“Both,” Carmine says with a shrug. “She couldn’t decide, so we went with both.”
“As one does,” Rocco says with a wink.
The door bursts open, and the bride-to-be herself hurries inside, her eyes wide with an emotion I rarely see on my brother’s fiancée.
Fear.
“Carmine,” she says as she hurries over. “I have Annika on the phone. She needs our help.”
“Put her on speaker,” I say, and we all lean in to hear what Nadia’s cousin has to say.
“Okay, they can all hear you,” Nadia says as she plants her hands on the desk. “Tell them exactly what you just told me.”
“It’s Ivie,” Annika says, immediately getting my full and undivided attention. “She’s been taken.”
“Taken by who?” I ask, keeping my voice calm but feeling my blood erupt through my veins with a surge of new adrenaline.
“I don’t know,” she says and sniffs. “I got a call from her, but I was about to get in the shower, so I let it go to voicemail.”
She sniffs again, frustrating me.
Just fucking tell me.
“I remembered it the next morning, this morning, so I listened to it. Oh my God, you guys. She’s been taken. She was trying to get me to pick up, to listen, and help her. And I failed her horribly. I need you. Is Shane there?”
“I’m here.”
“Thank God. Please, we need your help.”
We all look at Rocco, who’s already pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“The plane will be ready when we get to the airport.”
“I thought Annika was going to tell me that this was all connected to Rich,” Nadia says, shaking her head as the plane lands in Denver. “That there was more information or that someone else was dead. Something. I didn’t expect her to tell me that Ivie had been taken.”
I swallow hard, fear a very real and icy demon settling in my stomach.
I don’t fear much. But Ivie and I have become friends over the past several months, and if my life weren’t well and truly a shitshow, I’d take it much, much further with her.
If anyone touches a hair on her gorgeous head, I’ll fucking skin them alive.
“Rich’s organization fell,” Carmine reminds his fiancée.
“We don’t know that now,” Nadia says, shaking her head. “Maybe this is tied to that. Maybe someone thinks they can get something out of Annika, or punish her by taking Ivie.”
“We don’t know what’s going on,” I remind everyone. “Let’s get to Annika’s place and figure things out.”
My mind is racing. I haven’t slept in seventy-two hours, and aside from the stale sandwich, I haven’t eaten.
And I don’t give a shit.
I need to find Ivie. Make sure she’s safe and whole.
Annika’s house is an hour from the airfield.
“You should sleep,” Nadia says to me, her voice soothing. “I can see that whatever job you were on took a toll. You need rest if you’re going to help Ivie.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” she counters, and I barely stop myself from rolling my eyes at her.
Nadia is a fierce woman. I don’t need her to kick my ass over an eye roll.
“I’m fine,” I repeat and narrow my eyes at her.
“What is it with the Martinelli brothers and being so fucking stubborn?” she asks as she turns back in her seat and scowls out the windshield.
“It’s just part of our charm,” Carmine says, but Nadia shakes her head.
“No, actually, it’s not charming. It’s dumb. He’s going to hurt himself if he keeps overworking like that.”
As if I have a choice. I can’t exactly tell her that I sleep when the fucking president says I can.
So, I just grunt and watch Denver whiz by outside the window. The few hours it took to get here is, unfortunately, valuable time wasted. Time that I could have spent trying to find Ivie.
Jesus, where is she? What are they doing to her? And who the fuck are they?
“Almost there,” Rocco mutters and sends me a sympathetic smile.
I know my brothers are aware of the massive crush I have on Ivie. I’ve never had a crush on anyone in my fucking life. But I saw her once, and that was all it took.
I know that Rocco and Carmine don’t understand my attraction. That’s because she’s a little awkward and has a classic, girl-next-door look about her that I find absolutely hot as hell. She’s not the type that would usually turn my head, and my siblings know it.
In the past, that may have been true.
But Ivie attracts me in every damn way. She’s funny and sweet. So damn sweet. We’ve spent a little time on the phone, talking. I’m not much of a talker, but it comes so easily with Ivie.
How my brothers don’t see the amazing woman she is, is beyond me.
I know that a relationship—hell, a future—with Ivie is out of the question for someone like me. My job consumes my life, and what’s left over belongs to my family. Between the government and the mafia, I’ve killed more than any one man should. My time doesn’t belong to me.
But if things were different, if I were free to be my own man, I would scoop Ivie up and make her mine in a heartbeat.
“She looks worse than the day she found out that Rich was a lying asshole,” Nadia says as we pull into Annika’s drive and see the woman standing in the doorway, waiting for us.
Her eyes are red-rimmed from crying, her nose chapped from wiping it too much. And when Nadia hurries to her and engulfs Annika in a hug, the other woman falls apart once more.
“Let’s go inside,” Carmine says, urging the women into the house and to the living room.
When Annika’s seated and wiping her wet eyes, Carmine speaks again.
“Now, tell us again exactly what happened.”
“Okay.” Annika takes a long, deep breath and then tells us again about seeing the call from Ivie, but how she let it go to voicemail because she was getting into the shower and how she didn’t remember about the call until this morning.
“So I finally listened to the message, and my blood ran cold.”
“Play it,” I say, sitting next to her as she pulls it up on her phone, taps the screen, and it starts to play.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know a Laryssa. I’m Ivie. And we’re closed for the day. But if you’d like to make an appointment, I can help you with that.”
“You know, I thought for a long time that your father was an imbecile. Stupid. He didn’t cover his tracks well. But you’re different. You covered your tracks very well. And I know that you couldn’t have done that alone. Which tells me that your father isn’t as stupid as I thought.”
“I don’t know what you could possibly want from me. I’m just living my life.”
“And a nice life it is,” the man says. “Good for you, Laryssa. I couldn’t make your father pay for his sins when he was alive—and we both know that those sins were many. But now I’ve found you. Now, don’t do something silly like try to get away. You’re coming with me. And you’re going to pay for the sins of your father.”