Except she was.
After about twenty blocks, Zoey heard screeching tires a yelp.
Zoey pulled over on the sidewalk and craned her neck to see what had happened. Giuliana had been hit by a car, which was now speeding away. She was a block away from Zoey, crawling painfully to the sidewalk, still in wolf form.
Zoey leapt off her bike and ran over. Giuliana’s leg was bent at a horrifying angle.
“Giuliana, oh my God! Are you all right?”
Giuliana’s wolf lunged and snapped at her.
The hell with this.
Zoey wasn’t going to die trying to help a pain-maddened, jealous she-bitch of a wolf. She grabbed her phone from her messenger bag.
Giuliana shifted back to human form in a flash. Standing naked on one leg, her face was white with pain. Zoey looked at her other leg, with the bone poking through the skin, and struggled not to barf.
“Who are you calling?” Giuliana cried out, panicked.
“I’m calling an ambulance, you moron! Your leg is broken!”
“Don’t you dare!” Giuliana shouted. “Please,” she choked out. “Don’t call anyone. I have no right to ask you for a favor, but I’m asking.”
Zoey was bewildered. “Why not? Is the pack abusing you? Are you afraid of them? I could help you find a place to hide. I’ve got map magic; I could take you somewhere really hard to find.”
“Why would you?”
“Because it’s what anyone would do.”
Giuliana grimaced. “You’d be surprised.”
“Giuliana, seriously. I’m ready to barf from just looking at your leg. I have to call the ambulance.”
“I’m a healer!” Giuliana snapped. “I can heal myself. I don’t want you to call anybody because if my uncle finds out I was chasing you, he’ll lock me up in my room for a month. He’s not abusive; it’s just the way the pack works. He’s an insanely overprotective ass.” She looked positively pouty but not frightened.
Giuliana’s leg began to straighten as Zoey watched. The flesh rippled and closed back over the bone, and the blood flow slowed.
“You’re sure? Pack members aren’t abusive?”
Giuliana gave her a sly look. “They’re abusive to their mates. They beat them for the slightest offense.”
“Wow, for someone who comes from a criminal organization, you really suck at lying.” Zoey shook her head. “You actually want people to think that of your pack-mates?”
Giuliana’s face contorted in frustration. “Fine. Our men don’t beat their women; it goes against our pack’s code. None of our women would tolerate it anyway. Doesn’t matter. Stay the hell away from Dominic.”
“Suddenly, I feel like calling him for a very romantic date. If you start following me again, I will not hesitate to snitch on you.”
“You bitch!” Giuliana gasped.
“Thank you.” Zoey gave a sarcastic curtsy. Climbing back on her bike, she peddled away, chased by a stream of what were probably very colorful insults in Italian. For all she knew, Giuliana could have been shouting the alphabet.
But she probably wasn’t.
Chapter Sixteen
D ominic rained a hail of blows on the punching bag in the pack gymnasium at the back of the Arena. It exploded under the force, and he threw back his head and howled in fury. That was the third one this morning.
He was boiling with frustration. Zoey was nowhere to be found. Normally, he’d have men on her apartment twenty-four hours a day, but with the war against the Bianchi Pack, they didn’t have the manpower. She’d briefly gone to her apartment yesterday, but by the time one of his men got there, she’d left again. Her friends claimed they had no idea where she was staying. He knew they were lying, but he also knew if he had them tortured to make them talk, she’d never speak to him again.
Damn, love was complicated.
His wolf was furious. It craved its mate, wanted to nuzzle her, smell her, press up against her. It wanted to feel the peace that came to him in her presence. Yesterday, he went running in the woods and challenged a bear to try to find some sort of release. The bear took one look at him, turned, and ran for its life.
After the night he’d spent with her, he couldn’t believe she’d run off and leave him over one little argument.
It had been a hell of a week. The Bianchi Pack had burned down a restaurant under Moretti Pack protection. The Morettis were now rebuilding the restaurant and paying the owner for the loss of revenue. They’d kidnapped four Bianchi foot soldiers in revenge and blew up an armored truck carrying money from one of their casinos.
