Page 146 of Filthy Liar

They’d gone numb, so hopefully they didn’t have a damn shootout while I was still tied to this damn chair.

He was beat to shit and looked like hell, but it was like he barely felt it from the way he was moving.

Then I noticed his goon by the door with his arms crossed, Stefano’s face paling slightly.

“Elio, I?—”

The man cursed him out in Italian, I assumed, his face full of anger as he stared his boss down.

I jerked when Dante dropped his hands to my wrists to untie me, having no problem showing where his loyalty laid.

Apparently, it wasn’t going to be with his father.

Ander

We were almost at the location when my phone buzzed, and I glanced down to find live footage playing. My heart hammered at seeing Zavier tied to a chair, Elio smacking him around.

They hadn’t gotten serious yet, but they would.

“What is it?” Knox asked from the driver’s seat, his eyes on me in the rearview.

It had taken two seconds to update them at the compound before we were piling into vans and hitting the road, the hours feeling like days.

Raven and the guys were in the van with Knox and I, Beckett and Maddox with us too. Rory and some of her guys were in the other vans with the Thieves, and hopefully, it would be enough to overpower Stefano’s men.

“I’ve got a live feed,” I answered, flicking my gaze back down and turning the volume up.

“Stop playing dumb with me. You know exactly what information I’m talking about, Lopez,” he stated once Elio had left them alone. The van was quiet as everyone listened, trying to hear what was being said.

My phone only went so loud, but the footage was surprisingly clear.

The back and forth wasn’t a surprise, whatever his problem with Zavier was, was obviously one-sided. The deal he claimed he had with Zavier confused me, but it seemed to confuse Zavier just as much, which was good.

I trusted him, but seeing how confused he was just cemented the fact that Stefano was acting fucking crazy.

The voices were quiet for a second before Stefano raised his voice again.

“No, I specifically dealt with Zavier Lopez, not Jeremy. You can’t pull that trick on me,” he snorted. “I worked with you for years, so I think I know who I was dealing with.”

“Jeremy?” Raven asked from her seat beside Reid, her eyes wide. “Why are they talking about him? He’s been dead for over a year now.”

“That might be the case, but from the sounds of things, he pretended to be Zav in a business deal,” I answered, my thoughts confirmed as they kept talking.

It had all been a misunderstanding, I fucking knew it.

I rolled my eyes as Stefano started the same old argument about how I was apparently letting Zavier dick me down in my spare time, but my blood turned cold when Stefano kicked the chair over and exploded at him.

“He doesn’t fucking know about the ones we sold that belonged to my men! He helped Elio look for his wife for months when she went missing. He had no fucking idea it was us!”

“You sold one of your men’s wives?”

“To the buyer you brought me!”

I almost snapped my phone as I clenched my hand around it, fury filling me.

Elio had been devastated, he still hadn’t lost hope that she’d come home one day. They had a rare type of love for being in the mafia.

Where a lot were business deals and arranged marriages, theirs was pure and real.

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