Romeo took him driving himself instead of my father, for fairly obvious reasons. No one wants to learn how to parallel park under the threat of a backhand. Romeo was rough on all of us, but I learned later that it was mostly for the same reason my mom was—to spare us from the boiling wrath of my father.
No emotion shows in Santo’s eyes, after decades of schooling sentiment and feeling.
Santo might be playing this off, but he knows this was personal. He knows it. We both do.
He wraps his fingers roughly around my elbow. Calloused, rough fingers touch bare skin. Gentle words and soft touches would repulse a woman like me, but his hard grip… I ignore the flare of warmth where he touches me and internally scold myself, while he escorts me to the waiting caravan of cars outside the warehouse door.
He opens the door to one of The Family’s large, armored black SUVs, missing nothing, his eyes like a hawk’s, zeroing in on anything that breathes within a twenty-foot radius of us. If there was an invisible ghost tracking me, he’d see it.
Several of the Capos march out first to his car while sirens blare in the distance, probably firefighters coming to put out the damn fire. Santo doesn’t even look at the rising flames. My throat aches.
We’re out of here.
Santo shoves me in the back of the car roughly, as if proving to my brothers that I mean nothing to him. I bang my knee on the door and shoot him an angry look, but he only narrows his eyes to slits and buckles me in.
“Push me, Rosa. Fuckin’ dare you,” he says under his breath. And nothing’s ever tempted me so much in my life. Maybe it’s his perfect control, the perfect picture of calm, cool, and collected. Maybe it’s because I want to know what he thinks, what he feels inside.
For too long, I’ve wondered if my attraction to him was one-sided. I’ve seen him take so many women to bed over the years, I’ve muted the zing of pain I felt wishing I was the one he paid attention to.
But I didn’t imagine what happened in the warehouse before Romeo was taken. I didn’t imagine any of it.
Orlando and Mario enter the car after us; Tavi, Elise, and the others are in the third car.
“Gun it,” Orlando orders the driver. My belly drops when the huge car peels out of the parking lot, just as a second boom explodes around us.
I gasp and cover my mouth, my eyes scanning all around us, but Santo only shakes his head. “Same car. Ignited fuel line.”
Flames light the sky as the sirens of firefighters grow nearer. Flashes of red and blue light the sky.
Santo grabs his phone and makes a call.
“Lock them down. Tavi will give you direct orders, but I’m calling a soft lockdown now. Yeah. Explosion at Copley, Romeo’s been arrested.” Cursing at the other end of the line. He barks out more orders, then shuts his phone off.
Orlando nods. “Amadeo?”
Santo nods.
I throw my hands up in the air. “Is someone gonna fill me in here or what?”
“We’re expecting another ambush,” Santo says. “We need to call in reinforcements. Tavi’s in command, but any of the made men of the inner sanctum can call a soft lockdown at any time and Tavi’s got his hands full.”
Orlando gives one short nod. “Good call, brother. Good fuckin’ call. Tavi’s on the phone with Flynt and he can only work so fast.”
I want to hold his hand. I want to reach for him, to sit closer to him so I can feel the steady, confident warmth of him beside me. But Orlando and Mario will notice if we do anything more than we’re doing now.
Goddamn it.
“What’s a soft lockdown?” I ask.
Santo looks to me, his piercing blue eyes holding mine. I ignore the way my heart beats faster, and I swallow hard.
“Hard lockdown means there’s an active perpetrator and we’re in imminent danger. Might hit a safe house or barricade in the dungeon until the coast is clear. Soft lockdown means doors are locked and barricaded, and no one goes in or out. Hard lockdown is a defensive move, soft lockdown offensive.”
Santo always prefers taking the offense.
“Why soft lockdown?”
Santo blows out a breath and looks at Orlando and Mario. They both nod.
“Because everyone knows better than to directly attack a made man of The Rossi family,” he says.
“Why?” I ask again.
Santo’s jaw clenches. “You never ask anything, Rosa. You’ve chosen to stay out of it. Why the twenty questions now?”
I look out the window. “Because this feels… different.”
Because if it were Papa taken to jail, I’d rejoice.
But it isn’t Papa.
I love Romeo. And I have a daughter who could be in danger.
Oh my God.
Natalia.
I sit up straight and feel panic hit my chest. “Natalia,” I say in a choked voice, shaking my head. “Her nanny’s useless. I don’t trust her to follow protocol, to make sure that anything’s safe for her.”