Reign (The Italian Cartel Book 3)

by Shandi Boyes

  “I had no choice,” Alice coughs out in a sputter as tears flow down her face. “They took Lucy. T-t-they wouldn’t give her back until I helped them secure Roxanne. I didn’t know she was really pregnant. I swear to God, Dimi, I had no idea.”

  Her blubbering response exposes holes in her defense. Roxanne let slip to her this morning that she didn’t need free-flowing garments added to her wardrobe selection because her pregnancy was merely a ruse to fool Dr. Bates, so how is Alice aware Roxanne’s test returned a positive result in Dr. Bates’s office this morning? If all she did was inform my enemies Roxanne was wearing a tracker, she’d assume Roxanne’s pregnancy was still part of our ruse.

  Although pissed, news of Roxanne’s positive test doesn’t change anything. “Whether she’s pregnant or not makes no difference. You went against me—”

  “F-for L-Lucy,” Alice defends, her words stuttering. “Only for Lucy. I couldn’t let her be a part of that lifestyle, Dimitri. I couldn’t only see her through a monitor like you do…” Her words trail off as her eyes widen in fear.

  Bringing Fien into this won’t do her any favors because not only is she reminding me just how far I’ll go to protect my daughter, she’s also reminding me that it’s more than just Fien’s life at stake now. Roxanne’s is in my hands as well, and so is our unborn child’s.

  Too pumped with anger to stand still, I house my gun into the back of my trousers, then storm to Alice’s side of the room, confident gamers these days are as ignorant as Rocco and I were anytime we played Super Mario.

  I reach Alice before she even considers deflecting the barrel of her gun to me. She wouldn’t fire at me even if I still had my gun in my hands because she knows as well as her ex-husband, it isn’t an eye for an eye in this industry.

  It’s family for family.

  Mine for hers.

  Or better yet, hers for mine.

  As I drag Alice toward the open French doors that lead to her patio, my anger gets the better of me. “They took my wife, they have my daughter, yet that still isn’t enough for you. You want them to take everything away from me.”

  “No,” she denies, shaking her head as she eyes the pool we’re heading toward. “I was just protecting Lucy.”

  I’ve never laid my eyes on my daughter in person. That doesn’t make me any less of a father, though, so I understand her objective, but I’m just too worked up with anger to absorb it. “Because your daughter’s life is more valuable than mine?”

  Fear leeches out of her pores before she once again shakes her head. This one is more hesitant than her earlier one.

  “Then why did you do it? Why go against me knowing you could lose everything!”

  As Alice’s stilettos skitter across the pavers, she attempts to lodge them into the cracks, hopeful her fight to live will have me recalling the time I saved her from this exact scenario.

  If my anger wasn’t bubbling over, I might have, but it’s too late for her now. I can’t separate the past from the future any more now than I could when I was driving here. Roxanne is nowhere near as far along as Audrey was when she was taken. However, all I see when her face pops into my head is the horrific footage of Audrey going through a botched caesarian. My fucked-up head has replaced Audrey’s face with Roxanne’s, and it’s messing with my mind even more than Lucy’s frantic cries for me to stop holding her mother’s head under the water in their half-a-million-dollar pool.

  “Get her out of here!” I scream at Rocco a mere second before pulling Alice’s head up so she can suck in the quickest breath. It isn’t long enough to fill her screaming lungs with air, but it will warn her I’m not playing. I’ve played the game as taught the past two years. It got me nowhere, so it’s time for a new set of rules.

  As Lucy fights Rocco with more gusto than an eight-year-old should have, I bring Alice’s drenched head to within an inch of mine. “Where are they taking her?”

  “I don’t kn—”

  She’s back under the water in an instant, gargling and screaming while her nails make a mess of my arms. She digs them in deep before dragging them to the hand wrapped around her throat. If the water doesn’t suffocate her, the hold I have on her throat soon will.

