“It was a pleasure doing business, gentlemen,” Orlov told the Zavarida Group. These men sickened me. I had to grin and shake their hands. They’d been on Carmine’s radar for a while. For all my annoyance with the Galluzo underboss, I understood his extreme hatred against human traffickers. His mother had been a victim of one and he was the seed that was born out of such atrocity. I even understood why Natalya had a soft spot for him.
Orlov got his money, but the Zavaridas would be encountering law enforcement when their planes landed. Carmine and I spent weeks planning their downfall, but I wouldn’t be relieved until we returned these teenagers, who were no more than children, to their parents.
I thought of Elias. How did I callously think I could give him away to Vincenzo?
When our guests left, Orlov turned to me. “You sure you don’t want a cut? You deserve ten percent at least.”
“We’re done here,” I said. “Tell Koshkin I’ve upheld my end of the deal.”
“Aw, come on, Moretti, get off your high horse. Those men could get you into businesses you can’t even imagine.”
“I’m happy with what I have.” I yanked open the door, and it took all of my willpower not to slam it behind me. I used the back exit of the club where my men were waiting for me.
I ran into Dario. He had a phone to his ear and a worried expression on his face. Fuck, did something go wrong with the Zavaridas’ flights out of Chicago? We had no control over those, but we gave the details to our contacts in different countries. At least, Carmine did.
“What?” I slipped out the pack of cigarettes and was about to light up when I thought better. I never did it around Elias, but it didn’t stop Natalya from looking at me with disapproval whenever I lit up.
“No one’s answering their phones at Tralestelle,” Dario said.
I stilled. “Maybe there’s another storm and cell towers are spotty?”
“The landline keeps going to voicemail,” he said.
I had a breakfast meeting with an alderman the next day, but my gut was telling me to go home and check on Natalya and Elias with my own eyes.
Not an hour from now.
Right fucking now.
I strode to the Escalade and got the keys from a soldier—a new recruit who was a distant cousin of Tony who looked like Tony, so I called him Tony-two. “I’m driving. Get in.”
Dario and the soldier looked at each other.
“Don’t waste my time,” I snarled at my consigliere. He got into the passenger side. Tony-two said he would catch a ride with the other guys.
“Why are the men afraid when I drive?” I asked Dario.
“You really want me to answer that?”
“I drive the same speed as all of you,” I said in the same beat as, “Try them again.”
As Dario tried to get in contact with the mansion, I couldn’t help getting antsy. The Escalade pulled into traffic and more than a few cars honked their horns at me.
“That’s why,” Dario said. “You drive like a maniac and people need to make way for you.”
“I’m impatient.” I cast him a look that qualified my statement. “No reply?”
“We have a crew that is fifteen minutes from there,” Dario said. “I told them to drop everything and go check.”
“Good.” I’d warned Tony that tonight was going to be an important coup for the Morettis. We could finally break free of Orlov and mind our own business. Carmine had grown more adept in inter-organization negotiations, so he could go back to Italy soon. My rabid appetite for power had quickly dissipated these last few months. It became more trouble and more of a headache than it was worth. I thrived on chaos, but I was getting enough of that from a fussy two-month-old. I smiled faintly, then remembered the alderman.
I slipped out my phone, put it on the dash and told it to call the politician.
My call went to voicemail. “Alan, an emergency came up. I have to miss our tee time tomorrow.” I hated golf with a passion anyway. “I’ll have Dario make another appointment.”
I ended the call.
“He’s not going to like that.”
“Well, tough shit.” It had become harder to stay away from my wife and son. I wasn’t sure if it was a comfortable place to be, but I had a compulsion to be with them more often. Maybe it was time to overhaul the mafia code. The nineties had seen a deterioration of the men-of-honor code as many in our ranks turned federal witness. This year, seventy percent of our revenues came from legitimate businesses. We couldn’t be fully legitimate. There was a devil in the Morettis, and it needed to be fed.
We were just outside Chicago when Dario received the call from the crew we sent to the mansion.
“Who?” Dario roared.
My blood turned to ice. “Put him on speaker,” I barked.
“Three of our men were shot. The rest were drugged, boss.”
“My wife and son?”
“They’re not here.”
My foot rode heavy on the gas. “Tony and Rocco?”
