Page 109 of Ruthless Guardian

“They better fucking be there, Aldo, or you’re a dead man.”

“I’ll call you back,” he mutters.

“No, I’ll stay on the line.” Paralyzing fear streaks through me, the blood icing in my veins. I’m torn between staying put so I can hear his answer and gunning the Vespa to get across town. I can’t just sit here. I twist the ignition and the engine ignites, shooting us across two lanes of traffic.

Horns blare and shouts echo from the cars behind me as I weave across traffic. I have to get to Isabella. She has to be okay. Why would Massimo do anything to her? It can’t be… There must be some logical explanation.

At this point, I prefer the idea of her in some tawdry motel with her professor than the alternative.

No… do not go there.

She’s fine. She has to be.

“Ferrara, you still there?” I can barely hear Aldo’s voice over the rushing wind.

I press the phone to my ear. “Yeah. Did you find her?”

“No one’s here.”

“You better have some fucking answers for me by the time I get home.” I press the red button and shove the phone into my pocket as terror’s claws rip into my heart.

This cannot be happening. Not again.

“Where the fuck is she?” I roar at Aldo and the remaining guards in the living room of our apartment, which has now becomecommand central. I’ve already questioned every person on staff at the café where they were last scene. Everyone had the same story: Isabella left with Massimo and Alberto nearly two hours ago.

And now they had vanished.

I pace the small living room, my angry footfalls eating up the small space in long strides. Aldo is on the phone with the Kings’ connections in Rome and two of the other guards are out on foot canvasing the neighborhood.

My thoughts flicker back to my meeting with Enrico and what he’d said about the shooting at The Velvet Vault. Isabella’s bodyguard had been killed that night, leaving the position wide open. I still wasn’t sure I believed Enrico’s story. Why go through such lengths? But ifPapàhad…

“Still no sign of Alberto,” Aldo calls out from across the room, jerking me from the dark spiral. He throws his phone on the couch and skulks closer.

“He’s dead,” I mutter. “Don’t waste your time. Isabella is our priority.”

“But if he was with her?—”

“He’s not anymore,” I growl. “Clearly someone took her, and Alberto would have just been deadweight. The question is what role does Massimo play in this? Was he just at the wrong place at the wrong time or did he orchestrate this whole thing?”

“We haven’t found a single thing on the professor. He’s clean.”

“And his assistant?” Maybe there’s a reason he ended up dead on the rooftop.

“I didn’t?—”

“Get on it.”

“Sure thing, Ferrara.” Aldo trudges back to the other side of the room, like the other guards giving me a wide berth. As ifmy beaten, bloody, bruised face wasn’t intimidating enough, the savage scowl has kept them at bay.

I glance out the window and suck in a calming breath. This frenzy isn’t going to help Isabella. I have to stay calm, levelheaded. But all my training, all my procedures went to shit the moment I heard she was gone.

It has to be my father…

The last rays of sunlight dip below the horizon, and the setting darkness mirrors the black void that has become my chest. I thankDiothis is Aldo’s fuck up as much as my own and he’s as wary to call the big boss in Manhattan in the middle of the night as I am. If we don’t find Isabella before dawn, I’ll be forced to make the call that will rain down all hell upon us.

A personal hell I’ll never escape if I lose the woman I love.

Dio, I love her, and I was a fucking idiot not to have said it sooner. What if I missed my chance? My fingers dig into the soft skin at my palm as the encroaching darkness threatens to consume me.

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