Before she could finish her tirade, she stiffened suddenly and fell to the floor. The handle of a knife showed starkly from her back. Rose watched in horror as Caterina knelt down, grabbed Juliet’s hair, and pounded her face into the floor.
“Liar! Enzo loved me! It’s mine, all mine!” she screamed over and over again before slamming the dead woman’s head on the ground one final time. She stood up and went to sit on the couch. Men came rushing in at the sound on the screaming. Looking down at what was left of Juliet, they turned to Caterina.
“Get everything ready. We have to leave,” Caterina told them distractedly before focusing on Rose. A calculating look entered her eyes. Calling out for one of the men to return, she told them to take Rose and release her, unharmed. She stood up and left the room. Confusion showed clearly on the man’s face, but he did what he was told.
Three hours later, Rose was home.
Chapter 16
They say time heals all wounds, but whoever wrote that clearly hadn’t lived a life like Nero’s. To Nero, time changed nothing. Rose had been returned the same day she had been taken. Her tale of what had transpired during her capture only cemented Nero’s own belief that insanity ran in his family—and he was determined that it was a trait that would end with him.
Arrangements had finally been made with the cartel, and money changed hands to ensure an unsteady peace between his family and theirs. Juliet’s death left Caterina without any power, so Nero disregarded Angelica’s warning and had allowed her to live—though he had her watched. It was the wrong move for the family, but the brother who had once protected her couldn’t bring himself to hunt her down. The years and acts of horror that they represented weighed heavily upon Nero, creating an internal friction between the boss he needed to be and the man he once was. Watching Matteo walk into the office one day, Nero hoped it was to tell him that his people had located Caterina. She had disappeared several weeks earlier, leaving Nero with an urgency to find her that Matteo’s first words increased.
“Nero, Tori is gone.”
“What the hell do you mean, she’s gone?” he demanded.
“Exactly that. She left a note saying that we are not to worry.”
“Are you fucking kidding? Find her.”
I don’t fucking need this right now, not with Caterina on the loose.
“What?” Nero demanded. Matteo was just standing there instead of going off to follow orders.
“There’s more, Nero. The guards assigned to Tori said that those shopping trips she has been taking aren’t exactly shopping trips.”
“What the hell do you mean? Why haven’t they reported this before now?”
“They were planning on speaking with you today. Last night when they took Tori into the city to shop, they saw her meet up with a woman. Tori gave her a large envelope. After seeing that, things started to click for them—and made a lot of the places that Tori visited start to seem suspicions. One of the guards followed the woman to a house. When the woman noticed him, she started screaming and rushed inside. He had to get out of there before the cops showed.”
“He remember where it was?”
“Yeah.”
“Get the car. Maybe someone in that house knows where she went.”
…
As Nero pounded on the door, he could hear movement inside. His men surrounded the place to make sure that no one got out. Tired of waiting, Nero kicked in the door. Women shrieked as they pulled children behind them. An older woman with graying hair stood in front of them; she was holding a shotgun. She pointed it at him and had her finger poised on the trigger.
“The cops are on the way. Get the hell out of here before I fire,” she said coldly. The glint in her eye told him she meant business.
Knowing that his guys were on their way in through the back, Nero decided that he needed to keep her talking. “Actually, the cops are on my payroll and won’t be coming. Now, what I’ve come here for is information. My sister is missing and a woman who came into this house yesterday was last seen with her.”
“Get out before I shoot,” the woman said again as she pulled back the hammer on the gun.
Before she could do more, Matteo was there. He grabbed her and shoved the gun up just as it fired. The pellets ripped through the ceiling above instead of through Nero. The older woman fought like a wildcat, but she couldn’t escape Matteo. He wrenched the shotgun from her hand, threw it to the side, and shoved her toward the woman who she had been standing protectively in front of. Nero’s men poured into the house at the sound of the shot, their guns drawn. The women whimpered in fear while the children cried and clung to their mothers. Motioning for his guys to put away their pieces, Nero stepped forward. He stopped a foot from the woman, who was defiantly on her feet and valiantly trying to hide the fear in her eyes.
“As I was saying, my sister Victoria Genovese is missing and a woman that she met with was seen coming into this house. I want to speak with that woman—now,” Nero said loudly. His patience was coming to an end.
Fear filled the woman’s face at the mention of Tori’s name.
What the fuck is going on?
Before Nero could demand more answers, a woman in her late thirties stepped forward.
“It was me. I was out last night, but I didn’t meet with your sister. I met with one of our donors. Tori gives us funds to run this center,” she said fearfully.
“That’s my sister.”
“It couldn’t have been. I never would have taken money from anyone named Genovese,” the woman vehemently denied, forgetting her fear.
