Page 99 of My Best Friend Is Broken
I clench my phone in my hand. My fingers have gone white. My heart is pounding and my legs are shaking. I’m burning with a pointless need to run all the way home. To tear back to the apartment as fast as I can. To search it. Ransack it. As if I will find Liam just as long as I’m quick enough.
As if I will be able to undo what has already been done.
“Nicolo.” Dario’s voice cuts through my panic. “They’re both gone. Security footage shows them going down to the gym ninety minutes ago. They never came back up.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. Ninety minutes. They’ve been gone for ninety minutes, and we’re only just finding out. Ninety minutes for the Russians to take them God knows where, to do God knows what.
I’m spiraling, dread and panic and guilt crashing over me in waves that threaten to pull me under. This is my fault. I dragged Liam into this world, promised to keep him safe, swore that loving me wouldn’t put him in danger. And now he’s gone, taken by people who will hurt him just to get to me, to get to Dario, to send a message about power and territory and all the bullshit that suddenly seems completely meaningless.
Liam is already so fucking vulnerable. The nightmares, the panic attacks, the way loud noises send him spiraling back to prison. He’s been working so hard to heal, to believe that the world can be safe again, that people won’t hurt him just because they can. He has been clinging on desperately to the fake hope I’ve told him is real.
And now this.
This is going to destroy him. My incompetence, my failure to protect him, is going to shatter every bit of progress he’s made. He’ll never trust me again, never believe that I can keep him safe, never forgive me for being the reason he was taken in the first place.
Even the strongest, feistiest, most well-adjusted person in the world would be irrevocably damaged by being abducted by Russian mobsters. How is Liam ever going to survive this?
“I trusted you to keep Molly safe.” Dario’s voice is harsh, accusatory, and completely justified.
Molly has been taken too. Sweet, kind and lovely Molly, who has been such a good friend to me. Molly, who has also been through hell. Molly, who Dario loves every bit as much as I love Liam.
Something in me snaps. “I trusted myself!” The words come out sharp, almost a shout. “Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I’m not already tearing myself apart over it?”
I start pacing, unable to stand still, unable to do anything productive with the energy that’s burning through my veins like acid.
“Liam is already so very vulnerable. This is going to destroy him. My incompetence has destroyed the man I love, so do your worst to me, Dario. I deserve it. Fucking kill me if you want. It can’t be worse than what I’m already feeling.”
The silence that follows is heavy, broken only by my ragged breathing and the sound of my footsteps wearing a path in Dario’s expensive carpet.
“Nicolo.” Dario’s voice is softer now, the anger draining out of it to be replaced by something that sounds like understanding. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. This isn’t your fault.”
“It is, though. I was supposed to keep them safe. I promised…”
“We both promised. And we both failed.” He runs a hand through his hair, and I can see the same panic in his eyes that’s coursing through my veins. “But falling apart isn’t going to help them. We need to think. We need to plan.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. But the guilt is suffocating, making it hard to breathe, hard to think about anything beyond the image of Liam scared and alone and thinking I’ve abandoned him.
The door bursts open, and Carlo and Dante stride in, both of them armed and radiating the kind of controlled violence that means they’ve already heard what happened. Dario probably messaged them while I was spiraling.
“What do we know?” Dante asks, his usual smooth demeanor replaced by something even more cold and lethal. He scares the fuck out of me and right now I’m glad of it. He is on my side, and the Russians are going to quake in their boots.
“Russians took them from the gym,” Dario says, all business now despite the terror I can see lurking beneath his composure. There is a reason he is the boss. He can hold it together while his world is falling apart. “Footage shows four men, coordinated, professional. They knew about the security, knew the timing, knew exactly how to avoid the bodyguards.”
“Inside information,” Carlo growls.
“Maybe. Or just good reconnaissance.” Dario pulls up security footage on his laptop, and we all crowd around to watch Liam and Molly being escorted out of the gym by men who move with military precision. “They went out through the loading bay. The car was waiting, the plates will be fake.”
I watch Liam on the screen, see the fear in his body language even through the grainy footage, and something murderous rises up in my chest. Someone is going to pay for that fear. Someone is going to pay with their life for every second he’s been scared.
I have a ridiculous urge to try to climb through the screen. To defy all laws of physics and reality, and travel through both time and space. I want to jump out into that alley and appear there ninety minutes ago, and murder every motherfucker there before they can put Liam in that car.
The fact that I can’t is making me feel physically sick. I’m lightheaded and nauseous, and there is a cold, heavy lump in my gut that I know won’t go away until Liam is back in my arms and every Russian who laid a finger on him is lying in a pool of his own blood.
“I’m mobilizing everything,” Dario says, his voice taking on a quality I’ve never heard before, an absolute, uncompromising authority. “Every soldier, every resource, every contact we have. I’m calling in every favor, suspending all other business. The Russians are going to regret this so thoroughly that whatever’s left of them will be a cautionary tale for the next century.”
“You’re sure?” I ask, because I have to. Because Dario’s hold on power is still relatively new, still challenged by factions who think he’s too soft, too progressive, too compromised by his love for Molly. “There are people in the family who are already unhappy about Molly. About you having a boyfriend instead of a wife and children. This could be the excuse they need to move against you.”
Dario looks at me with an expression of such fierce certainty that it takes my breath away. “I don’t care if I lose it all. The power, the business, the entire empire my father built… none of it matters. The only thing that matters is getting Molly back. Everything else can burn.”
