Page 76 of Consumed By the Mafia

He almost didn’t hear the burst overhead, above ground, over the way Felicity’s voice carried in the otherwise quiet, cavernous garage.Almost. Ryoma cursed, freezing in place for a second as he looked up, not wanting to make a wrong step.

Felicity squeaked and latched onto his sleeve. “What the hell was that?” Her question was whispered, undeniable discomfort in her voice. She had the phone still raised to her ear.

The building’s main elevator lit, indicating it was in use, at almost the same time as the roof of the parking garage seemed to shake. Small flakes of debris crumbled down.

Fuck.“Bomb,” Ryoma said, the realization dragging the breath from him. Then he sucked it back in and snatched Felicity’s wrist. “Car, now!”

Abigail couldn’t sit still. Her heart was racing a mile a minute. If she had access to a vehicle, she would have left the so-called safehouse ages ago. She hated that Ryoma had gone on his own in the first place, but after she’d gone back for one more quick chat with Silva that anxiety in her chest had exploded. Not unlike the goddamnbombSilva had implied was lying in wait at the tower.

Him with his stupid, racist, kamikaze comment.

Silva had sworn he’d never met Peter personally, but that he’d heard something about a mole who’d been planted in Cristiano’s tower. A mole who had been responsible for setting up a contingency.

She remembered Peter had tried taking her and Ryoma to the tower before. And she remembered Ryoma had thoughtthat was strange. But that had been days ago.How does that make sense?The bomb hadn’t yet gone off, or maybe it was going off as she paced her way up and down the hall of the safehouse-penitentiary. Was Peter just planning to hold them there all this time? Or did Peter have a way to trigger it himself?

Understanding dawned and she flexed her fingers over her eerily silent phone. Peter had been in De Salvo custody since the incident of his capture. She didn’t even know if he was still alive. More than likely, considering his aim and the current reality, Peter knewofthe bomb and had at least a decent idea how to detonate it on-site. Whether he’d been willing to take himself down along with them or there was a time-delay, she might never know. But all of that meant there was one other angle—there was also, almost certainly, a switch which could detonate it remotely. A switch which remained in someone else’s hand.

“Eleonora will only be the start.”Silva’s words whispered through her memory.“Once that domino falls, Coughlan will move. He’ll come for all of them. All the women and children. All at once.”

He’d said it so calmly Abigail had wanted to shoot him in his unblinking face. He clearly thought nothing of the tragedy he described. But she couldn’t kill him—his death belonged to someone else—so she’d done the next best thing. She and Ryoma had put their heads together, analyzing the most blatant vulnerabilities, and he’d taken off to keep Felicity alive while Abigail made calls. Whether anyone would listen to her or not was out of her hands.

She prayed Miguel had at least listened when she’d half-screamed at him to send word out to evacuate that building.

It had been so many minutes since she’d spoken to Ryoma. It felt like hours, maybe days. Her chest ached. If she could justleave,she could do something. She still needed toactuallyarrest people, and frankly she was more inclined to wrap all of the assholes involved in this mess in a shiny bow and dump them at the De Salvo’s doorstep. There were too many assholes in the world. Too many people who didn’t care about the consequences.

She looked down at her still-dark, still-silent phone.Please, please be alive.Would she even be able to justify visiting him in the hospital?

No, probably not.

If it really came to that, she would just do it anyway.

The front door slammed open seconds after Abigail twisted away from the entry, startling her so badly she nearly dropped her phone before she could spin back around. Her eyes blew wide and she froze, confused at the sight of a woman she hadn’t technically met striding inside. Men in black clothes slipped in from behind the woman, spreading out around her but not proceeding further into the building. Two of the men held tight to her side, nearly touching. Every single man had a gun in his hands, but only as they swept across the room for a heartbeat had one been aimed at Abigail.

“Abigail Fitzgerald,” the woman in the surely too-expensive dress said, “I need everything you got from Rodrigo Silva.”

Abigail cleared her throat. “You’re—”

“Iris De Salvo, yes.” The redhead glanced aside. “Get started. Dante won’t want us lingering.”

One of the forwardmost men nodded sharply. “Yes, ma’am.” He and about half of the others strode forward, forcing Abigail to side-step to allow them down the hall without trampling her. A choice she suspected they wouldn’t have hesitated to make.

Abigail steadied herself as best she could. “I recorded everything after Mr. De Salvo left,” she said. “It should already be uploaded.” She raised her phone. “It’s also here.”

Iris inclined her head. “Good. Let’s get going, then.”

What?Abigail hadn’t felt this flustered since her first week on the job. “You want me to go with you? I thought I was supposed to wait—” Her throat constricted. “Is … is Ryoma—”

“We can talk in the car,” Iris said. She swept her gaze over Abigail, something like hesitation flickering in the green. “I hope you’ve made your choice, Abigail. But this is bigger than your personal struggle, and we need to leave. As for what you’re supposed to do, right now, you’re supposed to do your job.” She turned as she spoke, already aiming for the door again. “Impress me.”

twenty-three

Be Okay

There was nothing quietabout the scene in front of the tower. It was a fucking mess, and Ryoma couldn’t help but stare up at the smoke billowing up and out of the burning skyscraper. The sight filled him with more than unease. It pissed him off. It felt like failure. Or maybe that was the scratch in his throat from having inhaled his fair share of that smoke.

“Ryoma.”

He dragged his stare from the chaos of the scene across the road—the firetrucks, the ambulances, the ever-growing crowd of nosy onlookers, the police he sort of felt like pulling aside and questioning with his fists—and found Cris watching him patiently.The man had been a mess when they’d first met up some twenty minutes earlier, not unlike the time Felicity had been abducted. He’d composed himself better, faster, this time. There was no doubt that was thanks to the woman who might have been melting into him, tucked beneath Cris’s arm with her own wedged around his torso.

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