  With her eyes on the verge of sporting new blood vessels, I lift Alice’s head for the final time. Her gasps as she struggles to fill her lungs with oxygen are barely heard over Lucy’s frantic bangs on the window of her room. She’s three floors above, but she thumps her fists on the glass as if breaking her window will magically save her mother.

  I wish it were that easy, but sometimes, the heroes in stories need to be villains too, especially when the only person they looked up to disappointed them time and time again.

  I’m waist-deep in freezing cold water, but my skin is so hot, it hisses as well as my words when I growl out, “Where. Are. They. Taking. Her.”

  “I…” when my hand moves for my gun, over the time waster Alice is being today, she talks faster, “… overheard them saying something about a ranch. T-t-that they had a bigger payday coming.”

  I instantly feel hopeful. “Roxanne’s family’s ranch?”

  Tears mix with the saltwater coating her face when she shakes her head. “They were talking about a gala, something about a ransom drop.”

  When my hand raises in the air, Lucy screams my name in a mangled roar. It reminds me so much of Roxanne’s endeavor to protect her mother. Even when she should have hated her, she still went in to bat for her.

  “I’m telling you everything I know, Dimitri,” Alice swears, her tone honest.

  The truth in her eyes does little to calm me down. “You should have told me from the start. You should have warned me.”

  “Warned you about what?” she asks on a sob. “That your enemies were going to take Roxanne as planned by you? That she would be thrust into a world you should have done everything in your power to keep her away from? What was I supposed to tell you?”

  I hold her under the water again, the truth of her statement too much for me to bear. Not only was this the outcome we were reaching for, I’ve known for years my enemies have always been one step ahead of me, so why did I expect today to be any different?

  As Alice’s crying comment rings in my ears on repeat, her thrashes become stiller and stiller. She’s seconds from death, her fight honorable considering the circumstances. She gave all for her daughter, only to lose in front of her.

  My grip on Alice’s throat slackens when the frantic screams of a child in despair fills my ears. Lucy’s bangs broke through the glass. She is cut up and bleeding, but her thoughts remain with her mother. “Stop, Uncle Dimitri, please stop.”

  Alice and I aren’t related. I earned the privilege of being called Lucy’s uncle when I saved her life. Now I’m taking away the only person she’s ever cared about.

  When Lucy’s cries reach an area of my body I’m certain stopped functioning years ago, I fully uncinch my grip on Alice’s throat. My unusual offer of mercy comes too late. Alice is floating in the pool. Her eyes are wide and unblinking. Her chest is still.

  I killed her for doing exactly what I would have done in her situation.

  I murdered her for putting her daughter first.

  That makes me a fucking monster—just like my father.

  3

  Roxanne

  As the haze making my vision murky clears, I attempt to take in the area surrounding me. I’m lying on my side, a scratchy blanket the only thing responsible for my modesty. My throat burns with every swallow I take, and my head is thumping.

  I don’t know where I am, but I wish I could be here without being naked. This is as awkward as it gets for me. I’m not one of those women who are comfortable in their own skin. I’d rather be found in a hessian bag than have Dimitri’s crew walk in on me stark naked when they track my location.

  When I roll onto my side, keen to drink in something more than the rippled steel of an outdated van, pain shreds through my stomach. I don’t know much about pregnancies
, but I’m reasonably sure I shouldn’t be cramping like this. I feel like the goon who grabbed me from behind punched me in the stomach before doing so.

  If that is the case, what’s their objective for taking me?

  Aren’t I more valuable if I’m carrying Dimitri’s child?

  Pregnant. Me. I still can’t believe it. We were laid-back on protection, but I still would have thought it would take more than one time to get me up the duff. I guess my life could never be accused of being easy.

  The roll of my eyes stops halfway when the groan I couldn’t hold back announces to my captives that I’m awake. I don’t know whether to laugh or glower when the knowledge has several guns aimed at the crinkle between my sweat-beaded brows. I’m pleased they see me as a threat, but I’d rather it occur without additional harm. Being chloroformed was worse than anticipated, so I’m happy to skip extra theatrics.

  “Show me those hands, girlie,” croons the goon at the front.

