Page 93 of His Deadly Lies

“This is a bad idea, Unc,” he protests. “Let me get our men on this. They’ll be able to track her for you.”

“Oh, you’re going to get the men on this. But I’m also going after her,” I reply.

I hobble out of the room and leave everyone staring behind me. Ricardo finally pulls his head out of his ass and snaps to attention, gathering resources with the press of a button on his cell and urging Isabella to do the same.

Hospital security is located somewhere on the ground floor. Despite my body barking in protest with each step, I make it down there as quickly as possible, out of breath.

The security guards in the room stand to attention when I walk through the door, instantly babbling about how I’m not supposed to be in there.

“I need to see footage from the parking lot.” I’m in a shit ton of pain, and my vision blurs with it. “My fiancee has been taken.”

“That’s improbable, sir. We’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary on the feeds,” the man on the left tells me belligerently, already ushering me back out the door.

“She was visiting me.” My hand goes to my wound. “No one was watching her when she went outside.”

They should have been.

Why would anyone let their guard down now?

“Gentlemen, if you wouldn’t mind.” Ricardo steps up behind me and smoothly takes out his wallet and a wad of cash from the interior. “We’d be happy to pay you for a brief moment of your time. This would have happened in the last thirty minutes only. So surely there isn’t a ton of footage to sift through. Just indulge the man and look to see if you might have missed something.”

And there is my nephew, offering fuck-you bribe money.

I center my focus on the feeds of the parking lot and see nothing but grainy black and white and gray stillness. No Mia.

When the security guards have accepted his bribe, the footage on the screen, Ricardo hisses in my ear, “The bullet cracked your rib, you idiot. You had surgery to get the thing removed. Leave this to me, please. I’m begging you.”

“I don’t give a shit,” I hiss back. A shadow on screen catches my eyes, and I point. “There. Do you see it? Stop! Go back.”

My final words are shouted, and the guard to the left only blinks. He presses a button, changing from one camera angle to another, and right there is Mia. As large as life. She’s staring out at something offscreen.

A large figure wearing a black hoodie appears behind her with gloves and a cloth in his hand. The cloth over her mouth. I watch her struggle. Then she’s dragged out of the frame, and I go cold.

No. This isn’t happening.

“I need that footage immediately,” I demand.

“Sir, that really isn’t protocol,” the right guard replies. “We can’t simply turn over—”

“Fuck your protocol. I need that footage to find her. Don’t you understand?”

The air in the room disappears molecule by molecule with the addition of another body. Edward Balestra fills the space with his presence.

“I suggest you do as he says, gentlemen, or else my patronage to this hospital will be forced to drastically decrease to the point where you will wish you’d made a different choice. You know who I am.” He points. “That is my daughter on the screen, and if you stand in the way of finding her, I’ll make sure you’re both personally at fault for whatever happens to her.”

The guards obey immediately. Of course they know who he is. Even if they hadn’t been in his pocket, most staff are made well aware of who supplies the cash flow to this hospital.

Ricardo steps closer to me, Edward following, the three of us a unit at once. All of us determined to find Mia.

“What do we do?” Edward asks.

Me. He asks me.

“We need to see if we can find any more details on the attacker from the footage. The man didn’t just come out of nowhere. He had to drive here, had to have a car to take her out of the lot,” I point out.

When I turn to him, the look on his face knocks the remaining bit of air from my lungs. He’s displaying every ounce of anger, disgust, and concern I feel. “You were supposed to protect her. You were supposed to be there for her,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” I caress my side, “but I was a little busy getting shot doing exactly that.”

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