Page 57 of The Fighter

I fight the urge to burst into tears.

“Ali,” a warm, kind voice says. Tomas puts his arm around my waist. “It’s going to be okay, dolcezza. We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”

He killed the men who tried to abduct me. I should be intimidated by the way he took the law into his own hands and terrified by his remarkable lack of remorse. But right now, when the very foundations of my world are dissolving, Tomas is here, his arm around me, offering me the support I desperately need.

“It was here,” I whisper. “The osteria I ate at last night. It was in this empty storefront. I swear it was. Am I losing my mind, Tomas?”

“No,” he says. “Joao ran the fingerprints of the dead men. They’re career criminals from Rome, available for hire to the highest bidder. They’ve both served time for assault. One of them had twenty thousand euros on his person. We think it’s the down payment for your abduction.” He clenches his right hand into a fist. “Your friend Gemma was smart enough to pay them in cash. There’s no paper trail for Valentina to follow, nothing to help us understand why.”

I stare at him helplessly.

“I checked the security cameras at the gym,” he continues. “Gemma was there twice, but both times, she kept her head down and her face obscured. She knew where the cameras were, and she took care to stay concealed. And Matteo called me ten minutes ago to confirm that you were drugged. Your urine sample had GHB in it. This wasn’t random. This was the work of professionals.” He guides me to a bench and makes me sit down. “Why would anyone go after you?”

“I don’t know,” I burst out. “This doesn’t make any sense. I’m nobody.”

He laughs softly. “Ah, Alina,” he says, turning into me and cupping my chin with his callused hand. “You are a firecracker. A meteor blazing across the night sky. A tempest, wild and powerful. You are many beautiful things, dolcezza, but the last thing you are is nobody.”

I stare at him in disbelief. Those words… No man has ever seen me the way Tomas does. No man has ever looked at me the way he’s looking at me now, as if I’m the most important person in his world.

And I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to process any of it. The last twenty-four hours have been too tumultuous. I feel achy and needy and deeply unsettled.

I wet my lip with my tongue. I need to focus on the abduction. Not on Tomas or the way he’s looking at me. I need to stop remembering how amazing this morning was. I need to ignore the ache in my core, the hunger in my blood. “Could it be Simon?” I don’t know why my former partner might want to kidnap me. None of this makes any sense. “Or Ciro del Barba? Maybe he was angry that you bet on me?”

“Antonio talked to del Barba this morning,” Tomas responds. He’s still cupping my chin. I want to close the distance between us. Stand on my tiptoes and kiss his lips. “It wasn’t him. As for Groff, Leo has him under observation. He’s currently doing his best to seduce a Russian heiress, but he doesn’t realize she’s also a con artist. It’s not him either.” He drops his hand, and I feel its absence like a loss. “Think, Ali. Has anything changed in your life in the last couple of weeks? Anything at all, no matter how unimportant.”

“You bought Simon’s share of the gym.”

“My enemies, such as they are, wouldn’t target you. That’s not how these things are done.”

“Wait, you have enemies?”

He shrugs. “Not really. My former boss, Alonzo d’Este, wasn’t happy when I announced my intention to leave Valencia, but he’s retired now. His son Gabriel is in charge, and I don’t think we’re enemies. In any case, abductions aren’t his style. If Gabriel wanted to target me, he would ruin me financially.”

There’s so much to digest there that I don’t even try.

“I don’t know what else is new. Lidya got me into del Barba’s underground fight, but you’ve already dismissed him from the list of suspects. The only other thing that’s happened is…” My voice trails off. It’s not that, is it? It can’t be.

Tomas’s expression sharpens. “The only other thing that’s happened is… what?”

“I heard from my father.” Every nerve in my body is on edge. “My mother never told me anything about him, but two weeks ago, I got a letter from him.” A letter that was hand-delivered to my gym. At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it. But now… “He enclosed a photo of him and my mother, taken more than twenty-five years ago. He said he wanted to get to know me better, and he invited me to visit him in Palermo.” Disbelief wars with suspicion, and disbelief wins. Of course it’s not my father. All my life, I’ve dreamed about him finding me. Telling me he loves me. Telling me he wishes he could have been around while I was growing up, but he’s going to make up for all his years of absence. All my life, I’ve wandered around with a tear in my heart, one waiting to be healed by his love. “He can’t have anything to do with this. He just cannot. That makes no sense.”

“What’s his name?”

“Vidone Laurenti.”

Tomas’s shoulders stiffen, and his face wipes free of expression. “Vidone Laurenti,” he repeats flatly. “Alina, Vidone Laurenti is part of the mafia. He’s the underboss of VDL, a mafia organization in Sicily.” He takes a deep breath. “I think you’d better come with me.”

38

TOMAS

Thirty minutes later, Ali and I are seated around a conference table in our headquarters in Giudecca. Antonio Moretti, the padrino of the Venice Mafia, is here, as are Dante and Valentina. Joao is here, too. The only member of the inner team missing is Leo, our enforcer.

“Should we get Leo?” Dante asks as we sit down.

Antonio shakes his head decisively. “He doesn’t need to get involved in this mess; he has enough going on right now.” He turns to Ali. “The last few hours must have been quite a shock,” he says sympathetically. “This can’t be easy to process.”

Ali’s been silent the entire way to Giudecca. But at Antonio’s words, her back straightens. “It’s not true,” she bursts out. “My father invited me to visit him. We discussed a trip in November. He told me he was going to try to visit Venice earlier than that. He can’t be responsible for last night. He just can’t be.”

---