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I knocked two times and still got no answer. I knew I had to open the fucking door and check, but if she was in a nightgown or something, I was about to lose my shit. I clenched my teeth and turned the door knob, careful not to make a sound. The room was submerged under thick darkness, only a string of light punctuating it through the drapes. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and when I looked at the bed, I found it empty and untouched. Fuck.
Flicking the lights on, I pulled the gun up from the back of my belt and chambered a bullet. The bathroom door was opened, but it was empty. I felt the pulsation of adrenaline inside my gut. I checked the windows, but all were still closed from the inside.
Fuck. I took the stairs all the way to the rooftop and started looking in every room, trying to find a breach, hoping that Cat just went for a midnight snack or something, but there was no trace of her anywhere in the house. I even checked Gino’s office and the basement, even though she didn’t have any business being there. When I was sure she wasn’t anywhere to be found, I picked up the phone in Gino’s office and called the number of one of the boys from the house next door where the guards were. Someone was there at all times.
“Joey here.” I knew him. He was a nice kid that I trained to toughen up a few years ago. He was some kind of cousin of a cousin of Ignazio’s who wanted to get into business, but when I first met him, the boy couldn’t throw a punch. Now he was pumped and the first to jump in a brawl.
“Joey, it’s Mustafa. Where is Catherinelle?”
“She should be home.” He had become stronger, but he had also become fucking dumber.
“I know where she should be, asshole. The house is fucking empty. Go to the street, ask the boys and come back to report.”
It took him five minutes, so three minutes too late, to come knocking on the front door.
“The boys say the last time they saw her was when you dropped her off today. She hasn’t left the house since. I sent a couple of guys to check the parking lot. Who knows, maybe she felt like taking a ride.”
“She doesn’t have a license, idiot. And there are men on the back entry too.”
I was starting to lose my fucking patience. Where the hell was she?
Another bull, Patrick, came running from around the corner.
“She left. She snuck out.”
He had to be shitting me. This had better not have been about that party she was blabbing about in the car today.
“How the fuck did no one see her?”
“She used that side exit, next to the basement door, the one coming from the empty room the maids use as storage on the bottom floor. I don’t know what to tell you, man. She knows the comings and goings of the boys, and she’s a slippery girl. I was her tail a couple of times, and it’s easy to lose her. You’d think that pink hair would make her easy to spot, but no.”
In the past year, she had made a habit of running away from the people that were supposed to look after her; that was the entire reason I was here. Gino got sick of replacing her bulls so he passed her to me. She wasn’t able to pull anything of the sorts until today.
“Patrick, are you sure there isn’t any breach? No one could have come inside?”
“And what, take the boss’s sister? Nah, Mustafa, she left. Maybe she’s meeting some handsome fella and didn’t want you on her tale.”
I felt the blood pulsing through my body and going straight to my head. A vein was pulsating on my neck only thinking about it. If that was the case, I sure hoped the handsome fella knew how to pray because I would put him on his knees and shoot him like a dog.
“Fine, I’ll handle it.”
I turned my back to them without any other word and locked myself in Gino’s office, calling every lookout we had in the city and every club, restaurant or bar we had to let them know I needed to find Cat. The finest places of New York’s night life were under Nucci’s name so she’d probably turn up at one.
As I hoped, the phone rang half an hour later.
“Mustafa.”
“Hugo, it’s me, Ignazio. Were you looking for principessa?”
I sure fucking was.
“What do you have, Ignazio?”
“She’s here, at my gambling joint with some friends. They had cocktails somewhere in the city and came here for an after party. She said Gino gave her the green light.”
“And you believed her?” I breathed into the phone.
“Ah, not really, but what can I say? She has a way around my heart.” Everyone had a way around his heart. The man was too kind for his own good. “I’m not throwing her out, so you will have to come and pick her up if you want. But I can take care of her. No hard liquor, and someone will drive her home.”
Nah, that wasn’t about to cut it. I’d had enough of her spoiled ass. Tonight was the night where Catherinelle Nucci would learn that no one, not even her, should push my fucking limits.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Come on, Mustafa, all the girl is doing is enjoying a glass of rose with three of her friends and mingling at some Black Jack tables.”
“Fifteen minutes, Ignazio. Do not let her move.”
I got into my car and drove down there like I was on autopilot. I didn’t even see the fucking street I was taking; the rage was like a drop cloth over my eyes. Unfortunately for Catherinelle, she was about to feel that rage first hand.
