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CHAPTER 17
luca
When the alarms start, my watch beeps with them, letting me know there’s a fire at my apartment building. I know, immediately, something’s wrong.
When Dani calls thirty seconds later, I pick up on the first ring.
"Luca," she blurts out, "I’m sorry," are the first words out of her mouth, and immediately my heart stops, it drops, and my stomach rolls.
"What the fuck did you do?" I snarl, and she doesn’t back down, like she knows I’ll tear her a new asshole if she shows any weakness.
"I did what had to be done, or… I thought—" she says, her voice strong, but she growls, at herself maybe. "I think I fucked up. But it had to be done."
"What?"
"There’s a fire alarm at your apartment. The sprinklers are going. It’s a false alarm, but the whole building has been evacuated." She pauses. "We have the whole condo wired with security cameras, Luca." What she’s not saying is freaking me the fuck out. I stalk out of my office, just as Ricky is running toward me.
"What do you need?" He asks immediately, face serious as hell, and I shake my head.
"Stay with me," I snap at him, and turn back to my phone and to Dani. "Tell me what the fuck you did," I demand, and she’s silent, "Dani, I swear to fucking god, if you don’t tell me?—"
"She’s gone, Luca," Dani says, and the whole world stops.
"Who?" I ask, even though I already know. But I want her to say it. My heart feels like it’s cracking.
"Ashley," Dani replies, and then I hear something that sounds a lot like a door slamming.
"All the stairwells are clear, the lobby, she’s not anywhere," the voice is muffled in the background. I gesture to Ricky, and he takes off, toward the stairs, as Dani keeps talking.
"I thought we had the situation under control," she says.
"What the fuck does that mean," I snarl, walking after Ricky. I hear him on his phone, calling my brothers. I love Dani, she’s my cousin, but sometimes she oversteps. And sometimes, I need my brothers to support me. Now is going to be one of those times, I can tell.
"She’s been here for weeks with you, and we haven’t found a thing, except her laptop, which was pretty much wiped, and a bunch of empty notebooks and random stuff. The Viper hasn’t so much as raised his snake-head since she moved in with you?—"
"You’re not making any sense, Dani," I reply, "tell me what happened, because I’m about three seconds from finding you and choking you. You chased her off?"
"I made her take a test," Dani says, and now’s when she falters, like she doesn’t know what to do with the information except tell me. "This isn’t how you should find out."
She doesn’t even need to say the words. She doesn’t need to tell me what test.
I’m not fucking stupid.
I’ve just been fucking blind. My throat goes tight.
"Fuck," I whisper, and Ricky looks back at me, and shakes his head, holding his hand up for me to pause. He’s on his phone, his mouth set in a grim line, and his eyes are wide and shocked. My hand is numb around the phone. "Find her," I grate the words out, "and if she’s hurt?—"
I don’t finish the threat. I just hang up. Ricky’s eyes are bright as I stride across the floor to him, and he holds the door to the stairs open for me.
"Matty and Gio are waiting," he says, "Matt’s at Cascade, Gio’s got guys all over her old neighborhood, we’ll find her." He sees it on my face. "Dani overstepped huh?" He shakes his head. "I get it, I’d want to know if I was gonna be an uncle that bad, I guess..." He’s being charitable, underestimating her, not that Dani’s anyone to worry about....
But she puts the family first always, even above and beyond my own happiness.
How many times have I bitchslapped my brothers for not doing the same? And here’s me, having fucked it all up in exactly the same way.
And now... Ashley, and our baby, is going to pay the price. If she’s out there, exposed, thinking she has to hide from Dani or any of the Greco family?
She’s ripe for the Viper snatching her up.