“They were tied up.”
“Check surveillance.”
“On it, boss.”
I weaved through the vehicles and cut too close to some, but it was as though my road home was preordained and that was all I could see. If I saw the slightest opening between cars, I took it.
I rode the gas and honked the horn.
“Stop being tense.”
“I can’t help it,” Dario gritted. “We’ll get there sooner if we don’t get stopped by cops or end up in a wreck.”
“The locket,” I said. “We can trace Natalya through it.”
“I noticed she started wearing it after she had Elias,” Dario said. “Let me see if the tracker on that is working.”
And it hadn’t run out of battery.
“Holy fuck,” Dario said.
“What?” I growled. “Next word out of your mouth better be a location.”
My chest was so fucking tight, it felt like it was being compacted in a junkyard car crusher.
“She’s a few miles from Tralestelle. In the middle of cornfields.”
“We’re heading there directly. Don’t tell anyone,” I said.
“How about Carmine and Ange?”
“Think, Dario. Carmine had a lot riding on this auction and he’s not around. Both he and Ange weren’t answering my calls earlier tonight.”
“Surely not…you think they’d do something to Natalya and your son?”
“At this point, I don’t know.” And for whatever reason, my brain wouldn’t compute. “You’re the only one I trust.”
The tracker brought us to a deserted stretch of country road. We’d passed one burned-out vehicle. Another one had hit a tree with two men inside strapped to their seat belts, dead, with gunshot wounds to the head. The passenger doors were open. The direction of the footprints was chaotic. I’d have my best human tracker on it.
“Call Salvie,” I told one of my men. “And have him figure this out.”
“Nothing on the sheriff scanners,” another soldier told me. “But with the smoke up ahead, it was only a matter of time.”
Dario and I returned to our vehicles. “Has her point moved?”
“Yes. It used to be here when we were on our way, but it has moved four miles ahead and looks to be where that smoke is coming from.”
“Dammit, we better get there before the fire department.”
“Our men are monitoring.”
The minutes it took us to get from one location to the next felt like an eternity. I was caught between a fatalistic existence and one where my life shit unicorns. In my fatalistic one, Natalya and my son were killed by my enemies—and I had more than a few. I’d find out who they were and seek vengeance. But I wanted the life where they lived. I fought against the feeling that I didn’t deserve to have a life with them.
“You must prepare, Luca.”
“I am,” I gritted. “The locket pinging?”
“Yes.”
“Then shut up.”
“What if they have demands?”
“Then we’ll pay them, get my family back, and then hunt them down and slaughter them all.” I didn’t care anymore if it would be a weakness. I tried to push the dark thoughts from my head about what those fuckers could be doing to my family.
“Tony texted. They’ve reviewed surveillance, and it appears Natalya and Nessa walked out with them.”
“So they weren’t drugged?”
“No.”
What the fuck? My whole body was thrumming with adrenaline. Did they plan this? Was Natalya so miserable with me she left with my son? “Have they accounted for everyone?”
“Tony and Rocco are checking. It seems Yvonne is missing too.”
“Martha?”
Dario exchanged more messages with Tony. “They found her slumped in her room. She didn’t make it to the bed and has a concussion.
“Turn here,” Dario instructed. I swerved onto a dirt road, but I could see flames licking a structure. I checked behind me to see two more SUVs following us. An alert was sent out to the Moretti crime family to activate lockdown.
“Contact Dom. Tell him what’s going on.” My niece and sister weren’t my concern anymore since they married into the De Lucci crime family, but it was courtesy to let the boss know if our problems could touch any of them.
“Already did.”
Still no call from Ange.
The Escalade stopped in front of the blazing house. The last time I’d seen a structure burn like this was two years ago in Vegas.
“Where’s Natalya’s signal?” I didn’t wait for him to answer and stumbled out of the Escalade. The heat of the inferno singed my flesh. Nothing and no one could have survived it. My legs could barely move.
“It’s not in the house.”
Hope almost choked me as I spun around in the direction of the tree line.
“Natalya!” I roared.
Our men caught up with us and set up a perimeter.
A soldier scowled at me. “You should let us clear the place first, boss.”
I glared at him. I knew this, but I was beyond caring. Everything inside me was screaming to find my wife and son. “Natalya.”
