Marge’s eyes were wild. She looked as if she was on drugs, her pupils blown, bouncing all over the place. “Emme. For God’s sake. Do you know what he’ll do to me? I don’t know where these girls are being held. I don’t know anything at all. I managed Miceli’s club for him. That’s all I did.”
Val nodded to the men holding Marge, and one produced a syringe. She screamed and tried kicking, but he avoided her swinging foot easily. The other man held her head while the first one plunged the needle into her neck. The drug didn’t take effect immediately, but her guards continued walking her to the door.
“One minute, sir,” Luca said.
“Everyone out,” Valentino said. “We’re going to blow the place, so make sure you’re all clear. Get out.”
Dario waited, eyes meeting his. Both men knew he was afraid to turn around and look at Emmanuelle. She was still there, right behind him. She hadn’t moved a muscle. Hadn’t changed position. All around them, the building was emptying, but his woman, Mariko, and her brothers remained. He knew her brothers were waiting to ensure Emme left.
Stefano was in front of him. He put one hand in the air and turned his finger in a circle. Instantly, the Ferraros were gone. Including his wife. He felt her absence. Technically, she was supposed to stay in the shadows. She was part of Stefano’s crew, not his. She wasn’t riding in his vehicle with him. They were raiding Miceli’s many businesses, and the Ferraros were going ahead of them. Emme was part of them.
Valentino cursed under his breath as he walked out of that hellhole with Dario. He just wanted to check in with his wife before she left. Make certain she was all right. Make certain they were all right. Was that too fucking much to ask? He walked across the parking lot, not in the least upset that they were going to take down the monstrosity of a club. The women had been removed from the cages and taken to the medical facility where they’d be taken care of before Val could send them into the rehabilitation programs. He would have to know who had families and who didn’t. Bernado would check into it.
The regular strippers had been told to go home after Bernado checked out their phones. None of them had ties to Miceli or Marco. They just wanted out. They’d gone to the club in the hopes of making a living and had ended up working for practically nothing. They had been treated despicably by Miceli’s sons and men. Marge or her bouncers hadn’t protected them from the customers or clients. They were pretty miserable and seemed happy enough to lose their jobs.
Valentino slid onto the leather seat and pulled out his phone, staring down at it. Emmanuelle didn’t carry her phone into the shadows. She did wear a wire made of some kind of natural element her brother Giovanni had come up with. He liked to “tinker” with electronics. Still, it didn’t afford them any privacy.
They were three blocks away when the series of explosions went off, and they were massive. Orange, red and black smoke and flames rolled high into the sky. There was satisfaction in knowing that the dungeon and the cages hiding their vile secrets were gone for good. Miceli and his sons had no way to use the club again for any purpose.
He took a deep breath and tried to relax as the car took him toward their next location. He would give anything to have Emmanuelle in the car beside him. No, on his lap. He always liked her curled up on his lap. She never started out that way, but she ended up that way.
Emme. Princess. He’d spent hours at night when he couldn’t sleep reaching for her. Visualizing the pathway of their shared nerves together. To him, that center was like a heart with arteries and veins flowing in every direction, carrying their life’s blood to each other. I need you right now. He was so used to her eluding him. Slipping away.
He rubbed the wedding band sitting on his finger and then twisted it back and forth, aching for her. For a whisper of an answer. He detested that she’d had to hear anything Marge had to say, or be anywhere near the woman.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Val. You look like some lovesick bull who just got his balls whacked off.”
“Shut the fuck up, Dario,” he snapped at his cousin. “You know you’re capable of falling in love, whether you want to believe it or not.”
Dario stared at him for a few minutes and then nodded slowly. “I’m not going to deny that it is a possibility. A slim one. It would take the right person, but I’d fall hard if it happened. The difference, Val, is I’d be damn careful not to let her see that shit. And I’d never let anyone else see it. You know how vulnerable she makes you? Someone sees the way you look at her, or sees the way you do that …”
Dario leaned forward, glancing toward the front of the car, and then he indicated the way Val had his hand wrapped around his wedding ring. Dario sat back on the seat again and shook his head.
“Not planning on giving any woman of mine the upper hand, which you handed to Emme on a platter. She’s already going to give you enough trouble without that. Now we both have to watch her like a fucking hawk. Add to that, you put a target on her back. Not happy about it.”
Valentino had to agree. He wasn’t happy about it, either. “She was never going to sit on the sidelines, Dario. She wasn’t born for that.”
Dario sighed. “I get that. It’s called negotiations. You don’t just hand her the win.”
“We’re married. It isn’t some kind of game, with one of us winning and one of us losing.”
“You don’t think so? I can just about guarantee it is.”
“You have a strange view of marriage.”
“Not marriage. The battle between a man and a woman.”
“Dario.” Val hit his head on the back of the leather seat three times. “There’s no hope for you. You have such a skewed view of relationships. Why should it be a battle?”
“Because it is. Because if she gets the upper hand the way Emme has, she could die, Val, and then you’ve lost everything. You’re going to die. You and I, we don’t do anything by halves. When we take down a fucking enemy, we rip out their heart and soul so they don’t have a chance of ever coming back at us.”
Valentino knew it was true. They were loyal to a fault. And they loved with everything they were. And he loved Emmanuelle Ferraro Saldi.
“When we were on the plane going to Vegas and Stefano made the comment about not fucking up my relationship with Emme by being too overprotective, at first I thought he was giving me advice because she’s trained as an assassin and isn’t ever going to be happy sitting at home. I already knew that. It doesn’t make me happy, but I thought we could use that. Take her to the meetings with us, have our ace in the hole, so to speak.”
Dario nodded, his dark eyes serious. “Yeah, there’re a lot of ways Emmanuelle moving around in the shadows can be an asset as long as she stays there.”
“Then I thought about it. Emme’s had bodyguards on her, serious ones, her entire life. You’ve seen them. I’d give anything to have Emilio and Enzo training our people. They don’t leave anything to chance. They don’t make mistakes. The only way Emmanuelle ever got away from them is moving through the shadows. That’s how she came to me at the lake house, or any of the other places we met. She didn’t outwit her bodyguards, she slipped into a shadow and disappeared. They can’t follow her into them.”