The Bianchis had refused to ransom their soldiers, who were still being held prisoner, so the Morettis dressed them in frilly outfits and sent pictures of them to taunt the Bianchis.
Dominic still hadn’t been able to track down the business owners who’d gone missing. Arturo would only tolerate his failure for so long before doling out disciplinary action.
Romano had been trying to reach him all morning. Every time he answered, Dominic snapped, “Did you find her yet?” Romano’s answer was always “no,” and Dominic hung up on him.
As he swept up sand from the latest punching bag he’d destroyed, the door flew open, and Romano stalked in.
Dominic whirled to face him. “When did you decide life wasn’t worth living?”
“There was an attack on one of our armored vans this morning,” Romano said calmly. “The driver was badly burned. Arturo brought him here so Giuliana could heal him. Giuliana’s pissed because she wasn’t allowed to go to the scene and the driver nearly died. Arturo asked me to tell you since you’re not answering your phone. He’s on his way here. I told him you were already on it.”
Dominic shook himself. “Fuck.” Then he grimaced. “Thanks for covering for me.” He dumped a dustpan full of sand into the trash.
“Always,” Romano said promptly. “And no, we haven’t located Zoey yet. She’ll have to come up for air eventually. She has friends she cares about, and her bank account’s running on fumes.”
“All right. Damn, she’s good at hiding.” Dominic shook his head.
“Do you want my opinion?”
“Not ever, actually,” he growled.
Romano bent down and scooped up some shreds of leather from the punching bag and tossed them into the trash. “You’re letting the past hold you back. Zoey isn’t … her.” Wisely, he’d stopped himself from saying the name.
He knew what had happened to Dominic long ago and why he had gone wolf. But he had no right to bring that up.
“Tread very carefully.”
Romano, as usual, ignored him. “You’re letting a ghost get between you and the woman you moon-bit. And it’s making you act like a real douche.”
“Since when do you fucking care about the woman in my life?” Dominic snarled.
Romano’s brows drew together, his eyes glowing in anger. “This isn’t some roll in the hay. When it’s a mate, that’s different.”
Dominic’s wolf nearly exploded out of his skin. Instead, he took a swing at Romano, who just barely managed to duck. “If the next word out of your mouth involves Zoey, it will be your last.”
Romano, in a rare moment of common sense, kept his lips zipped.
“And I am not driving her away,” Dominic growled at him as he set the broom and dustpan in the corner. “I’m romancing her. I’m romancing the hell out of her.”
“Damn. So sweet. Even I melted a little when you said that.” Romano smirked and ducked to avoid Dominic’s punch. “Too slow.”
“You really have picked today as the day you want to die,” Dominic said. “What do you want on your tombstone?”
“How about ‘He died doing what he loved—annoying the shit out of people’. But really … now that you’ve moon-bit her, there’s no going back, so you’ve got to make it work. You’re buying her fancy things and nice dinners, but you’re ignoring the one thing she’s really asking for.”
Dominic and his wolf began arguing. His wol
f, pacing restlessly inside the cage of Dominic’s humanity, wanted to be set free to tear off Romano’s face. The human part of Dominic wanted to break down and ask Romano what that one thing was.
His phone started vibrating in the pocket of his jacket he’d hung on the wall. He grabbed it and answered.
“It’s Zoey,” he growled at Romano. “Take all your dumb advice and shove it up your ass.”
“What did you say to me?” Zoey sounded shocked.
Carefully moving out of Dominic’s reach, Romano threw back his head and howled with laughter.
“Not you!” Dominic shouted. “That wasn’t for you! I was talking to a dead man. Where are you?”
“We’re headed to the Arena. Are you there? Please be there.”
The strain in her voice sent chills through him. “I’m here. I’ll meet you out front.” He broke into a trot. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. We’ll be there in five minutes,” she replied, her voice frantic.
His hackles rose. Something had upset her. Why wouldn’t she just let him keep her safe?
Romano was wheeze-laughing at getting Dominic in trouble with Zoey. Dominic, boiling with rage at whoever had hurt Zoey, swung around and punched Romano so hard, he heard ribs crunch. Romano fell over, still howling with laughter.
