Chapter 17

Adrian

 

 

 

Sweat was rolling down my back as I sliced the blade just under the skin of Fontana’s feet, peeling back the sensitive flesh. The room filled with his screams as I continued, until both his feet were raw and blood dripped onto the warehouse floor.

I had turned off the part of myself that loved and cared about the most important people in my life, and turned on the monster who lurked just beneath. The one who could torture a man, as I was doing right then, and make him think I was enjoying every minute of it.

I wasn’t, though. This kind of thing had once turned my stomach, but sometimes it was a necessary evil to get what I wanted.

Right then, I wanted to know where Jr. was so I could beat him worse than he had beat Scarlett the night before. So I could make him scream as Fontana was doing. So I could make him pray for mercy, and then slit his fucking throat.

After we had found Scarlett, there had only been one of Jr.’s men left. He’d had a bullet in the gut and hadn’t lasted more than an hour before he was dead on this very table. Nevertheless, he had pointed me and Ciro’s men in the right direction while the capo had taken his woman to the hospital to have her many bruises looked after.

We hadn’t found Jr. where the now dead man had suggested, but we had found someone just as good.

Fontana was Jr.’s second, but really, he was the actual brains of Jr.’s operations. He was Santino senior’s security net, who handled the real business while letting Jr. think he was in charge.

If anyone knew where Jr. was right then, it would be Fontana.

“He’s not here!” Fontana finally screamed as I started to flay the skin on his inner thighs, his entire body shaking so hard with pain and coldness from the continued blood loss his teeth chattered. “Jr. went to Chicago last night after he took the girl.”

I smiled down at the pale sonofabitch. He would die soon from the blood loss, but it wasn’t going to be an easy death. I would make sure of that …

“Fuck,” I heard Cristiano mutter under his breath.

“What?” Ciro grunted.

“I sent Victoria to the house in Chicago with Anya. She said she needed to get away for a little while. That she needed to think. I thought she would be safer there … that they both would.”

The knife I had just held to Fontana’s skin dropped to the floor with a loud clank.

No fucking way. He hadn’t just said that. I would kill him. Fucking kill him.

“You sent Victoria away from me?” I snarled in his face.

The other man didn’t even blink as I stepped farther into his space, his own anger flashing in his brown eyes. Eyes so much like Victoria’s.

“She begged me to help her,” he spat the words at me. “Anya thought it was a good idea, too. You’re fucking with my sister’s head, and she can’t deal with your shit right now.”

Hearing my sister’s name was almost a slap, and I stumbled backward several steps at the realization of her betrayal. She had helped Victoria run. She had stabbed me in the back.

“Anya helped you?”

It didn’t seem possible. She wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t help …

But she liked Victoria. They might have even become friends.

Fuck.

I turned away from them all, even the man who was practically pissing himself in pain and fear.

Victoria had left me. She was so far away, and if something happened to her, I wouldn’t be able to reach her in time. Her fucking brother had sent her away, straight to the same city where Jr. was now attempting to hide out.

I snapped at my men, telling them to move their asses in Russian as I nearly sprinted from the room and the warehouse in my desperation to reach my kotyonok as soon as possible.

 

 

 

***

“You sure about this, pakhan?”

I didn’t move my eyes from the house we were parked in front of to look at Oleg. The minute Cristiano had told me that Victoria had gone to Chicago, I had jumped on the first plane to get to her. I didn’t know why she had run, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her go off without me. Especially not after what had happened to her sister at the hands of Jr. And now he was in the same city with her.

It was hard to stomach that Anya had gone with Victoria, that she was now inside that house with my woman, helping to keep her away from me. My sister wouldn’t answer my calls or texts, and neither would Victoria. The only way I could see her was to walk through the front door of De Stefano’s house.

I knew Dante, respected and actually liked the man. Before he had moved to Chicago, we had even worked together on certain … projects.

He had grown up with the Vitucci children, was friends with Cristiano and Ciro. He, like Ciro, had moved up the ranks within the Cosa Nostra quickly. When the underboss who ran Chicago for Vito had caught a bullet, everyone had expected it to be Donati to take over the territory. Brows had lifted, however, when the capo had turned down the offer with no explanation.

And thus, the job had gone to Dante De Stefano.

He was expecting me, but I didn’t have faith that he would let me see Victoria. Not if Cristiano was already there. I didn’t know for sure if he was or not. As soon as he had said his sister was in Chicago, I had left. I had to try, though, damn it. I was going mad without her, and if I didn’t see her soon, I was going to lose the battle I had over my sanity.

Seeing her twin, her exact image, bloody and bruised by the hands of Jr., it had been as if I was seeing her. It had taken everything inside me not to snatch Scarlett from Ciro’s arms the night before, to hold her so I could reassure myself that she wasn’t Victoria, that my kotyonok was safe.

“Just drive,” I bit out at the big Russian behind the wheel.

With a shrug, he drove forward and a guard outside the gate of the estate came forward. Oleg powered down his window as the guard bent to look into the black car.

“Mr. Volkov,” the guard greeted, his eyes going past Oleg to me. “Please drive through and around to the back. Mr. De Stefano will be waiting for you.”

I gave a single nod as the gates opened.

Oleg drove through and up the small inclined driveway, following it around to the back of the house where a large garage was separated from the house. Four men in suits were already standing outside the back door. One stepped forward as Oleg came to a stop. My door was opened and, without a word, I stepped out.

