“Someone fucking took her, Z,” Xander blurts. My veins expand with the force of blood hurtling through them, and I absent-mindedly wonder if this is what a stroke feels like.
West looks as strung out as I feel. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“She never made it to the office. She’s been clocking time on a big story, so they assumed she was working from home. But I knew West dropped her off, so I had the security footage pulled. As soon as she got to the lobby, she was stopped by two mean-looking fucks. She left with them two minutes later.”
West pinches the bridge of his nose. “She left or they took her?”
Xander’s face is etched with worry. “She walked out, but the footage is pretty clear. They weren’t friendly.”
My head spins. “But her email. It was sent like forty-five minutes ago.”
West shakes his head, his jaw working, and I know he’s as fucked up over this mess as I am. “Maybe she didn’t send it?” The look on his face tells me he doesn’t buy that.
“No way.” Xander pulls his phone from his pocket. “I know my girl’s writing. Those are her words.” His eyes go wide. “She sent it using Schedjunkie.”
He looks up and must notice our blank expressions because he rolls his eyes. “It’s an app we developed for our Hellsgate employees, but I downloaded it to Lily’s phone for her to use. It allows you to schedule emails and messages ahead of time.”
I rub my temples, trying to stave off the dull ache throbbing through my skull. “So she wrote the email before those guys took her from the lobby?”
Xander nods.
“She knew they’d come for her?” West frowns. “None of this makes any sense.”
I am going to spank her ass so hard when I get my hands on her. If I get my hands on her. A violent swell of rage and fear washes over me, making me sway on my feet. I shake my head to clear my thoughts, focusing on what needs to be done and praying to a god I don’t even believe in that we find our girl in time.
Chapter
Seventy
LILY
“Get your hands off me, asshole.” I snarl at the man with the skull tattoo as he grabs my arm and drags me up the steps of Carmine’s mansion.
He presses his face close to mine. “I cannot fucking wait to get the nod to put a bullet in your head, little girl.”
Spittle hits my face, and I wipe it away with disgust. “You honestly think Carmine would let some pathetic little weasel like you have the honor of killing me?” I snort, and his cheeks turn purple with rage.
“Always so full of fire, Liliana.” The voice of the man I hate more than anyone else in the world drifts through the open doorway. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
I spit at his feet. “Fuck you.”
Raising his hand, he cracks the back of it across my cheek, causing my head to snap to the side and making my two kidnappers laugh.
“Do not speak to me like that, puttana!”
Memories assault me from being called a whore by the man who tried to turn me into one. The man who snuck into my room every night for almost a year and made me suck his disgusting cock. I balk at the mental assault. His stench. The feel of his flaccid penis filling my mouth. The bile that burned my throat when I gagged or even vomited, but nothing ever made him stop.
I glower, trying to make him feel all the hatred and venom I’ve been holding onto just for him. If I could let him experience even a fraction of it, then he would surely drop dead where he stands. “Where are Nico and Dean?”
He sneers. “Safe for now.”
“I want to see them.”
“And see them you will, Liliana. How else will you take their place?”
He dismisses the two men with a jerk of his head, then motions for me to follow him. Shivering, I step inside the house that has haunted my dreams for far too many years. The place I was desperate to escape and swore I’d never come back to.
“How did you find out?” he asks, eyeing me with curiosity.
“An old friend of my father’s told me,” I say, and it’s not exactly a lie. When I was eleven, an old friend of my father’s did tell me that Nico wasn’t my twin and Carmine wasn’t my father. Relief that I wasn’t Carmine’s nearly overshadowed the depth of my heartbreak about Nico. I was sworn to secrecy, and I’ve never spoken of it to another soul.
Without showing an ounce of emotion, he backhands me again. “I am your father. The man who raised you. The man who fed and clothed you.”
Yeah. With my actual father’s money, you psychopath! But I keep my mouth shut, if only because I can taste blood and my eye is throbbing where he’s already hit me twice. There’s nothing I can say to make him believe he’s wrong and I’m right. He murdered his own brother in cold blood just to get his hands on more money, as if he didn’t have enough already. A calculated monster who forced my mother to give me up. Although, he’s not solely to blame for that. Her own family played just as much a part as he did.
“Who was this friend?”
I shrug. “I don’t recall his name.”
He snarls. “But you believed him over me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I scoff. “It certainly explained how you could force me to do that sick, twisted shit you made me do. You always hated me. Do you think I didn’t realize that was why you were marrying me off to Giovanni, because we all know what happens to women who share his bed, Dad. They end up hooked on pills to get through the day or jumping off a building. It was the perfect way to shut me up for good.”
He leans close, his sour breath washing over me. His lip curls in disgust. “I should have killed you the moment you were born.”
“Yeah, but you couldn’t, could you? Because despite all of this”—I wave my hands at his opulent mansion—“you have no true power at all. The Santangelos forced you to take me in because Ludovica begged them to let me live. They forced you to keep her little secret quiet so it wouldn’t mess up her marriage to Vito Morrone and ruin their precious alliance. A scared eighteen-year-old girl wielded more power than you.” I laugh. “You couldn’t even make your own fortune. You had to steal it from my father, your own brother. And you know why? Because he was smarter and stronger and one hundred times the man you are.”
His face turns purple and he raises his hand to slap me again, but I punch him in the jaw, causing him to stagger back. My triumph is short-lived though. He barrels forward, crashing into me and pinning me against the wall with a hand wrapped around my throat. He squeezes hard, and I struggle to breathe.
“Boss?” A familiar voice makes us both turn. “Not here, eh?” Stefano says with narrowed eyes. “Let her see her brother before she dies.”