“He’s a good man.” Vittorio stood for a moment, his gaze on Val. “We didn’t want him for you, Emmanuelle, because he’s hard as steel. He’s never going to bend when it comes to taking care of you. He’ll be like Stefano with Francesca or like me with Grace. You’re his world. His entire world. We look like we have different worlds, but really, they aren’t. You know that, right?”
She nodded slowly. “He is a good man. We have to be careful though. I know that we do. The shadows work differently for our families.”
“There will be times when he’ll have to make hard decisions you won’t always agree with, honey, but you have to back him up. You have to love him through them even though it hurts like hell to give up your freedom or choices. Promise me if you have trouble with that, you’ll come to me or Grace. We’ll help you. You can talk freely to us. I give you my word of honor. I’ll always be for your union, your marriage.”
She wrapped her arm around her brother’s waist, her gaze on her man as he got closer to the apartment building. In another minute, she would be in the shadow tube, taking that shadow right inside with the first wave of her family to dispense with as many of Miceli’s guards as possible at the entry points to clear the way for Valentino’s army.
“Thank you, Vittorio. That means the world to me.” It did. Having her brother give his word was huge. She’d never forget it, and more, she knew she’d need someone to talk to occasionally. She didn’t try to fool herself into thinking marriage to Valentino would be easy.
“Let’s do this,” Vittorio said and stepped into the shadow.
She followed him in, and the little feeder tube wrenched her apart, seemingly pulling her skin from her bones and her hair from her scalp. If she wasn’t careful, it would pluck her eyes from her head. How could she ever explain the sensations to Val, tell him what it was like inside a shadow, traveling at a high rate of speed? Explain that it was dangerous for a child, yet if he wanted his child to learn, that was exactly when it was best to teach them, when they were very, very young.
She barely had time to put the brakes on or she would have slammed into Vittorio’s broad back as he stopped in the mouth of the tube to orient himself before he chose his targets and another shadow inside the apartment in order to best help the coming army. The moment her brother was out of the way, Emmanuelle did the same, all business.
She removed three guards, one at a door, one at a window and one roving. She moved on to the next room. Her family went room by room, floor by floor. Already, Valentino’s men were inside, engaging with the enemy. She tried not to think about the sound of gunfire and the screams of dying men as she moved through the building.
The stench of mold and urine was sickening. The idea of young children being subjected to this horrible place disgusted her. The dog crates were on the second floor. The children had been put in various rooms, including bathrooms and closets, throughout the second and third floors. She counted nine boys. The oldest appeared to be ten, the youngest perhaps four. The conditions of the cages and the floor beneath them sickened her. Some of the boys had bottles of water inside the cage; others had none. The boys had bruises on their bare cheeks and legs and their dirty faces. Her stomach plummeted.
There were eight girls locked in individual dog crates. These children all seemed to be very young, no more than six to three. They seemed eerily silent to her. Their little bodies were dirty, bruised. One or two rocked back and forth, staring sightlessly. She turned away, her heart pounding.
Vittorio reached for her, but she avoided his hand. She couldn’t bear to be touched right then. She didn’t want any act of kindness, not when babies had suffered so long without hope and the perpetrators were right downstairs. She felt that she could forgive Valentino anything for the rest of their lives. He had been working on trying to follow this trail for years. She could see why. Who did this kind of thing? Monsters. True monsters. They had to be stopped in any way possible.
Emmanuelle went down to the first floor, trying to keep her body from trembling and the rage under control. She’d experienced anger, she had a temper, but she’d never felt anything remotely like this emotion in her life. She wanted to plunge a knife straight through Miceli Saldi’s heart. Not once, but over and over. Not deep, but shallow, so he felt each strike, once for each of those poor little children locked in those crates.
For the first time in her life, she thought she was capable of going into one of those secret rooms deep under the ground Stefano had where he locked away a prisoner to extract information needed to find a hostage fast. She wanted to be the one to slice through Miceli or Angelo’s skin and do it over and over until they suffered what these children had suffered.
Valentino looked up as she walked toward him and the two prisoners. She stepped over bodies, not even looking at them as she approached. Levi and Axel closed in on her from either side. Vittorio was behind her. She felt him at her back, and the two men at her sides, but she kept walking with determined purpose.
Miceli and Angelo had been attempting bravado with Valentino and the others, but something in her expression wiped the smirks from their faces. Stefano suddenly moved to intercept her direct path. He positioned himself just to the right of the prisoners. Ricco stood to the left of them. She kept walking, covering more than half the room at exactly the same pace.
As she stepped over another dead body, she saw a knife on the floor inches from a hand. She bent and smoothly palmed it, never breaking stride. Valentino moved to intercept her.
“I need them alive, baby,” he murmured softly as he came up to her, standing directly in her path, his fingers very gently settling around her wrist.
“I’ll leave them alive.” She lifted her gaze to his. “I promise.”
“I know you would,” he said, his voice still velvet soft, as gentle as ever. “I need you to give me the knife. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, but I have to do it. Or Dario. It’s a matter of a promise we made.” The pads of his fingers trailed over her lips and then down her chin. He caught her chin and tilted it. “I swear to you, baby, I’ll do what you ask me to do, but this is something I can’t give you.”
“Those children, Valentino.” She didn’t want her voice to break. She didn’t want Miceli or Angelo to see her break down. “What they’ve done to those children. That trauma will never go away. Never. The scars will be there for life …” She broke off and raised her gaze to Dario, who watched her impassively with his dark, dark eyes.
They stood in silence for what seemed forever. She allowed Valentino to take the knife from her. “Find out who is behind this, Val. Don’t let either of them die until they tell you.”
She had to blink several times to keep water from her eyes.
He brushed his lips over hers. “We’re taking them to the interrogation rooms now. I give you my word, they won’t go easily, and we’ll get a name.”
“And we find a way to help those children.”
“Stefano will help as well. They’ll have the best care.” Val looked over her head at his men. At her brother.
Emmanuelle felt a touch on her arm, and her brother escorted her out, with Levi and Axel on either side of her.