“Maricella,” he exhaled as if it were obvious. “They had her the whole time. They grabbed her in Rome after we moved in together. She was sobbing.”
My brow dropped. “How did she call you? When?”
“About an hour ago. In the van, just before they dropped me at Marco’s gate. They handed me a phone. She was on the other end crying.”
He scrubbed both hands through his dirty hair and paced a few steps away and back again. “She said they cut it out of her so it couldn’t harm the family.” He stopped in front of me and grabbed my shoulders, his eyes wild, hair sticking out all over. “I have to find her, Luc. You have to help me find mia moglie before they kill her.”
His voice was agitated, growing more hysterical by the moment, but in his desperate eyes I saw truth. A truth that suddenly put everything into perspective about how and why my father had beaten and imprisoned his own son.
“I will.” Heart racing, I squeezed his arms. “Just give me a few minutes to get dressed.” I looked to Marco. “Natalie—”
“We’ll take her up to the main house. She’ll stay with Fee.”
I nodded and turned back toward the tent. My heart stuttered when I spotted Natalie standing in the doorway with the sheet wrapped around her, watching us with wide and frightened eyes.
I crossed toward her, stepped into the tent with her so the door flaps fell closed behind me, and pulled her into my arms.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“I know.” I held her close as she trembled against me, hoping to alleviate her worry, desperate to calm my own. But I couldn’t get Dante’s words out of my head, and I was scared to death about what it all meant.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I said into her hair, telling myself if I believed it, it would be. “But I have to go help Dante right now.”
“Of course.” With her hands pressed to my chest, she drew back and looked up at me in the candlelight. “What can I do to help?”
“Let me take you up to the main house. I don’t want you staying out here alone. You’re safe on the property, but—”
“I don’t want to be here without you.”
I breathed a little easier, knowing she wasn’t going to argue about this. Pressing a kiss to her forehead, I said, “I’m sorry our night just got hijacked.”
“It’s okay.” She leaned into me. “We have lots of nights ahead. And you can make it up to me in the morning.”
I lifted my hands to her face, lowered my mouth to hers, and kissed her sweet lips. “I will, angioletto. I promise I will.”
I just hoped that we found Maricella by morning. And that what we found didn’t shatter the happiness Natalie and I had finally discovered in each other.
We’d been searching for hours with no sign of Maricella’s car.
Dante swore Maricella had told him she was driving south, away from our parents’ villa when she’d called him in the middle of the night.
Marco and I had both called her cell, but she hadn’t answered, so Marco had contacted a friend who’d been able to pinpoint a triangular location based on her cell phone pings. It had given us a thirty-mile radius to check south of the estate, but we’d been over nearly every road and highway in the last few hours and still had come up empty.
“Maybe her cell phone died,” I said from the passenger seat of Marco’s Mercedes, trying to stay optimistic. “Dante, try calling the flat again in Rome to see if she showed up there.”
He used my phone to dial from the backseat, then seconds later in a panicked voice said, “Still nothing. Where the fuck is she? She has to be somewhere close. What if her car broke down, or worse, if she was in some kind of accident? We have to find her. We have to find her soon...”
He was on the edge of hysteria again. I glanced toward Marco, worry threading through me about what Dante would do if we didn’t find Maricella. He’d already gone after my father once. If he tried it again, I had no doubt my father’s men would kill him on the spot.
“Breathe, fratello.” I turned in my seat and patted Dante’s shoulder as he dropped his head into his hands where he sat in the middle of the backseat.
He mumbled frenzied words I couldn’t make out, something he’d been doing the whole time we’d been searching for Maricella, something I hoped was linked to the drugs still in his system and not a sign he was seriously losing it.
“We could sedate him,” Marco said quietly from the front as he drove.
“You brought something?”
“Just in case.”
I didn’t want to think about that just yet. I didn’t want there to be a reason we might need sedatives. I ran my hand down Dante’s arm, searching for something to say to keep his hope alive.
“Luc,” Marco said softly several minutes later.
Realizing Marco had slowed the vehicle, I let go of Dante and turned to look out the windshield, spotting what had caught Marco’s attention.
A car—what looked to be a silver sedan twenty yards ahead—on its side in the ditch.
“Merda,” I muttered under my breath, already reaching for the door handle. “Stop here. And keep him distracted while I check it out.”
Marco pulled the car to the shoulder and shifted into Park. Dante’s head came up, and he asked what was going on, but I didn’t wait around to hear what Marco told him. I climbed out and jogged toward the wreck, illuminated by Marco’s headlights and dawn barely rising in the distance.
Voices echoed from the road, back near Marco’s car. I knew he and Dante were out of the vehicle. I could hear Dante frantically arguing for Marco to let him go. Picking my way down the embankment, I moved around the car, which was banged up on all sides, and made my way toward the driver’s side.
The windshield was busted out. The side window shattered. Kneeling down to get a good look, I glanced into the car and spotted a woman with bloodstained clothing and matted blonde hair twisted at an odd angle in the driver’s seat.
“Merda. Maricella,” I called, reaching into the car as carefully as I could so as not to startle her. Gently, I pushed the hair out of her eyes. “It’s Luc. I’m here to he—”
I froze when I realized her eyes were wide and lifeless and staring straight at me.
My hand immediately dropped to her neck, and I felt everywhere for a pulse, only there was nothing. Nothing but cold skin and an emptiness that sent bile sliding straight up my throat.
“Porca puttana.” Resting my elbow on my knee, I breathed deep and swallowed back the sickness as my mind spun.
I hadn’t seen skid marks on the road. It didn’t look like someone had been following her, but I couldn’t know for sure. It was possible she’d been hysterical trying to get away from my House, that she’d lost control of the car on these windy back roads, but—
Every thought came to a screeching halt when I spotted the marking on her inner forearm where it lay against her thigh. To anyone else, it would look like a peace tattoo—a new peace tattoo judging by the red marks around the ink—but I knew it for what it was.
A marking aimed specifically at me, so I would know without a doubt that she’d been targeted.