I glanced from one man to the other, but none were De Stefano. “Where is your boss?”

“He was called upstairs,” the guard who was still standing beside my open door informed me. He was older than me, with an angry scar that went from his left temple to the corner of his mouth. “He won’t be a minute.”

My gaze lifted to the house, my eyes going to the top floor and to a window where the curtains were fluttering. Somehow, I knew that Victoria was in that room, that she was watching me. I could feel her eyes on me, watching every move I made.

It took everything inside me to keep from storming into the house and finding her.

Oleg stepped out of his side of the car. He was the only man I had brought with me, because I hadn’t come here to start a fight. All I wanted was to see Victoria, to talk to her for five minutes. I needed her to know …

What? What the fuck could I say to her that would make any of the secrets I had kept from her right?

She deserved the truth, though, and right then, that was all I could give her. I had to make her see that Klara was nothing to me, just a name on a piece of paper … and the mother of my nephew.

“This way,” the man who had opened my door spoke, turning his back to me as he walked toward the back door. The other three men had their eyes trained on both me and Oleg.

At the door, the guard opened it then waited patiently for me to enter the house first.

Inside, I found we were in a foyer with a sitting room off to my right and a hall to my left that went on for at least fifty yards. There were no signs of any stairs that could take me up to the other levels of the house so I could find Victoria.

Irritation ate at me as the guard followed me inside. Oleg and two of the three other guards entered next, leaving one outside. I saw him before the door shut, his eyes trained on the black sedan that I had rented at the airport, as if he expected more of my men to suddenly jump from the trunk and ambush him.

I didn’t need more than myself and Oleg to take on this small group of men. Then again, there were more than just these three men in the house. I knew it, could sense they were everywhere. There were probably more men patrolling the grounds, as well, keeping De Stefano and his houseguests safe.

“Please hand over your weapons,” the man with the scar said, his tone as emotionless as it had been from the first words out of his mouth.

Oleg grunted something under his breath, but I shot him a hard look that had him shutting his mouth. With a sigh, he pulled both his guns from the holsters under his jacket.

Once he had handed his over, I removed my own guns, but I didn’t even move to remove the smaller pistol I had strapped to my lower leg, or the knives I had tucked into my boots.

The man with the scar stood there, watching us both, waiting.

“Volkov,” a voice I vaguely remembered called my name, and I turned my head to find Dante De Stefano walking down the hall.

I watched the way he walked. He had a kind of cocky swagger that amused more than annoyed me. There was something hard, cold to the soul about him, but he was easier to deal with than either Ciro or Cristiano had ever been the few times I had worked with him in the past.

As he neared, I stepped forward and offered him my hand. “De Stefano.”

His handshake was firm, but not so hard that he was trying to make a point or show me that he was my superior. He had no beef with me, and as long as he didn’t keep me from Victoria, I had none with him.

Dropping my hand, he turned toward the guard with the scar. “Give them back their guns. Volkov isn’t going to shot me in my own house. Not when we have what he’s so desperate to get.”

After a brief hesitation, the other man handed back my guns, then did the same with Oleg’s.

De Stefano turned back toward the hall. “Come on, man; we can talk in my office.” He glanced at his men when they started to follow. “Pretty sure I can deal with this on my own. You fuckers keep Volkov’s man company. Offer him a drink.”

Turning to me again, he slapped me on the back. “How the hell have you been, Volkov?” he asked as we walked into his office.

I waited until the door was shut behind us before speaking. “You know why I’m here?”

He shrugged his suit jacket off then loosened his tie. Tossing the jacket on a random chair across the room, he nodded. “Of course I know. But as long as Victoria wants to stay here, she has my protection. I can’t let you see her unless she agrees. Cristiano is in the air right now, heading here. Once he gets here, it’s even further out of my hands.”

“Have you spoken to her?”

“I’ve spoken; she’s remained oddly mute. Which is unlike little miss sunshine, actually. Victoria is normally all bubbly and can’t find a single thing wrong with the world.” He grimaced. “Of course, that all changes when you piss her off. Girl has some serious darkness lurking around in there.” He crossed to a small bar and opened a bottle of well-aged scotch. He poured one glass and handed it over to me before pouring one for himself. After taking a swallow, his face twisted into anger and what to me looked like possessiveness. “But she’s not pissed off right now. It’s beyond that.” His voice was like steel. “She’s hurting, and that’s on you.”

That possessive look had jealousy churning in my stomach. The urge to slam my fist into his face was nearly too much to resist. Instead, I tightened my fingers around my glass and tossed the contents back in one swallow.

Setting the glass down on his desk, I faced him fully. “Yes, that is on me. I wish I could change things, but for the moment, I can’t. I only want to speak to her, Dante. Let me see her.”

He finished off the rest of his own drink before pouring himself another. “You would probably have better luck speaking to your sister. She and Victoria seem to have become close, which is all kinds of disturbing, actually. If your sister were to train her in all the things she can do, the world would tremble in fear at just the sight of Victoria Vitucci.”

It wasn’t lost on me that De Stefano was suggesting he knew about Anya’s extracurricular activities. Few people knew what she did in her spare time, but those who did, knew she was the best of the best. She never left a job undone, and she was worth every penny she made her clients pay.

Assassins were few and far between these days, after all.

I didn’t want to think about Anya teaching Victoria any of the things she knew how to do. My kotyonok didn’t need to know them, not when I would always be around to protect her.