Page 69 of Avenging Kelly

“I was ambushed, drugged, and kidnapped. Those people”—I pointed toward the bodies of Miguel Montero and Bess Trudeau—“are running some sort of baby black market, and they got the brilliant idea that I have a baby they’ve pre-sold. The mastermind, Phillippe Trudeau, took off, I guess. In all the confusion, I couldn’t fucking tell you what happened,” I answered the uniformed Hoboken rube standing in front of me. He seemed to have some sort of fetish for the taste of lead as he stuck out his tongue to wet the small pencil he was using to write in one of those policeman’s-special notebooks one sees on television.

A young Hoboken cop walked up to the officer talking to me. “Sir, we found this outside, taped to the building.”

My officer—a sergeant, if I was judging the stars and stripes on his black uniform properly—took the evidence bag from the younger guy and studied its contents for a good minute before he looked at me. “This mean anything to you?”

He flipped the bag my way, and I took it, seeing block printing on a piece of white paper.

GABRIELE,

THE FIGHT REMAINS BETWEEN OUR FAMILIES—NO OUTSIDERS.

WE HAVE THE GIRL AND WANT TO RECLAIM OUR FAMILY.

A TRADE IS ONLY FAIR.

YOUR UNCLE, FRANCESCO

Well, that couldn’t be good news…

27

KELLY

“That was London. He’s taking a cab back and said he’ll meet us here. He told me I need to call Gabby in,” Smokey, our man in charge, stated.

Gabby was still on paternity leave, and Smokey had done everything he could to keep him out of the fray until London could talk someone into sending a picture to Smokey’s phone of a note that was found outside a warehouse in Hoboken. It was addressed to Gabriele, and it made no sense to me, but Smokey, Casper, Dom, and Austin seemed to believe it to be significant.

“Do we need to check on our guest?” I asked. We had Ritchfield in some sort of bunker in the basement of that enormous Victorian house they’d turned into an office building. I was truly impressed. She was secured to a gurney, which really pissed her off, but it was a better choice than being wrapped in duct tape from head to toe with only her mouth uncovered, as I’d suggested.

“No. She’s fine, and if she isn’t?” Smokey shrugged as he walked away with his phone to his ear.

“We should knock her out like Mateo did to those… Well, I know we have meds in the fridge down there that will knock someone out. Hell, we’ve got meds down there that will kill someone, though disposal becomes a problem,” Dominic piped up.

I glanced at Austin, who was staring at his husband for a moment before he chuckled. “Let’s not brag, Willow.” Casper and I laughed with them.

I had to wonder what the hell was really going on at that warehouse where they’d taken London, but for the moment, Trudeau was in the wind and that was all I could think about. I had the feeling he knew the walls were closing in on him. Unfortunately, I was guessing he didn’t have a chip in his neck so we could track him.

Smokey came back into the gym where we were all sitting on various pieces of workout equipment, his phone still in his hand. “We have an additional problem.” When he looked directly at me, I felt my stomach drop.

He continued. “While Frankie Man’s goons were so graciously rescuing Narc, another group of Mangello goons took your niece, Daisy. Frankie’s people want to trade her for Dylan and Searcy.”

I shot up from the weight bench where I was sitting and stared at him, waiting for the sick, fucking punchline. When none came, I lost my mind. “What happened to Mateo and Shay keeping my niece safe?!”

My head was spinning. This wasn’t supposed to be happening.

“What about Mia and my mom?” I asked, trying to regain control of my temper.

“They’re fine. Someone broke into their home and took Daisy, waking no one,” Smokey stated.

Casper hopped up and walked over. “No! I wired that fucking place myself. No way could they have overridden my security system.” I could see he was as pissed as me, though for very different reasons.

Suddenly, the door burst open and Gabby walked in, his phone to his ear. “Goddamn, Tommy. How could we lose all of them? This is fucking ridiculous. Nat Crossley tells me that—”

“I don’t trust that guy,” Dom hissed where only Austin and I could hear him.

Casper, who was a powerful man in his own right, stepped in front of Gabby and pecked his finger on the big man’s chest. “You, too? You guys went to Crossley behind my fucking back, and now look at this shit. Crossley has access to the security schematics for all of our homes. Giuseppe insisted those things be housed on the mainframe in Italy in the event of an emergency, so I sent all of them.”

I stepped forward and got between them. “That sounds like an internal problem. I want my niece back. What do we have to do to make that happen?”

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