Dario touched my arm. “Listen.”
A baby’s cry.
Relief gripped my heart so hard, I was dizzy. I rushed toward the sound.
But before I could take one step into the shadow of trees, Nessa exploded from them.
Confusion and horror hit me.
My arms automatically reached for the bawling Elias, but my eyes refused to accept that my wife wasn’t in front of me.
“Where is she?” I shouted at Nessa, but she could only shake her head.
I handed my crying son to Dario, instinctively knowing the roaring anxiety rampaging inside me would transfer to the baby. I gripped Nessa’s shoulders and shook her. “Where. Is. My. Wife?”
She was weeping hysterically, and I could barely fight back the frustration and fury. Fury that someone dared attack my family, frustration that I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Throw in the fear churning in my gut, and I was a mess like she was, except I’d kept it under the veneer of a man who was supposed to be the boss of his crime family.
That veneer was cracking under pressure.
I wondered afterward if it would have been better if we knocked Nessa unconscious. Then maybe I wouldn’t go through the pain and torment unlike anything I’d experienced before.
My eyes followed her trembling arm as she slowly pointed toward the burning house.
Without thinking, I charged toward the flames, getting too close before hands forcefully held me back. I threw men off me, but there were too many of them who held me down.
“Natalya,” my voice choked, finally drained of any fight. Because if she was in there, she wouldn’t have survived.
My eyes swam and turned blurry. I was on my knees, head tilted heavenward and a hideous cry of a wounded animal reverberated around us.
I was holding my son. He was sleeping peacefully, uncaring of the activity going on inside the house. Cops, detectives, and FBI agents walked in and out of the house, asking me endless questions. A few of them weren’t sympathetic.
Did I trust them not to do a shitty job? No. But Dario couldn’t rip me away from the burning house even when the authorities arrived. My brain wasn’t working. My Natalya was inside.
I had failed to protect her.
Nessa told us men who sounded like Russians took them from the house. And then more masked men blew up one of the vehicles and railroaded the second one.
My brave Natalya tried to save them but got hit on the head. I couldn’t explain how it consumed me—the thought that someone dared hurt my wife gnawed at my insides like a festering disease and it festered because I didn’t know where to unleash my wrath. Who to eviscerate and dismember.
They were all taken to that house that burned afterwards.
The only thing that made sense in what she told us was that Yvonne was a traitor.
Pie.
Who would ruin a good pie and put enough tranquilizers in it that could kill a horse? Martha was still recovering from a head injury. I had no one running my household except a mute who was not making sense.
Nessa said she saw Natalya unconscious on the floor before she and Elias were herded into a separate room. They tried to frighten her. Fired shots into the room but then they let her go and made her run into the fields. They told her not to look back. So that was what she did until the house exploded and then she ran back.
None of this made sense.
Natalya was not dead.
“We refuse to believe, right, sport?” I told Elias.
Finally, close to five p.m., Dario came into the room. “They’re gone.”
Behind him followed Ange and Carmine.
As my consigliere and lawyer, Dario sent me to the study with Elias so I wouldn’t incriminate myself with their leading questions. It was always the husband, wasn’t it? Well, fuck them.
“Next time, don’t bait them.” Dario pinched between his brows. My eyes were probably as bloodshot as his.
Ange and Carmine lingered behind my consigliere like the guilty parties in this. I didn’t buy their alibis. They were probably wondering if they were going to survive the day.
“I don’t give a shit.” I grabbed my whiskey and threw it back, then glared at Ange. “So who betrayed us?”
“Turo.”
I gave a snort. “Tell me something new.” He was Yvonne’s boyfriend.
“None of his crew are answering their phones,” Ange said. “I’m having our men go to their homes and their usual haunts. They probably won’t be there, but we can ask people who know where they are.”
“And these Russians? Any of them look familiar? Orlov’s?”
“Our IT is checking into it,” Ange said. “The one who held Nessa is a known associate of Orlov, but a low-level one.”
My eyes turned to Carmine. “Have you informed Natalya’s parents?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. The news needs to come from me.” My voice cracked. I refused to look at Elias at this point because everything was so overwhelming and I was close to breaking. My son had not lost his mother. My wife was not dead.
The way I was feeling, it was as though wolves were circling, waiting to tear me apart. I cleared my throat. “So where were you, Carmine?”
