Chapter 506: Just Wanted To Hug You
Carol nodded.
In under fifteen minutes, the house changed. The living room became a command station. Men moved quickly, checking weapons, loading magazines, speaking in low voices. Marco stood among them with a hard face and tired eyes, his fear for Veronica buried beneath discipline.
Massimo gave short instructions. When they were ready to leave, Carol stepped forward. This time, she reached for Marco.
She wrapped him in a hug.
"I’ll be fine, Ma," Marco murmured, trying to reassure her.
"I know," Carol said, holding him tighter. "Just wanted to hug you."
Marco chuckled softly, kissed her hair, and walked out with Massimo.
*******
Luca stood in the middle of David’s bedroom, and for the first time since Veronica had vanished, the rage in him went quiet in the way the world went quiet before a bomb tore through it.
The apartment itself was nothing remarkable. Too lifeless to belong to a man who intended to stay anywhere long.
The walls told the truth. Dozens of Veronica’s photographs covered them.
Everywhere.
Taped to the wall above the bed. Pinned along the edges of the mirror. Hanging beside the window. Lined along the closet door. Some were distant shots—her leaving Commissioned, stepping out of a car, walking beside Luca, laughing with Val, sitting by herself. Others were closer.
David had been watching her for months. Even before the café. Before the bodies were planted. Before Luca had known there was a name to put to the sickness circling them. David had been there, moving through the edges of their lives.
Luca walked slowly toward the closet door. A photograph hung there, larger than the others. For a moment, he could not make his body move.
It was Veronica naked in the shower. His vision blurred at the edges, but he forced himself to look. He had to understand the full shape of the threat. He had to see what David had done, what he had taken, what he had already violated long before he put his hands on her body.
Luca recognised the place instantly. The Chinese club. She had gone there to push her body until her mind stopped hurting. She had trusted that space.
She had no idea she had been watched. His hand rose slowly, but he stopped. They had all been blind.
Luca had built walls around her. He had wrapped Veronica in every form of protection he understood, and none of it had mattered because the enemy had not been at the gate.
The enemy had walked freely among them. He had been close enough to study Veronica’s routines, close enough to learn the places she went.
Luca’s throat tightened. Veronica was in more danger than she had ever been. This was not just revenge.
This was not Bianca giving instructions from beyond the grave through a loyal brother. David wanted Veronica.
He was darkly and sickly obsessed with her. Luca saw it in the pictures. The angles. The moments chosen. David had collected pieces of her without permission, building an altar out of violation.
Luca pressed his fingers against his eyes.
Focus.
He needed to focus but the walls seemed to lean toward him, every photograph another accusation. He turned, scanning the apartment again.
Nothing.
No bills. No personal attachments. No photographs of anyone David loved. No obvious place he would run.
The bastard had no roots in New York. No friends Luca knew of. No family he could grab. No lovers. No loyalty that could be squeezed.
Nothing he cared about. Nothing Luca could threaten. David Vitale had made himself into something hollow.
Where could he have taken her? His chest started to ache. Pain was irrelevant. Breath was irrelevant. His body could collapse later, after Veronica was safe.
The pressure grew, heavy and unbearable. Luca dragged in air, but it did not feel like enough. The photographs blurred together until they seemed to move, to surround him, to mock him.
You failed her.
You promised.
You failed her.
His hand went to the chain around his neck. There, against his chest, he had attached her rings along with his own. He closed his fingers around them.
A promise sat on his tongue. He was going to get her back. He was going to put those rings back on her finger with his own hands. He was going to kiss every place David had touched until her body remembered she was loved. And then he was going to cut David Vitale into pieces so small his family would need glue and tape to give him a proper burial.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Luca pulled it out, expecting a call from Marco, from the tech team, from anyone with a lead.
It was a text from Veronica’s phone. His entire body went cold. He stared at her name on the screen. ’Bambola’. That’s what he saved her number with. His Bambola. Then he opened the message.
The picture loaded and Luca dropped to his knees. The impact barely registered. His hand locked around the phone.
In the picture was his wife, bloodied. Blood on her skin. Blood on her face. Blood staining her body. She was in nothing but her underwear, her eyes bright with pain and fear. The knowledge of what David had done to get that picture tore through Luca. He screamed into the room.
He could not hold it. He could not take it. He just could not. The room spun. The walls of photographs watched him fall apart. His lungs refused to work properly, dragging in shallow, useless breaths.
He had nothing. Only proof that David had her. Proof that he had touched her, hurt her. For the first time in his life, he was frightened, actually frightened because he had no idea how to find his wife before it would be too late.
*****
There was a reason Don Genovese was feared. When Massimo went to war, he announced himself. He arrived loud enough for every one to understand that negotiation had ended and consequence had taken its seat.
(600 power stones!!!)
Comments