Then it hit her. She knew exactly where she was going to go and it wasn't straight into Mateo's arms. Not yet. That was a future problem. She was going to run one more time, with Giovanni's help.
Then another thought occurred to her. She looked at Giovanni with concern. "Your son."
She didn't say more than that, she didn't need to. Giovanni had told them that his son was hidden away and Mateo wouldn't find him. But today he was telling her that Mateo could track anyone. And Giovanni was about to lose Raina as his leverage.
Giovanni seemed to slump in his seat, aging somewhat. He was about to lose his only child and there was nothing he could do but stand by and accept the loss, because his son had committed the grave error of attempting to kill Sotza’s princess.
Raina's heart ached for him and for the decisions he'd had to make in the past few days. He was an intelligent man. He probably realized from the moment he intended to let Raina go that he was signing his own child's death warrant. She didn't understand why he didn't fight harder for the life of his son and it wasn't her place to ask him.
Giovanni leaned over and kissed her cheek before sitting back in his seat. "God speed on your journey, my young friend."
Chapter Fourteen
Mateo was lying on his hotel bed fully clothed, his legs stretched out, his arms over his head, his hands tucked under his biceps. It was a deceptively lazy pose. Deceptive because the coiled tension running through him meant he could be on his feet in a split second. He was not relaxed. He was annoyed, bordering on angry.
It was 10:05 AM and Raina had not been delivered to his hotel room as promised. Apparently, Giovanni was not afraid of playing him, a mistake that would cost the old man dearly. Mateo didn’t deal well with hitches in his plans and so far, Italy had been a complete clusterfuck.
In fact, when Mateo really thought about it, he realized that the common denominator was Raina. If Mateo were to be honest with himself, he would've realized from the moment he set hands on her that she was going to throw a huge wrench into his life. That day, more than two years ago, when he had first seen her, his whole world had turned upside down. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, her energy and joy in life so fucking attractive, that he'd lost all sense. In reality he didn't know if she was the most beautiful woman in the world, but to him she was the gold standard.
And touching her, fucking touching that soft skin, it'd gone straight to his head. He'd forgotten who he was and what he was doing there, that he was supposed to be picking up the daughter of his boss’s new love interest. It should have been a simple chore, almost beneath him. But that day Raina had shown him exactly how not beneath him she was.
She turned on him in an instant, like a wildcat, fighting for her freedom. He'd been so stunned by her he almost hadn't reacted quickly enough. Of course, she had been no match for him, but the struggle had been sweet. Her slim curves wiggling underneath him, her scent invading his nostrils. The only thing that had stopped him from fucking her into the ground right then and there was the campus security guard who stumbled upon them.
Reflecting back, Mateo was grateful for that interruption. That hadn't been the time, nor the place. But their time was coming soon, very soon.
If he could only find the damn woman. He was getting tired of losing her. He picked up his phone and commanded it to call Giovanni Savino’s number.
Giovanni picked up on the first ring. "Gutierrez," Giovanni said jovially enough. "I've been expecting your call."
"It's after 10." Mateo didn't bother with pleasantries. There would be no point if he had to kill the other man. "Tell me where my woman is."
Since Mateo was being blunt, Giovanni decided to give him the same respect. "Your young Ms. Duncan is no longer in Italy."
Mateo quickly calculated the complexities of this new situation. If Raina was no longer in Italy, then Giovanni no longer had leverage over Mateo. He was essentially unleashing the younger man and inviting him to come and destroy his home. The only way that Giovanni would take such a risk is if he believed he might be able to gain the upper hand. Go on the offensive.
Mateo slid his hand from behind his head and underneath his pillow gripping his gun and pulling it out. "You’ve decided not to honour our agreement," Mateo stated.
“I have warned my son,” Giovanni said, his voice betraying a hint of worry. “He is my blood.”
Mateo stood and reached for his holster which was slung across his leather jacket on the back of the hotel chair. With quick efficient movements he pulled the holster on. He pulled his second gun from the holster. He placed each weapon on the table, strapped his knife to his belt and shoved his taser in his other pocket. Though Mateo was right-handed, he'd spent many years teaching himself to be equally as efficient with both hands. He was an excellent shot with both his right and his left hand. He could gut a man in seconds with either hand. And the taser was just for fun.
"I apologize for coming across as unprofessional," Giovanni said formally. "I don't usually play such games, nor do I condone them. But for the sake of both my son and the young lady I decided to renegotiate terms."
"You let her go." Mateo was relieved.
When Giovanni said that she was no longer in Italy, Mateo had been concerned that Giovanni had done something to her. Perhaps passed her along to his son. Mateo had seen Raina's and Giovanni's interactions and had come to the conclusion that the two had bonded. He was glad that that seemed to be the case.
"Raina reminds me of the daughter I never had but always wanted. Free-spirited, lovely inside and out, sharp as a tack and able to use her intelligence as a weapon. I’ve come to admire her. It seemed a shame to force her into a marriage that she doesn't want."