His gaze dropped to my son before coming back to mine. “It wasn’t just Turo. You have another capo regime who was working against you.”
“You have proof of this?” Ange growled.
Carmine stepped away from Ange. Dario cast me a brief glance as the tension between the two men pulled taut.
“Yes. I have the recordings. I suspected him and bugged his car. They were communicating with Ilya, the Russian, in the wrecked car.”
“Why am I only now hearing about this?” I snapped.
“I thought I had more time.” Carmine’s voice was a whisper; it was almost as if he was on the verge of tears.
But I was not sympathetic.
Neither was Ange. “If you had come to us sooner, we could have stopped the kidnapping.”
My brother’s accusations were so laughable, and I would have given him a pass if it wasn’t about Natalya. “And you, brother, had let Turo make his play under your nose. You are my underboss. But the buck stops with me. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is going under a security check. Bank accounts and phone messages. I want the mastermind found.”
Ange and Carmine gave brief acknowledgments.
I tipped my head for them to go. “Dario. Stay.”
I waited for the door to close before I said, “You’re the only one I trust. You know that, right?”
He massaged his temple between his fingers. “What a clusterfuck,” he sighed. “Who do you suspect?”
“I don’t know. Both? Could they be conspiring against me and this tension between them is fabricated?”
“I thought so too…but…Luca…if you want more answers, we have to listen to Nessa. She’s the only witness to this whole shit. Don’t you want to hear what she told the cops?”
I couldn’t tell my friend that I couldn’t stand the sight of her. It was eating me inside that she wasn’t Natalya. That my wife was still missing.
I was fucking tired, but maybe it was because my heart was dead. Then my son would make a sound, and it would beat again.
The nightmare had barely begun. I hadn’t had a decent night of sleep in a week. The cops continued to come and go.
Natalya’s parents were back and talking about a funeral, adding to my aggravation. While everyone was buzzing around the house, I locked myself in the study with Elias. He was the only part of Natalya I wanted with me. I slept with my son in the nursery. Martha was back in circulation and helped with my boy when I was too intoxicated to be a proper parent. I told everyone to keep Nessa away from me. I didn’t want her around. Somewhere in the back of my raging mind, I knew it wasn’t her fault.
But someone needed to pay. One of our crew was found dead on I-55 outside Chicago. Was he running away? Who killed him?
Dario had a wild story from Nessa that the Russians accused Natalya of stealing their money and they took her laptop.
That damned laptop.
What money? My money?
A knock sounded on the door. Dario was my gatekeeper, so it was important. He made sure to keep Vincenzo and Elena away from me.
“Come in,” I called out wearily.
My consigliere stuck his head in. “Detective Voss is here.”
I could already feel a migraine building. “Hasn’t he asked enough questions?”
“They found something in the house.”
Bile rose up my throat. Was I ready to hear this?
“Send him in.”
Dario gave me a look before he nodded and left to get the detective. I walked over to where my son was sleeping by the window. Since I spent my time locked away, I had a small crib brought in. I caught my reflection in the mirror. I resembled a vampire with my sunken and red eyes and the unhealthy pallor of my skin. Beard grooming became nonexistent and my unruly hair hadn’t seen a comb since everything went down. I showered and finger-combed and dressed. Sighing, I tucked my shirt into my trousers and returned behind my desk. I couldn’t have the cops call Child Protective Services on me.
The knock sounded again, and Dario walked in with the detective.
“Do you want me to take him?” Dario nodded to Elias.
“He’s getting used to the noise and voices,” I said. “Let him be. So, Detective, any progress on my wife’s case?”
“We’d interviewed Vasily Orlov at length. It’s his understanding that you and your wife had an arranged marriage.”
“It’s not uncommon between Italian families when our businesses benefit.”
The detective’s brow rose. “Did you love your wife, Mr. Moretti?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You already asked me this last time.”
“If we went by the unemotional way you answered the questions last time, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”
“Are you saying I’m a suspect?”
“It’s standard procedure, sir.”
“They always suspect the husband.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“Natalya and I have an understanding. In time, it’s expected we will grow to love each other.”
The detective started nodding. “Did you miss your son’s birth because you had business elsewhere?”
