by the cartel. The fuckers were making sure she was desperate with little money and totally beholden to them.
I’ve asked Don Mazzone to run a covert investigation into how the cartel was able to hide all of this so effectively. Our teams should have uncovered the truth. Gia personally oversaw the second background check, and she’s thorough. Someone with specialist knowledge helped the cartel to cover their tracks, and I want to know who they’ve got in their pocket.
I’m about to call Gia to tell her to set up the trace on the money when my secretary buzzes to say she’s here to see me. Getting up from behind my desk, I stride to the door, reaching it as Gia does. “What’s happened?” I know she wouldn’t show up here unless it were important.
“I didn’t want to risk emailing you,” she says as I usher her inside and over to the couch in the corner. “In case we have a mole on the tech team.”
“You think it was someone inside the Cosa Nostra IT team who helped the cartel?” I glance over my shoulder as I make coffee.
“I hope not, but it’s a possibility.” She removes a tablet from her briefcase and swipes her finger across the screen. “Until Don Mazzone has concluded the investigation, I’m taking no chances, and you shouldn’t either. We’ll have to do this the old-school way. Leave no trace if you can.”
“Understood.” I hand her a mug and sit beside her. Gia angles the screen so I can see. “What am I looking at?” I ask, cradling my mug in my hands.
“This came into my personal email ten days ago. I rarely check that account anymore. It landed in my junk folder, and I almost deleted it because I didn’t recognize the email address, but something made me open it. It’s from Sloane.”
Putting my coffee down, I take the tablet and read the email.
This is Sloane. I know you probably hate me, Gia, with due cause, but please don’t delete this message without reading it. It’s important. You need to tell Cristian he has a mole. I don’t know who it is, only that this person is working with the cartel.
The other thing you should know is it’s my fault those women and children were taken. I’m sure the cartel has them. I hate that I’ve placed them in danger, and I hope you can find them. I didn’t understand what I was sending when I sent those files. It’s not an acceptable excuse, so I don’t even know why I’m saying it, only that I didn’t do it deliberately.
I gave them nothing else, so put Cristian’s mind at ease. They don’t have the location to your house or Cristian’s parents’ house, and I never sent them any schedules. I didn’t know they were planning to kidnap Elio, but I was nervous going out that afternoon, and I should’ve listened to my instincts. I’ll never forgive myself for putting him in so much danger. I love that little boy like he’s my own, and I would gladly have given my life for his. I hope you believe it because it’s the truth.
There is lots more I could say, but you probably don’t want to hear it. Like Cristian doesn’t want to either. Please warn him. Contrary to what he thinks, I have never wanted to hurt anyone, especially him or Elio. I love them both so much, and I hate that I caused them pain. I’m sorry for deceiving everyone, and I truly wish things could be different.
Keep them safe, Gia. Thank you.
I didn’t think I could hurt any more, but a fresh wave of pain pokes new holes in my heart. Sloane didn’t even attempt to defend herself, offering no explanation for why she did the things she did. “She’s running from the cartel, and yet she’s trying to protect us. I really fucked up this time.”
“I feel bad for being so judgmental, so I can only imagine how you must feel.”
“I jumped to all the wrong conclusions.” I drink a mouthful of hot coffee. “I love her, and I’ve let her down in the worst way. My love was supposed to be unconditional, and I forgot that when it mattered most.”
Shards of pain scrape my throat raw. Why was my first instinct to presume she was guilty instead of asking my love to tell me the full truth and listening without interruption? Instead, I cut her off before she could fully explain, deciding I couldn’t trust anything out of her mouth.
“Elio would be so ashamed if he was old enough to comprehend things,” I admit. “Sloane needed me to see what I should’ve seen all along. Everything was a cry for help, and I should’ve pushed her to tell me what was wrong instead of backing off and letting her tell me in her own time. But there’s no point looking at all the what-ifs and should-haves. This is the reality, and I’m going to find her, bring her home, and pray we can forgive one another and start over. The cartel is not getting their fucking hands on her again. I’ll blow their entire operation sky-high if they touch her, so please, Gia, tell me you got some lead from this email.”
She bobs her head. “The email account is deactivated, but I was able to trace the IP address to a small café in Alton, Illinois. I hacked into the traffic cam across the street.” Her fingers fly over the keyboard. “Watch.”
My heart is in my throat as I watch a woman exit the café, tipping her head forward and pulling a ball cap down firmly to cover her face. She’s wearing nondescript jeans and an oversized gray hoodie, and she’s walking with a noticeable limp. A muscle pops in my jaw as I watch her dragging her injured leg and trying to disguise the obvious pain.
“Wait for it,” Gia says, and I hold my breath.
At the crosswalk, Sloane stops on the sidewalk and purposely lifts her chin. Strands of short dark hair peek out from under her cap as she tips her face directly in front of the camera. Blue eyes shine with regret as she stares into the camera for a few seconds. Gia pauses it there, and I drink in every beautiful feature.
A pang of longing rushes through me, and I wish I could project into the screen, scoop her up, and run away with her. But this was days ago, and I’m doubting she’s still there. John Angelo told her to keep running, and I know she’ll have listened to him.
Still, this was a bold, reckless move. One she risked to warn me. If I have any lingering doubts, they’re fully eviscerated now. Sloane loves me and Elio. She sacrificed her mother to protect us, and I’m the prick who repaid her with cruelty instead of kindness and love. As long as I live, I will never forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made, and I won’t stop looking for her. Rubbing a hand across the pain spreading in my chest, I silently offer up my soul to whoever is listening, begging them to keep her safe until I can find her.