Mateo was surprised by the other man's assessment of Raina. He wasn't wrong. In fact, he had described her perfectly. But it took perception to see these things in another person. And in Mateo's experience most people weren't perceptive enough to pay attention to their environment, let alone the complexities of the people around them. Raina was young, and impetuous, it would be easy to write her personality off as youthful arrogance. But there was so much more to her than that.
While Giovanni spoke, Mateo prepared his things, packing his bag and making sure every weapon he had was on hand. He sent a quick text to his people letting them know that they were about to be attacked. He sent them coordinates for meeting and told them to scatter and re-converge in an hour. As per Mateo’s long-standing rule, every member of his team texted back with a thumb’s up, telling him they were all alive.
They didn’t question his order. And though they were protective of him, treating him like the boss when they were with Mateo instead of Sotza, he was still head of the security team.
"Well you may have come to understand Raina's personality, I don't believe that you understand what she needs. The more she runs, the more likely she is to get herself into trouble. And next time, I may not be able to make it in time to save her from the Antonios of the world."
Mateo's words must've hit home, because the older man sucked in a deep breath, almost a gasp. He'd been part of the mafia long enough to read between the lines. Mateo blamed both Antonio and Giovanni for what happened to Raina. Raina's departure from Italy opened the door for Mateo to do what he needed to do to ensure that the entire underworld knew that a threat to his woman was a threat to him and Sotza's entire organization.
"My son did a very stupid thing by going after Raina. Regardless of who her family is, I would never condone his actions. He hired her to do a job and then he double-crossed her. I assure you I taught him better." Giovanni sounded exhausted all of a sudden. “He has grown too arrogant for his role as my successor.”
"You’re stalling." The older man was keeping Mateo on the phone and he was doing it for a reason. He was giving Antonio and his men time.
Mateo stood to the side of his door, his guns at the ready.
"As are you," Giovanni said coldly.
It was true. Mateo ne
eded to ensure that everything was in place before he confronted Antonio’s team, the one he would’ve mobilized when his father warned him that Mateo would be coming after him. They were either on their way or here already. Mateo hoped that his own team had managed to leave the hotel, that he'd gotten them the message in time.
Mateo dropped to one knee and reached up to unlock the door. The click of the latch was like the starting shot of a race; within seconds all hell broke loose.
The door smashed open banging into the wall. Two huge men came crashing through the door guns blazing. It pissed Matteo off that they didn't seem to care what the fuck they hit. What if housekeeping had been in the room?
He heard the lamp shatter, the TV explode, and bullets thunking into the furniture and the walls. Fucking unprofessional. If Mateo wasn't planning on killing them, he'd be having a long conversation with them about the etiquette of gunplay.
Mateo lunged to his feet behind them and put a bullet in each of their heads. They both died instantly, hitting the ground in unison. For Mateo, killing was poetry. It had a certain flow to it that appealed to him.
His phone was still on speaker and Giovanni's voice was sharp and agitated. "Antonio, Antonio, mio bambino, are you there?"
Mateo held the phone up to his face as he glanced around the corner and into the hallway. There was no one out there, though he was certain there would men in the building, more for him to kill. "I'm still here," Mateo said, his lip lifting in a sneer. "You can tell your son I'm coming for him."
Chapter Fifteen
Twelve hours and one connection after her conversation with Giovanni and Raina was touching down in Pennsylvania, her home state. She thought coming back to Pennsylvania would give a sense of coming home. It had been over two years since she was kidnapped from her University campus and this was her first time back.
As she gazed out her window, she felt a sense of nostalgia, but not home. Maybe the home feelings would come back to her when she was back with her mom and dad, in their farmhouse. Or maybe she had outgrown her home. She grew up there, but she knew at a young age that she was adopted. It wasn't something that her mom and dad told her, because they would never want to hurt her, but more a deep-seated knowledge that she wasn't blood-related to them.
And while blood shouldn't matter, unfortunately, as Raina grew from a small child into her teens it came to matter to the Duncan family. At age nine, Raina was diagnosed with kidney failure. She went on dialysis for three years, and when she turned twelve, she was deemed old enough, or desperate enough, to receive a lifesaving transplant.
It wasn't until she had met Elvira, her birth mother, that she realized who the kidney donor had been. She'd seen the scar on her mother’s back; a scar that matched Raina’s.
If Joe and Diane have been able to donate a kidney to Raina, she was positive that they would've handed over every single kidney they had between the two of them. That was how much her adoptive parents loved her. And she loved them back. Wholeheartedly, unreservedly and without question. Even when Raina found out that they were also mob-affiliated, it hadn't changed the way she felt about them. They were her parents and that would never change.
Sometimes Raina felt a slight sense of guilt that she couldn't give them exactly what they wanted in a child. Not that they ever told her otherwise, but she knew, deep down, that they'd wanted a daughter a little more like them. One with both feet and a brain planted in reality. A child that didn't long to explore the world and everything in it. A child that wouldn't use her intelligence for illegal gain.
From the moment Raina learned that forging documents was a thing, she'd been in whole hog. Something about the fine detail, the subterfuge and outsmarting the authorities called to her when she worked. It was something she didn't want to lose and tried to work on as often as she could. Something that she tried to keep from Joe and Diane, but she suspected she failed.