“What the fuck is going on? What is this place?”
“This a shelter for abused women. We wouldn’t take money from a Genovese because I am well aware of the evil to women that stems from that name.”
“I suggest you explain yourself—now.”
“I won’t go back! You’ll have to kill me before I’ll let you take me back!” the woman screamed instead of answering his question.
“Look, lady, I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. I don’t want to take you anywhere, I just want to know if you know where my sister went.”
“I’ll speak with you, just let the girl be,” the older woman said, motioning for one of the other women to step forward and take the now-hysterical woman away. “You’ll have to excuse Joan, but the name Genovese is a curse here. She was one of the girls lucky enough to escape your family’s brothels.”
Jesus Christ, Nero thought as he waited for her to continue.
“We have no idea where your sister is. When she met Joan she gave her a donation totaling several months’ worth of contributions because she said that she had business that she had to attend to and didn’t know when she would return. If you’ll wait here, I’ll collect the money that she gave us. We don’t want your family’s dirty money,” she spat.
Ignoring her, Nero turned on his heel and walked out the door. He had just reached the car when the old woman screamed after him.
“When you find her, tell her never to contact us again! There is no salvation that can be bought from the evil that your family has sown.”
…
Several weeks passed, and Nero was no closer to finding Tori than the day she had disappeared. What he had been finding out about her activities had him worried. He couldn’t figure out how the hell her guards hadn’t realized what she was doing. She had been contacting Enzo and Juliet’s victims—abused women who had been captives in Enzo’s sex clubs. She had even, stupidly, been going into clubs that had been seized by the Salvatici family. A family that would kill her just for being a Genovese.
Hopelessly, he looked around her bedroom from his perch on her bed.
There has to be something. Some clue that could lead us to her. Fuck.
Standing up, he grabbed a book from her bedside table and threw it. Nero expected to hear a satisfying thunk, but instead he heard a tearing sound. Confused, he walked toward it. A large painting of a meadow stood before him,
canvas flapping where the book had gone through. Reaching forward, he grabbed the frame and pulled the painting from its spot on the wall. He dropped it to the ground when he saw the hole that it had been hiding. The only thing in the hole was a large manila envelope. Pulling it free, Nero turned it over and saw Tori’s name boldly written across it. Nero opened it and pulled out a single piece of paper that read, “A gift for you, dear sister.”
What the fuck?
He shook the envelope, and a USB drive fell into his hand. Gripping it tight in his fist, Nero dropped the envelope and strode purposefully down to his office. Sitting down at his desk, he put the drive in a computer port in his computer and opened a window to examine its contents. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of files appeared. As he quickly scanned the filenames, dread filled Nero. One stood out to him: “Angelica, age seventeen.” Nero saw the face that he had hoped never to see again appear. The masochistic things being done to the stoic child who stared into the camera were enough to turn his stomach. Clicking off the video, Nero opened up another file toward the top of the listing that was marked with her name. Articles filled the screen about the heiress Angelica Gagliardi and her brother being found alive—among many others. One reported her marriage to Lucca Salvatici; that would have effectively combined two empires. Pictures obviously shot from a distance of Angelica and her family, as well as a list of places, dates, and routines were there. Quickly clicking another file called “Maria Salvatici,” Nero found similar information.
Jesus Christ. Tori has been having them followed.
Scrolling randomly through the other files, Nero clicked on them only to close them just as quickly. Image after image of abuse and pain—all on the faces of women staring Enzo—were revealed. When a few of the faces turned out to be the woman that Tori had been giving money to, things began to click in Nero’s head. He prayed he was wrong. Grabbing his phone, he texted Matteo to come to the office—and to bring Rose with him.
He didn’t have to wait long for their arrival. As soon as the door was closed and they were in front of the desk, he clicked on one of the videos marked “Angelica” and turned the screen around so they could see. At first they looked on in confusion, then horror.
“I found this in Tori’s room, with a note from Enzo. There are hundreds of videos like this of her and of other women. There are also files of recent information on the Gagliardi and Salvatici families on here that Tori must have collected, as well as information on Enzo’s other victims. Some are articles, but to get some of these photographs she must have paid someone to follow them,” Nero told them.
“Nero, please turn that off,” Rose whispered as she lowered herself into a seat.
Clicking off the screen, Nero looked to Matteo. “I want you to discreetly send some men into Salvatici territory and the surrounding areas to search for Tori.”
“Nero, she wouldn’t have gone there. Especially after seeing that,” Rose said, in shock.