  His shoulders are as wide as Clover’s, his eyes almost as deadly, his voice is just missing an Arabian accent. That means nothing, though, because I swear the first voice I heard upon awakening was twanged with an Italian accent. It wasn’t laced with maturity, so I don’t believe it belongs to Dimitri’s father, but it did have a familiarity about it.

  “Don’t make me ask you again.” The stranger tosses his half-smoked cigarette on the drought-affected ground, stomps it out with his boot, then moves close enough to me the bright rays of the sun stop sheltering his face. He’s handsome if mass murderers are your kink. “Your plaything the past nine weeks isn’t the only man around here with no patience.”

  After absorbing the little nugget of information he unwittingly shared, I hold my hands out in front of myself, smug as fuck about his first stumble of the day.

  I can’t wait for him to have many more.

  With his grin as shit-eating as mine, he lowers his pistol from my head to my almost exposed chest before grunting out, “Higher.”

  “If I raise them any higher, I’ll lose the scarce bit of coverage I have. I will spit in your face before I’ll ever let that happen.”

  The man with a sleeve full of tattoos grin turns gleaming. “Those there are fighting words for men like me. Are you sure you want to go down that road, girlie? It won’t be as pretty as your face.”

  You don’t scare me, I want to say, but hold back, mindful our ruse will be more effective if I play the damsel in distress. Only someone believing they’re not in real danger would act nonchalant in this situation. This isn’t the movies. Not even an imbecile would remain quiet when they’re being led out of a packed restaurant with a knife jabbed under their ribs.

  A montage of the footage I perused before drawing sketches of the people I saw at Joops the day Dimitri’s wife was kidnapped halts playing in my head when something sharp jabs into my thigh. I was so deep into my thought process on Audrey’s silence when she was led away by a stranger, I didn’t notice the goon removing a needle from his bag of tricks at my side and stabbing it into my leg.

  “What was that…” My woozy words answer my question on his behalf. I feel like I’m floating, like more than scratchy material is moving out from beneath me when he leans into the van to lift me out. Just like when I was carried through the hidden corridors of the office building shouldering Dr. Bates’s practice, I’m fully exposed.

  It’s not all bad. My lack of clothing uncovers elements my dazed head wouldn’t have noticed. Such as the warmth of the sun when I’m carried across the gravel-crunching ground and the direction the wind is blowing. It always howls in from the ocean. Since the gusts are nowhere near as strong as the ones that roll in from Bronte’s Peak, I’m confident we’ve headed inland.

  The shadow on the man’s face and the lack of warmth from the sun exposes it’s still early in the day. I either slept for an eternity, or we’re still close to Hopeton. If my intuition is anything to go by, I’m leaning toward the latter.

  The thought makes me smile. Dimitri is closer than I realized. Perhaps he’s sitting in the dark sedan I spotted near the woodlands when my eyes were wrenched to the needle sticking out of my thigh. I only got the quickest glimpse of the vehicle before my eyelids grew weary, but I’m confident it wasn’t my imagination. I have a knack for taking things in much deeper than an ordinary person would. It’s a disturbing trait I developed from my father’s wish to embarrass me. I gawk even when I shouldn’t. Mercifully, I don’t see it getting me in trouble this time around.

  A second after the beep of an electronic lock sounds through my ears, I’m lowered onto a cool, bumpy surface. Although this metal doesn’t feel as scratchy as the rusty bottom of the van, its distinct smell assures me I’ve been moved from one mode of transport to another. Regretfully, it isn’t an elaborate private jet. The tire jack digging into my ribs assures me of this, much less the tight confines. I’ve been shoved into a trunk, the bend of my legs to fit adding to the gnawing pain in my stomach.

  “Get comfy, sweetheart. You’re in for an all-nighter,” grunts the stranger with a chuckle before he slams down the trunk, trapping me inside.

  Once again, I want to get smug, but once again, the reminder that Dimitri is only one step behind stops me.

  We’ve created a storm.

  Now we just need it to rain.

  Fingers crossed it doesn’t turn into a flood.

