Page 87 of Broken Vows

“Don’t kill the fucker yet, Steph,” Matteo warns. “He might still be useful!”

I’m ready to flip. Vincenzo will know. Hemustknow. Or his cronies will. I open the secure steel door with my thumb print, and the guard stands, first wanting to block my way.

“Out. It’s time these fuckers talk for real.”

It’s a shit show in here. The cleaner hasn’t been in yet today, and the four Ukrainians we’ve taken on Friday night have been having the runs. Who knows what they ate before they went in for a job. The room has been hosed down a few times, but fuck it, the stench.

The five men are chained to metal chairs welded to the floor in a circle, their backs facing each other, holes in the seats and buckets underneath. They’re naked and somewhat dead already. Vincenzo’s head bobs as he becomes aware of us, peering at me through his swollen eyes.

I reach for his neck and choke him with my fist. “Tell me where Franco will be taking the women.”

There must be an apartment or something he’s bought or rented or who knows what the fuck. Vincenzo wheezes in a shallow breath and manages to shrug his shoulder.

“Think about it.” I wait until his eyes bulge before I let go. I suppress the urge to punch him, but there are four more guys in the room, and these are local, for what it’s worth.

“Keep your fucking cool,” Matteo bites out, a warning hand on my shoulder. Unlike that time where I kicked Tatiana’s assailant into the afterlife, destroying his insides in a tit-for-tat move, I have no objections to strangle these men with my bare hands.

“This is fucking war, Matteo,” I snarl. “Fucking war, do you understand? With everybody who is helping that fucker.He has my wife!” And they still don’t know what Franco Fiore is capable of.

“Don’t finish them off yet, then,” he says. “We’ll smoke them out and eliminate them, but this isn’t over until it’s over.”

I’m interrogating the second-last guy, now on the brink of losing my shit completely, when Luca’s phone rings.

“Yeah, Benedict? You have? Send it through. We’re on our way.”

With a last squeeze to the fucker’s throat, I turn to face my twin. “This better be good news.”

Luca’s phone pings a message, and he tilts his screen. “The footage is about two hours old.Thisis Franco Fiore. He disguised himself. And he’s brought a woman with him. That’s why we overlooked him.”

Fucking rookie mistake.

I glare at the screen as the video plays, both Matteo and Luca watching, too. That could be anybody. The man in jeans and a plaid shirt with a fucking Stetson hat and cowboy boots gives zero Italian Mafia vibes. No visible bodyguards and not a tattoo in sight, even on his hands, but the woman he’s holding onto gives the game away. He’s walking fast, and she’s lagging half a step behind, carrying a guitar case. It’s her face that tells the story. She’s petrified, even if she’s trying to hide it.

“What the fuck,” I hiss. “How did they leave the airport?”

“Took a fucking cab, like normal people,” Matteo says as he reads something on his phone. “Come, Benedict is on it. He’s tracing their route and will let us know where to go as he figures it out. They’re not too far ahead of us.”

I’m already dialing Dominic’s number. His security company has cameras on every corner of all our buildings.

“Dom, I need the footage on Matteo’s street,” I bark as he answers.

“Already on it, Steph.”

I bet Matteo already told him to keep eyes on movements from his building.

My heart is in my throat. Gigi is out there with a fucking monster on her trail. We waste precious minutes waiting for Dominic to share his screen with us. When we finally get to the salient portion—camera footage from the street—my body tightens as if fists are punching it from all sides.

Gigi, my darling, beautiful wife, is standing on the curb as a white van rolls up in front of this building. The street is busy. Suits and tourists are walking around, going about their business. It’s peak tourist season in Boston. Four of our security detail are right there, guarding her, ready to pull guns and shoot.

Why the fuck didn’t they notify me? I wasted precious time coming all the way up to Matteo’s apartment when Gigi was probably already in the high rise’s main foyer. She used the building’s general entrance and not Matteo’s private one, side-stepping our security guards and making sure to delay their response. Jesus. My wife thinks on her feet. She must have taken the penthouse’s fucking fire escape which connects with the rest of the building on two floors, and only allows access out of the building, and not in.

And now, she’d said something to them to give them pause. Whatever it was, it was serious, because when one of the van’s double back doors opens, she steps up to look inside, then turns and raises her hands to stop our guards. Something in her stance tells me she’s begging. Begging again for them to do nothing.

Who knows what she sees inside the van, but I can imagine. Automatic rifles aimed into the street. Carla at the back of the van and that lunatic holding a gun to her head.

Gigi climbs inside, the door shuts, and the van pulls away.

“Track that fucker,” I bark. “We’re going on a road trip.”

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