“Yes.” Motherfucking Orlov. What was his game? The Russian called immediately after the news of what happened at Tralestelle got out. He vehemently denied involvement, but I sent the cops his way anyway. This was probably his way of getting back at me.
“What was your wife’s reaction?”
“She wasn’t happy. Look, if this is to grill me about my marriage, you’re wasting time. So, if there’s no development on the case, you should leave.”
The detective reached into his pocket and slid an evidence bag toward me. “Do you recognize these rings?”
I stared at them, my arms and limbs frozen in horror so I couldn’t move and pick them up. “Where did you find them?” My hoarse voice sounded foreign in my ears probably because of the silent roar that had clogged them.
“It was found in the debris of the burnt house. The fire officials declared the property safe to collect evidence, and our CSI found those this morning.”
“Natalya’s wedding and engagement ring.”
My chest grew tight. Was I going to have a heart attack?
“I’m sorry, Mr. Moretti.” He took the plastic bag back. “I’ll have to keep these longer for evidence.”
I could only nod. My whole body felt numb. The walls of the room shrank and curved over me. I didn’t even hear the detective leave. Dario came in, and when he saw me, he asked, “What did he want?”
“They…” I staggered to my feet. “Natalya’s rings.” I hunched over, my hands flat on the desk, unable to find a comfortable position to breathe. “Does it mean…oh God.” I stumbled over to my son. Our baby, who could have just lost his mother.
Was it my fault? Did Natalya try to leave me?
I stared at my son with a pain in my chest that I couldn’t understand. I sat with my son, trying to make sense of that pain. Was it from the thought that Natalya was forever lost to us? Was it from the guilt eating at me that I spent time in my bullshit instead of making my wife happy? It circled back to that pain mixed with an outrage that she tried to leave me, taking my son from me. Did she think I wouldn’t spend every last dime and all my resources to find her?
Dario had left the room. I paced the study, drank more scotch, stewing in a tornado of thoughts and conflicting emotions until I decided I was too smashed to take care of Elias. I handed him to Martha. I needed to be alone in my misery.
Elena seemed to have appointed herself mistress of the house and was busy in the kitchen. Vincenzo stood when he saw me.
“You haven’t eaten anything today, Luca.” I ignored her, grabbed a bottle of Barolo from the wine rack, and uncorked it.
“What did the detective say?” Vincenzo asked. “Do they have any update on who could be behind this atrocity?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came. Vincenzo grew teary eyed. I did not know why when they were so eager to hold a funeral for their daughter, while this was the first time that I had proof that Natalya might be dead. I blocked my mind to the horror.
No body.
No body to bury.
Not dead.
“They found her wedding ring.”
Glass shattered in the kitchen and Elena howled, “Oh, my baby!”
I didn’t wait for the aftermath because I didn’t have it in me to give comfort. Leaving the crying that detonated behind me, I passed the ever-present guards in the house and went to the attic.
I hadn’t been up here since…
No. Natalya is not dead.
I pushed the door open. Her fragrance still lingered. Mandarin oranges and jasmine. I took a swig of the wine. It was her favorite one too. I moved to the window. The sun was setting, and the sky was golden. Natalya loved thunderstorms, not this colorful painted sky. At least I knew that much about my wife.
Two chugs of wine.
She loved Paris in the rain. She wanted us to walk in it. Would it have killed me to do it? We would never get a chance again.
“Natalya,” I choked. Emotion stung the back of my eyes. “Have I lost you, tesoro? I think I would feel it if you’re no longer here on this earth.” I backed away from the window and dropped on the couch.
I glared at the television that had occupied so much of her time. I guzzled more wine.
Watching all her romance movies, she placed impossible standards on me. I would never have been the hero she wanted me to be, but I’d been trying to be a husband who cared. I’d been giving her more of my time, not because she demanded it, but because I genuinely enjoyed spending time with her. I worried about her. Worried about her descent into depression. The signs were there. But again, I put her second.
I should have put her first instead of trying to get clear of Orlov.
I could have said no and said fuck it to the Galluzo and let them deal with their problems.
Natalya had been drowning. Even Rachel worried because she stopped producing breast milk.
My eyes landed on her romance books.
All these fucking books ruined what could have been a great marriage. I threw the wine bottle at the television. It shattered with the force and burgundy liquid soaked into the carpet.
