He met my gaze. “Not yours. Mine. You must have gotten it from your nephews when we were at your parents’ house. I just followed the GPS.”
“How’d you even know I’d been abducted?”
“I heard your van’s engine turn on at the same moment the side panel door was slid shut. You couldn’t do both things at once. So I looked out the front window and saw the van driving off with you in the passenger seat, and I recognized the guy in the back of the van as one of my uncle’s men.” As he was talking, he continued to slice at the ropes. When they fell to the ground, I grabbed him and crushed him to me, then gasped at the pain in my midsection.
He pulled back and looked at me closely. “Where are you hurt, Jamie?”
“I got punched in the stomach a few times. My ribs are probably bruised.”
A muscle worked in his jaw as he ground his teeth together. “Come over here and sit down, baby.” He led me to the nearby Packard and opened the passenger door, and I sank gratefully onto the black leather upholstery.
He knelt in front of me and looked me over carefully. And I said, “So, you never mentioned the fact that you have your own personal army.” I tilted my head toward the men he’d brought with him, who were currently rounding up Sokolov’s cohorts, patting each one down, and tying their hands behind their backs.
Dmitri grinned a little. “I don’t. But fortunately, I knew someone who did.” He indicated a tall, good-looking man of about thirty with olive skin and dark eyes, and said, “That’s my friend Dante Dombruso.”
“Dombruso?” I echoed in disbelief. “You got the Sicilian mob to help you?”
“Yup. Your dad was wrong, by the way, we’re not Kindergarten level mafia. We actually run with the big boys.” He actually sounded a little bit proud of that.
“We?” I asked. “Are you more involved with your family business than you let on?”
He gave me an enigmatic smile as he said, “I’m the same man you’ve always known, Jamie.” And he reached up and gently tucked my hair behind my ear. It didn’t really answer my question.
“And Dante agreed to help you out of the goodness of his heart?”
“Well, no. We made a trade. Quite a fair one, I think.”
“What was the trade?”
“Dante and his men agreed to help me get you back in exchange for the family business. And a couple other things.”
“You mean – ”
“They’re taking over the Teplov empire.”
Dante Dombruso came over to us then, holstering twin Berettas into twin shoulder holsters. “Hi. You must be Jamie,” he said, assessing me carefully.
“Hi Dante. Thanks for acting as the cavalry.”
“My pleasure. That was fun.”
I grinned at that. And then I asked, “How did you round up all these men so quickly? I’ve only been here a few minutes.”
“That was pure luck,” Dmitri said. “Dante lives down the street from me, and he happened to be holding a meeting with several of his men at his house tonight. It took very little time to load everyone up and come after you.”
“Ah. So, what’s going to happen with your uncle?” He was currently hogtied on the floor of the warehouse, a few guns pointed at him and one man’s boot resting on the side of his head, glaring at everything and everyone over his broken nose.
“Dante and I talked about that on the drive over. I don’t want him. Dante doesn’t want him. He told me he knows my uncle didn’t kill Pasteretti, by the way – they caught the real killer years ago.” Or so they were told, I thought. “The only one that actually wants him is the SFPD. So we’re thinking we’ll turn him over to the cops, along with a nice, tidy bundle of evidence to put him away for a long time.”
“I thought you didn’t have any evidence,” I said to Dmitri.
“He doesn’t,” Dante said. “I do. I always make sure to keep plenty of documentation on my colleagues. You never know when you might need it.” He grinned a little.
“And his men?” I asked.
Dmitri stood up and gestured toward Sokolov’s thugs, who were rounded up at the rear of the warehouse. “Everyone that works for my uncle – well, not to be a total cliché, but Dante will be making them –”
“Don’t say it!” Dante exclaimed. “Don’t even think about saying ‘an offer they can’t refuse.’ You dork.” He was grinning affectionately now, and I got the feeling there was a history between these two that went a bit beyond friendship.
“Well that’s what they’re doing, isn’t it?” Dmitri demanded, also grinning.
I stood up and felt mildly dizzy, so I sat back down again. Dmitri turned his attention back to me and said, “Baby, do you think you need a doctor?”