“Worth it!” he yelled after Dominic, and then got up and followed him, limping. His ribs would heal within the next few hours.
And what is Zoey asking for that I’m not giving her?
Dominic raced angrily down the hall. He gave her food and beautiful clothing and hot sex and himself, for the rest of his life. Wasn’t that enough?
He knew he wasn’t exactly experienced when it came to romance. Before Zoey, he’d had feelings for one woman. That woman was no longer in the picture because of Dominic. Because of his weakness.
He hadn’t had to woo Phoebe, his high school sweetheart. He’d been human back then, and she’d sat next to him in English class. One day, she got busted passing him a note asking if he knew the answer to question 11 on their pop quiz. They’d spent the next week sitting next to each other in detention.
The rest was history.
Painful, heart-breaking history.
“All right, what?” he barked as Romano came limping up to him. “What does she really want from me, oh wise one?”
“She wants you to let her in. You’re coming on all Big Bad Wolf telling her you’re going to go kill a man, telling her she’s going to be a mob wife, like it or not, and she’s not allowed to ask any questions. No wonder she’s hiding from you. If you stopped and explained things to her, you could turn it around.”
Dominic gave him a look of disgust. Let her in? That was Romano’s big idea? That had to be wrong. He was sorry he’d asked.
Maybe Giuliana could have given him a clue, but she got weird every time he even mentioned Zoey.
Minutes later, he stood on the sidewalk in front of the Arena as a taxi pulled up. Zoey spilled out of the cab, followed by a few friends of hers. There was Cin, the homeless thief. There was a frantic-looking middle-aged woman named Andrea, and Andrea’s friend Stewart. They crowded around him, all babbling at the same time.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
They all started answering at once.
“Quiet!” he bellowed. He pointed at Zoey. “You. What’s happening?”
“Lorenzo’s gone. Andrea’s son.” Zoey gulped a breath. She’d been crying. Whoever made her cry was going to swallow all of their teeth before they died. “The Bianchis took him.”
“It’s all your fault!” Andrea shouted and slapped Dominic across the face. She gasped and fell back a step.
He bared his fangs at the woman, who looked temporarily startled, but then she lunged at him and grabbed his shirt.
“My son is missing! They did it to get at you!” she shrieked.
He shook her off violently, but she was too frantic to be terrified. “Explain.”
“My son started bragging about how he had a friend in the Moretti Pack. He’s just a kid. He wants to be tough. He didn’t mean anything by it.” Andrea choked on a sob.
“And?”
“And he went to visit her, and she was hiding out in the Bianchi’s territory …” She pointed at Cin furiously. Cin shriveled in on herself. “And they took him!” Andrea’s face crumpled. “Save my son. Please! I’ll give you everything I have.”
Dominic shook his head impatiently. “I don’t want your money. Where did they find him?” He glowered at Cin.
She started talking really fast. “We were dumpster diving at 37th and Fillmore. He saw a bunch of the Bianchi Pack members headed right for us, and he ran out to distract them so I could get away. I didn’t want to leave him, I swear didn’t, but he said if they grabbed both of us, nobody would know we’d been taken. He told me to find Zoey and get help.”
Giuliana ran down the steps to join them. She glanced at Zoey but didn’t say anything. Dominic quickly filled her in on what was happening.
“All right. Approaching them directly won’t help,” he said. “We can grab someone from the Bianchi Pack and put the screws to them and hope they know where he’s been taken. We’ll also have our Strega do a locate spell.”
Andrea raised a brow. “What’s a Strega?”
“A witch we contracted for the pack,” Dominic replied. “Do you have anything of his? Some hair or an item of clothing?”
“No, I don’t!” Andrea looked panicked. “God, I’m so stupid! I can go back home and get it, but that will take so long! They could be killing him!” She burst into loud sobs and collapsed in Stewart’s arms.
“You can find the kid,” Giuliana said to Zoey.
“Me? How?”
“You’ve got some kind of magic location powers, right?”