I rose from the couch and stalked toward the entertainment center and yanked the whole thing from the stand and sent it crashing to the floor.
I looked around to find something to smash it with, then I saw the books. Before I could control myself, I swept a bunch of them to the floor. A voice in my head mocked me for my shortcomings, and I was taking it out on words inked on paper. Words that created worlds for my wife to escape into, worlds away from the one I forced upon her.
Dario appeared at the door, Tony hovering behind him.
“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay,” Dario said.
“I wasn’t the husband she wanted!” My roar reverberated in the attic. I stalked back to the couch. “Fuuuuuuck!” I glowered at the pieces of broken glass on the floor. “Tony, get me another bottle.”
“No,” Dario said.
I glared at him. “What’s your problem?”
“What’s my problem?” he sneered. “You made me godfather to Elias. It’s my duty to see to that boy’s welfare, and right now? You’re wallowing in self-pity, or is it pride, Luca?”
“Fuck you!”
“Your son needs you, not this drunk,” he said fiercely. “You can’t blame a bunch of—”
He cut off, and a puzzled look changed his expression. He walked to the bookshelf. “What the hell…?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tony, get me a flathead screwdriver,” Dario ordered. “There’s something behind this.” He threw me an impatient look. “Come here.”
I dragged myself from the couch and stared at the bookshelf, trying to shake off my alcohol-induced haze. “It’s deeper than what it should be.”
“Yes.” He looked behind it. “And there’s a bunch of wiring behind it and enough space…”
Tony came back and handed Dario the tool he requested. This fresh development jarred me out of my despair. “Remember what Nessa was saying about the Russian, Natalya, and the laptop?”
I looked at Tony. “Get Nessa up here.”
Tony scowled. “I won’t have my niece—”
“Get her up here,” I snapped.
When Dario removed part of the back panel of the bookcase, my jaw unhinged.
“Holy fuck,” Dario breathed. “What does your wife have going here?”
We cleared out more books until we finally exposed what was behind the panel.
Servers. Network routers. I recognized this equipment as the ones we used in our online gambling site. These were overkill to use at home.
Dario turned to me, his eyes disbelieving. I was sure my expression mirrored his own.
What. The. Fuck.
Weeks later, we still had no answers as to what happened to Natalya.
DNA had come back from the burnt house identifying Turo, Yvonne, and two of his crew.
Vincenzo and Elena admitted they hid Natalya’s high IQ and her hacking skills, but swore she’d stopped doing it. I was not surprised they didn’t know because my wife had fooled me too. I kicked them out of my house. Carmine went with them. He knew I was on a tear and decided it was best he left the country.
I tasked Dario with finding the best hackers and private investigators to track down the other capo and round up the rest of the missing crew.
In one of our unoccupied buildings, the stench of copper and death surrounded the walls of its basement. Dimly lit with a string of incandescent lights, it had tiled flooring that made cleanup easy.
We interrogated six of our men and one Russian.
None of them knew anything except what Turo had told them, promising a big payday.
Their payday had arrived in the form of mob justice.
I waterboarded them before I gutted every single one of them.
After the last man took a rattling, dying breath, I watched him a bit longer, cocking my head, staring at him intently because I had ceased to feel any emotion. No anger. No frustration. Nothing.
His head lolled to one side before Ange went to him and checked his pulse.
My brother shook his head. With each interrogation, I watched Ange. And I knew him enough that he didn’t play a part in Natalya’s disappearance. The hackers and investigators validated my instincts and cleared my brother. Ange didn’t answer my calls because he was staking out one of Turo’s crew. He suspected something big was going down. I still held him accountable for letting two of our capos conspire underneath his nose. I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him.
I walked to the sink and washed the blood from my arms and hands. I would do a thorough scrubbing later. “If anything comes up, I’ll leave the interrogation up to you, but I want it recorded.”
Ange dipped his chin briefly. “You’re going back to the mansion?”
I shut off the water and leaned against the sink, my head bowed. “Elias cannot lose another parent to this.” My molars ground against each other, unable to say more.
It had been a bloody week, and I was no closer to finding Natalya. But I realized that my rage had slowly morphed into feelings of nothingness.
This had to stop.
My son needed his father.