Raina was deep in thought when the plane finally taxied to a halt. She snapped back to attention when the people all around her began to stand, stretch and reach for the overhead bins. Raina waited until it was her turn to disembark before she stood, grabbed her purse from under the seat in front of her and her overnight bag from the bin above. Her back jolted in pain as she reached up, reminding her of her recent injury.
It felt so strange being back in the United States, back at the airport where she’d taken her very first flight as a child. They’d flown to Philadelphia for her kidney consultations. Raina had loved going to the big city. She’d felt important and special.
Raina followed the lineup of people ahead of her off the airplane, into the airwalk and through the airport towards arrivals.
Raina hadn't told anyone that she was coming, just in case something happened to her plans. Like Mateo somehow finding and stopping her. So she was completely unprepared for the sight of her loved ones when she walked through the sliding frosted doors. When they caught sight of her, they made an unholy amount of noise, drawing attention from the people around them.
Raina grinned from ear to ear and threw herself at her parents. They enveloped her completely between the two of them. They were both taller and wider than her, so it wasn't a difficult thing to do. After a long family hug, then separate hugs for each of her parents, Raina turned to her two best friends, Cass and Noah.
Cass squealed and squeezed Raina so hard that she had to fight for air. Cass’s long curly brown hair surrounded them in a cloud. The second Cass let go, Noah snatched Raina off her feet swung her around, crushing her in a bear hug. She yelped as her back twinged but didn’t demand he put her down. It felt good getting a Noah hug. This was how Noah had always greeted her and Cass when he hadn't seen them in a while.
She squeezed him extra hard and then let go. She studied him for a second, admiring the way his features seem to be growing out of their youthful roundness. He was a man and a good-looking one at that.
"How did you know I was coming?" Raina asked happily, her arms around Cass and Noah as she turned back to her parents.
Joe took Raina's overnight bag while Diane answered her question. "Mateo told us," she said as if that explained everything.
Raina blinked and tried to make sense of what her mother had said. Since when were her parents on a first name basis with Sotza’s second-in-command?
They made their way toward the baggage claim and as they walked, Diane answered her unspoken question. "The night that we left with you from Venezuela in the helicopter, he was following close behind. It was very shortly after we put you on a plane to Beijing that he… met with us."
Diane cast a glance toward Cass and Noah. Cass was watching Raina and her parents carefully, as though she sensed that she had missed something very important in Raina's life. Diane was being careful as she talked, making it sound as though Mateo was simply a family friend instead of the man who probably confronted and terrorized her parents. A shiver ran through her.
"But he didn't follow me to Beijing?" Raina asked thoughtfully.
"I think Mateo saw the wisdom in allowing you to follow your plan of travelling the world. You were too young for a boyfriend… of his age." Joe spoke this time, his voice less tearful than Diane's. Raina studied him carefully. Though he seemed happy to have her back, he also seemed different. Aged somehow.
Raina's heart broke as she realized the impact of the last few years on her family and friends. Cass and Noah had probably been given some kind of story about her travelling the world. It was a miracle they even still cared enough about her to show up at the airport given she hadn't been able to speak to them. She'd essentially been in hiding. She hadn't really spoken to anyone except her birth mother, who had assured her that she was passing on messages to Joe and Diane. While Raina had been enjoying her time exploring city after city, country after country, her friends and family had been suffering.
She would have to find a way to make it up to them. But for now, she was exhausted and truly happy to be home.
They collected her
bags and made their way out of the airport, driving back toward the farm, which was about forty-five minutes away. They dropped Cass and Noah off at their home in the town closest to the farm. The three of them agreed that they would see each other the next day. Then Raina watched with curiosity as the other two made their way inside the same apartment building. Was something going on between them? Maybe they were roommates? Maybe they had separate apartments in the same building? The apartment building wasn't a place that Raina had ever visited before. It made sense that Cass and Noah would move out from home. Both were the same age as her, twenty-one.
As Raina, Joe and Diane drove out toward the farm, Raina was able to speak freely. She spoke with enthusiasm of all the places she visited, all the things she’d done. They were an avid audience and some of Joe's heaviness seem to lift as she spoke, as he realized that Raina hadn’t been suffering, that she had been safe and happy while away from them.
"It's so wonderful to hear you speak of your adventures. Of course, we always knew where you were. Mateo kept us updated every step of the way. In fact, he would call at least once a week. It helped, knowing that someone like him was keeping an eye on you," Diane said with a smile and an obvious soft spot for a hardened killer.
Raina was stunned. Not only had Mateo known about Beijing, but, as Giovanni had suggested, it was starting to sound like he'd known where she was the entire time she was gone. She’d had no reason to look over her shoulder constantly as she travelled because he'd been with her every step of the way. Maybe not physically, although she'd bet money that he had people on her.
While a part of her had suspected, actually knowing how close he was the entire time pissed her off. She’d never really been free. She'd only been given a couple more feet of leash. He could've picked her up at any time. And why the fuck was he talking to her parents once a week?
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