Dominic looked at Giuliana suspiciously. How did she know that? He hadn’t told anybody.
“My powers? They’re useless for this,” Zoey protested. “I’m just a map witch. My power guides me through town and helps me avoid obstacles, but it doesn’t find missing people. I’d do anything to find Lorenzo, but I can’t.”
“I’ve heard of map witches,” Giuliana mused. “You can find any destination. Can’t you imagine Lorenzo as your destination?”
“A person as my destination? I …” Zoey looked at Andrea who was staring at her now, tear-stained eyes shining with hope. “I’ll try.” She closed her eyes and pictured Lorenzo. She imagined his narrow face topped by the mop of brown hair, his tall, skinny frame … she pictured being in a car and driving toward him … And she knew exactly where he was.
“East Main and 35th!” she cried out happily. “In the basement of an office building. Not only that, I can see the obstacles.” She quickly described them to Dominic. Every obstacle was almost certainly a group of Bianchi shifter guards, and she knew how to steer him and his men around them.
“Call in the troops,” Dominic said to Romano who took off at a dead run. He’d quickly round up the foot soldiers.
Dominic guided Zoey away from the rest of the group, a grim look on his face.
She put her hand on his arm, her brow crinkling with worry. “Be careful,” she said. “And thank you so much. I hate to ask you to do something dangerous, but the Bianchis are going to make an example of Lorenzo to get at you guys, and he’s just a naïve kid. I’d get him myself if I were capable.”
“You’ve done your part. I would never let you go on a mission like that. Here’s the deal, Zoey. If you want us to get your friend back, you agree to stay with me on pack property. You don’t leave the property until the feud with the Bianchi Pack is settled.”
She dropped her hand from his arm and took a step back.
“If I say no … will you leave him there to die?” Acid dripped from every word.
“He’s not one of us.” It was what Arturo would have said without conscience or a second thought. It didn’t make the words taste any better in his mouth.
&
nbsp; Fury blazed in her eyes, but she gave a sharp, abrupt nod. “Fine,” she snapped.
He’d been run over by a truck, shot, stabbed, set on fire, bitten by ghouls, punched by an ogre, and thrown off a fifty-foot cliff, but the look on Zoey’s face caused him so much pain.
Dominic turned and hurried down the steps, praying he wouldn’t be too late to save Lorenzo. If he was, it would break Zoey’s heart.
Chapter Seventeen
“I s that him?” Andrea jumped up from the overstuffed velvet chair and hurried to the window for the dozenth time that hour.
They were in the parlor of Arturo’s house, a sprawling mansion on the outskirts of the northwest side of town. She looked out over the broad front lawn, her eyes laser-focused on every car that drove by. Arturo’s property was ringed in by giant iron gates, which were adorned by enormous wolves and bristling with protective spells.
The car drove by the front gates.
“Not yet,” she answered her own question, shoulders slumping in despair. She slunk back to the chair and collapsed.
Armed men and wolves paced the front of the property. Most of the pack members lived in houses scattered across the grounds. Wolves were social animals and needed to live together, or their animals risked going feral. The size and luxury of the pack members’ homes depended on their position within the pack. The low-rank, single pack members lived in dormitory-style accommodations.
Cin sat hunched in her chair in the far corner of the room, hugging herself, steeped in misery. Stewart sat quietly in a chair next to Andrea’s, looking wretched. Giuliana kept flipping the pages of a magazine she wasn’t really reading.
“Andrea,” Zoey said, “it’s not Cin’s fault. What did you want her to do, stay there and fight, all ninety-five pounds of her? Get killed or kidnapped? Did you want that skinny little girl to be in the hands of those Bianchi creeps?”
“No.” Andrea scrubbed at her face with her hands. “Not that.”
“Lorenzo’s a big boy. He makes his own choices. Cin didn’t hold a gun to his head and force him to visit her. And she’s not a bad person. She takes care of a whole crew of homeless kids, keeps track of their whereabouts, and makes sure they have food and clean clothing and a place to sleep.”
Mated to the Capo (Mafia Wolf Shifters) (Encantado Shifters Book 1) Page 13