“Marcello!”
Her stern voice makes me stop midway down the hall, and I stare down at my own two feet and the tiles in front of me. I always hated coming here when my mother forced me to. Now I remember why.
“You tell me right now … Why?” Andrea calls.
She always had her way of making us talk.
Even Camilla, the wife to the Italian Don, would answer when she called.
There is power in these halls.
Not the power of guns or money, but the power of a woman voicing the will of God.
Clenching my teeth, I answer, “I have her.”
I can’t bear to look at her.
“What do you mean?”
I glance at her over my shoulder, saying through gritted teeth, “She’s mine, and I’m not letting her go.”
And I’ll be damned if that’s a sin.
The ride home is over in a snap. It barely registers with me that the car has stopped. That’s how buried I am in my own thoughts about Harper … and the role she plays in this city.
Still, I get out of the car and slam the door shut behind me. I go inside and get to my study, where I pick up a bottle of whiskey and pour myself a glass so I can brood in front of the fireplace. Even though there’s no fire crackling, looking at the soot is enough of a distraction so I can gather my thoughts.
As I take a sip of my whiskey, my phone suddenly rings. I pick up, barking, “Yes?!”
“Come quick, Marcello,” Claudio pants into the phone. “We’ve been hit.”
I don’t say another word. I hang up the phone and race to the garage, where I climb into my fastest car and take off with screeching tires. He texts me the address on the way. It’s one of our warehouses near the docks, a place we hold all kinds of valuable products, both legal and illegal.
When I arrive, the whole place is burning.
A massive column of dark smoke reaches up to the sky. I’m too late to investigate it—the first responders have already arrived. Red and blue lights flash everywhere in the afternoon sun. A man in uniform unspools caution tape around the perimeter of the scene.
“Fuck,” I hiss under my breath.
As Claudio nears my car, I roll down the window. He jerks his head toward a back alleyway to the side of the warehouse. “I’m parked back here. Come, get in my car. Giovanni found a survivor, one of our men, and he’s taken him to a nearby safe house. He can tell us what he saw.”
I leave my car behind, and we drive in Claudio’s vehicle to a nondescript office building half a mile away. One of my men stands outside, smoking while he guards the entrance. He opens the door for us so we can go inside.
We find Giovanni standing next to a man lying on a couch. The man’s clothes are singed black, and his face is smeared with soot. He’s groaning in pain from the burns he’s suffered. When he sees me enter, he tries to say something, but his words come out slurred.
“Water,” I order, snapping my fingers. “Get the man some fucking water.”
Giovanni nods and strides out of the room. He returns a moment later with a water bottle. I take it from his hand and kneel at the side of the injured man.
I tilt the water bottle to his lips. He drinks at it greedily. “Easy,” I tell him. “A little bit at a time.”
He nods slowly, then lets his head fall back against the couch.
“Tell me what happened.”
“It was the—” He starts to cough before he can finish his sentence. It sounds like he’s hacking up a lung. We need to get him medical care, and we’re running out of time to get information out of him.
“He’s all fucked up, boss,” Giovanni mutters from behind me. “He doesn’t know his ass from his elbows right now.”
“Shut up,” I snap. I turn my attention to the man once more. “Who was it?”
He coughs, blinks, and takes another sip before clearing his throat and trying again. “It was the—the… the Russians,” he manages to choke out. Getting those few words out saps the last of his energy. His eyes close, and this time, I fear they will not open again.
I stand slowly. It feels like a fist squeezing at my insides.
The Russians? What kind of game is Igor playing? Has he lost his fucking mind?
“Get this man to the hospital,” I bark. I don’t wait around to see my orders executed. Instead, I stride out of the room.
My head is whirling with a thousand conflicting thoughts.
The Russians are attacking me.
Harper is distracting me.
And the date of my electronics shipment arrival is drawing ever closer, like a ticking time bomb I can’t defuse. We still lack the weapons to defend it properly. Which means everything I have—everything I’ve worked for—is balancing on a knife’s edge.