  4

  Dimitri

  “Call an ambulance!” I scream at Smith as if he’s standing across from me instead of watching me via the security dome above my head.

  With my earpiece bogged down by the water I’m wading through to reach Alice floating in the middle of her pool, Smith’s response doesn’t come out as crisp as normal. “Dimi—”

  “Now!” My short reply doesn’t weaken the severity of my warning. I didn’t suggest for him to bring in the authorities. I told him to. That’s a direct order. Ignoring it will see him on the receiving end of my wrath.

  As Smith does as asked, I drag Alice’s weighted body to the edge of her monstrous pool. Considering the fact my hands can circle her waist, she shouldn’t feel as if she weighs a ton.

  It takes all my strength to lift her onto the pool’s edge, but it has nothing on the weight that slams down on me when Lucy suddenly falls at her mother’s side a couple of seconds later.

  She didn’t escape Rocco’s clutch. He freed her so he can help me fix the second injustice I made today. The first was letting Roxanne out of my sight. “Dip her head back, you need to open up her airways.”

  As Lucy holds her mother’s hand, crying for her to wake up, I rip open Alice’s shirt and bra, cover her chest with my hands like I did almost nine years ago, then press down.

  I do four compressions before Rocco uses her tilted chin to his advantage. He breathes into her mouth two times before raising his eyes to mine. “You were only supposed to scare her, D. You weren’t meant to kill—.”

  I glare at him, cutting his scorn off halfway.

  I’m riddled with guilt.

  He doesn’t need to make it worse.

  Even confident I have nothing to answer for, the disdain in Rocco’s eyes is too strong to discount. He’s been angry at me many times and has wanted to rip my head off even more than that, but this is the first time he’s been truly disappointed in me. “She helped them take Roxanne. She knew her pregnancy wasn’t a hoax.”

  My confession sees me pumping Alice’s chest more forcefully than needed. It can’t be helped. I either take my aggression out on her chest or push her head back under the water until there’s no chance she’ll survive. This is the kinder of the two and only occurring because her daughter is kneeling across from me, ashen-faced and crying.

  “She did it for…” I stop myself in just enough time. If anything Alice said was true, and I have a feeling it was, Lucy will already be traumatized. I don’t need to add more angst to the bucketloads she has to tell her future therapists.

  “Again.”

  Rocco ba
rely forces half a breath into Alice’s lungs when the gurgle of a woman clawing her way back from the brink of death sees him pulling back.

  While Alice coughs up the water in her lungs, the sound of sirens is heard in the distance. She lives in a rich, leafy suburb that’s so quiet, it’s easy to distinguish the difference between a paramedic’s wails and that of an unmarked police car.

  “We need to go,” Rocco says, stating the obvious. He rolls Alice on her side before re-tilting her head. It’s clear from the rise and fall of her chest that she’s breathing. She just hasn’t fully come around yet—emotionally, not physically. “When she wakes up, keep her on her side, okay?” he says to Lucy. “She has lots of water in her lungs she needs to get out.”

  Like the brave girl she was born to be, Lucy wipes at the tears high on her cheeks before dipping her chin at Rocco’s suggestion. She looks like she wants to gut me, but there’s nothing but admiration in her eyes as she stares at Rocco.

  “Send someone to collect her grandmother. Make sure she gets here before CPS. If she spends an hour with them, Smith, we’ll have more than words.”

  He doesn’t absorb my threat. He gets straight to work on locating Lucy’s only surviving relative before updating us on how close the sirens we hear wailing in the distance are. “It’s a single unit, but he isn’t on payroll.”

  That means it can only be one man. Detective Ryan Carter.

  While snagging a towel from a rack on my right to cushion Alice’s head, I say, “Log a disturbance one block back. Ensure it mentions the words ‘shots fired’ and ‘officer down.’”

  Ryan can’t help but be a hero. He was born to be one. Me, on the other hand, no matter what happens today, my credits won’t ever include a synonym of the word. Every story needs a villain. It’s just never anticipated for him to also be the leading man.