“Rose, Tori has spent at least the last year—maybe longer—trying to find the woman on those videos, without any of us being the wiser. If her quest was just to meet one of the average women, I don’t think she would have run off like this. The only reason I can think she would want to disappear would be because she wanted to go someplace there wouldn’t be a chance in hell we’d allow her to go,” Nero said, looking away from Rose when tears pooled in her eyes.
“Will she kill Tori, Nero?” Rose asked in anguish.
“I don’t think so. Angelica has had many chances to wipe us all out, and she hasn’t done it. So no, I don’t think she will—but that doesn’t meant the Salvatici's won’t. They have a lot of reasons to hate our family,” he told her truthfully.
“But she’s just a girl. An innocent. Surely they will just send her back to us? I know that what Julius and Enzo did to Angelica and her family was horrible, but they never hurt the Salvatici family,” she said desperately.
Nero knew that he would have to tell her about Maria. Taking a deep breath, he looked at Rose. “After Jenny’s death, Angelica came to me, Rose. Right in this room. No one besides me ever knew that she was on the property. That’s how good she is. She told me many things that day, and one of them was that Enzo had planned to have Maria Salvatici murdered before the wedding so that he could get out of the marriage but keep the dowry.”
“Nero! Why the hell didn’t you tell us that she got past the guards? Do you realize what the hell could have happened to you?” Matteo said angrily, interrupting him.
“Enough, Matteo. Even if I had told you, it wouldn’t have stopped her if she had wanted me—or any of us—dead.” He told Matteo this in a tone that said he was through discussing it. Ignoring his angry stance Nero continued. “Now, what I am about to tell you can never be repeated because it would mean a full war with the Salvaticis. The men Enzo used raped the girl, but she escaped before they could kill her. So we need to find Tori before she does something stupid.”
“Nero, they’ll…” Rose started to say, only to stop when several of their men burst through the door.
“What the hell is the meaning of this?”
“Sorry, sir, but neither you nor Matteo were answering your phones and this is an emergency. Word just came in that there was an assassination attempt on the Salvatici family.”
“Who was killed?”
“No one knows for sure who’s dead, but it’s believed that Maria Salvatici, Angelica Salvatici, and several guards were killed.”
“Matteo, get on the phone and find out for sure.”
“Sir, there’s more.”
“What?”
“Word on the street is that our family ordered the hit.”
Oh, this just gets better and better.
“Get word to all our people to tell them what’s going on. I want everyone alert in case the Salvaticis move,” Nero said, dismissing them.
Fuck.
“Nero, we’ve got another problem,” Matteo said as he put down a phone.
“What other fucking problem could there be?”
“The Salvaticis have Tori. She was seen by a cop on our payroll entering the hospital with Dominic Salvatici and his crew.”
“Can he grab her?”
“Not without a direct confrontation with the Salvatici people.”
“Tell him to follow her and find out where they take her.”
“I already did.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“Several of the women’s guards are dead. The ones who made it to the hospital don’t look like they will make it. Maria Salvatici was taken, and as for Angelica—they don’t think she or the kid will make it.”
“They got her daughter too?”
“No, she was pregnant. Nero, Lucca Salvatici will be out for blood.”
Yeah, he will. There’ll be no reasoning with the man. If we don’t get to Tori soon, there will be nothing left alive to find.
“Matteo, have the plane fueled. We’ll need to go immediately. I want you to get Vince on the phones. We need to find out why our family is being blamed for this.”
“I’m on it.”
“Rose, I’m leaving you in charge since I’m taking Matteo with me. Keep our people on defense only. Try not to let this escalate.”
“Don’t worry, Nero. I’ll handle it. Just bring Tori home…” Rose said. She wanted to add “alive” to the end of her statement, but she was unable to make the word leave her lips because she knew the truth was that he might only be bringing back a body—if he was lucky.
Chapter 17
Tori was alive. The why or how, Nero had yet to learn. The Genovese family had scoured the city looking for her, and for the members of their own crew who had taken her. There was to be no mercy—they didn’t care how they were brought back, only that they were. It was only dumb luck that had led him to their hiding place. One of Dominic Salvatici’s crew was spotted picking up medical supplies. Following the informant’s directions, they found a farmhouse hidden in the woods. Quietly
and efficiently, his guys dealt with the two they found in the living room. Nero could tell asking them where Tori was would be useless, so his men started checking rooms. A low whistle told him that what they were searching for had been found. Following the sound, Nero walked into a bedroom. His sister was in the bed, curled around Dominic Salvatici.
Cold rage filled him as images from the latest video that had been sent to his home flashed before his eyes. He had been looking for Tori for two days when Rose called him. The video that had been sent to the house showed this Salvatici raping Tori while the two guards they had in the living room watched.
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