Page 60 of Borrowed Bride

“We need to get you out of here. Now.”

24

MARCO

“No one.”

My father’s lie weaves an unruly path through my mind as I stand on the balcony, observing the sunrise over a smoldering city. He lied right to my face and told me no one had been at the door last night. He even seemed irritated at being questioned.

But I saw her on the security cameras.

Tara.

I haven’t seen her in years. She was gone by the time I came out of my coma, and when I queried the whereabouts of the people who ran with us at the estate, my father put it simply: dead and gone. Just like Gianna.

But Tara is clearly very much alive.

As horns blare far below and sirens rise up through the morning smog, I study the printed screenshot I took from the security footage. There’s no mistaking her slender build, but how did she find us? And why was she here?

Why would my father lie?

A quick search through the system revealed that Tara did appear to fall off the map shortly after the explosion at my safehouse. Leonardo’s men raided my home not long after he sent his assassin after me so she must be working for Leonardo.

No one else hates me as much as he does.

And I him.

I’m convinced he also had something to do with the explosion at my safe house, but that mystery refuses to unravel itself. If I get my hands on him again, I’ll beat it out of him right before I kill him.

“Tara,” I murmur, staring at the picture. “How do you fit into all of this?”

Just as I’m considering asking my father one more time, my phone buzzes to life in my pocket, and the strained voice of one of my remaining lieutenants scrambles across the line.

“Boss! Boss, we have him! I see him right now?”

“Who?”

“Leonardo!”

Tara’s picture ends up crumpled in my pocket and the call becomes a shared video. Through the shaky hands of my lieutenant, sure enough Leonardo Simone is deep in conversation with someone outside one of his last remaining clubs. It seems my fires have finally brought the cockroach up for air.

“You watch him,” I order, racing through the apartment and grabbing my car keys. “You watch him and if you lose him, I will rip out your eyeballs and shove them so far down your throat you’ll end up with four fucking testicles, do you understand me? Watch him!”

“He’s still there, boss,”my lieutenant gasps in fright after I hit my knuckles sharply against the rolled-up window of his car. “He hasn’t left, I swear.”

“He better be,” I snap down at him. “Because if I go in there and he’s slipped out the back, losing your eyes will be the least of your worries.”

“He’s there, I swear. See, even his car is still there.” The man points across the street to the black sedan I saw earlier, so I nod and unholster my gun.

“Boss, don’t you want to wait for backup? Anton is five minutes out!”

“I’ve waited long enough.”

Leonardo has been in hiding for almost eighteen months and I won’t let that snake slip through my fingers again. This is it. This is where I will kill him.

And finally avenge Gianna.

Leaving my lieutenant to wrestle out of his seat belt in a vain attempt to come and help me, I race across the street and hop up onto the sidewalk. Then I gently test the handle on the door to the club.

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