Page 81 of The Last Vendetta

“You need to come to the house,” he said. A shuffling sound on his end confused me. Almost like he was covering up his phone and hurrying somewhere.

Is he trying to hide? Trying to sneak around?

“I have information, but it’s better if you come here and see… what I found.”

I agreed and hung up as I sped up even faster. If any cop dared to pull me over, he’d regret it. Nothing could keep me from getting information that would lead me back to Giulia. Nothing.

I braked so hard that rubber peeled and screeched on the drive. Parking haphazardly, I grabbed my phone and ran inside. No guards stopped me. No one called out to me.

I sprinted inside, seeking out Dean. He’d instructed me to come here, but he hadn’t told me where to go.

Calling out for him didn’t seem wise. Since I’d punched Gio, I felt like I’d made myself something of an enemy. I was his son. I was still the second in command, taking over after Luka, but hitting Giovanni was a grievance I would have to answer for. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ordered guards to watch me, to protect himself.

Of course, we’d argue and come to blows, but with my choice to side with wanting Giulia instead of simply nodding and going along with his orders to give up on her, I’d drawn an irrefutable line in the sand between us.

“Renzo.”

I spun, finding Dean jogging toward me through the huge foyer space.

He wasn’t out of breath, but he moved with an implied need to hurry. “This way,” he said with a nod toward another hallway.

I trusted this man, and I didn’t protest when he guided me through the house. Asking him what was going on wouldn’t make a difference now. Without a word, I hustled with him toward the back of the mansion.

He took me down the stairs, and I dreaded the reason he might want me near the cells where we normally locked up traitors and prisoners. It was preferred to move and keep our enemies and foes further from our main and largest home, but the old underground layers that resembled an archaic dungeon had been built many generations ago for a good reason.

“I came back here earlier and saw several soldiers rushing out,” he said, speaking softly and quietly as we slowed in the area of specific cells.

“When I came inside to see why the men might have been running out the entrance that’s only accessible through here, I found this.” He pointed at the floor inside one cell, and I sucked in a breath at the sight of darkness on the cement.

Blood.

Someone had been severely wounded in here. My first thought was Giulia. If she was the one who’d been injured and bleeding out in here…

“Over there.” Dean wasn’t imploring me to look at the large puddles of still-drying blood, but at a small item near the back wall.

I approached it, narrowing my eyes and wondering what he was concerned about.

As I crouched lower, my breath got stuck in my lungs again.

Slowly, I reached out and picked up the tiny diamond stud.

Giulia’s earring. The other half of the pair resided in my pocket. It had come out in the bed at the vacation villa she’d been taken from.

She was here.

I looked back again, chilled by the idea that she could’ve been the person to lose all that blood over there.

“She…”

“I have not seen any sign of her anywhere on the premises,” Dean said as I picked up the earring and paired it with the other one from my pocket.

“As soon as I arrived, I searched for her through all the cells.” He cleared his throat, gesturing for me to follow him out of the empty room.

His report of not finding Giulia anywhere else here should’ve comforted me, but until I saw her and knew she was alive and well, I wouldn’t lose this grip of fear.

We moved so hastily through the holding cells and the corridor that connected them. In our hurry, I knocked against a rudimentary table. Cigars were still smoldering. Numerous bottles of booze still held alcohol. And with a double-take, I spotted the remnant of a line of white powder.

Guards had been in here recently. If Giulia had been brought here, she’d been moved quickly.

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